Overreaching is a training approach where you intentionally train excessively for a short period of time and then rest or taper to get a super-compensation and improve your performance afterwards. This is different from overtraining, where you just keep training too much over a longer period of time and your body breaks down and you have to rest for months to recover. Another way to distinguish overreaching from overtraining is that overreaching is planned for a limited period of time, whereas overtraining is not planned and lasts for a longer period of time. One week of hard training is not overtraining if you then back off, that is overreaching. But training hard for months on end, then getting sick or injured as a result is overtraining.
But in either overtraining or overreaching, there is a decrease in performance. With overreaching, you have a temporary decrease in performance, followed by a taper so that the performance increases afterwards and you reach new personal bests. Here is an article about overreaching and overtraining: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/overtraining-overreaching-and-all-the-rest-part-1.html/
Overreaching is not a concept for beginning or even intermediate athletes. They can make good regular progress from normal training and recovery between workouts. However, they need to be careful not to follow the same training programs that elite athletes use. It is often tempting to try to copy the best athlete in your sport. However, that athlete has built up to that level of training over a period of 10 or more years. If you don't have that kind of training time behind you and you aren't in that kind of shape, copying the training of a top elite athlete can lead to overtraining. You need to do a program that is appropriate for you at your level.
As for a specific time period to plan overtraining, I have seen plans lasting from 5 days to about 3 weeks of planned overreaching. If you do less than 5 days, it's probably not enough stress for optimal super-compensation. If you do more than 3 weeks, you risk getting into overtraining territory. And the recovery time afterwards is crucial. It should be commensurate with the overreaching phase. I have seen recovery plans varying over about the same length of time, 5 days to 3 weeks. Shorter overreaching periods probably mean shorter recovery periods and longer overreaching periods would require longer rest or recovery afterwards. The big problem most athletes have is not truly resting or tapering after the hard training. You might want to take a couple days completely off, then use a taper schedule where you do fewer workouts, take fewer runs, but maintain the intensity and have long rests between runs.
For example, one plan might be to overreach for 1 week, doing 3 workouts per day. At the end of the week, take 2 days off, then only train 3 days per week with 1/2 the volume and long rest periods for 2 weeks. At the end of the first week, you will feel slow and tired. By the end of the second rest week, you should be feeling fresh and strong and faster than ever. That is the super-compensation effect. Again, this program is designed for elite athletes, not for beginner or intermediate athletes. If you aren't racing at the national or international level, you are better off just training normally, with some training and some recovery between workouts, rather than using this type of program. And in any case, make sure you maintain good technique when using this program. It is easy to start using poor technique when you get tired. Make sure your last strokes in the workout are as perfect as your first strokes in the workout were. Here is a link to the article:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/overtraining-overreaching-and-all-the-rest-part-1.html/
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