lagging muscles

[DylWilmot]

Hey guys need some advice from people who have experienced "overtraining" is it a myth or is it true?

My arms seem to be lagging compared to all my other muscles and I don't know if I should continue training them 2x a week or extend it to ed alternating between bi's and tri's. Any info would be appreciated thank you

[Metalject]

Yes, over training is very real.
No, training your arms daily is not going to make them grow larger.
Personally, I prefer to train arms on their own day. I do not like doing, for example, bi's after back or tri's after shoulders. I did it that way for several years but it didn't work all that well for me.
That said...arm workouts are typically fairly fast but that's all I do on that day.
Just food for thought...some of the biggest arm guys I know only train arms once every 7-10 days.

[H93]

Not disagreeing with metalject, but is Rich piana just bullshit`n then? I mean he says theres no such thing. I mean i get it if your training your arms everyday lol but i do both, arm day and then a back bi, chest tri.....But everyone has their own deal. Rich arms are stupid big and he said he trained them all the time. but then again, he also said he was on all kinds of shit, and alot of it.
IMO, if your sore and still training them, your over training. But hey if your arm day is say wednesday, and your g2g saturday, maybe hit them again. Or If vis versa. You train them twice a week and your sore as shit, back off a little.
Just my 02. I have roughly 19-20inch arms, 240lbs 6` at 13%bf if that matters at all.

[Metalject]

Not disagreeing with metalject, but is Rich piana just bullshit`n then? I mean he says theres no such thing. I mean i get it if your training your arms everyday lol but i do both, arm day and then a back bi, chest tri.....But everyone has their own deal. Rich arms are stupid big and he said he trained them all the time. but then again, he also said he was on all kinds of shit, and alot of it.
IMO, if your sore and still training them, your over training. But hey if your arm day is say wednesday, and your g2g saturday, maybe hit them again. Or If vis versa. You train them twice a week and your sore as shit, back off a little.
Just my 02. I have roughly 19-20inch arms, 240lbs 6` at 13%bf if that matters at all.

I think overtraining is relative to the individual, at least to a degree. Everyone responds better to certain things. For myself, high volume training with massive amounts of sets and frequency did nothing for me but beat the crap out of my body. I had more injuries with high volume by far, even with lots of gear. And perhaps more important in terms of bodybuilding, growth was a struggle. Then take guys like Flex Lewis, the guy does ridiculous amounts of sets per training session, tons of drop sets - that type of training is guaranteed disaster for myself yet he looks great. But while he does high volume each session, it might be more than a week before he hits a body part again, he still allows for recovery.

On the topic of soreness, I'm not a big fan of using soreness to gauge anything. Obviously if you're so sore you can't move a body part you definitely don't want to train it that day, but just because it's not sore doesn't mean it's ready to be trained. I've heard plenty of bodybuilders say they never get sore anymore - so again, soreness cannot be a good indicator.

In the end, it's one of those things you have to play with, you have to be willing to play with it and "willing" is the hard part. It's so easy to get stuck in a rut of how we think we should do things, but if you're not progressing or you're stagnating then something has to change. I'd even go as far as to say if you are progressing but it's weak progression then something needs to change.

if I could do things differently, when I was still taking a lot of gear, I'd train like I do now - very few supersets or drop sets, very rarely. Moderate volume per session, often just 10-12 sets for large muscles and as few as 6-8 for things like bi's or tri's. But each set is concentrated so much more, so much more concern on contractions and just the feel of the right muscles doing the work. I don't have very good genetics, far from it. Anyone with great genetics can make great progress just by moving weights whether they're doing a little or a lot and it's easy to assume what you're doing is right if you fall into that category. What if you could do even better? Wouldn't you want to? But that said, I can tell even on nothing more than my TRT that the progress would have been so much more if I had been willing to train then like I do now. But I also understand that most bodybuilders cannot make changes like this on their own just by hearing someone else say it, they have to come to it on their own terms and their own time. And if they don't, well most burn out or get hurt in the end.

[MIKE_XXL]

I think overtraining is relative to the individual, at least to a degree. Everyone responds better to certain things. For myself, high volume training with massive amounts of sets and frequency did nothing for me but beat the crap out of my body. I had more injuries with high volume by far, even with lots of gear. And perhaps more important in terms of bodybuilding, growth was a struggle. Then take guys like Flex Lewis, the guy does ridiculous amounts of sets per training session, tons of drop sets - that type of training is guaranteed disaster for myself yet he looks great. But while he does high volume each session, it might be more than a week before he hits a body part again, he still allows for recovery.

On the topic of soreness, I'm not a big fan of using soreness to gauge anything. Obviously if you're so sore you can't move a body part you definitely don't want to train it that day, but just because it's not sore doesn't mean it's ready to be trained. I've heard plenty of bodybuilders say they never get sore anymore - so again, soreness cannot be a good indicator.

In the end, it's one of those things you have to play with, you have to be willing to play with it and "willing" is the hard part. It's so easy to get stuck in a rut of how we think we should do things, but if you're not progressing or you're stagnating then something has to change. I'd even go as far as to say if you are progressing but it's weak progression then something needs to change.

if I could do things differently, when I was still taking a lot of gear, I'd train like I do now - very few supersets or drop sets, very rarely. Moderate volume per session, often just 10-12 sets for large muscles and as few as 6-8 for things like bi's or tri's. But each set is concentrated so much more, so much more concern on contractions and just the feel of the right muscles doing the work. I don't have very good genetics, far from it. Anyone with great genetics can make great progress just by moving weights whether they're doing a little or a lot and it's easy to assume what you're doing is right if you fall into that category. What if you could do even better? Wouldn't you want to? But that said, I can tell even on nothing more than my TRT that the progress would have been so much more if I had been willing to train then like I do now. But I also understand that most bodybuilders cannot make changes like this on their own just by hearing someone else say it, they have to come to it on their own terms and their own time. And if they don't, well most burn out or get hurt in the end.

Very well said, i agree 100%, i do not respond to volume training well either, most of my lingering injuries have come from volume training...moderate to low volume is what i prefer, one of my favorite DC training which is high intensity and low volume...i also agree about not using soreness as an indicator of routines effectiveness, much like pump is not directly related to muscle hypertrophy...Like Metalject said it is very hard for people to change from High volume to moderate volume routine most people are resistant to change and get stuck in a rut...what i find amusing is that most people keep doing the same thing day in and day out and expect different results, if it didnt work for last 2 years it is very unlikely it will magically start working...its time for a change, a lot of times to get extraordinary results one must take extraordinary changes and actions...in any case, great write up by Metalject as usual..