By far the number one mistake that I see people making at the gym is over training. Are you stuck at a platue and feel like when you go workout, you exhaust yourself, pushing your body so hard but nothing good seems to come of it? When it’s time to hit the gym do think to yourself ” oh s**t! I don’t feel like doing this today”? Do you feel sluggish, low on energy, and depressed? If you answered yes to any of these questions your most likely a victim of over training.

How does this happen?

The reason this happens to so many people is this: When, you perform a set on an exercise, and push yourself 100% squeezing every last rep out that you possibly can until you cant do no more, then you have gone to complete muscle failure on that set. Once this happens there is an inroad cut deep into that particular muscle’s recovery system. This inroad puts that muscle in a state of under compensation, meaning that muscle has less than it did before you performed that set to total muscle failure.

So what next? What needs to happen in order for that muscle to get bigger?

That muscle now needs to compensate (to back what was there before) before it can overcompensate (put back more than was there before) which is building the muscle, making it bigger and stronger than it was. So how do we get the muscle to go from an under compensated state to an overcompensated state? The answer to that depends on the number of sets you perform to muscle failure and the amount of recuperation time you give that muscle before you start tearing it down again. As far as the number of sets are concerned, when I train a body part like biceps for example, I never do more than 1 set to failure on any exercise. I may do 2-3 warm up sets using lighter weight just enough to get my muscles and joints warm and stretched out a little. For example, if I’m going to do barbell curls; I will do a warm up set with 135 lbs and complete it for 5-6 reps even though I could do 20 reps if I wanted. Then for my second set I will put on 155 lbs and perform 3-4 reps even though I could do it for 15 reps if I wanted. At this point my biceps are warm and stretched and ready to do my one big set of barbell curls and push till complete failure. So now I load 185 lbs on the bar and perform 9 reps and at that point I have reached 100% muscle failure, I go all out to get that 9th rep and now the job is done. No more barbell curls until my next arm workout!

The body contains a mechanism in which it will send off an alarm when it detects that it’s own physiology is being threatened or under assault. This alarm goes off when a muscle has been pushed to complete failure on a set. Like my bicep example I gave earlier, doing that set of barbell curls at 185 lbs X 9 reps. The switch has been tripped in my body, it detects a threat to it’s physiology where the biceps originate. Now, via multiple chemical reactions the body collects it’s resources it needs and directs them to strengthen that muscle to compensate for the stress it was just put under. At this point the compensation will begin. Putting back what was already there. Now understand this! The biochemical resources the body uses to recover and grow are strictly limited. So limited that if I were to perform a second set of barbell curls to failure, I would be cutting an even deeper inroad into my muscles recovery system, delaying the recovery and growth process, now making my efforts counter-productive. You see the body is very mechanistic. Doing one set to complete muscle failure activates that switch that tells the body it’s time to make that muscle recover and grow to protect against further assault. Once this switch has been activated, it’s on! Just like when you walk into a dark room and flip the light switch on you are confident that the mechanism within that switch will turn on the light. There is no need to keep flipping that switch up and down over and over again, it wont make the light any brighter, it will just wear out the switch! Make sense?

So how often should you train each muscle group?

Well that depends on your level of strength. If you do a set on bench press with 135 lbs X 10 reps, you won’t need as much time to recover as would someone who does 315 lbs X 10 reps. As a general rule of thumb, I suggest that nobody should hit a particular muscle group more than ounce per week. People seem to do well on a varying split style routine in which they weight train 3 times per week and not train any one muscle group more than once per week. This style of training yields very good results for most. This will allow you to recover and grow for a while but remember that as your level of strength increases so does the necessary recovery time in order to make that muscle grow. So if you hit a platue where your strength ceases to increase, I recommend adding in two more recovery days between all weight training sessions from that point on and you will see your strength begin to move up again. I’ve had people comment to me that ” well ok, training like that might make you stronger but it won’t make you bigger.” My response to that is ” well ok, if you don’t get bigger by getting stronger, then how do you get bigger? By getting weaker?”

Make no mistake about it, if you’re getting stronger than your moving in the right direction. Now I don’t want you to take my word for it just because I’ve done a few physique competitions. I want you to believe it because it’s logical. You see, I’m not an advocate for less training; however, I am an advocate for the precise amount of training to produce muscle growth. It’s sad to see all the same people that have shown up at the gym every night to lift for 2-3 hours per day, and have for the last 10 years of their lives, and have absolutely nothing to show for their time and effort. Going through the motions day in and day out thinking that one-day the routine they are doing is just going to magically start producing results. If a workout routine hasn’t produced results for months let alone years, then it’s not going to, EVER!

What about the pro bodybuilders I read about in Flex magazine?

They have their workouts printed and they do 4-5 sets to failure on each exercise and they train each muscle group 2-3 times per week? Yes, true but let us not underestimate the power of anabolic steroids. And your kidding yourself if you think there are IFBB pro’s out there that aren’t using multiple combinations of steroids! Steroids alter the chemistry of the body on multiple levels, two of them being the ability to greatly enhance nitrogen retention and protein synthesis. Yes this will make you recover much, much faster so you can train much harder, more frequently and yet not over train This information is directed more at people like myself who have chosen to follow this path the natural way. Best of luck to everyone you out there. I hope the information I’ve provided will help you take a second look at your current training routine and make a clear judgment on whether or not it’s an effective one.

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