When you think about it, this is something you already
know from experience. If you do a light workout it
hardly takes anything out of you. Your recovery is
swift. But when you do a grueling workout involving
heavy weights and a high intensity of overload, it
can take days to feel fully recovered.
And since the indispensable key to strength training
gains is progressive overload, you must find a way
to increase the intensity of every workout and allow
more time to recover from that workout.
Why splitting Your Routine Won't
Avoid Overtraining
To keep workouts less demanding, it is a common practice
to split workouts, such as: Monday upper body, Wednesday
lower body. While this is a sound tactic (one I recommend)
it alone will not solve the problems of a fixed training
schedule. The reason is stated in Sisco's Maxim: Every
day is kidney day.
The fact is, whether you work your chest, arms or
legs today doesn't make the slightest difference to
your kidneys. They still have to filter all the metabolic
waste products out of your blood so you can fully
recover. And remember this, until you are fully recovered
you will not grow new muscle. That's a physiological
law. So a split routine helps reduce the amount of
work your kidneys and other organs have to perform,
but as you get stronger and hoist heavier iron, your
kidneys will need more time to perform their job.
Amazing Progress by Doing Nothing
Once you understand how to adjust your personal training
frequency, your results will soar. Here's an example
of what happened for a very tough-minded client of
mine named Stanley.
After we discussed his training and lack of progress,
particularly in the barbell shrug exercise - I told
Stanley to take three weeks off of all training. He
said there was no way he could stay out of the gym
that long. Actually, this is a common problem with
serious bodybuilders. Psychologically, when you want
to make progress, it is very difficult to do what
seems like "nothing." Not training feels
like throwing in the towel or admitting defeat in
some way. But the truth is your body needs time to
recover. Time off is not wasted time; it's time that
is critical to the growth process. It took a lot of
talk to convince Stanley but, to his credit, he took
three weeks off of all training.
Two months later he called me back with results that
will shock you. His strength increased in every area
of his body and his shrug power had skyrocketed. His
first workout after the layoff was a personal best.
Now he's training once every nine days. That's 18
days between workouts for the same bodyparts, because
he uses an upper/lower body split. Before this correction
in his training frequency, Stanley was training four
times in just nine days. Look at the numbers that
he sent me.
October 11
365 lbs. 20 reps
405 lbs. 20 reps (easy)
405 lbs. 20 reps
November 8
400 lbs. 20 reps (very tough)
455 lbs. 20 reps
505 lbs. 20 reps
December 17
505 lbs. 16 reps
600 lbs. 12 reps
Stanley did not include his times for lifting so
I don't know his Power Factor or Power Index numbers
but his total shrug weight went from 15,300 lbs per
workout to 25,280 after doing nothing for three weeks.
When was the last time you had a three-week period
that was that productive?
Think about that. Three weeks of no training whatsoever,
nothing but sitting on his ass for three weeks and
his progress outpaced everybody he trained with! His
training buddies couldn't believe their eyes. There's
Stanley, who found it "very tough" to do
20 reps with 400 lbs. now hoisting 505 lbs. for 16
reps - after doing 455 lbs. for 20 reps! Next time
back in the gym he's playing with 600 lbs. And as
far as his bonehead buddies are concerned he's "missed"
the previous 20 workouts! That's what I mean when
I talk about "training smart."
All the best,
Pete |
