Training bodypart frequency on roids

[Toenail Juice Z]

I know the body recuperates faster while on roids, and most people can get away with getting to the gym 6 times a week, but does this also mean you can train a the same bodypart 3 or 4 times a week. (I also know you grow when resting )

The reason i'm asking this is because my chest is lagging behind all the other bodyparts, and I want to prioritize on it by training it 3 or 4 times a week. Will this be beneficial while on, or is it still too much.

I know more is not better, but isn't more better when your on ?

[KAEW44]

3 or 4 times is overkill man!! yes your body recoveres faster on roids but it all depends on your feel, if after doing chest your chest feels sore for a week then you should take that week off regardless of how much steroids yoru taking, dont do it based on what your taking, judge your training by how your feeling, if there is no soreness or pain then you are good to train that part again.

[Toenail Juice Z]

3 or 4 times is overkill man!! yes your body recoveres faster on roids but it all depends on your feel, if after doing chest your chest feels sore for a week then you should take that week off regardless of how much steroids yoru taking, dont do it based on what your taking, judge your training by how your feeling, if there is no soreness or pain then you are good to train that part again.

That's the thing, there's not much soreness/hardly any the next day, and I train chest like mad. It's only a bit sore if I tense them, but after 2 days the soreness is gone completely.

And I heard that it's not always correct to use the soreness as a means to say you trained enough.

[BodyMechanic]

3 or 4 times a wk. would be to much but def.2 times would be ok and you shouldn't be able to train a body part that often if you are totally exausting it. Just because it is not sore doesn't mean you didn't stimulate it.When you are on gear and have been training for a while you probably will not get much soreness if any at all. If you feel like you are not stimulating the muscle enough try going heavier if you can and do some forced reps.

[madmaniac]

i have to work out everday to grow. i do upper body one day and lower body the next day. it works out to be every bodypart like 3 or 4 times per week. however if i dont get a full 8 hours of sleep the night before i wont workout at all. ive been working out like this all summer and i feel great. i used to split my workouts up (back/bis, chest/tris, shoulders/legs) my gains are much better now w/ my 2 day split.

i'll do 1 warmup set then 1 heavy set with rest pausing.

im on 500mg test and 500mg tren enthate. no signs of overtraining.

[MyBodyIsMyTemple]

for me personally i have found that more frequent training with less volume is better while on a cycle, and higher volume but less frequency off cycle. I keep a better weekly pump this way and I get much better workouts

My trained muscle is exhausted much faster while on cycle, so rather than overtraining a bodypart, I will stop when i get that exhausted feeling and do that bodypart again about 3-4 days later (as oppsed to 5-7 days later when off cycle)

when im off cycle it takes more sets for me to exhaust my muscles-

You have to go by what your body tells you more than anything, not the calendar. If I feel a bodypart is still healing or sore I let it go until its ready to be beat up again.

[Pork Chop]

for me personally i have found that more frequent training with less volume is better while on a cycle, and higher volume but less frequency off cycle. I keep a better weekly pump this way and I get much better workouts

My trained muscle is exhausted much faster while on cycle, so rather than overtraining a bodypart, I will stop when i get that exhausted feeling and do that bodypart again about 3-4 days later (as oppsed to 5-7 days later when off cycle)

when im off cycle it takes more sets for me to exhaust my muscles-

You have to go by what your body tells you more than anything, not the calendar. If I feel a bodypart is still healing or sore I let it go until its ready to be beat up again.

Same here Bros.

Another sign of not enough recouperation for that body part is "no pump".
After a set or two if my muscle doesn't pump up and feel deflated and weak i know it hasn't recovered fully.

[Toenail Juice Z]

bump to hear some more responses. It seems everyones different. I wanna know the basic rule that works for the majority of people.

[NoobJuice]

I train my chest 2x per week. I think your pectorals are different than any other muscle group, IMO. It seems to me that the pectorals seem to recoup faster than lets say your bis or tris. The one thing my workout partner and I have discrepencies on is the chest workouts. He throws in something everyday for the chest, working the chest 5x per week. When we are on arms day he still does bench flys, when we are on leg day he still does incline. So if you are asking if you can work your chest 4 to 5x per week, IMO it is fine. We do have a chest day only but he does not work as hard as I do on chest days because he works it out 5x per. My partner is in very good shape and his chest is fairly large, so the 5x thing does not hurt him so Im sure you will be just fine. We are in the gym 5 days a week and 2 solid days off. The key to growing is rest, this is more important than diet imo. So if you wanna do 5x per week just make sure you don't go all out, do your other workouts as you normally would just throw some flys or incline in on non-chest days. REST REST REST.

