My First Workout Program that Really Worked

I was a freshman in college. I had done some weight training in high school, but I wasn't very informed on what I was doing. I did, however, see some small gains from my very flawed program. I think I did something like a full body workout every other day. However, not long after, I hit my first plateau. Naturally, I thought that if some working out was good, then more would be better. Soon I was doing a three hour workout every other day. I performed just about every exercise I knew. Not surprisingly, I didn't make any progress and probably got a little weaker from being so overtrained. Fortunately, I played a club sport, and one of the athletes on the team was a graduate student that had played division I football. Lucky for me, he was willing to help me with my workout program. He made two major changes:

• Drastically reduce the amount of volume. Good-bye three hour workouts—I was in the gym an hour at most

• Perform compound exercises with forced reps. That means that after I went to failure and could not physically lift the weight one more time, I'd have a spotter help me with a few more repetitions.

Compared to what I was used to, the results were amazing. First of all, despite the fact that I had previously been doing long workouts, I was never terribly sore the next day. After my first workout on the new program, that changed in a hurry—putting my mind at ease because I was worried that I was not doing enough volume to get good hypertrophy. More importantly, I made fantastic gains and was very pleased with the results.

So what can you do to learn from my mistakes?

• Don't spend all day in the gym. If you are there more than an hour, you are probably being counter productive, as your testosterone levels may start to dip.

• Get the most out of your sets. If you've been lifting for a few months and your just starting to hit your first plateau, try forced reps to see if you can create a little more hypertrophy.