Overtraining and Other Bullshit

Disclaimer: I am not an accomplished lifter, a coach, or anyone else that you should actually listen to under any circumstances or for any reason.
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People talking about beginner programs (and odds are that if you're still reading blogs and taking other peoples' unpaid advice on your training, you are indeed still a beginner) love to talk about how you should only train a certain number of times per week, should only increase at a certain rate, shouldn't deadlift too frequently, and all other kinds of annoying crap that far too many people listen to. Rippetoe seems particularly guilty of this (always justifying his statements with "Because we found that less wasn't enough than more was too much," which while sound in principle is annoying as hell given that people were producing amazing results with 5x5 BEFORE he showed up and said that five sets was too much), which is part of the reason that I think he's a pussy.

Here's the deal: If you feel recovered and want to train, go train. If you prefer sticking to a schedule (which I do, to some extent), cool, but if you're a beginner and wake up the morning after a PR thinking "I could totally do more today...and I really wanna go to the gym," go do more. If you wake up the next morning thinking "...that was a bad idea," then either don't do it again or try an alternate rep scheme, or don't increase (or, further still, straight up reduce) the weight, or play around with another movement. Experiment with this shit - don't let some guy with a book dictate everything about your training to you, especially if that guy is just some random idiot on a forum.

"B-b-b-b-b-but I might overtrain," I hear you think - and I call bullshit. "Overtraining" gets bandied around as this insatiable boogeyman who's just outside, hiding in the shadows and waiting for you to train ever-so-slightly-too-hard so he can jump out and steal your nervous system, and this is absolute crap. The whole "There's no such thing as overtraining, just undereating and undersleeping" mantra is just as stupid in many ways, but for beginners, it's a hell of a lot more relevant - you are just starting out, your brain is only just now realizing that it can do things like synchronize signals to motor units to make muscles contract harder, and you are recovering so quickly that "1-rep max"-based programs are completely irrelevant because your max increases fast enough that the percentages change completely after every session. Very few people will ever reach a state of actual overtraining even ten years after they start lifting seriously, and overreaching (essentially overtraining-"lite") is relatively rare among those who "listen" to their bodies and back off when they have to.

The most important benefit of getting in the habit of trying extra sessions per week - even if you don't increase the weight in line with whatever linear progression you're following, if that is your situation - is that, if you pay attention, you should get plenty of information with which to figure out what works, what doesn't, and where your limits are. Just assuming that your program is "good enough" will get you a reasonable distance, but if you ever want to become actually strong, you're going to need to get a little crazier than that. Starting early and getting in the habit of experimenting can't realistically hurt you (given that you can progress so fast that one poor choice will set you back by at most about two or three days), and will do you a lot more good in the long run than just sitting around talking about "recovery." You're a newbie. Recovery isn't something you need to worry about. Shut the fuck up and lift.