[Eddie8]

Here is a copy of an article on the subject taken from an email that I received from Lee Labrada. It talks about over training and also over training while on steroids. Yes you can over train while on a cycle. Mentions training techniques from Mentzer, Platz and others who were all definately juicing. Its a long read but has good info.


by Chris Aceto

Everybody has heard at some time or another "You’re overtraining! That’s why you’re not making serious gains." So we hear it. But do we understand what it means? I mean really what it means? Once you can make the distinction between an overtrained body and one that remains fresh, you’ll make great progress in building muscle.

In its most basic sense, overtraining means the body is being put under greater stress than it can handle. It’s that simple. Any additional stress, above and beyond what your own body can handle will result in a failure to recover and grow. So you could be fairly dedicated, training with a routine you believe to be a well thought out approach to getting big – yet fail to move ahead and grow if your body is overtrained. The real let down with overtraining is you wont grow regardless of nutrition! If you are in an overtrained state, muscle growth and recovery comes to a dead stop, no matter how much you pump the body with protein, carbs, creatine, glutamine or essential fatty acids.

The intangible part of overtraining is that it varies greatly from person to person. That is, stress adaptation – and the body’s ability to bounce back from hardcore training – is different for every bodybuilder out there, just as the metabolism will vary from person to person. We know people who can eat a lot of junk and get away with it right? While others seem to blow up when they marginally overeat. With training, you have to discover and hone what your body can handle and what it can’t handle. Once you strike the right balance, then gains will come rather easily. Let me tell you about a retired top pro I used to consult with. This pro frequently performed at least 20 to 24 sets for larger body parts and 15 for smaller body parts, taking each and every set to total failure. Every training partner he hooked up with never grew, ending up completely overtrained, while the pro continued to grow. Before you assume "Yeah, that’s because like all those pros, he was using anabolic steroids," I can tell you this man trained clean. He was drug free for the majority of the year and very often his training partners were not drug free. The basis of the story is that overtraining thresholds will vary.

1) What’s too much for one individual may not be excessive for another.

2) If you overtrain – hit the body too hard without adequate rest and recovery, you won’t make gains, even if you take steroids!

As I've always said, this particular pro made it to the pro ranks on hard work and exceptional recovery ability.

One of the myths that perpetuates overtraining is the silly idea there’s no such thing as overtraining, just under eating. The idea is so far off the mark and ill-advised, I don’t even want to spend much time with it. The fact is, nutrition can only support the body so far. When exercise stress exceeds your body’s own tolerance for recovery, you go back wards. You don’t grow; even if you are eating a lot.

When Dorian Yates burst onto the scene, he followed up on the ideas formulated by Tom Platz and Mike Mentzer years earlier. Dorian’s take on things were in line with Tom and Mike’s, which was most bodybuilders fail to grow because they train with too many sets (known as volume) and usually train too frequently. In other words, training every day means not enough rest days. Platz, Mentzer and Dorian were right. When you train too much, you don’t grow. However Mentzer fell into the trap that, "If more is not better than less – even far less may be radically better." So the pendulum shifted from heavy volume to far fewer sets. Suddenly, bodybuilders were doing 6 sets for chest or 8 to 10 sets for back, which in my opinion is not enough to optimally stimulate growth. To understand why their approach may have been a little overboard, here’s a brief note on physiology.

Building muscle relies on the weight you use. Pretty simple. If you can perform a set of barbell curls with 150 pounds, you’ll stimulate far more growth than only using 100 pounds. No matter how you cut it, the weight you use is immensely important in stimulating the muscles to grow. Next in line is volume or the total number of sets you perform. Volume influences muscle growth. If you do not perform enough sets, you’ll fail to trigger growth. If you get carried away and do too many, you’ll overtrain and also fail to grow. So you have to find a balance, a happy medium. Where’s the happy medium? It depends, but here are some guidelines to help you sidestep the pitfalls of overtraining.

1) The More Sets You Perform, the Better

Just as the greater the weight you handle, the better in terms of muscle recruitment, the more sets you do, the greater you’ll work a muscle. The thing you really have to distinguish is where to stop. To illustrate the point, just ask yourself is three sets of bicep curls better than one? Of course, the answer is yes. Is five better than three. Most likely. Is 7 better than five? The point where you have to stop or the point where more sets are no longer helping is typically where you lose the "feel" or "pump" in the muscle or where your poundages start to drop.

