Extreme Mass-Building Routine Or A One Way Ticket to Overtraining?

[it stars sAddam]

After a short hiatus due to an illness (during which I lost a substantial amount of weight), I am outlining my battle plan for my return to the weightroom. I am going to be starting a Fall/Winter bulk, and my goals consist of gaining strength and, most importantly, stacking on mass. I've outlined a routine that will allow me to do a few sets for each bodypart twice a week, but I'm not sure whether this will lead to overtraining or not. If anyone can recommend ways which I can tweak my routine to yield better results, I would appreciate it.


Monday: Legs
Tuesday: Chest, triceps, shoulders
Wednesday: Back, biceps, traps
Thursday: Legs
Friday: Chest, triceps, shoulders
Saturday: Back, biceps, traps
Sunday: Rest


Chest:

Incline bench (3x6)
Dips (3x8)

Shoulders:

DB press (3 x 6-8)
Side laterals (2 x 10)
Upright rows (3 x 6)

Legs:

Squat (3x6)
Straight leg deadlift (3x8)
Hamstring curls (3x8)
Calf raises (4x10)

Traps:

DB shrugs (4x10)
Behind the back barbell shrugs (4x10)

Biceps:

Barbell curls (3x6)
Preacher curls (3x8)
DB curls (3x10)

Triceps:

Tricep pulldowns (3x10)
Skullcrushers (3x8)

Back:

Deadlifts (3x8)
Bent over rows (3x8)
Lat pulldowns (3x10)
Wide grip chins (2xfailure)

 

[hardrock]

Are you jumping right into this or workin up to it?

Natty or juiced?

 

[it stars sAddam]

I forgot to post my stats. I currently weight about 135lbs () at a height of 5 foot 7 inches. I am an extreme hardgainer with a fast metabolism and I usually recover from my workouts rather quickly. Also, I didn't mention that I will most likely be training my abdominal muscles every other day. If not I will be training them everyday; I need some advice as to what to do with that. I've read that abs can stand being trained everyday, but then again I don't want to run the risk of overtraining as this has caused me to lose progress in the past.

Abs:

Weighted decline situps (4x10)
Leg raises (4x10)

 

[it stars sAddam]

Are you jumping right into this or workin up to it?

Natty or juiced?

I plan to jump right into this routine, but with very light weights, progressively adding somewhere around 5lbs to my lifts each week (a la 5x5).

Also, I am completely natural and have not yet juiced at this point in my life.

 

[Guinness5.0]

IMO, you don't need (and will be hampered by) all that pressing. I would ditch the laterals and the uprights, and just focus on one main press during the first workout, and a different big one on the second.

For example, concentrate on heavy dips on the first workout and maybe do higher rep inclines, then do heavy overhead work (standing, with a barbell) supplemented with something like DB flat bench on the second 'press' day. IMO that covers the bases well, and doesn't add any fluff that does little more than rob recovery.

Also, the lat pulls followed by chins are not needed - just do chins fo the desired reps (add weight if need be). I would advise against deads for sets of 8 because I feel the main benefit of deads is big weight. Doing multiple triples would serve you better than 3 sets of 8. And do 'em once a week at most - maybe even every other week if you get bogged down.

I don't think that you'll benefit much from the trap work yo listed. I personally do very little trap work and they are my best bodypart, but that may be genetic. Deads will hit the traps very hard, but if you really need more then do powershrugs or even power cleans if you know how.

And I think that that is too much arm stuff. A set or two at the end of the workout will be plenty. If you are pushing your dips, overheads, rows and deads, you will not do yourself any favors by overdoing arm stuff.

But overall it's good. I like the 2x/week frequency for sure, but I feel you would be better served by detouring from the notion of a bodypart split and think instead in terms of movements. I like an upper/lower split or just plain full-body. There is no getting around the fact that the big, important lifts stimulate all/almost all of the body, so the notion that divying up the body into 'parts' is a relevant construct just doesn't hold up.

 

[it stars sAddam]

Very helpful response.

 

[Tweakle]

good stuff from Guinness, I agree with my esteemed collegue's opinion of your routine.. a 2-3 x weekly full body routine is more appropriate for a hardgainer for sure