So, I’m doing the 30 Day Mass Plan and today is day 10. I’m to weight train today and take the next 5 days off to grow.
The thing is: I’m up by 4 pounds already. My arms measure larger everyday, by 1/4 inch margins the past few days and I’m not even taking any supplements.
The program itself is a breeze, and an obviously effective one at that. (thanks, Chad!) I do what I can to up the difficulty of the workouts in hopes of fatiguing myself like the program wants, but I can’t get there. Also mentally pretty happy.
If I were to guess, the sheer briefness of the workouts would be it. My muscle memory is filled with things like 10X3 and such. That and school’s out, so getting enough sleep has been easy.
So, should I rest after today or ride this out until I’m run down? Can’t help but ponder that if the point of the recovery days are to grow because you’re overly taxed to begin with, then wouldn’t I not get that effect?
You sound young which is good. You actually could probably get away with less recovery so I say push it.
Fuck it, throw in some super-sets, failure sets and declining sets. Here is something I do from time to time especially for triceps, wave loading with in a set.
It breaks down like this let’s take triceps push-downs with a rope. Start at you near maximal weight, decline the set at say 20 lb increments until you go light, but not to light. If you can crank out more than 10 at the lightest weight, you went to light.
Now, once you’ve bottomed out weight wise, work your way back up in increments of 10 lbs. Until you get to a weight you can’t do. If you have anything left, go back down.
What you will notice, is that once you’ve gone to the lightest weight and highest reps, you have actually recovered enough in the faster twitch cells, that you can actually go back and do a weight you previously failed with within the set, for several reps until failing again.
Sound crazy? Give it a try because it is crazy. It’s a good one for legs on a leg press too, but you obviously need a training partner for that one. You’ll be fucking sore.
Overtraining? Never heard of it!
[quote]muscleshark wrote:
My arms measure larger everyday, by 1/4 inch margins the past few days and I’m not even taking any supplements.
[/quote]
Tell me about it. My boyfriend and I just got to day 10. Around day 8 I actually read the heading of the workout. It was then I understood why my shirt sleeves have been tight the last several days.
Well, I took the advice of doing it as is for the 1st 15 days and going from there.
It’s day 12, and now I feel depressed and lazy from not training everyday…
I’m not experiencing the “grow like a weed during rest days” effect, but I did gain 4.5 pounds in the first ten days. Body fat looks exactly where it was.
I’ll probably start again tomorrow on Monday.
So the next question:
I’m thinking that the changes I’ll make next time around are (and these replace their corresponding exercises)
Barbell deadlifts on days 1, 4, 7, 10
BB Bench Presses on days 1, 4, 7, 10
BB military presses on days 2, 5, 8
Back Squats on days 2, 5, 8
The rep parameters will be kept the same.
I learned this early on and I’m sticking with 10 free minutes at the end as opposed to 5 free minutes twice to avoid pre-exhausting target muscle groups before the compound lifts.
Those groups will be
biceps on the days there are two triceps involving lifts in the circuit
and triceps on the days vice versa.
Also, will choose 2/4 of these to work on: shoulder width, upper traps, neck, and calves.
How does this look?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!