Advice - can I do more / am I doing too much?

joker77

Alright all you fitness heads, need a little bit of advice on how you think I could improve my training. I'm at a good level of cardio-vascular fitness now, and am starting to improve my strength but need to improve.

My routine goes like this:
Monday
Cycle 6 miles to work (always at decent pace)
Lunchtime - Gym - biceps, chest, few situps, 40 mins
Cycle home 6 miles

Tues
Lunch - gym - triceps, lats, situps
Eve - football training (1 hour drills, 1 hour astro 5-a-side)

Wed
Cycle to and from work
Lunch - gym - legs, few situps

Thurs
Lunch - gym - shoulders, back, few situps
Eve - football training (1.5 - 2 hours drills)

Fri
Cycle to and from work
Lunch - gym - biceps, chest, few situps

Sat
Sometimes game, sometimes gym

Sun - rest

Dragan

If i could just point out that your using your triceps on 4 different days a week, and your biceps on 4 days a week as well. This is not really ideal.

You want to work each muscle group directly about one a week, and indirectly maybe twice more tops!!!! For example, you are hitting your triceps twice a week, then doing chest and shoulders as well which use the triceps. This means that your triceps will not be recovering like it should.

Also, and i do not mean this in any way that may cause offence, but i would seriously doubt the intensity of any of these workouts if you can train the body part again so soon after. Remember, we are mostly natural trainers here and recovery can take some time.

For example, recently i did chest on a Friday, the way the next week feel we needed to hit chest again on Tuesday, my chest was STILL so tired from Friday my lifts were down about 10%. This is just the way things go, normally i would leave much more time for recovery but it's just the way that week turned out.

Monday : Biceps and chest
Wednesday : Shoulders and Legs
Friday: Back and Tricpes.

As far as the weights goes, this should be more than enough to add some decent strenght as it will allow you to really pour it on in the gym and recover well afterwards.

Remember also that with the amount of cardio you do, this will also affect your recovery times! Keep the weights heavy and the reps in the 6 to 8 range and i guarantee you will see some good strenght increases with this. And remember, if you can work something twice a week, your not working it hard enough!!!!

Reyman

Hi Dragan,

I have a problem with this word 'intensity' - because it seems everyone has there own idea of what a once a week workout should consist of ?

Maybe you could do us a favour and outline your usual Monday workout -- for say "Biceps and Chest". as an example?

Thanks

Dragan

By intensity i mean than when i walk into the gym fresh i walk out half dead. Plain and simple. No offense to anyone, but every time i go down the gym i see people all around the place half assing, putting in minimum or 50% effort and then moaning about how all the work they put in is not paying off.

The specific workout that i may or may not do for any given bodypart shows nothing about the intensity it is done with. Me and the guys i train with lift heavy and we lift hard , every set is done like it is the last set, and then we do one more.

If i told you on chest day i do flat bench to warm up for 2 sets, then three worksets of flats, inclines and decline followed by 3 sets of flyes. And for bcieps i do 5 set of barbell curls, 4 sets of dumbell curls and three sets of preacher curls, you could walk into the gym and knock it out, of course you could. But what way would you do it?

Too many people think about the next excercise when they need to bury themselves in the one they are doing. No one cares if you can bench 50 kilo's or 100 kilo's , least of all me. But i will have a lot more respect for the skinny kid in the corner busting his ass on each set than the big guys who are half assing , no matter what weight they are doing.

Intensity means that you are putting in the maximum effort that you can at that specific time, without that you are just cheating yourself. EVERYONE has the potential to be in great shape, or really strong or whatever they want to be, but very few people seem to be able to tap into the work ethic to get there.

Thats what i mean by intensity. Once you know deep down inside that you are giving your all, then everyone can be happy with themselves. But me, i know there have been times when i was easy on myself, and most of the time i saw it and sorted it out. Sometimes i didn't and went in the next day and made up for it. It's all about being honest with yourself.

Reyman

Ok you have to go all out to get results.

But when you know you're going to be back on the bench doing another set in a minute or two maybe you just do 7 reps on the first set instead of the 9 you could really push out .

That way you can do the later sets better ?


If you push flat out on all the sets you must be lifting less as the sets progress?

You also may be setting yourself up for injury I'm guessing.

g'em

Push to fatigue on every set.

Our muscles are made up of hundreds of thousand of muscle fibres. When a muscle contracts (when its being worked) only some of the fibres are used. The point of doing multiple reps is that it continually recruits new fibres as the others get broken down or torn from use when you're lifting. So by going to fatigue you're ensuring that as many muscle fibres as possible have been used. The more fibres get torn, the more get repaired, the bigger you get.

It may mean that you lift less on each consecutive set, but you can always drop the weight slightly. A fairly popular way to arrange sets is to do 10 reps for set 1, then 8 at a higher weight for set 2 and finally 6 at a higher weight again or to total exhaustion. Then turn around annd do six more for good measure Personally I stick to 4 sets of 8-10 reps of the heaviest weight I can manage, with the exception of some big compound excercises like squats and deadlifts where I'll tend to gradually increase the weight to a limit that I'm comfortable with on the day- sometimes I'm up for lifting heavy, sometimes I feel like lifting even more, it changes week to week. But either way I push myself.

