How often is too often?

irishpacker

Alright guys,

I currently go to the gym every second day with cardio on the inbetween days, My normal routine is Monday Wednesday Friday and maybe Sunday depending on how I feel physically. I usually spend 3 hours in the gym and do 15-16 exercises. My cardio is usually a mix of Sprinting drills on some days and then long jogs on other days. I'm training to build strenght, size and speed for my sport, american football.

I've been doing weights for years and I've always been told by old rugby and rowing coaches to do weights on alternate days, so as to give your body a chance to recover. But, I've a friend doing sports science in DCU and he recommends doing 4 days in a row of weights (monday to thursday) then cardio on other days.

I'd just like to get your opinion on it. What do you think is more beneficial, 4 days in a row and 3 off, or alternate days for weights?

Cheers

celestial

irishpacker wrote: »

Alright guys,

I currently go to the gym every second day with cardio on the inbetween days, My normal routine is Monday Wednesday Friday and maybe Sunday depending on how I feel physically. I usually spend 3 hours in the gym and do 15-16 exercises. My cardio is usually a mix of Sprinting drills on some days and then long jogs on other days. I'm training to build strenght, size and speed for my sport, american football.

I've been doing weights for years and I've always been told by old rugby and rowing coaches to do weights on alternate days, so as to give your body a chance to recover. But, I've a friend doing sports science in DCU and he recommends doing 4 days in a row of weights (monday to thursday) then cardio on other days.

I'd just like to get your opinion on it. What do you think is more beneficial, 4 days in a row and 3 off, or alternate days for weights?

Cheers

What is his rationale for the 4 days in a row of weights?

irishpacker

He basically said that it forces the muscles to work harder under more severe circumstances because they dont get a chance to rest, which apparently is ok to do during offseason training because you're simply looking for massive size and strenght gain as efficiently as possible, which this apparently lets you accomplish. Even though it goes against everything I've been thought which is to allow your muscles time to repair.

Also, I know its ok to train consequtive days as long as you are training different areas (legs, shoulders etc..) but my mate is say the contrary, that its ok to do Bench 4 days in a row etc. I'm confused!

Hanley

That's the second bit of bad advice I've heard today from someone doing sports science. It's one of those cute theories that just doesn't transfer well into application.

It might work in the VERY short term (think 1 week, MAYBE 2) but if you are in anyway experienced you'd quickly over train if you were using a high percentage of your 1rm, and if you were doing high reps there's no way in hell you'd recover. That's a shocking piece of advice from someone who really should know better. Maybe you've just taken what he said slightly out of context tho?

Personally my favoured split right now is as follows; (and it's what I've done for the last 6 months and seen MASSIVE improvements with)
-Sunday = upper body
-Tuesday = lower body
-Thursday = upper body
-Friday = lower body

celestial

I'd love to sit in on one of those sports science classes!!

Considering muscles recover and therefore grow during rest periods, I'm not sure how your mate can claim it's better to not have rest periods in between training sessions.

Degsy

That sort of "advice" is dangerous.
At the very least you'd be heading for an injury and at the worst you'd be heading for complete overtraining.

Roper

Are you sure your mate didn't just misinterpret a theory he heard about in a lecture? Or maybe you've misinterpreted it?

After say a heavy leg day, I wouldn't be able to use my legs the day afterwards to walk down the stairs, never mind do another session! Perhaps there's merit to it for a certain kind of work, conditioning maybe, but certainly not strength or size.

Theories abound.

Coileach dearg

You must listen yo your body. When your muscles are sore, rest them.

"Rest them and they will grow" TM

Colm_OReilly

What exactly are you doing in the gym for 3 hours?
What are your numbers on the squat, dead, bench, press?

On Hanley's split,
Bear in mind he's an intermediate/advanced trainee. He's exhausted linear gains and to drive his adaptation he need workloads that he cannot recover from in one session.

irishpacker

I agree with what you guys are all saying. I've always been told by my S&C coaches to rest muscle groups, not to exercise same groups on consecutive days.

I dont do solid weights for 3 hours, about a 30-40min warm up (cardio &streching) Then into weights. I usually spend around an hour on the heavies such as squats, bench, cleans etc.. and then the other 1hour on specific areas. 15 min warm down and strech at the end. For example on backs squats I'm doing 4x12, 140 to 160kg. I dont really take note of how much I'm lifting, I just put on as much as I can lift. I live by the failure is success policy, meaning if I'm aiming for 12 reps, I put on enough weight so I fail on 11.

Hanley

irishpacker wrote: »

I agree with what you guys are all saying. I've always been told by my S&C coaches to rest muscle groups, not to exercise same groups on consecutive days.

I dont do solid weights for 3 hours, about a 30-40min warm up (cardio &streching) Then into weights. I usually spend around an hour on the heavies such as squats, bench, cleans etc.. and then the other 1hour on specific areas. 15 min warm down and strech at the end. For example on backs squats I'm doing 4x12, 140 to 160kg. I dont really take note of how much I'm lifting, I just put on as much as I can lift. I live by the failure is success policy, meaning if I'm aiming for 12 reps, I put on enough weight so I fail on 11.

If you're squatting 160 x12 below depth then you probably know more about training than a lot of people here and should be trusting your gut instinct more.

Lothaar

What position do you play? You can tailor your training to your position.

3 hours is a long time in the gym. I suggest you check out Nebraska's conditioning programme (search for the book on Amazon). This breaks down training regimes by position, with a list of combine goals per position. The training regimes include flexibility, weights, plyometrics and cardio in order to develop the explosive power required for football.