Health and Fitness > Build Muscle > Dont Overtrain for Faster Muscle Mass Gain
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Gregg Gillies
Weight lifting programs and bodybuilding are based
around the idea of progressive resistance or overload.
The idea being that in order to build muscle and increase
your strength you must constantly increase the stress on
your muscles.
Then you must give your muscles adequate
time to recover and rebuild so that you can again increase
the overload and continue to build muscle.
The following weightlifting workout won't do you a darn
bit of good if you don't adhere to the overload principle of
progressive resistance.
Overload doesn't necessarily have to mean an increase in your
training poundages. You can also do more reps on a set with
the same weight. Another way to bring about overload in these
weighlifting workouts is to
decrease the amount of time you rest between sets.
Doing more work in the same amount of time or doing the same
work in less time is a great way to overload your muscles
without increasing your workout poundages. This is the cornerstone
of Escalating Density Training by Charles Staley.
Clearly, to make great muscle building gains, you can't get
complacent in your weight lifting workouts. You need to constantly
strive to do more. And, as stated above, this does not mean
working out more often or making your workouts longer.
You must make your workouts progressively
harder and more intense.
However, this type of weight training routine is very hard on
the recovery process so you must make sure you get enough
rest between workouts to allow the muscle building process to
take place.
Otherwise, you end up overtraining and
instead of bigger muscles, your muscles will get smaller and
weaker.
When training this intensely, it's very important to take time
off from your workouts. You should consider taking
a week to ten days off every four to eight weeks to keep your
mind and body fresh.
If you don't recover from these weightlifting workouts you
overtrain. And if you overtrain, you don't get stronger
and your muscles don't get bigger.
The core of these power-mass workouts is the
big compound weight training exercises like the following:
Squat
Deadlift
Bench Press
Chin ups
Dumbbell Press or Upright Row
Shrugs
Following is a sample weighlifting workout
for developing power and building muscle.
Day 1
Chest, Triceps, Shoulders
Decline Bench Press 3 x 10, 8, 6
Decline Flyes 2 x 8 - 12
Incline Flyes 2 x 8 - 12
Dips 3 x 12, 10, 8
Tricep Pushdowns 2 x 8 - 12
Dumbbell Upright Rows 3 x 12, 10, 8
Incline Dumbbell Laterals 2 x 8 - 12
Day 2
Back, Biceps, Abs
Curl Grip Pulldowns 3 x 10, 8, 6
Machine or Dumbbell Pullovers 2 x 8 - 12
One Arm DUmbbell Rows 2 x 8 - 12
Incline Dumbbell Curls 1 x 8 - 12
Dumbbell Concentration Curls 1 x 8 - 12
Barbell Curls 1 x 8 - 12
Weighted Crunches 2 x 15 - 20
Reverse Crunches 2 x 15 - 20
Day 3
Legs
Squats 3 x 10, 8, 6
Leg Extensions 2 x 8 - 12
Stiff Legged Deadlifts 2 x 12 - 15
Leg Curls 2 x 8 - 12
Standing Calf Raises 2 x 12 - 15
Seated Calf Raises 2 x 12 - 15
This routine involves working each muscle group once per week.
The idea is to keep the overall training session short but
intense to avoid overtraining.
If you can recover from it, you may want to replace the Curl
Grip Pulldowns and the Pullovrs with 4 sets of deadlifts instead.
If you feel you recover sooner
than that, you may want to change up the split to something like
the following:
You definitely don't want deadlifts on the following split because
you would find yourself doing deadlifts and squats on consecutive
days.
Monday: Chest, Triceps, Shoulders
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: Back, Biceps, Abs
Thursday: Off
Friday: Chest, Triceps, Shoulders
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off
Monday: Back, Biceps, Abs
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: Chest Triceps, Shoulders
Thursday: Off
Friday: Back, Biceps, Abs
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off
Monday: Repeat at the top
If you haven't been training, or haven't been training
very intensely lately, you'll want to start out by avoiding
training to failure for the first week or two. This will help
you build up some momentum, as well as avoiding extreme soreness
that will keep you out of the gym.
Gregg Gillies is the founder of Build Lean Muscle.com
His articles have appeared in Ironman Magazine. He has written two books
and is a regular contributor to Body Talk Magazine. He publishes a free
fitness newsletter available at his site that includes
lots of weight training tips, fat loss, nutrition and exercise
program information to help you build your best body as quickly as
possible. You can develop your own muscle building nutrition plan at http://www.mynutritionjournal.com
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