You should not injure yourself if your form is good. Never lift a weight you can't control and always use a spotter when going heavy on a bench/ squat rack/ even using dumbells.

So, like Dragan said, put in maximal effort all the time. If you don't you're kidding yourself (but above all else enjoy the burn )

Dragan

Reyman wrote:

Ok you have to go all out to get results.

But when you know you're going to be back on the bench doing another set in a minute or two maybe you just do 7 reps on the first set instead of the 9 you could really push out .

That way you can do the later sets better ?


If you push flat out on all the sets you must be lifting less as the sets progress?

You also may be setting yourself up for injury I'm guessing.

Not really, it's all in the mind and the heart as well as the muscle. Like i said, people can hold back, but why????? It doesn't matter if you get more reps on the first, second or third set as long as you got as many as you could. But if you start telling youself to hold back for the next set, in the back of your mind your holding back for the next excercise and so on and next thing you know your banging on about not wanting to over train!!!!

Just give it loads and you will get the results you want.

joker77

Thanks for the replies and the advice Dragan. I suppose I'm not really trying to build up to body-builder status, I'm a fairly skinny lad naturally, I'm just trying to improve what I'm doing, so the advice on splitting up the workout more is good. I'm using the gym at lunchtime at the moment which means I'm in and out in under an hour, so that includes changing, warming up and stretching, shower and all that. With the cycling and football training, and the short time I have in the gym, I want to do as much as I can in the time but not totally wreck myself. Take last night for example, the manager was angry about the performance at the weekend, so decided to take it out on us. We did a very hard session, which included sprint drills, situps, push-ups, burpies, tuck jumps, then played a match - if I was completely dead from a gym session I would not have been able for it, simple as that, so I suppose there's a trade-off there.
I know I have to push it in the gym which I do, but I can't afford to be aching for days!

Dragan

Yeah , the balancing act is tough.

I have many friends who all take part in other sports, do comps, run marathons and they always have to balance the size and strenght training against that!!

Cravez

Dragan wrote:

By intensity i mean than when i walk into the gym fresh i walk out half dead. Plain and simple. No offense to anyone, but every time i go down the gym i see people all around the place half assing, putting in minimum or 50% effort and then moaning about how all the work they put in is not paying off.

The specific workout that i may or may not do for any given bodypart shows nothing about the intensity it is done with. Me and the guys i train with lift heavy and we lift hard , every set is done like it is the last set, and then we do one more.

If i told you on chest day i do flat bench to warm up for 2 sets, then three worksets of flats, inclines and decline followed by 3 sets of flyes. And for bcieps i do 5 set of barbell curls, 4 sets of dumbell curls and three sets of preacher curls, you could walk into the gym and knock it out, of course you could. But what way would you do it?

Too many people think about the next excercise when they need to bury themselves in the one they are doing. No one cares if you can bench 50 kilo's or 100 kilo's , least of all me. But i will have a lot more respect for the skinny kid in the corner busting his ass on each set than the big guys who are half assing , no matter what weight they are doing.

Intensity means that you are putting in the maximum effort that you can at that specific time, without that you are just cheating yourself. EVERYONE has the potential to be in great shape, or really strong or whatever they want to be, but very few people seem to be able to tap into the work ethic to get there.

Thats what i mean by intensity. Once you know deep down inside that you are giving your all, then everyone can be happy with themselves. But me, i know there have been times when i was easy on myself, and most of the time i saw it and sorted it out. Sometimes i didn't and went in the next day and made up for it. It's all about being honest with yourself.

i totally agree, for the past good while now iv been using more power lifting techniques than muscle building techniques e.g i was doing 3x3 with extremely heavy weight. So i decided to lower the weight and put more reps in 6-12x5....well holy god my back hasnt felt like this in ages, its good to feel the good pain again. I was able to do more sets and actually failure on the last 2 in which before i found i couldnt failure because the weight was TOO high. So listen up, dont bust your ass with heavy weight if your not gettin results, lower the weight and put more effort in!

Reyman

Michael Cravez wrote:

So listen up and listen to Dragen, dont bust your ass with heavy weight if your not gettin results, lower the weight and put more effort in!

Maybe I missed something, but I don't think he exactly said anything about lifting lower weights rather than heavy weights.

Rather you should max out on whatever you choose to do

Cravez

Reyman wrote:

Maybe I missed something, but I don't think he exactly said anything about lifting lower weights rather than heavy weights.

Rather you should max out on whatever you choose to do

maybe i didn't fully clear explain myself i apolagise, Dragen didnt say lower your weight i was only merely agreeing what he said. I meant lower your weight, from MY experience. Iv tried maxing out with extremely heavy weight and felt no progress, so i used less weight to sacrifice for more reps and it worked. If you want to max out on whatever amount of weight then go for it, i was only giving my 2 cents, its your body at the end of the day.