Thread: Would this routine be overtraining for a hard gainer

Most likely youre overtraining, 16 sets per muscle is a lot of volume. Cut sets and even though you mentioned it already, up your cals and eat cleaner

ok thanks.... anyone else got any opinions??

Throw some days off in there

Hey hey!!

How's it going? Liking the new semester?!? haha, four months left for me!! oh yah!!

So, I'd say if you've been doing this routine for a year you probably could stand to change up the exercises a bit or maybe do a different rep range or split. Just cuz when you do something for so long your body just adapts. Maybe play around with a different exercise. For example, I just did some one legged squats the other day and my ass is still killing me...never done these before. Also, if you decide to keep with the same thing, i'd maybe add a day of rest after day 2 or 3. I'm sorta the master at overtraining too i think (or at least I used to be) and have recently reduced my volume and have been noticing I've been getting stronger.

Anyway, good luck with it!!
Laters!

Originally Posted by ST240

I think my routine needs to change... As i'm not really making consistant gains. I'm 5'7" 155 pounds 20 years old. im ecto-meso build (hard gainer, super fast metabolism), been training for about 3 years on and off.

For about the past year ive been doing the following. Unless otherwise noted, each exercise is 10-8-6-4.

Day one (shoulders):
military dumbell press
front raises
reverse fly machine
side raises
shrugs (only 3 sets of 8-10)

Day two (back):
bent over machine rows
pulldowns
sitting rows
DB rows

Day three (chest):
flat bench
incline DB press
incline flys
random chest exercise

Day four (legs):
leg press
curls
extensions
calf raises

Day five (arms):
overhead two handed tricep DB press
standing barbell curls
cable pulldowns
hammer curls
skull crushers
concentration curls
(every arm exercise is 3 sets of 6-10)

I'm kind of thinking this routine is overtraining me... as the gains are coming painstakingly slow. My diet is decent, not FANTASTIC, but trust me its more than sufficient, if youre wondering (3400 cals, 202g protein, 414g carbs)

thanks in advance

At 5 7 155 and a self confessed hard gainer with a fast metabolism, I find it hard to believe you are an ecto/meso. It sounds like a pure ecto. That being said, you are overtraining both in number of days and volume.

Cut to three days a week, four at the absolute most, doing more than one bodypart each workout. The legs, back and chest are big muscle groups and this is how you gain mass. Get off the machines for the back and do barbell bent rows and deadlifts. Increase the leg work, including adding squats and stiff deadlifts and cut back on the arm work. Cut out the front raises for the shoulders. Its redundant with the DB Press.

if it is hard for you to gain weight, why are you spending so much time in the gym??

It certainly couldn't hurt to drop back the volume. Try it as an experiment and see what it does for you. I know that in my case switching from a workout schedule similar to yours to one that used less sets with fewer reps and heavier weights worked wonders. After my first couple of workouts I was very skeptical. My workouts were all of a sudden much shorter and I didn't feel like I had worked out as hard. I don't care how much intensity you throw into a single set, it simply doesn't wear you out like multiple sets does. However, it didn't take long to realize that I was working with heavier weights almost every week, and I liked what I saw in the mirror. I liked feeling like I had worked hard after a workout, but I like getting bigger and stronger better. For me switching to a lower volume workout made a world of difference, especially at first. I might go back to using a little more volume in the future when my body adapts, but for now I will stick with what's working.

It's possible that you might not do well with a high intensity low volume program, but what have you got to lose. If your gains are coming slowly after a year of sticking with your current program then you can either content yourself piles of hard work for little gain, or you can switch things up a bit and see what happens.

Are you increasing poundage pretty consistently and working out to failure at least some of the time?

Definitely appears to be a classic case of over-training. Scale things back, get back to basic compound movements. As mentioned above, squats, DLs....are critical for overall mass building.

more rest, less volume