Deception 2 is a tricky one as it can really boost a lifters training until it quits working. Deception two is based on shocking the body by overtraining and also by allowing the body to overcompensate by undertraining. Both overtraining and undertraining can escalate your strength for a time. If paired together, both methods can be even more effective. Even so, progress is often temporary and the progress often misleads people to buy into the deception that they have found a magic training routine because it brought sudden results in spite of the temporary nature of the results.
The body’s initial response to overtraining is often an increase in strength as your body knows that an increase in strength will make a given workout easier. However, if the body is repeatedly shocked with overtraining after it gains strength, it will find no advantage in continuing to gain strength. If a lifter has reached their anabolic zero point, progress that occurs from overtraining will usually cause strength gains to cease within a few weeks if not sooner. A temporary benefit from overtraining can cause a training deception if it leads a lifter to conclude that such training is always the best way to train.
Undertraining can also produce a temporary increase in strength if it is preceded by harder training. Undertraining is often called de-loading, or tapering, or cutting back. There may be other terms for it as well but it still amounts to undertraining. Undertraining works on a different basis than overtraining. Undertraining is based on metabolic overcompensation. Less training (undertraining) does not require as much replenishment and rebuilding of the muscles. More training requires more replenishment and rebuilding of the muscles. More training programs the body to anticipate the need to replenish and rebuild muscles at a faster rate than undertraining. If a person who has been doing more training switches to less training, the body will still be in the habit of replenishing and rebuilding its muscles at the previous rate that it has been programmed respond to. This amount of replenishment and rebuilding will be more than what is demanded by the workout once undertraining is initiated. The result is that the body will be building its muscles up to a greater degree than they are being broken down by the workouts. Strength and growth will result from this. However, once undertraining has been maintained long enough, the body will begin to anticipate that workouts are less demanding and will then slow down its recovery rate to match the need of the less severe workouts. At this point, undertraining will suddenly cease to work. If a lifter thinks that a temporary gain in strength indicates that undertraining will work on a regular basis, they will be deceived.
Many lifters use overtraining and undertraining as a regular training strategy as it leads to overcompensation. This is often times helpful to training and it does work. However, neither overtraining nor undertraining work forever by themselves. They work better when you alternate back and forth between the two. Even so, overtraining that is too severe and undertraining that is too easy will most likely backfire and stop working at some point. Programming for overcompensation can be done without overtraining and undertraining.
It is possible to achieve overcompensation by using a time period where more light weights are used followed by a time period where heavier weights are used while still staying within the boundaries of precision point training. In addition, the number or workouts per week can be manipulated. For example, if you normally do four or five workouts per week, you can cut back to two workouts per week for one week during a month. You can also manipulate the workouts within a week. For example, you can work out on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, then rest two days and workout on Saturday for a total of four workouts during the week. You are training more at the start of the week, and less at the end of the week to allow for overcompensation to take place.
One final deception that can occur with increasing training frequency is that it can make you sore when you first increase your training frequency. When you get sore, you often lose strength. But once your body adapts to the increased training frequency and the soreness goes away, you may find that the higher frequency training is more effective, even though it made you weaker for a few days when you first began. You need to give it a couple of weeks to see if it really works or not.
In the next article, we’ll talk about individual differences in regard to training deceptions. In the mean-time, best of training to you.