For example, Victor Martinez can’t do 20 straight sets of standing barbell curls with 120 pounds. After the sixth set, he will no longer be able to use 120 pounds. If he was aiming to do 8 to 10 reps per set, after set number five, six or seven, the weight he can handle will drop off quite a bit meaning it’s time to move onto another exercise. When you reach a point where the poundage starts to fade, that’s it. For some people, like a beginner or intermediate, that might be 2 to 3 sets, while for someone like Victor, it might be 5 to 6 sets. It’s important to listen to your body and move on when you need to. If you lose a pump, move on. When your poundages drop – you can’t handle the same heavy weight for each continuous set, move on to another exercise!

2) Speed Of Reps Count

The speed or perceived speed at which you move a weight influences how many sets you can do. Outside of the weight and total number of sets you perform, the speed at which you drive a weight has an influence on growth and can determine your own personal threshold for overtraining within each training session. Moving a weight fast, with speed and aggression, is far better for growth than moving a weight with a slow and even speed. That’s because in trying to "drive a weight" with the intensity of a bullet coming out of a gun, a far greater number of muscle fibers come into play than simply moving the weight with a slow cadence. Slow training, in my opinion, is a gimmick and has no real place in mass building plans. If you want to grow, you should pick a heavy weight and drive the weight while maintaining good form. Of course when you drive a weight, there’s not going to be a lot of momentum created because when you overload the muscle with a heavy weight, the poundage radically cuts down on the creation of momentum. In overloading a muscle with a heavy weight and driving the weight by pushing it fast rather than super slow, you physiologically create the greatest amount of stress on the muscle as possible. One way to discover whether you are about to do too much is by getting in touch with your ability to drive a weight. If you go into the gym and there’s no oomph to the muscle – you can’t explode and drive the first few sets of an exercise (after warming up of course) you are already overtrained. Get out of the gym! On the other hand, if there is a lot of snap in the muscle – you can drive those heavy weights and you feel powerful, for sure you are not overtraining and should proceed with the workout.

3) Frequency Counts

Another factor that influences recovery is training frequency. For the most part, I believe you have to train a muscle once every 5 to 8 days. In general, if you train a body part more frequently – say training chest every fourth day, you won’t grow because of overtraining. On the other hand, if you wait more than 8 days, you’ll also fail to grow. In this case, not by overtraining, but by failing to train frequently enough. You see, the muscles grow by stimulating them, then resting. If you rest too long – waiting too many days before hitting the same muscle group for another workout, the stress on the body appears to be too great which overwhelms the recovery process leading to a lack of growth. Let’s put it this way, imagine training legs on Monday and then again on Wednesday. The time in between is too short, so you overtrain. Now try training them for a second time 10 –12 days after the first workout. What happens? The time between training is so long your legs become immensely sore the second time you train, which can also trigger overtraining. You need balance, not too often and not too infrequent. To avoid ovetraining, you’ll need a training strategy that allows you to hit each body part once every 5 to 8 days with 7 to 8 being the ideal.

4) Too Many Days In a Row

If mass is the goal, you have to rest. Many bodybuilders won’t be able to train more than two consecutive days – or at least should not train for more than two consecutive days in a row – because training for more than two days usually causes hormonal changes that lead to overtraining. Typically, in an overtrained state, testosterone levels start to drop a little. In addition, you’ll experience a small surge in cortisol levels. Cortsiol is the stress hormone released from the adrenal cortex that sits just atop the kidneys and it increases in response to stress. In small amounts it actually contributes to anabolism – the building up in muscle tissue.

However, when released in larger amounts, especially when testosterone levels drop even mildly, it tends to tear muscle down creating a catabolic scenario. I’ve found most bodybuilders cannot train for more than two consecutive days in a row before having to take a day of rest. For most individuals, good gains can be realized following the 2 day on 1 day off system where half the body is trained in two days followed by a day of rest. Then the other half of the body is trained in two days followed by another day of rest. In fact, even following this approach many (hard training) bodybuilders and athletes could risk slipping into a state of overtraining.

Chronically, over time, even the one day off becomes inefficient at facilitating recovery. The next logical step is to incorporate another day off after 3 cycles of following the 2 on 1 off system. For example, after cycling through 2 on, 1 off, where you train all the body parts at least one time, repeat this for three cycles then incorporate another day off.

