Overtraining

davyjose

At times this year, I've spent 10-12 hours a week in the gym, lifting weights. This was spread out over 6 days: 2 hours a day. Does anyone think this is overtraining? I have to admit I was fairly thrashed after a couple of weeks of this, but I made significant gains. I must add, in the end, it was a cold which knocked me off this regime.

DublinEvents

Maybe you got the cold coz your body was too worn out from the physical training. What I have heard is that you need to rest your muscles to give them time to build themselves up. So training every other day would be a good idea. Otherwise, you could suffer from muscular atrophy.

davyjose

I think your right. However i was making sure to space workout, for instance I would work legs on Monday and Thursday, giving them time to rest. Is this sufficient time for muscle repair?

Transform

Focus on whether you are getting stronger e.g. what weights are you lifting, are you getting bigger,

Also its all about recovery ability not how many sessions you do. If you have a perfect diet and take all the top 5 supplements, get 7-8hrs sleep every day then you are going to recover faster than the guy who goes to gym 4 days a week with poor diet and drinks too much at weekends.

Put up your current program and your stats

justsomebloke

truthfully it will all depend on what your training consists of and what you are training for. It is very hard to say yay or nay without knowing what your training consists of

davyjose

At the moment I'm working out about 8 hours a week, 4 x 2hr sessions.

I'm 5'11" About 96kg Bodyfat just under 20%
Weights I haven't got offhand. Benching about 4x8x70kg - which i'm not totally happy with.
Deadlifting about 120kg
Don't squat as it gives me trouble with my left knee. Leg pressing pretty much the entire weight on the mchine.

Day one: I'm doing chest, triceps, front delts
Day two: Back, Biceps, lower back
Day three: rest
Day four: Shoulders, core work, cardio
Day five: Legs
Day six/Seven: Rest/cardio

What i was doing was:
Day one:Chest shoulders triceps
Day two: Back, arms, Abs
Day three: Legs
Days 4-6 repeat
Day seven rest

To be honest it was nasty, and f**ed me up. My bodyfat had shot up in the last while - touching 22%ish and as I'm naturally a gainer i figured the best way to lose it was to hit the weights - hit them a bit too hard though, i think.
The newer way seems a lot easier, but that's what i'm unsure of - easy isn't good, right?

justsomebloke

Your new programme looks like it is grand, your old one probably would of lead to overtraining though if you where going to failure all the time. However your sessions are far to long at 2 hours , you should try and keep it to max an hour if not you should be at least taking in some simple carbs and protein during your workout, that or try and break it up to 2 1 hour sessions per day with one in the morning and one in the afternoon/evening

Transform

Remember your body fat went up beacuse you ate too much - no other reason.

I would seriously recommend getting body fat to a mimimum of 14% as 20% is wayyyy to high.

Post diet if you like

davyjose

Cheers guys, Yeah one of the reasons I want to put on a lot of muscle is because I put on so much fat. My diet generally isn't too bad, but I went for too many nights out a while back

OFDM

DublinEvents wrote:

Maybe you got the cold coz your body was too worn out from the physical training.

It's more likely a virus that seems to be getting everyone over the last month...

Transform

OFDM wrote:

It's more likely a virus that seems to be getting everyone over the last month...

Not at all.

A healthy immune system would fight off any potential infection