OVERTRAINING

Overtraining is when you reach a point where it will take over 3 weeks of no training to completely restore your previous level of performance. Overreaching is when it will take less than that much time to get back to normal. You get into this state when you train too hardcore.


Fitness-fatigue model
You have fitness.
And
You have fatigue.
Fatigue masks fitness.
Preparedness = fitness - fatigue = how much you can lift on a given day.
When you lift, you accumulate fatigue. Fitness also rises up a bit (but not as much, leading to decreased preparedness straight after the workout). Fatigue fades away faster than fitness.
So you can lift, wait for fatigue to go to 0, some fitness will still be there, leading to a rise in preparedness. Then you train again before fitness drops down. That's how single-factor theory (or the supercompensation model) works (like SS).

But what if you train really really hard for a bit, leading to accumulated fatigue over a period of time, then stop training so hard for a bit to let that fatigue fade away, revealing your heug fitness gains?
That's called planned overreaching. And it works really well. Chinese scientists in a secret lab in Soviet Russia assisted by Ivan Abadjiev have discovered the optimal period is around about 3 weeks 'loading' to 1 week 'deloading'.

During the loading weeks you do not let your body fully recover. You train hard. If you are progressing you're not training hard enough. But if you regress by more than 5-10% you're probably training too hard, and your workouts will not be hard enough to stimulate significant fitness improvements, but they'll still be hard enough to cause fatigue to keep going up (ie no gains + get weaker).
During the deloading week you don't train as hard as you want. You allow the fatigue to dissipate, whilst hopefully maintaining fitness gains (by training a little bit), leading to a sharp rise in preparedness.

The loading period can be kind of depressing, and you will slow down and possibly be less precise whilst doing faster lifts, which may (will) be detrimental to technique on the classic lifts. So it might not be the best idea to go really hard on this if you already have technical problems. But that's up to you. You'll probably get stronger.


But Pas, how do I deload?
Well m8, what you have to do is reduce a training variable (or maybe multiple ones)
You have frequency, volume and intensity.
Ie how often you pick things up, how many times you pick those things up in a session, and how heavy they are (generally as a percentage of your max, or how hard it feels). So you can:
- Lift things up fewer times a workout
- Stop lifting heavy things up
- Lift things up fewer days a week
Or any combination.

1 macrocycle would be something like 3 loading weeks + 1 deloading week.
Some say after 3 normal macrocycles (eg [3 loading weeks, 1 deloading] x 3), you need a deloading macrocycle (something like 1 loading week, 3 deloading weeks). But you probably don't really need to worry about that.

tl;dr
If you want to try planned overtraining:
- Train really hard for 3 weeks, so your lifts don't progress much, or regress by a max of ~5%
- Reduce frequency, volume and/or intensity for a week.
- Observe gains.