Day 1 chest and biceps
Day 2 Quads, hamstrings, calves
Day 3 rest
Day 4 Back and abs
Day 5 Shoulders and triceps
Day 6 rest

This is equal to one cycle. After going through three cycles, tag on another rest day such as follows

Day 1 chest and biceps
Day 2 Quads, hamstrings, calves
Day 3 rest
Day 4 rest
Day 5 Back and abs
Day 6 Shoulders and triceps
Day 7 rest
Day 8 rest

This added rest day can ensure you don’t overtrain. At this point, you ‘d go back to the original two on one off schedule.

5) Hormones Count

Some bodybuilders resort to shooting illegal anabolic steroids in hopes of adding mass. One reason: steroids help starve off overtraining – at least for a few weeks. The reason: it’s all about the interplay of hormones: testosterone, thyroid, growth hormone and cortisol. Overtraining plays havoc with your own anabolic hormones – suppressing them – while dramatically increasing the circulation of catabolic hormones. In part 2, we’ll take a closer look at hormones and what you can do naturally, from diet to supplements, to alter your hormonal status to help you overcome the perils of overtraining.

[map200uk]

hey man, whered u get that? i want part 2

[ripsid]

I would rather lift for 8 hours a day and 7 days a week, but it is known that you do need to rest. I tried to get atleast 2 days of rest, but would usually have 1. I was a 1 bodypart a day guy, and now trying to workout at 2 on 1 off, or 3 and 1.
I think if you lift alot just make sure you get plenty of rest during the day and night, that's what I tried to do. But everyone reacts differently to different workouts, everyone knows that though.

SID

[*Narkissos*]

Personally... The training split that took me tru 5 sucessful junior years into the senior level of competition i'm now in has involved training all my bodyparts twice a week... over 4 days.I think overtraining is relative.I believe (this varying from individual to individual) that training a bodypart 3times a week to 'bring it up' isn't overkill.. and can be the schock that said bodypart needs.

Here's a couple extreme examples (note that i was completely natural)

My shoulders and traps were lagging behind my other bodyparts (my leg development did and still does over power my upper-body development).My coach told me to do 4 sets of upright rows on each of my training days except shoulder day.Needless to say.. my shoulders improved dramatically.

There was a Guy here who (tho a heavy-weight) had sucky calves and humungous thighs.His twice a week calf routine was failing him so he increased the frequency and decreased the volume.He did one calf movement (a different one) daily for four sets... It's an oldschool principle.'Forcing a bodypart to grow'.The theory was that.. like a rubber band.. if you constantly applied short duration stresses to it(the body) it would be forced to stretch (grow)..

[bluethunder]

many good replies. My BEST bodypart is my Chest do doubt. I blast it totally but mix it up. IV done very high volume(over 15 sets), all the different exercises to hit all angles. For me if I was succesful I will have some pain/soreness DOMS. That tells me I worked the targeted muscell. I make sure for example on flyes to get the full stretch on the eccentric portion & the full squeze on the concentric upper. You can work the same muscell 2-3 times a wk but more experience bodybuilders can do it better. So I say work it twice but go with the feel. Yes if you dont feel the soreness it does not mean you did not work the muscell like one reply noted. But you did not work it from all angles therefore the breakdown was less. Bottom line is we all have different genetics & concentration of fast/slow fibers. My legs are my weakest. Chest best because I enjoy my chest workouts, so I need to get mental visualization for my legs. Visualize the chest growing & make sure you do iso-tension techniques to get blood flow engorged, it worked for me.. good luck

[stitch1967]

Great read Eddie8. I would like part 2 also....

[Eddie8]

Great read Eddie8. I would like part 2 also....

Ok guys...here you go. Sign up for the emails from LaBrada nutrition. The web sit is http://www.labrada.com They send them out weekly and I have not received part 2 yet.

Enjoy

[stitch1967]

Ok guys...here you go. Sign up for the emails from LaBrada nutrition. The web sit is http://www.labrada.com They send them out weekly and I have not received part 2 yet.

Enjoy

cool, thanx

[Froggy]

For me, the best gains were from using 5 workout routines with each one stressing a particular area. I would take days off whenever I felt the need, not at any pre-set time & might have even taken off 2 days in a row once or twice. The different workouts would always be done in the same order. It worked well for me.