How to avoid overtraining

[Singleton]

HST advocates a routine that is very high volume. I would never attempt to do this and I would not recommend anyone else try it.

For example, you might do squats, deadlifts, Overhead press, bench, pullover, dumbell curl, and chins all on the same day.

This is very hard on the CNS.

Ideally, a workout should be less than 50 minutes so that cortisol will be minimized. Workouts with high volume will usually take longer than that.

A double split can reduce the workout time to around 40 minutes.

The following split takes four days to complete. It consists of chest, arms, shoulders, followed by legs and back, then back to chest, arms, shoulders with different exercises, followed by back/legs with different exercises.

You can see that the volume is quite low.

Quote[/b] ]
C/A/S #1
Bench
Crossover
Rope Lateral
OH Rope Ext
E-Z Curl

B/L #1
Front Squat
Clean
pullups
Calf

C/A/S #2
Incline DB
OHP
DB Curl
Pullover

B/L #2
Deads
DB Row
CGPD / Chins
2-pulley PD

 

[Insane_Man]

WTF?

 

[imported_da1andonlychacha]

ummm its not high volume when ure doing 1-2 sets per exercise and usually 1 exercise per bodypart. some people dont even train biceps, calves, or rear/side delts directly.

 

[Singleton]

2-3 sets per exercise, but occasionally 1 set per exercise. So you'd have about 10 sets per workout with the split above. Including warmups, it takes about 40 minutes to complete.

In the 5's, it is best to allow more rest between sets. I go up to 5 minutes. This allows the muscles to regain strength for consecutive, subsequent sets on the same exercise.

 

[spartacus]

i don't see what you're getting at. i think my workout is pretty standard and it only takes 30-40 minutes.

 

[Catalonia]

Yeah, this is the fastest weightlifting workout I have ever done. Granted, I never knew what the hell I was doing--I used to spend maybe 2-3 hours at the gym, doing multiple sets of just about everything, killing myself. with maybe 10 pounds of gains. This workout (I have just started it for real--but I can tell) kicks @$$ so far.

 

[Insane_Man]

Why rotate so many exercises?

You can hit your whole body with like 7 exercises and do 1 set of each, 3X a week. I know, I did it and saw great results. I'm sure that there are many others...

 

[imported_formula1]

Quote[/b] ]HST advocates a routine that is very high volume. I would never attempt to do this and I would not recommend anyone else try it.

No, HST doesn't necessarily advocate "high volume" - in fact, if you read the primer, it says the volume should be kept to a moderate level to accomodate increased frequency. Further, it would be helpful if you could provide supporting evidence to back your claims.

Quote[/b] ]2-3 sets per exercise, but occasionally 1 set per exercise. So you'd have about 10 sets per workout with the split above. Including warmups, it takes about 40 minutes to complete.

If it takes you 40 minutes to do ten sets, then you are either doing way too much warming up or goofing off/socializing excessively. Doing too many different exercises can also lead to long workouts.

Quote[/b] ]In the 5's, it is best to allow more rest between sets. I go up to 5 minutes. This allows the muscles to regain strength for consecutive, subsequent sets on the same exercise.

It is easily possible to organize a routine in a push/pull format to minimize wasted time while still allowing adequate rest for a muscle group from set to set. If it takes you five minutes to recover from a set of 5 reps (and I doubt it does), then you are seriously out of shape - conditioning should, at this point, become your primary goal, not hypertrophy.

 

[Singleton]

Further evidence to support my claims? What claims? That hormone levels are not sustained indefinitely? Why do I have to prove anything? Use google.

I respond quite badly to high volume training. I assume I'm not the only one, and I posted this here so that maybe someone else who is like me and doesn't do well with high volume could see how I used a different routine while adhering to the HST principles.


Math Section
Each set takes 10-30 seconds. rest takes 1.5-5 minutes, warmup takes 15 minutes.

3 min/set x 10 sets = 30 min. 10 min warmup = 40 min.



The reason for resting up to 5 minutes is that I use Poliquin's 1,6 approach in the 5's. I'm not gonna prove that, either and you'll have to resort to google again.

I offer my approach as something that I found useful. I do not like the HST routine but the principles did sound valid.

They who like high volume HST, should do just that. It's your body; do what you like.