Thread: Newbie Questions!

One of the best things you can do when training is taking time to rest. I have read that some of the bigger gains occur as your muscles are resting.
In my opinion, I would give HIT or Gopros P/RR/S a try. Check them out, there is a wealth of information in this forums, in fact, check out people's journals.
Regardless of this, you need to rest.
Also, do you go to failure or up to a number? Or, do you fail at 5 reps or you count off and go all the way to X amount of reps and stop there? One thing that may help you is forgetting about a number of reps and simply lift until you can't lift no more, thus reach failure.
Gurus, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that rest and reaching failure will help you a whole lot....Just my opinion...

Originally Posted by Ejhickey

I guess ill start off by saying, Does anyone know an effective way to raise bench weight? Ive been stuck doing 45's on each side for months, and I work out my chest twice a week with generally 12-15 sets focused on it. I am sore for 3-4 days sometimes after working out, so I dont understand why, when i put 5's on each side in addition to the 45's, i cant do 10 full reps for even 1 set.

Train chest 1 time per week and drop it to about 8 sets.


For the past 3 1/2 weeks ive also been taking Phosphogen HP (I used to be 170 now a 177, i think a lot of it is water, the rest is a mixture of muscle/fat from increased eating), has anyon had any experience with it and know if it works well and maybe im just not training hard enough to see the benefits?

Have you tried adjusting your diet? Increasing protine and calories?


Lately, because ive been upset with my lack of gains in strength, ive almost doubled my workout.

You should be doing the exact opposite.


I work out with one group of guys from 8-9pm, working on 1 or 2 specific muscles, then theyll leave and ill stay and workout what we just did over again. is this the best way to gain strength? I definately am always sore for days after I do it, whereas if I didnt double the workout I most likely wouldnt be sore.

It sounds like you are overtraining.

There are plenty of workouts posted, try gopro's: http://www.ironmagazine.com/article65.html

And I highly recommend you start reading thru the articles: http://www.ironmagazine.com/archive.html

Welcome aboard!
There's such a thing as overdoing it, adn it leads nowhere...
If after a workout of specific body parts u still got juice to re-do it, rethink the intensity that u put into ur w/o...It might just explain the lack of results....

Another suggestion is to try dumbbells for a while for chest,or alternate one week db's next week bar.

O-V-E-R T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G Only train chest once a week, only do about 8-10 sets and you have to eat right to gain muscle. I used to train like you, I weighed 127 pounds at 5'11. I started listening to the people on this forum about training and diet and gained 18 pounds of lean body mass so far, and I've only been doing this for about 5 months.