A few weight training questions

[finnig]

I have been working out about every other day for 3 months now. I do every exercise every session, rarely switching it up. Is it wise to work out the same muscle groups this often?

Another concern is that I have progressed in all areas but my chest and back, which are really lacking.

For the chest, I start with the chest press and later in my routine do the seated fly. I have been doing the same weight on the chest press for over a month. Whenever I attempt to increase the weight I just cant handle it. Should i try something different?

I have also been doing the incline row at the same weight for just as long. I may have poor technique or something because it just isnt strengthening.

Can anyone comment or make some suggestions?

 

[BD-]

These questions aren't difficult to find if you look for them online.




Read these articles for instance, very nicely written and they cover a lot.

To answer your questions shortly (although I'm not an expert):

- Exercising every muscle group every other day is probably too heavy. Unless you keep the number of exercises and reps low, and don't always go to failure etc. In other words: if you make sure your body does not need to 'heal' a long time, then you can train every other day. This principle is used in HST, which is scientifically proven quite effective. Read some more on HST on the official site: (but you'll find a lot more info on the bodybuilding discussiongroups etc)

- If you don't want to apply this new training method, resting 4 days or longer per muscle group is prolly a better option.

- Three months the same routine is OK, certainly in the beginning... I used the same routine more than 6 months and kept making (small) gains... But switching up exercises is always interesting to make sure you target every muscle and your body doesn't adapt.

- If your chest is lacking, try something completely differnt with it. Perhaps you're overtraining... I would advice to switch to a completely different schedule, doing each muscle group only once per week for instance; HIT or something. You can find more info on HIT all over the web.

- However, as a beginner, you should make gains no matter what... the details aren't all that important really, those are for pro bodybuilders; which I assume you aren't. Just pay attention to your nutrition (2 g protein / kg of bodyweight & enough calories for your body to grow), don't overtrain, and you should do fine