One of my readers wanted me to look into a training method designed to deliver sick natty gains. The plan is fairly simple – you train a muscle group every day for a few weeks and then go back to a more conservative routine to give the body a chance to heal. During the downtime, the hit muscles are supposed to grow rapidly.
This type of training is becoming more and more popular thanks to a YouTube channel called Team 3D Alpha, although I have heard about similar techniques from other sources too.
Below are the major flaws of this training approach.
1.Overtraining hinders strength gains.
If you are going to overtrain a muscle group like crazy for a month, you will have to lift sub-maximal weights. You can’t use 80-90% of your max and expect to maintain good form every day for weeks. This can never happen unless you are a professional athlete on steroids who has built up his training capacity over the years.
Try this. Go to the gym and do a 5×5 workout with 80% of your max. Then try to repeat the same on the next day. R.I.P.
Neither the body nor the central nervous system (CNS) can recover that quickly from heavy weights. Therefore, you will have to lift weights that are 50-60% of your max.
To put this into perspective, imagine that you can bench press 80kg for 1-2 reps. 50% of that equals 40kg. Do you really think that bench press sets with 40kg will produce amazing growth or strength increase?
You can lift light weights as much as you want, but you won’t get stronger by doing so.
2.It’s pure bro-science.
Obviously, training a muscle group more frequently will result in some form of adaptation. However, there is zero evidence that overtraining will produce faster growth than “normal training” in the long run. Both approaches appear equal when it comes to long term progress.
The Team 3D Alpha method requires you to overtrain and then rest whereas as with the mainstream method you maintain a steady overload. Therefore, the overall work is often the same.
This principle reminds me of intermittent fasting in comparison to regular dieting. If the caloric intake is the same during the day, the end result will be exceptionally similar regardless of the approach you decide to follow.
3.The comments are just ridiculous and don’t prove anything.
Many say that they will try this approach, but very few report back. Also, you can never be certain of the context. Maybe most of the people who got “incredible muscle growth” were just beginners experiencing their initial gains that usually come easily. You can’t really know who is behind a YouTube comment anyway.
Some of the messages underneath the videos are just hilarious. Observe.
“i have been doing this aggressive overtraining for a month i clearly see my muscles grow bigger and bigger every day.
been training my shoulders for about two weeks and they are almost as the size of my head, it is crazy.”
My comment: Are you serious? Even with all the steroids in the world, you won’t get that big in a month. Sorry, but that’s a fact.
“this is how ex-cons say they got swole….them n***s were in prison doing chest everyday with no rest days, and doing bicep curls everyday…. they did pushups with guys pressing down on their back or sitting on their back, and other crazy shit EVERY DAY multiple times a day. and they got SWOLE.”
My comment: You have been watching way too many movies. Prisoners are not as massive as you think. This belief is the result of propaganda. The directors rely on muscular men to play the roles of criminals. Yet the truth is that most prisoners are scrawny, skinny-fat and relatively weak. Those as big as bodybuilders are doing things Kali Muscle style.
4.Overtraining can interfere with other activities outside of the gym
Unless your life revolves around lifting weights, you cannot allow yourself to overtrain especially if you have a physical job.
In conclusion
Focusing on a specific body part will definitely give you faster results, but the difference isn’t that big when it comes to long term results. You are still going to end up at the natty limits. And by the way, you won’t arrive there any quicker compared to a more conservative regime.
I know that people will never stop looking for the cure to being natural, but even overtraining cannot break the natural limits, for the fact that training does not alter the synthesis of protein in the body to the point where steroid-like results manifest.
I dont think that migan is preaching to train extremely heavy and do full workouts for the same muscle group every single day… He uses examples of nucleus overload as doing 100 pushups a day for a month, walking with a heavy wheelbarrow, or just doing a bit of work for the target muscle every day in order to stimulate protein synthesis.
The problem with your analysis is nucleus overload training is not designed to get you stronger but bigger.
That’s the point that Team Alpha was making.
It’s a short term strategy to improve a particualr body part
At the end, you will end up the same.
The natty limits are the natty limits.
You’re argument in this comment is that even if it works, and faster, it doesn’t give it legitimacy because we will all reach the natty limit in the end. That argument doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think this article should’ve been posted, dude. You didn’t research your topic at all, let alone try it out.
You clearly haven’t even watched the videos. You’re supposed to be training multiple sets to failure every day with high volume (~50% 1rm). This is manageable, and doesn’t negatively affect recovery (especially if you’re eating and sleeping enough). Try actually listening next time you want to diss a training routine.
I said that in the article – you can’t do that with heavy weights. 50-60% of 1RM or even less have to be used.
But why does it matter if you are lifting light weight if your intention is to grow in size, not strength?
Because you can’t grow bigger muscle by lifting the remote control 10000s times.
