New routine! Which One???

[BodybuildingUniverse]

I agree with BFold 100%. You will overtrain and get burnt out quickly. No way I could squat, deadlift, chin and press on one day. Not with any intensity at least. Cut it WAY back to the basics, add a little weight each workout, keep a log, eat big, rest big and repeat. I train 3 days per week and probably do 4 exercises per workout, 2-3 work sets centering on the bench squat and deadlift and am making better gains than I ever have. My bodyweight is up, I am still lean, my strength is at an all time high, I dont walk around dead sore anymore. Less is better. It is tough to give the high volume up, you feel like you can do more, feel guilty or lazy. But if your goal is just growth, do enough to stimulate growth and get out. My $.02

 

[Lord_Suston]

Man that's way too much... Listen to B fold on this one. I train no more than 4 days a week. I try not to workout a body part more than once in a 5 days....

 

[The Shadow]

Good call - the three times per week routine is a lot of work, but you would not stay on for an extended perioid of time. Look at it this way, how many times per week does the average upper body muscle griup get trained?? 2-3 times per week directly and indirectly, so it's really not that bad.

 

[b fold the truth]

I did deadlifts and goodmornings on Sunday afternoon...I HOPE to be recovered to do box squats by tomorrow (Wednesday)...but probably will not.

B True

 

[The Shadow]

I did deadlifts and goodmornings on Sunday afternoon...I HOPE to be recovered to do box squats by tomorrow (Wednesday)...but probably will not.

B True

How many sets did you do , total, on Sunday??

Are you equating soreness with recoverability?

 

[b fold the truth]

I did several light warm ups, increasing by either 50 or 40 lb jumps. (I would do 315, 365, 405, 455, etc...) I did that all the say up to 629 for a single on deads with no equipment at all. The only set that was hard was the 629 set...the 585 before it was a joke.

Goodmornings...I did 225 for 3 sets oif 5...all very light. Then came my event training

Check out my workout post here
http://boards.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=121006

And last weeks too
http://boards.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=118621

I am sore but may not be totally recovered by Wednesday for my speed squat workout. Who knows though...we will see.

B True

 

[Lumberg]

Cornholio makes a good point and I was wondering about this as well. I have always assumed that if you are still sore, then you should not work the muscles that are still sore. Now sometimes there's a grey area between soreness and stiffness but my bottom line has always been don't go balls to the wall if you're still sore. Also going balls to the wall on consecutive days, especially on two large muscle groups (like doing chest/shoulders/tris and then legs/lower back) I think is a bad idea because I got the feeling that adding new groups of muscle to the body's list of things to repair detracts from the body's ability to repair the muscles you trained the day before.

Cornholio, you sound like you know what you're talking about on this, what's you're take?

 

[b fold the truth]

I most definately agree and that is why I made my post. I do not see how "I' could train a bodypart three times a week at all. I would never recover. I train with intensity and I use heavy weights...if you do this too...how on earth can you train like that twice a week...much less three times a week?

B True

 

[Lumberg]

I must admit I trained everything twice a week under my football lifting regimen and while my squat skyrocketed my bench didn't improve. Now that I am resting each body part a minimum of 4 days (though that I felt was still a bit too little so I'm switching to seven days of rest) my upper body strength has definitely improved. My squat has fallen off in terms of weight but I'm probably just as strong since I was not using good form before and now I try to bottom out on every rep--you know what they say, quality over quantity. So I'm pretty sure I was overtraining before (especially since were were also sprinting and/or doing plyometrics either right before or right after lifting)

So anyways I am a supporter of the once-a-week philosophy, though probably once every six days would be ideal. The difference I think is quite small--over 42 days I would work out 18 times based on a 7-day split and 21 times on a 6-day split. Plus all the headaches of changing the days you work out on like the gym hours being different on weekends and all your friends getting pissed at you--"I thought WEDNESDAY was your workout day!"

JC

 

[The Shadow]

Cornholio makes a good point and I was wondering about this as well. I have always assumed that if you are still sore, then you should not work the muscles that are still sore. Now sometimes there's a grey area between soreness and stiffness but my bottom line has always been don't go balls to the wall if you're still sore. Also going balls to the wall on consecutive days, especially on two large muscle groups (like doing chest/shoulders/tris and then legs/lower back) I think is a bad idea because I got the feeling that adding new groups of muscle to the body's list of things to repair detracts from the body's ability to repair the muscles you trained the day before.

Cornholio, you sound like you know what you're talking about on this, what's you're take?

On the three-day program as listed the first 2 sets of the 5x5 are warmups, the last two all out, so it is really not that much work. The squats or deads on the 20 reps are the corner stone of the entire program.

BFold - I totally understand why YOU could not do your workoutes 3x per week. Especially with the sled and the stones - lot of work.

This program will actually let the body recover form overtraing.

3 guys followed it religiously. Fro - gained 10 pounds. Scrappy and Zebo gaines 15 and 17, so it def. works.

Take 5-6 weeks and try it, you will be amazed.

Remember ther is a day of rest after each workoput and two days after the one on Friday.