Can you fry your CNS?

I have been in the gym today and after class I did my regular strength stuff. I always go till failure. Always. If I do dips, I can do 15 easily, start shaking heavily at 20 and go till failure which is 23 at the moment. It is like that with pretty much all I do. 7 pull-ups easily, 9 shaking and 11 until I can't do anymore.

Anyways, a guy who is pretty good started a conversation with me. He asked why I always did my exercises until failure? Of course because I want to get stronger??

Anyways, he told me that he used to do that all the time. But then he fried his CNS.

He said it all started with intense thirst, nervousness and sleeplessness at night. Then he got so tired, no matter how much he slept he was like drunk. He couldn't tumble anymore, he said he got dizzy as soon as he tried to. All he could do was walking slowly.

It took him 2 weeks of doing nothing until he was able to train again. He said he was also very hungry but felt sick the same time.

During his "career" he went through this for a few times.

Can this be true? Is there really such a thing as overtrainig? How does a fried CNS feel? And should I stop training until failure 3 times a week?

Wow that sounds a lot like Adrenal Fatigue (although Adrenal fatigue is far more chronic that what you described).

Short answer, Yes, you can totally overtrain.    

Pushing to failure all the time, and doing a high volume of work close to 1 rep max without adequate rest can lead to CNS fatigue. 

I've definitely been in a state of overtraining but nothing close to the symptoms you have described. 

The good news is, if you follow Foundation you should be fine. Foundation has built in Overload and Deload programming to prevent the exact thing we are talking about.  Looking for long term gains, as opposed to a short term sprint. 

As Paul Chek says, For every Yang there is a Yin.   When you have performance  or 'Work out" goals (Yang energy), you need to balance yourself out with resting, 'work in' exercises too. Think sleep, rest, meditation, qi gong, leisure walks etc (yin energy).

Balance the Yin with the Yang, and you'll be fine.

You can definitely fry your CNS, but I prefer over easy.

over easy? how would I notice a fried CNS?

Puns do not always translate in an international forum. I laughed though

Overtraining, certainly. More common on the average trainee would be mental fatigue, especially with the fair technical demands of gst strength elements. This wouldn't be dangerous per se, more inefficient in making gains. My experience is that pretty much nothing complicated should be performed to or very near failure (on a regular basis) until it is being performed very close to 10/10 times correctly. At that point depending on the goal (martial arts for my small group of students) training with greater fatigue is important to bring reactions towards an instinctive level. Itsa balancing act though, its vvery easy to train in bad or inefficient habits training tired.

Just my experience

Haha ok

Ah, that's interesting! So you simple push-ups are not as demanding on the body as complex gymnastics skills like tucks, handsprings or press handstands?

How would I notice overtraining or a fried CNS in training? Less reps? Tiredness? Shakiness? Just unable to do anything?

The guy told me that he has been in this stage about every 6 weeks (OMG!!!!) in his worst times and he couldn't even concentrate on walking on a line and felt completely overtaxed by tumbling or doing dips!

Training until failure is never necessary. I have made my best strength gains avoiding failure. High level athletes make use of many different kinds of protocols that are dangerous, and the danger can be mitigated by close monitoring and chemical assistance but even so injuries are still common.  

Very few people can reach real failure, i.e. actual mechanical failure.  Most simply do not have the pain tolerance for it.  As an example, real failure is to bench press X weight until you feel a pop in your shoulder or a tear somewhere, and then you cannot bench another rep.  But even approaching this as you are doing, even if not close, is unnecessary.

Overtraining is also real but again not many people have the pain tolerance to reach it.

CNS overtraining the movement you attempt feels unnaturally off.  It may not hurt anywhere but a most mild case may manifest as simply not been able to do an exercise that you hit hard the week before, like a kind of muscle weakness. 

Mechanical overtraining will cause pain in soft tissue, in the joint. or things like shin splints. 

Cardio, elevated resting heart rate, general fatigue.  

All may cause difficulty sleeping.   

I don't think what this guy is describing is simply a case of overtraining, it sounds like some kind of nutritional/vitamin/mineral deficiency or a medical issue.  I have frequently overtrained until I have broken or torn something and I have never felt that much fatigue, any dizziness shakiness etc, it is strange that someone would reach that level of fatigue and not injure something.  Everyone is different tho.

A simple tho not very efficient way to tell is to get a blood test, if your creatine kinase level is high but you are otherwise healthy it is a sign of overtraining.  Best to see a sports doctor for this kind of thing.  

In regards to developing more strength:

1. Strict form, full range of motion, and less repetitions will always produce greater strength gains than sloppy form and high repetitions.

2. After developing a, particular, level of proficiency and endurance with one variation of a fundamental body weight exercise moving onto the next hardest variation will continue to develop strength.

One of the few reasons to stick with a particular variation is your body needs to develop more muscular endurance.

ASNB said:

Training until failure is never necessary. I have made my best strength gains avoiding failure. High level athletes make use of many different kinds of protocols that are dangerous, and the danger can be mitigated by close monitoring and chemical assistance but even so injuries are still common.  

 

Very few people can reach real failure, i.e. actual mechanical failure.  Most simply do not have the pain tolerance for it.  As an example, real failure is to bench press X weight until you feel a pop in your shoulder or a tear somewhere, and then you cannot bench another rep.  But even approaching this as you are doing, even if not close, is unnecessary.

 

Overtraining is also real but again not many people have the pain tolerance to reach it.

 

CNS overtraining the movement you attempt feels unnaturally off.  It may not hurt anywhere but a most mild case may manifest as simply not been able to do an exercise that you hit hard the week before, like a kind of muscle weakness. 

 

Mechanical overtraining will cause pain in soft tissue, in the joint. or things like shin splints. 

 

Cardio, elevated resting heart rate, general fatigue.  

 

All may cause difficulty sleeping.   

 

I don't think what this guy is describing is simply a case of overtraining, it sounds like some kind of nutritional/vitamin/mineral deficiency or a medical issue.  I have frequently overtrained until I have broken or torn something and I have never felt that much fatigue, any dizziness shakiness etc, it is strange that someone would reach that level of fatigue and not injure something.  Everyone is different tho.

 

A simple tho not very efficient way to tell is to get a blood test, if your creatine kinase level is high but you are otherwise healthy it is a sign of overtraining.  Best to see a sports doctor for this kind of thing.  

While I agree that training until failure is not necessary, you're off-base with quite a bit of your post.

Muscle failure does not necessarily include "popping" or tearing of stuff.  It's entirely possible to do pushups "to failure", at which point you are not capable of doing more until you rest and recover.

Overtraining is real, and not that hard to reach if you don't know how to program.  It's a chronic issue, rather than a one-time incident.  It's very often seen in distance runners.  The main feature of it is that the individual is conducting workouts without allowing for adequate recovery time.  Running a marathon unprepared is stupid, but not overtraining.  Trying to run 10 miles every day at a given pace might or might not be, depending on the person's ability to recover from it.

A lot of the symptoms listed (dizziness, weakness, shaking, etc) are very similar to dehydration and other heat sicknesses, which can be induced by exercise.

Finally, you should perhaps take a look at rhabdo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis

It's becoming relatively commonplace among crossfitters who don't always have the good sense to stop when they should.

Either way, I think we agree that training to failure is rarely necessary and mostly unhelpful.