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Don't Overtrain for Faster Muscle Mass Gain

Tip! You absolutely must associate pleasure with your muscle building routine and pain with not committing to your fitness routine. Humans by nature do things that are pleasurable and avoid things that create pain.

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.

Steppin Up To Mega-Muscle And Power! Mental Training For Peak Bodybuilding Success.

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 won't do you a darn bit of good if you don't adhere to the overload principle of progressive resistance.

Overload doesn't 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.

Tip! Get out a note pad and pen. Lets name the very top of the page Muscle and Fitness Goals.

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 can't 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, it's 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 don't recover from these weightlifting workouts you overtrain. And if you overtrain, you don't get stronger and your muscles don't 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

Tip! Soft-Tissue Treatment*: Soft tissue treatment utilizing Effleurage and Trigger Point Therapy to reduce muscle spasm and relax the tight, restrictive overused muscles can be very effective in correcting muscle imbalances. Utilizing Transverse Friction Massage (TFM) on specifically weak, injured muscles and/or tendons to break down adhesions on the soft tissues can also be very effective in reducing overall pain and dysfunction.

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

Tip! Using lower reps and fewer sets means you can use more intensity and overload on the muscles. High reps with low weight does nothing for muscle building.

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.

Tip! Now it's time to re-write those goals. So move to a new page on your note pad and give it the same name again -- Muscle and Fitness Goals Refined.

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 don't 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

Tip! Reduce rest intervals - giving the muscles less time to recover before exposing them to further work has the effect of increasing intensity.

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 haven't been training, or haven't been training very intensely lately, you'll 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 is a regular contributor to Body Talk Magazine. He publishes a free fitness newsletter available at his site that includes lots of weight training tips, fat loss, nutrition and exercise program information to help you build your best body as quickly as possible. You can develop your own muscle building nutrition plan at http://www.mynutritionjournal.com

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