Dont Overtrain for Faster Muscle Mass Gain

by Gregg Gillies

Weight lifting programs and bodybuilding are based around the idea of progressive resistance or overload. The idea being that in order to build muscle and increase your strength you must constantly increase the stress on your muscles.

Then you must give your muscles adequate time to recover and rebuild so that you can again increase the overload and continue to build muscle.

The following weightlifting workout wont do you a darn bit of good if you dont adhere to the overload principle of progressive resistance.

Overload doesnt necessarily have to mean an increase in your training poundages. You can also do more reps on a set with the same weight. Another way to bring about overload in these weighlifting workouts is to decrease the amount of time you rest between sets.

Doing more work in the same amount of time or doing the same work in less time is a great way to overload your muscles without increasing your workout poundages. This is the cornerstone of Escalating Density Training by Charles Staley.

Clearly, to make great muscle building gains, you cant get complacent in your weight lifting workouts. You need to constantly strive to do more. And, as stated above, this does not mean working out more often or making your workouts longer.

You must make your workouts progressively harder and more intense.

However, this type of weight training routine is very hard on the recovery process so you must make sure you get enough rest between workouts to allow the muscle building process to take place.

Otherwise, you end up overtraining and instead of bigger muscles, your muscles will get smaller and weaker.

When training this intensely, its very important to take time off from your workouts. You should consider taking a week to ten days off every four to eight weeks to keep your mind and body fresh.

If you dont recover from these weightlifting workouts you overtrain. And if you overtrain, you dont get stronger and your muscles dont get bigger.

The core of these power-mass workouts is the big compound weight training exercises like the following:

Squat

Deadlift

Bench Press

Chin ups

Dumbbell Press or Upright Row

Shrugs

Following is a sample weighlifting workout for developing power and building muscle.

Day 1

Chest, Triceps, Shoulders

Decline Bench Press 3 x 10, 8, 6
Decline Flyes 2 x 8 - 12
Incline Flyes 2 x 8 - 12

Dips 3 x 12, 10, 8
Tricep Pushdowns 2 x 8 - 12

Dumbbell Upright Rows 3 x 12, 10, 8
Incline Dumbbell Laterals 2 x 8 - 12

Day 2

Back, Biceps, Abs

Curl Grip Pulldowns 3 x 10, 8, 6
Machine or Dumbbell Pullovers 2 x 8 - 12
One Arm DUmbbell Rows 2 x 8 - 12

Incline Dumbbell Curls 1 x 8 - 12
Dumbbell Concentration Curls 1 x 8 - 12
Barbell Curls 1 x 8 - 12

Weighted Crunches 2 x 15 - 20
Reverse Crunches 2 x 15 - 20

Day 3

Legs

Squats 3 x 10, 8, 6
Leg Extensions 2 x 8 - 12

Stiff Legged Deadlifts 2 x 12 - 15
Leg Curls 2 x 8 - 12

Standing Calf Raises 2 x 12 - 15
Seated Calf Raises 2 x 12 - 15

This routine involves working each muscle group once per week. The idea is to keep the overall training session short but intense to avoid overtraining.

If you can recover from it, you may want to replace the Curl Grip Pulldowns and the Pullovrs with 4 sets of deadlifts instead.

If you feel you recover sooner than that, you may want to change up the split to something like the following:

You definitely dont want deadlifts on the following split because you would find yourself doing deadlifts and squats on consecutive days.

Monday: Chest, Triceps, Shoulders

Tuesday: Legs

Wednesday: Back, Biceps, Abs

Thursday: Off

Friday: Chest, Triceps, Shoulders

Saturday: Off

Sunday: Off

Monday: Back, Biceps, Abs

Tuesday: Legs

Wednesday: Chest Triceps, Shoulders

Thursday: Off

Friday: Back, Biceps, Abs

Saturday: Off

Sunday: Off

Monday: Repeat at the top

If you havent been training, or havent been training very intensely lately, youll want to start out by avoiding training to failure for the first week or two. This will help you build up some momentum, as well as avoiding extreme soreness that will keep you out of the gym.

Gregg Gillies is the founder of Build Lean Muscle.com His articles have appeared in Ironman Magazine. He has written two books and writes for Body Talk Magazine. He publishes a free newsletter available at his site. See how you can get a customized muscle building nutrition plan at http://www.mynutritionjournal.com

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