Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Overtraining and Another Ways to Kill Your Muscle Gains

By Ricardo Daryans

Jack finishes a focused set of exercises and re-racks the weight. His legs are wobbly, he feels light headed and he takes a big swig from his water bottle. He looks down at his watch and presses the start button to begin counting down backwards from 2 minutes.

He saw on TV that 2 minutes is the perfect rest time between sets, and what he wants is to do it exactly in that way. So, the watch beeps and he's be back in the squat rack ready for his next set of exercises with the weights.

2 minutes is up. His legs still feel weak, his heart still beats frantically and he doesn't quite feel 100%, but that watch beeped and that means his time is up. He must perform his next set regardless of how he feels.

He unracks the weight and squats down. His legs still burn and he wishes that he could have had more time to prepare for this set. He puts forth a mediocre effort, re-racks the bar, and sets his watch for another 2 minutes. Bobby, just like a ton of other aspiring lifters in the gym, is making a deadly, critical mistake.

The only thing he is doing is to force his body to train at an effort level really far for his maximum potential, and his muscles are rarely being stimulated to grow.

Muscles grow because of an adaptive response to stress. You lift X amount of weight for Y number of reps, and your body adapts to this level of stress. In order to see continual gains in muscle size, you must continually force X and Y to higher and higher levels.

In other words, building muscle is all about progression in both weight and reps. It is about lifting as much weight as you possibly can for the greatest number of reps that you possibly can (within a given rep range of course) and then continually striving to improve.

If you don't rest enough between sets, you will not reach your maximum strenght potential sacrificing the amount of weight you can lift, and also sacrificing the amount of muscle you can build. So, to begin the next set qhen you are still tired is the big mistake you should not make.

A watch will never tell you when you are ready to begin the next set. Instead of it, listen to your body and you will know when to follow your training.

The time between sets cannot be always the same. It will depend on the type of exercise you are performing. Some of them will tax the body much more heavily than others and obviously will take more time to your body to return to the ideal state. - 15275

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