The Limit of Not Overtraining?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

First a little background:
I weight 66kg which is like 140 pounds, and I’m 173cm tall which is about 5’9". I’m 18 years old.

I consume right now 3000 calories a day, first of all, is that fine? or should I be doing more or less? I want to get muscle, the faster the better, with a bulking period which I’m doing now, and later on a smaller cutting period to get rid of excess fat.

I get around 110g of fat, 220g of protein and 230g of carbs, with 6 meals per day and a little over 6-500ml glasses of water. I have meals with protein and fat, and others with protein and carbs, and I have like a cheat meal per week in which I take away 2 normal meals. I eat one meal right before hitting the gym, and the biggest one of the day after the gym.

Now about the actual workout:
I go 3 times per week, mondays, wednesdays and fridays. I don’t do cardio for now because I’m bulking. Most exercises consist of 2-8 rep warmup sets, 4 sets to failure starting with 8 reps, then 6, then 4 and then 2, finally I do a burnout set of 12 reps and immediately a superset of some other thing.

I do on day 1 abs, chest, triceps and shoulders, bench press with a dumbbell flyes superset, shoulder press with lateral raises superset, shrugs with no superset, 5 sets of dips with tricep pushdowns superset and 4 sets of 20-25 reps of crunches on an incline board.

On day 2 abs and legs. I do squats with leg extension superset, stiff-legged deadlifts with hamstring curl superset, calf raises strip sets, and 4 sets of 10-15 reverse crunches on an incline board.

On day 3 I do abs, biceps and back. I do 4 sets of pull-ups, one-arm rows with lat pulldown superset, bicep curls with ez bar reverse curls supersets for the last 3 bicep curl sets, and 4 sets of crunches on an incline board, 20-25 reps.

Now the questions:
I want to know if this is in the limit of what’s not overtraining,or if it’s way too lenient. I need suggestions on how to structure my routine (either make it bigger or more often, or shorten it) so that I get max results without overtraining.

I also need some exercises for the area between where they take blood out of you at a hospital and the area about 4 cm up where the bicep starts when I cur my arm at 90 degrees. The problem I see is that I have kind of a “short” bicep, and I notice that with bicep curls the flexed bicep seems shorter, but when doing reverse curls with an ez bar the bicep gets a lot longer, and when doing completely reverse curls with a normal bar, the bicep gets the longest, so there’s probably something I can do with more reverse curls to strengthen this area. Please give me suggestions on all this I asked and thanks very much in advance for the help.

2

If you’re gaining weight at the pace you want to, 3000 calories is fine.

When I first started bulking I didn’t do any cardio either - but now I am and just eating a little more food to compensate and I actually feel better and it hasn’t hampered my gains in the slightest. I know there are a few other people on these forums that agree with cardio on a bulk.

You’re clearly a beginner - don’t worry about overtraining. Especially since you’re bulking. So you have ample nutrition on your side, you have naturally great recovery just because of your age and lifting age, and you’re only working each bodypart once per week. You would have to TRY, in my opinion, to overtrain with where you are at.

I’m sure some more experienced people could voice their opinion as well.

3

I would suggest that as a novice lifter having “burnout sets” and immediately supersetting another exercise and so forth are more hindrance than help.

Your multiple set performance also should not drop as badly as from 8 to 6 to 4 to 2 over 4 sets, unless it’s really one set with rest/pause of say 15 seconds between the sets in which case that would be reasonable: but again for a novice lifter is more hindrance than help.

Rest sufficiently between sets, which means at least 30 seconds generally speaking and optionally more than that, particularly with heavier weights; and by the time you can only perform half as many reps (or the standard can be somewhat different than that but not ridiculously lower) you’re done with that exercise. Keeping going till you can do only 2 reps, despite rest, with a weight that fresh you can do 8 with, is driving the muscle into the ground and is not helping you.

4

[quote]r1card0 wrote:

I also need some exercises for the area between where they take blood out of you at a hospital and the area about 4 cm up where the bicep starts when I cur my arm at 90 degrees. The problem I see is that I have kind of a “short” bicep, and I notice that with bicep curls the flexed bicep seems shorter, but when doing reverse curls with an ez bar the bicep gets a lot longer, and when doing completely reverse curls with a normal bar, the bicep gets the longest, so there’s probably something I can do with more reverse curls to strengthen this area. Please give me suggestions on all this I asked and thanks very much in advance for the help.[/quote]

um i wouldnt be worrying about that if your a beginner lifter haha and its genetics u cant make your bicep longer or shorter. its seems longer when u do reverse curls because turning your wrist the other way

5

I think your diet is pretty much on track but your training is a little too complicated for someone of your training age. You’ll probably do better performing straight sets using a rep range from 5-12 reps.

One thing you wont need supersets and strip sets or any other advanced techniques. They’re called advanced for a reason.

If you’re bulking you time could be spent alot better doing another exercise than doing abs every day. You have a great ab exercises in your program already, squats and conventional deadlifts a great ab builders.

Your bicep problem wont be a problem when actually get some size on you arms, so dont stress.

Now give the articles below a read and then design your program based on what you learn.

6

Thank you very much for all the information guys. I will look into the links and make a new program.