Working out? [Archive] - Virtual Teen Forums

dmeek7

January 1st, 2011, 09:42 PM

Ever heard of P90X? They use a system called "Muscle Confusion", which is an extremely old form of weightlifting, but they were the first ones to market it. Our JV football coach (im a varsity player now, but he started working us the summer before my freshman year) and he got our lifting program from the P90X program. Except he tweaked it a little. it works awesome. in six weeks i can add about 30 lbs onto my max load of weight. Here's what you can do to work out.

"Muscle Confusion" is when you do a work out with a certain number of sets and reps. (ex. 3 sets of 10 reps is the most common)..and after about 3-6 weeks varieing for everybody, you start to "plateau" or "level off" , to where you don't see anymore improvement and your muscle gets used to what your routine is and it remembers what to do. Then when this happens you change your sets and reps (ex. 4 sets of 8) and work out for another 3-6 weeks. Your muscles get confused and they work harder, which leads to the tearing of your muscle fiber, in turn they regenerate bigger and badder.

You keep doing this over and over until you don't want to weightlift anymore. (if you DONT already do this and you think it's a good idea contact me and i can give you more details if you'd like).

You also have to remember in weightlifting to increase weight when the previous weight begins to feel a bit too easy to lift. an easy way to tell is that when you are lifting, lets say...3 sets of 10, and you are able to crank out off 10 reps easily in each set, you have to increase weight. How you can tell you have the right weight is when you need help from a spotter to crank out the last one or two reps in each set.

Another thing you can do if you want to get bigger is the "high weight low reps and rest" idea of lifting. What this is, is exactly what it says. You lift heavy weight in a low rep form of workout.....lets say you bench 150 lbs (figuratively) and it's somewhat easy for you to do in a 3 set of 10 workout, you up the weight about 20-25 lbs and you do about 4 sets of 5 reps. This tears the muscle fibers a lot better than high reps low weight (which is basically for toning your muscle, not enhancing mass)...then comes the rest part.

It is extremely important to rest in between workouts that include a certain part of the body. when you work on chest one day and you work on chest again the next day, you aren't letting your muscle fibers and tissue regenerate and rebuild, which will make it where you don't get bigger and stronger, you have to rest...oh say....about 2 days before you do chest again. (or what i do is i workout really hard with my "high weight low reps and rest" idea. I feel the soreness in my muscles the next day and i dont work out the same muscle group until that soreness is almost all the way gone.) I think it's a great idea to have a three day workout program that works on three parts of the body each week. (ex. legs, core, and upper body) that way it takes 2 days of rest period before you have to work on the same thing again. That way when i work out, lets say, chest. and my chest is sore the next two days, i take that time to work on my aps and back and my legs the next two days, and by the time im dont with those my chest is fine and i work that again. It's like a pyramid, or circle.

I hope you took the time to read all of this because I really think this could help you. I am very motivated in weightlifting, and I take my time to get educated in wellness and nutrition, so that i may apply this knowledge into my weightlifting. I get most of my information off of bodybuilding.com, where they have forums for teens on weightlifting.