Overreaching

[Daniel Town]

Rip, this is probably a stupid question but I was wondering what your thoughts are on taking Benzodiazepines to help counter overreaching side effects. For example, I am a intermediate lifter doing a 4 day split. It just so happens this week that I will be leaving Town for at least half of the week so I decided to compress the workouts into 4 days in a row (Monday-Thursday). Monday-Tuesday went pretty good but I completely crashed Wednesday night: Body felt fatigue, runny nose, Racing heartrate and bad Insomnia (only got 2-3h of sleep but was laying in bed from 8:30pm-6am exhausted). Would taking a benzo allow me to push through overreaching because it'll help my recovery for the next back to back workout? This is obviously not a lifestyle kind of thing but just once in a blue moon. Would this be foolish?

[Mark Rippetoe]

You're taking the benzo for recovery, or to sleep? This is not clear. A benzo in lieu of proper planning doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

[Jason Donaldson]

This class of drug is used for abnormal sleep disruption, right? Your sleep disruption, however, sounds perfectly normal, given what you did to bring it on. The lack of sleep here is not a cause, but a symptom. Getting yourself to sleep artificially may stave off some of the secondary effects of sleep deprivation, but it's not addressing the cause of it, which is the acute case of extra stress.

These days, I travel from time to time for work, and I just train normally up until the disruption, then treat the disruption as a layoff and get back after it when I'm home. If I'm at a hotel with equipment, I try to have fun with it while I'm there, but I accept that I'm not training. It's more for my own mental benefit at the time, which is, by definition exercise. It's kind of fun to go in and lift all the weights and it not be enough...

Step back and keep this in perspective, man. - losing an occasional half a week, or even a full week, is just not that big a deal in the overall scheme of things, if (and only if) you're otherwise consistent.

[Maybach]

That seems like a pretty extreme reaction to a single extra day of training. Especially since that's usually a upper body day in most 4 day splits, no? How do you know you weren't just sick or something?

[Cole Gorton]

sounds like you are catching a cold, man.

[Daniel Town]

To help sleep so I can recover due to overreaching. A quick bandaid to help fix a miscalculated week of training.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Overtraining does not occur in 1 week.

[Matt James]

Overtraining does not occur in 1 week.

Nor is it resolved by one good night's sleep.

That's not to say that a sleep aid isn't a good idea when needed. Benzos wouldn't be my first choice, personally but they do work as advertised.

To clarify: benzos are very good at knocking you out quick and keeping you asleep longer, but they promote longer periods of light sleep and decrease deep sleep. Which is not ideal for recovery. Just as overtraining doesn't happen in one week, recovering isn't going to happen with one good night's sleep.