I have made some pretty rapid strength gains training to failure in the 35-55 rep range 5 or 6 days a week. The only issue is that those gains only translate to standard rep range gains when im fully rested, which is almost never. Migans ideas may be somewhat flawed. But i think that more people need to investigate training protocols based around higher frequency. He is one of the only known figures pushing that online. Each rep range has its own biologically ideal programing style.
Training daily was common pre 1920s and guys like george hackenschmidt built lots of muscle but they didn’t train to failure nor use more then one set per exercise and used less then 80 %of their max weight
What about when he says that training a muscle group every day for a month increases nucleus in the muscle cells. Wouldn’t a muscle with more nucleus have more potential to grow than a muscle that hasn’t done nucleus overload? Would both ways still have the same natty limits?
This is simply broscience. That extra “nucleus” exists only in his head – placebo.
Not in reference to if this will work or not, but muscles ‘are’ multi-nucleated. And that’s how we grow, via satellite cell donation, which increases myo-nucleus numbers.
Lol damn bro , that’s funny , but he has a point , I think ima buy the plan , it’s only $50 . Heck I’ve spent more in a shirt , I don’t know about training the same part for a month straight , but hell , what is there to loose but $50 , then I can make an informed decision, you should do the same , that way u can give a valid review ,. And people won’t doubt your findings ,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930527/
myonuclei are definitely donated to the muscle cell
I once experimented with pushups every day for a month using the arms of a sturdy armchair. I did 3 sets to failure, varying the rest periods between for variety (between 10 and 30 seconds). I dropped all other chest, delt and tricep work to avoid any excess.
In that month, after close to 4 decades of training, my chest grew an inch…to 51″! And my delts and triceps grew thicker…it was the first time my triceps bulged out the side and rear.
And then you stopped for 10 days and it all went away…
Nope not at all! It has kept passed 51″ ever since.
Hilarious!..
So Olympic weight lifters (it’s an actual sport) who do heavy squats and deadlifts and shoulder press and olympic lifts every single day must be very weak
Nucleus overload is legit. Ectomorph here, starring arm size, 11.5” cold. After decades of off and on training, built them to 13” cold. Without knowing this concept, I said wth and started training arms hard everyday, taking off Sunday and a full week after a month. After two months, I stopped training them to failure daily. Within 2 months, arms had grown to 14” cold. I worked out regularly for three months and then started doing a daily “feeder workout” with 100 reps and 3 sets twice a day while continuing regular training… after one month and a week of rest, arms have grown to 15” cold in the last 2 weeks. Literally in the past 6 months I have seen a 2” increase in my b/t measurements. TRUST ME… this works. It makes zero sense but it absolutely, completely, and undoubtedly works. It will take 3-6 months but it will work.
did you need to go to failure? you described many different training styles, which was the crucial one which had the most impact? the feeder workout ?
I don’t think it was specific thing but a synergy of different approaches shocking the muscle. I went to failure when training everyday. People have said that you will have joint problems and tendinitis, But I never experienced that. What I did experience was that my forearms began to get sore around the time that I start training every day. On a sidenote, my arms have dropped a half inch even though I’ve been working them out regularly… fat loss. So at this point I can say that I’ve kept what I built.
Bro, don’t try to teach him anything. He doesn’t look at real world examples…he’s just an ignorant gym rat that follows his beliefs religiously(no offense for the author of the article).
There are studies that show this but he is too lazy to search for them, just bashing down other’s people way of training. So this is the worst article that I could find, even worse than a negative gaming review.
Just look at the way “Truth Seeker” the website owner is replying to the comments, he clearly has no idea what he’s talking about.
Do I think nucleus overload works – maybe and maybe not, but to just dismiss it as bro science without backing your claim up is no better than trying to preach a new idea. At least the guy from 3D Alpha linked a couple of studies on the topic.
Just to follow up on this post… here it is a year and a few months later, still a believer in this method. My arms look great now. I didn’t put much additional size on them but they look muscular. What a difference from the 13” puny looking arms I had. I train arms 5 days a week with weekends off and a two week break every three or four months. My problem area is now my show off area.
Nucleus training WORKS! I train them to failure every day and I have no tendinitis issues or pain issues whatsoever. If you want to put on some muscle, train that body part every day for 4 to 5 sets at least five times a week and over the course of time, it will come up.
Look if you want to see what the. Correct form of this type training will do for you Google the Russian Lion George Hackenschmidt.In his Book The Way to Live he advocated training up to six days a week.Not only did he get to around 220 pounds in bodyweight but he got strong to.He advocated not training to failure.And people back then trained with 60 to 70 percent of their max and slowly increased the weight and they all trained whole body back then for example like: Military press, barbell curl ,floorpress ,clean,squat,pullover, calf raises,stiff legged dead lift,bentpress,wristroller and would use 1 to 3 sets