I’ve been doing this for over six months. Now, according to just about everything I read, this is fast track to overtraining for the natural lifter , however, I haven’t felt the symptoms and seem to be progressing in both most lifts and development.
Should I be backing off before I hit a wall, or is it okay to keep chuggin’ as long as I’m progressing? Critique, suggest, bash, whatever. Just want to hear some thoughts. Thanks!
It basically goes like this…
Chest/Back
Shoulders/Arms
Legs
Chest/Back
Shoulders/Arms
OFF
OFF
Shoulders/Arms
Legs
Chest/Back
Shoulders/Arms
Legs
OFF
Off
Legs
Chest/Back
Shoulders/Arms
Legs
Chest/Back
Off for 7 days and repeat.
If the body part is trained twice a week I do 2 exercises per workout.
Example:
Monday: Chest - Bench 5 X 6-8
Flyes 3 X 10-12
Back - Deadlifts 5 X 6-8
Chins BW till 50 reps
Thursday: Chest - Incline 5 X 8-10
Weighted push ups 3 X whatever
Back - Bent over row 5 X 8-10
Pull ups 3 sets of BW
…and so on
So I mix up the exercises and reps schemes as much as possible to to try to keep fatigue in check. If the body part is only trained once per week I’ll increase the intensity and train it as if I was doing one body part per day type routine. Usually with about 4 exercises in the 4 sets of 8-10 range.
My primary goal is hypertrophy, but love me some strength as well.
Any suggestions?
Why are you taking a break so early when you don’t even have that much going on with each muscle? And why are you trying to make the schedule so complicated?
[quote]ukrainian wrote:
Why are you taking a break so early when you don’t even have that much going on with each muscle? And why are you trying to make the schedule so complicated?[/quote]
Idk, I’m doing 15+ sets/wk/group and everything I read seems to say it’s overtraining. I don’t really feel it’s complicated, I feel it keeps it interesting and less boring than some of the cookie cutter routines I’ve tried out there.
Do you think I should do the cycle twice and then deload?
[quote]Hawkguy wrote:
So I mix up the exercises and reps schemes as much as possible to to try to keep fatigue in check.
Any suggestions?[/quote]
This is the first major problem i noticed.
I suggest you create a much simpler, more basic routine and stick with it for a long time.
So what if I keep the same layout but not change the rep/set scheme as much or the exercises? I like the layout but don’t want to overtrain. That was the reasoning in switching everything around.
Well, you are getting a week off after 15 training sessions. I don’t know how good your recovery is, so I can’t really say what you should do. But, I personally never liked having a full week off for rest. Still, I enjoy being in the gym as much as possible.
So, if you need that week, you should take it. But I was just commenting on that through personal experience. You should reads Thib’s four most recent article. Very good and it talks about frequency.
Here is the fourth one:
http://www.T-Nation.com/article/most_recent/the_thib_system_variety_and_rules_for_progression
It has the other three links in the beginning.