Overtraining and TM reset

[JamesW]

Andy,

My question is how to address suspected overtraining and restart progress on TM.

5’10
183
Age 36

The last few weeks I have been feeling some symptoms of overtraining: restless sleep (toss and turn most of the night), lingering fatigue/soreness, and missed reps. I have had similar overtraining issues two times before and each time it seemed to follow a 10-12 week run of progress, which is the case this time. Sleep is normally an issue for me, and in the best of times I average 7 hours. Lack of sleep and overtraining feed on each other I would think.

I am running TM for the first time and had a nice 10-week run on a basic 3 day/week TM with heavy singles squats (mentally couldn’t handle starting with more heavy fives) and 1x5 deads on ID/Friday. I generally do 12x30yd prowler all out sprints twice a week but have been getting greedy and adding a third conditioning workout each of the last few weeks (this may be part of my problem).

Squat ID went from 320x1x5 to 355x1x3. I failed the 4th rep at 355 and the next week failed the 1st rep at 360. Similar drop in bench and deadlift performance. Have been bumping volume days 5lb every two weeks and last volume day was 285x5x4 +235x8x1. Although it’s a mental grind, I always feel like I have a rep or two in the tank on each set. I know I am underweight but bodyweight went up nicely from 174 to 183lb and I seem to have nutrition dialed in where I am now consistently gaining around 3/4lb each week.

I have seen your advice in other threads to reduce frequency to address overtraining and changeup the ID rep scheme to avoid failures. I also know you don’t like excessive weight resets when there is a way around them.

What do you think about the following plan (using Squat weights for discussion)?
1) Reset VD 10lb
2) Reset ID to 5’s with weight about 5% (~15lb) below estimated 5RM
3) For next three workouts, take one extra day off before each workout (3 off, VD, 2 off, RD, 2 off, ID) then resume normal schedule
4) Drop prowler for a week (maybe light rowing for recovery work), do 1x prowler the next week, and resume 2x prowler the following week
5) Runout 5’s, 3’s, and singles for the next cycle as described in Practical Programming (I skipped straight to the singles the first cycle)

Thanks for your help.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Eyeball test says this looks more like a consult than a forum q&a