Burn Muscle and Build Fat By Overtraining

“More is better,” says America. In fact, with weight training, it’s the exact opposite- more can be worse.

Johnny Boy is a hard gainer. He’s was making great progress in the gym the past few months since he started working out, but now his progress has come to a screeching halt. Out of confusion and desperation, Johhny decides he will ramp up the time he spends in the gym and the number of days a week that he coasts the gym floor. Week by week, he grows smaller (yes, he grows smaller!) and finds himself in a world of hurt.

As if his newly shrunken muscles weren’t enough, Johnny begins to feel overly fatigued and very lethargic. He experiences delayed soreness- it’s not that immediate soreness he is used to feeling. He begins to lose motivation. Johnny feels so irritable. He begins losing sleep. A look in the mirror shows he’s developing a spare tire around the waist- he’s getting fatter. Frightened at the lack of progress, he hits it harder in the weight room. Come Monday, while on the bench press, his ego takes over and he slaps on more weight than he can handle. On the way down, *snap*! He’s just torn his right pectoral muscle! He’s now a victim of injury.

Now, while the story above is entirely fictional, it entails the process of overtraining. But what causes overtraining?

• Lack of sufficient rest and recovery
• Malnutrition
• Workouts with too great a volume (too many sets)
• Workouts with too great an intensity for too long in duration.

The best thing to do is avoid overtraining altogether. Here’s how it’s done:

• Make sure you give the body part worked 48-72 hours of rest.
• After 6-8 weeks of training, take a week off from the weights.
• Sleep for 8-9 hours every night or get in at least a few “power-naps” to recoup lost sleep.
• Eat at or above maintenance if your workouts are demanding.
• If you intend on training with a higher volume, keep the intensity low.
• If you intend on training with higher intensity, keep the volume low.