Too Much of a Good Thing?

Hey all
I’ve been checking out the T-Nation forums for a bit and I think that now is the time to share my own concerns.

I’m 18, been working out for 13 months and managed to go from a very frail 135 pounds physique, with slight scoliosis, to a pretty buff (16% fat) and healthy 185-190 pounds frame, thanks to hard work, lots of eggs and the late discovery of creatine monohydrate.

Like many others, there’s nothing I like better than the soreness you feel after a hard session at the gym, and especially the day after. Thing is, to actually feel fatiguated, I have to train alot, even too much. I tried reducing my workload to avoid overtraining, but I just felt like I was running in circles, not progressing at all.

Anyways, I’ll let yall judge that for yourselves, here’s as an example the back workout I performed yesterday:

4 sets Widegrip Pullup, 12 reps
4 sets wide-grip lateral pulldown, 6-8 reps (using restpause on the last set for 4 more reps)
5 sets of deadlift, 7 reps
4 sets bent over reverse grip rows, 6/6/12/12 reps
4 sets of one-arm DB row, 10 reps, (using the drop-set technique on the last set for 6 more reps)

I’m regularly told that I’m doing too much, but this routine, with 60 to 90 seconds of rest between sets, only takes me about 60 minutes.

Thanks for your input!

Everybody’s capacity (and/or recovery) is different.
From what I have garnered from books and this site is TOO MUCH equals:

  1. TRUE symptoms of overtraining
  2. Progress halts
    2a. This also could be a sideaffect of faulty nutrition, adaptation etc.

FOR ME your back day would be overkill, FOR YOU it might be perfect.

I see :slight_smile: Thanks alot yasser, I’ve been aware that I might be doing too much for a while and been keenly aware of overtraining syndroms but never seemed to suffer from it.

When lifting weights, you cannot substitute intensity with volume.

If you can do 4 sets of Pullups followed by 4 sets of Lat Pulldowns followed by bend over rows, you do need to add intensity somewhere between.

Of course, as long as you are progressing everything is fine, but to me it looks you are unable to fatigue yourself completely during a given movement and thus do endless sets of exercises targeting similar muscles.

Yeah Petrichor I agree, and I used to basically do 2 supersets and everything else dropset|restpause in my workouts, thinking it would jack up the results but I actually had an arm and back injury. What do you think would be a good mix of intensity and volume for, say a back workout like the one I posted? I tried programs from M&F (muscle and fitness) but they never seemed intense enough for me.

Kataklysm, are you consistently putting up bigger and bigger numbers?

If yes, keep doing what you’re doing.

If no, pick a program from here: http://www.T-Nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=1943700
Stick with it for a while, make sure your diet is good, repeat.

[quote]hungry4more wrote:
http://www.T-Nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=1943700
[/quote]

Best post EVER!

Thats one hell of a workout compilation… I’ll be putting this in my favorites lol. Thanks hungry4more, I’ll be trying some of em for sure. But to answer to your question, I’m progressing slowly but steady, since I switch exercices around pretty often. Always keeping pretty much the same volume and intensity techniques tho, so this should be interesting to completely start fresh.

Thanks guys !