Sample body workout

[Closed039 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Closed039]

This was originally intended for the fella that was asking about a workout regimen. This is the best I can provide.

DISCLAIMER: All lifts should be performed properly and with a spotter. Clips need to hold weights in place when applicable. Always stretch and warm up before attempting lifts.

Monday - Chest and Tri's
3 sets flat barbell bench, trying to get the best set of 10 reps that I can. You can alternate this weekly or bi-weekly with trying to get the best set of 5 reps. Watch how quickly your "best set" of 5 becomes 10! Then I will superset chest flies (real light weight, get a nice stretch in those pecs) with as many pushups as I can do immediately after. 3 sets of this. Finally, I will either do dips or incline dumbbell bench press, depending on if I want to hit my upper or lower chest. For Tri's, simply do 1 exercise for 2 or 3 sets. Friday is "arms" day anyway, and your tris should be throbbing by now to begin with. Skull Crushers are my favorite. OPTIONAL: Abs and running.

Tuesday - Back and Bi's
Back is a bit less specific...each gym seems to have different machines. I will typically start my back day with 3 sets of as many pullups as I can. If you can perform 3 sets of 10 reps, add a 10 lb weight and continue. I recommend doing a front lat pull down, seated row, and romboid hitting exercises. 3 sets for 8-12 reps on each exercise. Now move to Bi's. Same as with Tri's, your Bi's should be burning up by now as it is. Choose an exercise such as preacher or hammer curls, and perform 2 to 3 sets. OPTIONAL: Abs and running.

Wednesday - Legs or Cardio
All I do is squat and hamstring curl on leg day. You could do calf raises too. For squats, try to get about 4-5 sets, progressively getting heavier. A sample workout might look like 135 x 10 reps, 185 x 10 reps, 225 x 10 reps, 275 x 6 reps, and 315 x 2 reps. If you're feeling daring, try a drop set - like going back to 135. Get as many as you can. Try for 30. (WEIGHTS MAY VARY) Now move to hamstring curls. Use a machine where you lay flat on your back. 3 sets of 8-12 reps again. Then do calf raises either on a platform or machine, if it suits you. Personally, I don't. Give your abs a break today.
If you do not want to lift legs, as so many people don't, take today as a long cardio day. Try to run for 30-45 minutes, not worrying about your speed. Keep a constant heart rate and sweat. If you can't run, walk uphill at a suitable incline.

Thursday - Shoulders
I prefer seated military dumbbell press. Perform 3 sets, trying to get either a best set of 10 or a best set of 20, alternating weekly or bi-weekly between the two goals. Again, watch how your best set of 10 becomes 20! Next move to standing upright rows. Perform 3 sets of 8-12 reps. Finally, I like to find a shoulder press machine and perform 3 or 4 sets of very heavy and controlled lifts, aiming for about 4 reps per set. Some people will now choose to work their forearms, but I am not one of them. OPTIONAL: Abs and running.

Friday - Arms
If you made it through the workout, treat yourself to arm day. Alternate between Bi and Tri exercise. Perform about 3 sets aiming for 8-12 workouts for each exercise. I will generally do 3 or 4 exercises for each body part. Sample bicep exercises include hammer curls, preacher curls, ins and outs, 21s, and straight bar curls. Sample Tricep exercises include skull crushers, french press, "rope" press downs, and close grip bench press. There are many others. Choose your favorite exercises, as you will enjoy the workout and your body will respond better.

Take the weekend off and heal up, maybe go for a run one morning. Depends how you feel. Anyway, I have been lifting for 5 years and I personally believe this is the best and most practical schedule for the average Joe. I am currently on a program just like this and am seeing gains.

PART TWO - NUTRITION - COMING SOON.

[ThickShady Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close ThickShady]

Wow man thanks for making this!

It really helps and I will follow it!



Oh and question, My schedule only allows 4 days at the gym a week. Is it okay to merge a day into another.

For example making shoulders and arms one day?

[blink2000 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close blink2000]

I Guess This is More of a Maintenance Routine

I Guess This is More of a Maintenance Routine
I gained about 40lbs of muscle doing this, but it took 4 years. I would have gained a lot more but I was working out 4 hours a day during two sport seasons & mostly losing mass / going catabolic during that time.

I probably could have gained 40-50lbs of muscle in half that time If I was not doing athletics.

Day 1 - chest/ back / arms
Day 2 - abs / cardio
Day 3 - abs / cardio
Day 4 - legs/ shoulders
Day 5 - abs / cardio
Day 6 - soccer (pick up games)

One big key is just figuring out what works for your physiology. For example, I figured out that for me, trying to lift on more days didn't do much for me. Just lifting 2 days a week kept me gaining muscle. I found lifting more didn't make me gain muscle any faster, and sometimes it was counter-productive.

You could just do 2x lifting days / 2x cardio days. Although sometimes I would do cardio on my 'lifting' days.

If you're really trying to get bigger, PEskeptic's workout will help you more than what I outline here. Also, sometimes I was only working out maybe 2-3 days a week. In those cases, I would still get in both lifting days. I still kept growing by doing this.

[Closed039 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Closed039]

How about throwing in legs to one or two of your upper body workouts? For example, 3 sets squats after chest day, and then 3 later in the week after shoulders or arms?

