I have bad news for all of you: there is basically no research to back any claim as to recovery times, supercompensation, central nervous system overtraining, etc. I reviewed some of the research on underperformance syndromes, especially those related to sympathetic overtraining and there might (only “might”) be some correlation between that and what we, powerlifters, observe in high performance lifters after either an important meet, with a huge max, or too frequent maxes (inadequate periodization).
I spent the last two hours reviewing what I had already reviewed and there’s only very indirect evidence to any of what “everybody knows”. That’s too bad. This is where urban legend and guru knowledge comes from: the notorious gap between science and practice.
So, in practice:
- “Everybody knows” static stimulus (the type we do in powerlifting, for example) takes much longer to recover than dynamic stimulus (the type we do in weightlifting, for example).
- “Everybody knows” excentric training is extremely taxing over the body. There’s some research (with quite debatable methodology) showing you might have over 60% strength loss due to excentric effort produced injury. So, “everybody knows” you shouldn’t do it too often.
- “Everybody knows” weighlifters train few days before a meet with real high loads. Something that leaves powerlifters in awe or, worse, when they try to mimic weighliters, in total underperformance hell.
- “Everybody knows” the deadlift is what takes longer to recover. Nobody knows why.
Who’s “everybody”? Good coaches. People who observe, spend hours in pubmed and try to put two and two together.
But this is getting harder every day.
I do what I can, but I’m not a guru and I will never be one. I believe gurus feed mythology, not knowledge.