How Much Is Too Much When Starting?

I am about to get serious this summer, no school, no work. All the summer will be dedicated to working out 24/7. I was wondering if its bad to start doing to much work all of a sudden. Should i do muscle conditioning or something like that before getting on a serious routine? I am 6’2" 168lbs and 10% body fat. If someone has some advice I would really appreciate it =D.

I don’t have time to give you a thorough explaination, but here are a few quick tips.

READ many of the articles on this site, especially the “Beginners” thread posted by VROOM. It has plenty of great links and advice regarding nutrition and training.

I know you are excited and have plenty of time to train, but 3-4 days of weight training and 2-3 days of cardio/HIIT/GPP is PLENTY!!!

Whole-body workouts three times a week or upper/lower body workouts four times a week (2 for upper, 2 for lower) using compound exercises will give you all the size and strength you need.

Read some training articles from Chad Waterbury, such as the Anti-bodybuilding Hypertropy workout (ABBH) and Total Body Training (TBT). I definitely recommend that as a beginner, you go ahead and give ABBH a try first. It’s an awesome program. It seems too simple, but if you do it as written, you will make astonishing gains.

Good luck. Keep reading and learning. But in the end, STICK WITH THE BASICS when it comes to nutrition and training.

Could you define muscle conditioning?
Of course you won’t go out there and squat 400 pounds on your first attempt but i don’t see why you couldn’t start straight up with the basic.

The most important thing when you start is good form, soon enough you’ll be trying to pile up the plates but if you’re doing it with the wrong form, you will most likely break something.

Don’t go out there and train 7 days a week either, that won’t help beside giving you a taste of overtraining after a couple of weeks.

Concentrate on a proper bulking diet according to all of those nutrition articles on T-Nation of course.

And last but not least, don’t let anyone tell you that training heavy is wrong (after you’ve learned and practiced the proper form over and over of course).

Thanks for the advice. Oh and by muscle conditioning i meant like doing light work on the different muscle groups to get used to the work that will come. Oh and thanks again =D

Well, for one, you’re in the right place for advice. If you weed through a lot of the haters on these forums, there are a lot of genuine and knowledgable people that are happy to lend you some help. (you’ll notice the haters by the constant barrage of negative comments and most of them are pretty out of shape by their stats)

Give yourself ample rest between training sessions per bodypart. Get adequate sleep and eat good clean foods. Do your research because knowledge is power in every aspect of life, especially training.

Don’t listen to those guys at the gym that try to push their new techniques on unsuspecting people. Most of their shit will steer you wrong… every gym has a few.

Keep motivated, like it sounds you are, and be the best you can be bro.

peace

Welcome to the forum and strength training world bro. It’s good stuff.

Here’s a link to the post generiously compiled by Vroom that Nate mentioned, on everything you could possibly need just starting out. It was a really good idea, and all the articles are solid and what many people on this site have forged great physiques out of. The sheer amount of articles provides lots of options, and even greater amounts of knowledge.

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=550116

Kubo

If you do too much - weight, sets, reps - too soon you will set yourself back. Excessive soreness and/or ‘weak’ feelings from lack of recovery don’t make for a good workout.

What I’ve used both for me and some people I train is:
full body workout every other day for two week (7 workouts if you are diligent) starting with a full range of exercises, a hour limit, the much maligned 3 x 10 rep/set format or similar, and moderate weights.
Each workout add weight to ONE lower body and ONE upper body exercise - the one’s that were easiest to do.
Don’t raise weight on the same exercise two workouts in a row.
By the end of the second week, you will be adjusted to working out AND have a better idea of how much weight you can handle on various exercises.

Then switch to four workouts per week - two upper body , two lower body.
I use a Westside variation.
Also then adjust your reps/set scheme on major exercises to low reps and start to differentiate between your main exercises (benchs, squats, deadlifts, etc) and supplementary exercises which will keep a higher reps per set scheme.

At the end of the fourth week you should test your one rep max on main exercises - bench, squat, dl for instance.

Then you can start to work weight %'s into your workouts and either do pure Westside or a Chad Waterbury routine, etc.

This one month buildup can add strength and condition you for lifting without great soreness or overtraining both of which you should avoid when starting out.

good luck.

hey i dont know how old you are but you’re in high school and so am i and i if i were you id start with a total body workout for a few weeks. I did total body workouts for a while and made incredible gains in both size and strength and then it set a pretty good base for other things to come so thats what id try/start off with first…but its up to you. your lucky no work in the summer eh (grr my dad making work construction)…but anways after the summer of working out and all u should post on how u did…and take in the advice the other guys posted above (good stuff)

dl-