It's me again fellas. So, since the last time I posted, I have seen minimal muscle gains and little to no fat loss. I even tried a very calorie restricted diet, but decided I ultimately needed to increase protein. I may post a topic about diet plan too, but what I really want to talk about is Progressive Overload training.
I was reading about how POT is the optimal muscle building program. Lately, training has hit a plateau, and I suspect it was because of the way I was training. I was doing as many as 20-30 reps and as many as 3-5 sets on any given muscle group. I decided to stop reading about all the ways to achieve fitness and went laymen with it, and though "oh, if I just work the shit out of muscles I'll make lean gains". So what I think was happening, was between an considerably low calorie restrictive diet on rest days and not training correctly, I was spinning in place.
I will note that I stopped doing dead lifts because they were really bothering lower back, and I swear form was fine. So I'm curious of a good alternative to that, I have been replacing those with squats.
Now, I've been seeing things online about calculating 1rm and doing a rough percentage of that to determine how many reps at a given weight to do. Could you guys give me some advice on either a good routine to follow, or tips on building own POT routine?
Progressive Overload training
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Re: Progressive Overload training
If you're looking for deadlift alternatives that will work the lower back, you might find that if you did the normal ones or stiff legged kind, you might be able to do romanian ones, or do good mornings and see how that pans out.
You might get away with bridges, but you'd have to see how that feels for a couple of reps.
One thing you could try for a routine, is simply do a workout 3x a week covering all the muscle groups and focus on a core of compound stuff like the exercises described before, as well as things like squats, lunges, bent over rows, bench press, military press, olympic lifts, woodchoppers, arnolds, turkish getups, or if you could manage it, you might find things like pressing heavy objects like large rocks and / or barrels over your head and tyre flipping stuff might work, as well as farmers walk type exercises for the lower body, that could be incorporated.
Then chuck in a bit of direct stuff for bi's tri's and shoulders if you like.
You might get away with bridges, but you'd have to see how that feels for a couple of reps.
One thing you could try for a routine, is simply do a workout 3x a week covering all the muscle groups and focus on a core of compound stuff like the exercises described before, as well as things like squats, lunges, bent over rows, bench press, military press, olympic lifts, woodchoppers, arnolds, turkish getups, or if you could manage it, you might find things like pressing heavy objects like large rocks and / or barrels over your head and tyre flipping stuff might work, as well as farmers walk type exercises for the lower body, that could be incorporated.
Then chuck in a bit of direct stuff for bi's tri's and shoulders if you like.
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Re: Progressive Overload training
What I'm really not sure about is how many sets of a given muscle group I should work. I decided I'm going to try doing 4-6 reps per set at somewhere around 85-90% 1rm at 4 sets. Last time I went to the gym after switching to this method, I spent almost an hour and a half doing all of muscle groups and some isolations, since with this method from what I understand I need to rest between sets and do one lift at a time. where as before I was doing more of a circuit kind of routine, doing pushes one day, rest, pulls, rest, push, rest, rest, repeat. Now I'm wondering if maybe I should split up muscle groups and lift maybe 4 days a week. I need some advice as to a new routine to fit into prog overload
Re: Progressive Overload training
If you're doing a TBT 3x a week, you only need 2-3 sets per muscle group.
If it's a 5 day split, then you could be doing around 9-12 sets on chest, back and legs and around 6 on bi's, tri's and shoulders, owing to the indirect work on those from big muscle workouts.
If you're doubling up muscle groups on a 3 day workout system, then the same kind of thing applies.
If it's a 5 day split, then you could be doing around 9-12 sets on chest, back and legs and around 6 on bi's, tri's and shoulders, owing to the indirect work on those from big muscle workouts.
If you're doubling up muscle groups on a 3 day workout system, then the same kind of thing applies.