Discover Your Optimum Training Frequency and Unleash Huge New Growth

#1 Mistake in Weight Lifting

Want to know the #1 mistake made by people lifting weights? This single mistake inevitably causes long training plateaus and frustration that saps your motivation. Needlessly.

OK, you probably already guessed the answer from the title of this article. The #1 mistake is training with the wrong frequency.

Frequency refers to the number of days per week you perform weight lifting workouts. The most common training frequency is 3-days-per-week, often performed on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If this is your training frequency, I've got some great news for you. You can do far, far better!

Knowing the proper amount of time off between workouts is the single most misunderstood concept in strength training. The truth is, even if you do everything in the gym perfectly, number of reps, number of sets, optimum weight, proper rest between sets and proper exercise form ? all of it can be worthless if you aren? training with the right frequency.

The Dirty Little Secret of Strength Training

Fixed training schedules are insane. Every fixed training schedule, such as 3-days-per-week, will ultimately fail you. Here's why. As your strength increases, your workouts are more demanding and require more time from which to recover.

The average guy sitting in front of a computer has the capacity to increase his muscular strength by 300-400 percent. However, recovering from physical activity puts demands on many of the body's organs, such as the liver, kidneys and pancreas, to name three. These organs do not have the capacity to increase their metabolic functioning by the same 300-400 percent your muscles can.

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.

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

>> Click here for Pete Sisco's Maximum Strength and start making explosive gains. (Generate optimum workouts to achieve maximum results. Average increase in strength of 70.2% in 30days)