Weight Lifting: Recovery time improving, but, getting weaker

whyflysouth

For the last 4 weeks I've stopped cutting calories and started focussing on (re)building muscle. With that in mind, I'm not so interested in any of these circuit training routines that are so in style, and after a short period of not wanting to spend too much time looking for a program or getting my head full of contradictory advice, I picked Max-OT and got started. For those that don't know, the idea behind Max-OT is that it's associated with some company that sells supplements (of course, you gotta make a living), and it revolves around a 5-day split routine where you're focussing on 1-2 muscle groups/day, like: Monday-Legs, Tuesday-Arms, Wednes-Shoulders, Thurs-Back, Fri-Chest+Abs, and you lift roughly 6-9 sets of 4-6 rep maximum, and you perioidically increase the weight as you are able to get above 6 reps.

Ok, so this seems to be a strength-training routine more so than a body-building one (given the current assumptions that maximum mass is achieved at a 8-12 RM creating the more sarcoplasmic hypertrophy of the body builder, as opposed to the myofibrillar hypertrophy of the power-lifter, whatever). So I should be getting stronger.

Here's what I've noticed 4 weeks in, my recovery time has gotten shorter, previously I'd still feel some soreness a good 4 days after the workout on the muscles (legs & chest particularly), but as there's 7 days between a legs workout, I'd be good to go by the time the next one comes around, well, that recovery time is shrinking to about 3 days for the legs, less for the other muscles, however my strength is roughly where it's been and it's actually a little weaker this week I've had to lower the weight and/or stop at 4 reps on a set that I could previously do 6 reps of.

Now I've also got barely a cold this week (y'know when you're almost sick but not quite, sore throat in the morning, gone by the afternoon sort of thing), could that be affecting the strength, should I be changing anything or just keep this up at least for the entire 8 weeks before changing (like maybe doing the same muscle groups 2x per week rather than this 5 day/wk thing)?

david1956

I don't know anything about Max-OT, but there is one standout feature of your split that I'd personally change. I'd never do small body parts early in the week. Like my current split is Legs - Chest - Back - Shoulders/Arms and I always do the Shoulder/Arms day later in week, same way I'd exercise small muscle groups last in a day if I wasn't doing a split. I just don't want smaller supporting muscles sore and pre-exhausted when doing the bigger groups... it simply means for example biceps would be failing quicker than lats when doing my back. That's what I really try to avoid in order to isolate the bigger muscles such as lats.

Just me, unless you are at a really advanced stage I think one day for arms alone is excessive. Looking at the order and intensity of everything you're doing, I wonder if you're hammering your smaller muscles so much that the next day they're compromising your strength on bigger groups. I did shoulders/arms yesterday and am quite sore. If I was doing bench-presses today I think my triceps would be hindering what is fundamentally meant to isolate pectorals as much as possible.

One muscle group a day is OK, but not what I'd do until I was quite a way into serious weight training. There's lots of ways to do splits... I personally like push/pull... so you do say Chest/Back one day... Shoulders/Arms another doing say supersets such as Bench-press/Lat pull-down, Bicep curls/Tricep pressdowns etc so you're alternating push-pull muscles. Lots of different ways of doing it.

disneyfetishboy

To respond to your last question . . . I caught a bit of a cold last week, and while I haven't been laid up in bed, my athletic performance has been *quite poor* in almost all facets. (This includes endurance, raw strength as reflected in what I am lifting, and overall energy level).

My instinct is to cut myself some slack until I am completely over the bug, but am interested in what others have to say . . .

whyflysouth

David- thanks for the advice. Yeah I notice that after arms day my triceps are sore for the rest of the week, while my biceps are good to go. But I'm sure it affects my perf on the back and chest exercises. I might look to modify the split to do chest & back before the supportive muscles.

disneyfetishboy - totally. I actually was sick the entire day yesterday in bed the whole time, and even today I'm still to sick to work out or do much of anything so any performance problems I had earlier in the week I'm going to attribute it to that. I was teetering on the edge of sickness for almost a week and finally got shot down hard yesterday, so hopefully I can recover quickly and get back to 100% and not 70% like where I've been at for some time.