REACH FOR THE STARS

Hit a plateau with your strength training? This advanced, intensive technique can help you break new ground 

For the most part, strength training follows a well-trodden formula. Repeat the same programme of sets and reps frequently enough and your body will adapt positively, allowing you to add more weight into the equation and get stronger as a result.

But there are occasions when this process slows or simply stops altogether. That could be down to a number of reasons – from skimping on recovery to not having your nutrition nailed – but if you’ve exhausted all of the obvious fixes, it might be time to reach further.

What is functional overreaching?

“Functional overreaching is a period or a phase of training in which you are trying to provide the body with a larger stimulus, in order to force positive adaptive change,” explains physiotherapist and personal trainer Liam Chong. In practice, it involves a substantial overload of training stress followed by a brief period of recovery. If that sounds a lot like overtraining, that’s because it is.

“Overtraining is chronic and has long-term impacts on your performance, recovery and motivation to train,” says personal trainer Tom MacCormick. “Functional overreaching takes it into a much shorter period of time, providing results before you get yourself into trouble long-term.” On a physiological level, the idea behind functional overreaching is that it turbo charges the stimulus recovery adaptation (SRA) concept that forms the basis of most strength training. Rather than following a pattern of training (stimulus), fatigue (recovery) and the muscle overcompensating by recovering above its initial baseline strength (adaptation), you shorten the recovery window by training intensively over a brief period of time, before having a longer break and reaping all those adaptation rewards.