Hi, I could use some of your opinions on what to do here.
For a long while I trained a M/W/F split doing chest/tris/abs on monday, back and bis on wed, shoulders/legs/abs on friday. I used to do 20mins HIIT cardio after each session.
Now I did this for a long while on top of university and a lot of other stuff, and I became overtrained. I had seen loss of fat, muscle gain and consequently stayed at around 74kg / 163lb, at 6ft2inches (although I dropped in weight from 79kg since I started, because in the first 3-4 months I trained I was not eating nearly enough). So I was more defined, but wasn't adding bulk at all.
I took a week off, tweaked my program and went back into it.
So I was still doing M/W/F, but then only doing cardio on wednesday, eating more, training heavy to add mass. Anyway I did that for two weeks but then due to time commitments I ended up having to change to a 9 day rotation rather than a weekly rotation.
So the last two cycles (where a cycle would have been mon/wed/fri) have been 9 days, one day on, 2 days off, working each body part once every 9 days (though of course they all see some action each session even if they aren't specifically being targetted).
The dilemma is, now that I have the time to go back to M/W/F again, I'm thinking that I've actually seen more results in the last 18 days in terms of gains, than I would have in 2 or 3 weeks training more frequently. I don't know if it is the extra recovery time, the fact I can eat more food between sessions (I guess that's part of the same thing really), or just a temporary thing because I let up for a little while and my body recovered some. The thing is along with that, my actual strength decreased a little bit, I noticed for example that on some exercises I couldn't get that last rep where I could before. However, because I've only done the 9 day thing for 2 cycles, it could just as easily have been an off day.
Is a 9 day rotation too long for real mass gains do you think? I'm trying to be instinctive, and there are people like Mike Mentzer who advocate long rest periods, but then I've also heard that 3 to 4 days is the optimum time to give a muscle group to adapt before it should be trained again to prevent results slipping.
Sorry if this is a little bit long and rambling, but what do you think I should do?
For a long while I trained a M/W/F split doing chest/tris/abs on monday, back and bis on wed, shoulders/legs/abs on friday. I used to do 20mins HIIT cardio after each session.
Now I did this for a long while on top of university and a lot of other stuff, and I became overtrained. I had seen loss of fat, muscle gain and consequently stayed at around 74kg / 163lb, at 6ft2inches (although I dropped in weight from 79kg since I started, because in the first 3-4 months I trained I was not eating nearly enough). So I was more defined, but wasn't adding bulk at all.
I took a week off, tweaked my program and went back into it.
So I was still doing M/W/F, but then only doing cardio on wednesday, eating more, training heavy to add mass. Anyway I did that for two weeks but then due to time commitments I ended up having to change to a 9 day rotation rather than a weekly rotation.
So the last two cycles (where a cycle would have been mon/wed/fri) have been 9 days, one day on, 2 days off, working each body part once every 9 days (though of course they all see some action each session even if they aren't specifically being targetted).
The dilemma is, now that I have the time to go back to M/W/F again, I'm thinking that I've actually seen more results in the last 18 days in terms of gains, than I would have in 2 or 3 weeks training more frequently. I don't know if it is the extra recovery time, the fact I can eat more food between sessions (I guess that's part of the same thing really), or just a temporary thing because I let up for a little while and my body recovered some. The thing is along with that, my actual strength decreased a little bit, I noticed for example that on some exercises I couldn't get that last rep where I could before. However, because I've only done the 9 day thing for 2 cycles, it could just as easily have been an off day.
Is a 9 day rotation too long for real mass gains do you think? I'm trying to be instinctive, and there are people like Mike Mentzer who advocate long rest periods, but then I've also heard that 3 to 4 days is the optimum time to give a muscle group to adapt before it should be trained again to prevent results slipping.
Sorry if this is a little bit long and rambling, but what do you think I should do?
