That was a very cool Tnation article. That site has a wealth of very good information. Unfortunately many people refuse to read that site just because it is so blatantly focused on muscle. Just yesterday they had an article about the best fats to eat and its wholly paleo but I’m betting about 99% of our community here would balk at that site. Anyhow…

I love that article. And I love the mindset, and the general idea of just manning up and training hard that he espouses. However, his method, I would say, works because of two big things that are prolly not applicable to the bulk of lay (though serious) lifters:

1. His athletes spend the majority of their resources lifting. They live to lift. Forget jobs, social lift, etc.
2. His athletes may be taking pharmacological helpers (I am generous with “may”)

That you added 15 lbs to your squat ever, let alone in one week, is rad. Could be because you’re a novice. I am a rank amateur and still see good gains on the regular. After reading smart people’s articles it seems obvious that this is because we are relatively new and nowhere near our genetic potential. I am referring to the basic curve that says the gains come quickly and relatively easily in the beginning, then of course that curve begins to flatten and shit gets hard. Otherwise we'd all be walking around with 700 lbs squats in a year or two.

Or of course it could be because you’re not new to it but you’ve just never been squatting at a weight that was actually taxing you to the level you thought.

I do not think that overtraining is really a state of being undertrained for most people.

Yes, it is completely possible to train your CNS to handle more like you do with your muscles. They are not mutually exclusive, and you’re doing both every time you do either. There are theories like “time under tension” etc that people say specifically go some way in training CNS. “Walk outs” are a good example: you take a much heavier load than your 1RM for the backsquat on your back as if you’d squat it but you do not squat it. You simply unrack it and hold it on your back for X seconds/minutes. The idea being that youre getting used to having it there, perhaps training your CNS to accommodate that uncomfort, etc of having the load bearing down on you.

I’m not sure about the caloric-intake’s effect on the the CNS’s ability to adjust to load. Personally I kind of think that the CNS works more like our mental attitude: in other words just getting used to dealing with a certain load. I think our mind and our CNS are always actually ready to lift more than we think its just that we don’t recruit them properly. I have no references.

In my experience over training isn't that big of an issue if you get adequate carbs and protien. You have to train smart though, I wouldn't continually work out a muscle day after day through pain but if its just a little sore I don't see a problem. Check out john berardis article about Gflux.

To answer the question, is overtraining real, I refer to the following point made by Doug McGuff MD (from an interview with Tim Ferriss in the book "The 4-Hour Body")

"Building muscle is actually a much slower process than healing a wound from a burn (which typically takes one to two weeks). A burn heals from the ectodermal germ line, where the healing rate is relatively faster, because epithelial cells turn over quickly. If you scratch your cornea, for instance, it's generally going to be healed in 8-12 hours. Muscle tissue, in contrast, heals from the mesodermal germ line, where the healing reate is typically significantly slower. All in all -- when you separate all the emotion and positive feedback that people derive from the training experience -- solid biological data indicate that the optimal training for the vast majority of the population is no more than once a week."

That being said, one must also consider that the body would rather limit how much tension your muscles generate in order to prevent injury because that would (in evolutionary terms) be less advantageous to survival. Training, therefore, is a process over overriding these limits and is likely the cause of the gains seen when individuals participate in particularly grueling exercise sessions. Additionally, music, visualization, competition, excitement, mental training/affirmation etc. can all affect the impulse one sends via the CNS leading to a transient increase in strength.

Eventually, however, "the house wins" and damage is damage. Unless you are "enhancing" your ability to recover with anabolics you will quickly accrue more damage than your body is capable of repairing. You will likely experience an "undulating plateau" (to borrow a term from discussions of peak oil) which will eventually lead to a decline in strength if you don't suffer chronic or acute injury first.