Muscle gain workout program

[Matk]

sure....

Ok let's think about it, when you are doing bench press - are you, or are you not indirectly stimulating your upper chest also? Of course, your upper chest may not be directly targeted, but, it is definitely utilised doing flat bench press.

Let's say you trained chest on Monday and only did flat bench press. Wednesday comes along, and you now plan to train upper chest and do incline bench press. Now, your chest is still recovering from Monday's heavy weight session (also, you may or may not still be sore from lactic acid build up). Which do you think will be more productive, letting your chest recover, or blast it again with heavy weights and target the upper chest (which will again utilise muscles that have been stimulated in Monday's session)?

Also, do you think you will be able to lift as heavy on Wednesday, doing incline bench press, as you would have been able to do on Monday? Personally, I don't believe you would be able to, but, I could be wrong. It would be good to try an experiment and see how it goes.

[swanso5]

thoughts would be that you could lift more wt every second day when fatigue has gone then doing all 3 in a row...it's the same volume and the same wt what i had there just split up...doing all in 1 day would limit the wt you would use for the other exercises...so instead of being able to use 80kgs for bb incline presses, your way would have you using say 70kgs for all your sets and then you have accumulated even more fatigue so your db decline press would be even lower again, say 15kgs for instance

so what you've done is accumulated more fatigue but by using a lighter wt...now if lifting big wts builds the most muscle (can't agree more there) then wouldn't splitting the lifts up to different days be more effective?

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[Matk]

I don't think there is any chance I would be able to push as heavy, two days after already training chest. Especially if there was excess lactic acid build up hanging around. Your muscles will fatigue much quicker.

And, that goes back to point of overtraining again; heavily utilising the same muscles that you just trained two days earlier.

I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. (bloody Melbournians)

[swanso5]

don't think there is any chance I would be able to push as heavy, two days after already training chest. Especially if there was excess lactic acid build up hanging around. Your muscles will fatigue much quicker.

but there wouldn't be excess lactic acid as you only did 4 sets, not 12...true?

[Matk]

Even a little lactic acid build up can reduce your training efficiency, your muscles won’t be able to contract as often or with as much force (mean less reps or less weight).

Doing 4 heavy sets of bench press can still cause delayed onset muscle soreness (pain you feel in muscles 24-48 hours after exercise), further reducing your efficiency....true?

[swanso5]

if you can't recover from 4 sets in 48hrs then your recovery is way off the mark and as our dear leso said, give your body a reason to recover in 48hrs (i.e. repeated exposures to it) and it will

currently i'm doing:

mon - full body
wed - lower
thu - upper
sat - full body

doing 2 cycles of this for 8 weeks but i know i won't overtrain and will also lift a heavier each time i go in, even if i can't be stuffed

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[Matk]

if you can't recover from 4 sets in 48hrs then your recovery is way off the mark and as our dear leso said, give your body a reason to recover in 48hrs (i.e. repeated exposures to it) and it will

Lactic acid build up has nothing to do with DOMS, it does not have the ability to create the condition. DOMS is caused by stiffness within the actual muscle fibres, so yes even 4 heavy sets can induce it. You can try all the breathing exercise you want, but it wont help with DOMS. Stretching may a little, but it won't completly eliminate it.

And, by the looks of your program, you are training the chest muscles up to three times a week - so it's not just the 4 sets of bench press that your chest muscles will be stimulated on Monday with, but also any other upper body exercises you are doing that day. Every upper body movement, involves the chest indirectly in some way.

You are just making things more complicated than they need to be. workouts are less than 40 mins each, so it's a shorter and more efficient way to train. Again I ask, if you even have a little DOMS, will your workout be as efficient?...i.e. will you be able to lift as heavy for as much reps?

[swanso5]

didn't mention DOMS, you can train wth DOMS...did it today no worries