I never want to take a day off.
Every day that I’m not in the gym, I’m angry that I’m not in their making progress.
I understand that your body needs some rest. But is there anyone that trains daily?
How do you do it? This is a question asked assuming the people answering aren’t taking any steroids.
Yes.
How do I do it? I just do. Last December (2011), I was training five days per week when I introduced extra workouts on the other two. Over time, those extra workouts became more and more demanding.
Now, I’m running Smolov Jr. (my second time on it after a deload from my first cycle concluded last week) on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I run the base cycle (finishing my third week now) on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I do speed pulls on Wednesdays and max-effort deadlifts on Sundays. Occasionally, I’ll do an extra workout in an AM session if I feel like I’m lagging. Before this, I was still training seven days per week, but I was running my own programming and only pressing three times per week and squatting twice weekly, with an additional deadlift day and a lower-body assistance day.
I don’t think I can tell you how to train every day, but the answer to training more is simple: gradually increase training volume and see how you respond. More is not necessarily always better, and you have to do what’s best for you at this stage in your development.
Some tips:
Make sure you can dedicate time to recovery.
If you work a desk job and don’t move around during the day it may be tough.
Morning walks/light lifts are great for active recovery.
Take your good days and run with them. Beat the shit out of the weights. If you have a bad day, cut your losses and don’t get upset.
It requires a lot of intuitive training on your part.
read up on the bulgarian method if you want to train everyday. you still wont be able to do their volume as O lifts have no eccentric motion and powerlifting does.
if i were to do a 7 day split for powerlifting here is one way to do it:
sun - ME bench
mon - ME Squats
tue - RE work on weak links and extra conditioning
wed - DE Bench
thur - DE squats
fri - bench skill work & overhead pressing
sat - squat skill work, low weight, low reps, low sets, just grease the groove
not perfect but an example of what can be done.
and i dont mean to be rude, but do you not have other interests or hobbies or a girlfriend/wife or something. i just cant imagine being in the gym every day. i am a single father with a career and a 110yr old house im remodeling. add in a girlfriend and hobbies and i struggle to make 3 workouts a week. i dont even have time for many things i enjoy i cant imagine giving up more to workout more.
the only times in my life where i worked out 6-7 days a week is when i was a trainer at a gym and i was there everyday anyways. or when i was in high school sports and did endurance swimming. i needed the volume to get ahead. but i had almost no outside interests at the time either.
nothing wrong with being active and working a lot. just dont become so obsessive that you lose out on other things in life.
Its totally doable. I dont now, but i did for a while. I know CT does most times too. It basicslly comes down to controlling CNS fatigue and feeding your muscles enough to recover. Take care of both those things and it can be done.
[quote]KyleKeough wrote:
Yes.
Now, I’m running Smolov Jr. (my second time on it after a deload from my first cycle concluded last week) on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday… I do speed pulls on Wednesdays and max-effort deadlifts on Sundays. Occasionally, I’ll do an extra workout in an AM session… [/quote]
What is your diet like?
[quote]grappling_hook wrote:
[quote]KyleKeough wrote:
Yes.
Now, I’m running Smolov Jr. (my second time on it after a deload from my first cycle concluded last week) on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday… I do speed pulls on Wednesdays and max-effort deadlifts on Sundays. Occasionally, I’ll do an extra workout in an AM session… [/quote]
What is your diet like?[/quote]
I eat at maintenance basically year-round to stay close to my weight class (I’m guessing it’s around 2500 calories per day), and I’m probably consuming ~150g of carbs, ~125g of fat, and ~300g of protein per day. I eat the same thing every day and just tweak my diet slightly based upon how I feel.
learn how to bury yourself in the gym so that you crave rest days…
Check out Chaos and Pain. Jaime Lewis pretty much trains whenever he wants to, which is normally at least 6 days a week, sometimes a couple sessions a day. As others have said, it seems to be largely about being very good at listening to your body. There is nothing wrong with training every day, BUT if you feel the need to go really heavy and push your limits every time you train, you are going to get very beat up very fast training every day.
I train BBB style so 6x per week, split into chest/back/bis/rear delts then legs/tris/delts/abs alternating days. I love it. I’m dieting now so don’t ramp up volume as in the book, but still make good progress.
And a basic theory (which works for me, an under-control natural endomorph now with abs) : weights + high protein: win, so i do that almost every day.
Just have balls, and be wise to mental fatigue (not to be confused with laziness) and/or joint pain. Back off on volume/frequency when these appear
I train 7-8x a week, but I always have a day completely off 1x a week. When I’m deadlifting and squatting above 400 I think I’ll reduce the frequency, but for now I’ve had no issues.
I started training everyday about 1 month ago and it doesn’t cause any issues for me. I would not say I am overtraining. My muscles work at a pace much faster than most people I think, because if I squat on Monday, if I don’t squat by Thursday I don’t gain anything and my progress moves backward.
Right now I am going 3 days upper body, then 3 days lower body, essentially I am going a Westside template-- Day 1: Max Effort bench, Day 2: Dynamic Effort bench, Day 3: Repetition method bench, Day 4: ME box squat/deadlift, Day 5: DE box squat/deadlift, Day 6: RM box squat/deadlift. Then repeat.
What I have realized is that you really need to find what works for your body. Most people would say lifting everyday is overtraining, but their bodies are different. I still like the idea of not overtraining at 90% of your 1RM though.
Can you train every day with decent intensity? Sure (with smart programming). Should you? I doubt it.
My personal experience is that more is certainly not always better in the iron game. Having said that, give it a try and let your progress by your measuring stick.
Yup you definitely I can. It’s something that you have to slowly ease into though. It’s as above post, your intensity every day will most likely be different depending upon what you can handle. For me, my split is like this now:
Day 1: Heavy DL
Day 2: Moderate Volume/Intensity Shoulder
Day 3: Back/Bi
Day 4: Heavy or Moderate Squat (depending on recovery from DL)
Day 5: Heavy/Moderate Chest (I cycle them)
Day 6: Back
Day 7: BW day. HIGH volume push ups, pull ups, ring dips, etc…kinda like an active recovery in prep for next day’s heavy DL.