One of the most discussed aspects of dedicated weight training is how to keep injuries at bay or avoiding the plateau stage wherein the muscles stop to grow by steering clear of ‘Over-training’. This is perhaps the most argued of topics in the niche of weight-training where opinions can be often contradictory. The following tips help you to achieve your muscle gain goals without risking muscle fatigue that is the unwanted results of Overtraining.
Tip 1: Use Specificity of Training to Avoid Repetition
A common mistake that many gym goers make is exercising the same set of muscles repeatedly. This means that a group of muscles is not provided sufficient time to recover. As a result, the development of such overworked muscles is hindered. Thus, it is very important that specificity of exercises is fully understood. For instance, it is not a good idea to follow pectoral training (such as intensive bench-pressing) with heavy exercising of the shoulder and the back since such upper body exercise regimens invariably mean involvement of the pectoral, trapezius and the deltoid muscles. It is better to alternate upper body exercising with that of lower body to ensure that a single group of upper body muscles is worked upon on alternate days. Again, there are some specific exercises for the upper back that induce minimal stress upon the pectoral and deltoid muscles. This can be understood as segregation of muscle groups to ensure that each muscle group is given time to recover before being used again for a training session.
Tip 2: Overloading is Both Good & Bad
Many gym trainers emphasize that overloading or lifting weights beyond a certain level is necessary to ensure maximum results from your weight-training sessions. However, there is a good and bad side to this theory. For maximum muscle gain, short spurts of overloading are a bit necessary. This means that the usual way of increasing the weight range on the barbell is interspersed with short spells of lifting a range wherein completing three or four repetitions seems impossible. However, Overloading becomes a problem when it is done repeatedly or too often. This limits the recovery time for the muscles, inducing more harm than good.
Tip 3: Progression is Vital but Slowly
The most basic rule of weight training says that gradually increasing the intensity, load and frequency of weight training is vital for developing muscles. This is often referred to as Progression of weight training but the biggest confusion among many gymming folks is how Progression has to be executed. It is worth noting that being too slow in progressing towards higher weights or greater intensity of working-out means reduced results from your gym regimen while speeding through the process means raising the risk of injuring yourself. Ideally, the range of weights you are lifting for bigger muscles (like the quadriceps—thigh muscles) should rise by at least 4 lbs, each week, once you have completed the first few weeks of basic body conditioning and are comfortable with gripping heavy weights and understand what constitutes a safe range of motion.