[CUSP82 Administrator Admin of the Month Dec 2014PEGym Hero Find all posts View Profile Close CUSP82]

I like to keep it simple. Day one I work out all the muscles that I use to push things away from me; shoulders, chest (bench press) triceps. Day two I would use all those muscles that pull things toward me; biceps, back. I would do 20 minutes of cardio before the weights. Day three would be just cardio of 45 minutes. The fourth day was just rest and then I would start the cycle all over again. It worked for me.

[WhatAwanker Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close WhatAwanker]

im on a heavy routine this has worked excellent for me
no specific days

(cardio) chest tri (abs)
(cardio) back bi (abs)
(cardio) shoulder legs (abs)
off day
repeat

very time consuming ofcourse 6 days a week, if your just starting out i believe to concentrate on the main(big) muscle groups untill you see some physical change 3-4weeks then incoorperate smaller muscles
chest tri
back bi legs
off day
repeat
this has also been highly effective for friends around me wanting faster results

all my programs starts with cardio prior to lifting and allways mixing up the training meaning never to start same place with lifting when u get in the gym
example: i benchpress first time i will dumbbell second chest workout, lift light first time many reps low weight, next is high weight low reps (cardio remains the same)

food program:

morning 1:
5-10 egg white
60 grams musli, 1/2 grapefruit
1 LIPOLYZE ( Species ), fish oil, CLA, multivitamins, Calcium

pretraining:

Protein (whey) shake
ISOLYZE (Species )
Carbolyze, (Species)
Glutamine
BCAA

noon 12.00 2:

100 gram boiled jasmin/basmati rice
120 gram white fish
green salad

afternoon 15.00 3:

120 gram chicken chest
2 cups boiled vegetables
1 LIPOLYZE (Species) Primrose oil

evening 18.00 4:

ISOLYZE (Species)
big green salad

evening2 20.00 5:

130 gram no/low-fat meat/steak
3 cups mixed vegetables
1 SOMALYZE, CLA, Fish oil, Primrose oil.

no intention of hijacking your thread mate just wanted to share info
regards

[blink2000 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close blink2000]

How about throwing in legs to one or two of your upper body workouts? For example, 3 sets squats after chest day, and then 3 later in the week after shoulders or arms?

I found with the extreme intensity I was doing, it took me at least a week to heal each time I lifted.

I know a routine like yours can be better for someone trying to gain really well. I also know some bodybuilders are so intense that they only work a certain part of their body 2-3 times a month. If I had higher intensity, I would have needed even more than a week to recover probably.

The irony of it all though, is I only saw it as a maintenance routine to stay in shape in the off-season. However, after years of doing it, I realized I packed on some mass because of one simple principle: consistency.

I was consistently getting enough fatigue to cause my body to adapt--and I slowly gained over time.

You can definitely work harder & gain faster than I did--I couldn't work harder though, because usually I was burned out from doing athletics during the school year (that was my routine while I was in college).

[Closed039 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Closed039]

Cusp - some people that I know, and are pretty damn big, do something similar with push and pull days. I think that is definitely one approach for lifting. We all have our own methods, ya know? Who is to say that one is better than the other.

More important is nutrition, anyway. Neither program will work if you're fueling your body with shit.

[Closed039 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Closed039]

WhatAWanker...not at all man. Your routine is pretty similar to mine. Your diet is crazy, though, and I don't mean in a bad way. I have no doubt that if you lift hard and follow that diet to a T, you'll get jacked up.

I'll write a piece on nutrition later...perhaps in a different thread. Maybe I'll shoot you a PM and we can discuss some ideas.

[blink2000 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close blink2000]

At other times I did routines like this:

Day 1 - Chest/Back
Day 2 - Cardio
Day 3 - Biceps/Triceps
Day 4 - Cardio
Day 5 - Legs/Shoulders

Then depending on what my goals were, I sometimes did cardio all the time. I've never tried to bulk up, although you will eventually gain a bit of bulk if you spend more than 10 years of consistently going to the gym & you're doing consistently intense workouts with good methodology. This implies things like good form, body confusion, etc.

What's amusing about bodybuilding is they often come out with 'new ideas' but usually its just old stuff rehashed in a new way. I first started lifting at the age of 18... and that was 18 years ago...

Some ideas come & go but the core stuff has remained pretty similar this whole time (since I started nearly 20 years ago).

[Closed039 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Closed039]

Yes Blink. I know many bodybuilders, too, who lift legs after EVERY work out because they believe that it spikes testosterone levels. I think this has actually been found to be true in various studies, though I'm way too lazy to find them. I am not sure to what degree the testosterone level spikes. Sometimes after a chest day I will slam out a set of 225 lb squats for as many as I can before I leave.

Blink, have you ever heard of Mike Mentzer? He is an advocate of what you were describing. Basically recommended doing chest once every 2 weeks, and only 2 or 3 sets per workout! And this guy was fuckin' huge. Then again, there is the "Ahhnold" theory, where he would train each body part 20 sets per workout, and sometimes 2x per week. Both men were on steroids and both gained.

[WhatAwanker Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close WhatAwanker]

WhatAWanker...not at all man. