Weight Training Advice
Avoid Overtraining
muscle size and strength from your routine. Many people believe that "more is better" in anything that they do. With weight training, however, this approach will very likely lead to overtraining.
To avoid overtraining you need to be sure that every muscle is fully recovered before its next workout. If you're going to do a chest workout, but are still sore from your last chest training session, you haven't fully recovered and should wait another day or 2 before your train it. Splitting up your weight training routine 3 or 4 ways will go far in helping every muscle get enough rest and recovery between workouts and avoiding overtraining.
You also want to avoid training smaller muscles like the biceps or triceps a day or 2 before you do your back or chest training. The arms muscles assist on most chest and back exercises and may hinder your training if you exercise them the day before your major muscle workouts. This is a great reason to use a "push-pull" split routine where you work the chest, shoulders, and triceps at one weight training workout; and back and biceps at another workout with the legs done on their own day.
If you do chest and back exercises during one workout and arms during the next with the legs on the last workout you should get enough recovery to avoid overtraining.
Even if you follow a split weight training routine you still shouldn't lift every single day. Your muscles do their actual growing when they rest, even though they look bigger when you're training them due to being pumped up. If you're weight training every day and starting to feel mentally, as well as physically taxed, you're probably overtraining and should take a day or 2 off. If you're on a 3 day weight training split routine you should try to get those 3 workouts done within 5 days. If you're training with very high intensity you may want to take every other day off or train 3 days per week.
One major reason that so many weight trainers overtrain is that they read the bodybuilding magazines that feature the training routines of professional bodybuilders. The vast majority of these bodybuilders are taking steroids along with various other bodybuilding drugs. Anabolic steroids greatly speed up recovery so professional bodybuilders can handle the routines they do. If a natural weight trainer follows these routines they will certainly overtrain and wonder why they aren't gaining size and strength. You're best off doing maybe half as many exercises and sets as one of the bodybuilding routines you see in a magazine to avoid overtraining. Protein supplements and creatine will help recovery, but not near as much as the illegal and dangerous bodybuilding drugs out there.
To avoid overtraining you should also try to not overdo cardiovascular training. Sure, cardio is very good for you, but if you're trying to build as much muscle as possible you may want to take it easy on cardio for a while. When you get the muscle size you want you can start doing more cardio to get more definition.
If your muscle size and strength gains have stalled or decreased it may be time to reassess your routine and take more days off. Taking a week off from weight training every few months isn't a bad idea, as you'll be fired up to get back to the gym after not lifting for a week. Basically, if you're dragging yourself to the gym and your workouts are becoming harder to do you need to take some time off to avoid overtraining.
Many weight trainers, beginners in particular, will at some point end up overtraining. It's very easy to get overzealous and overdo it if you weight train, especially if you're getting good gains in
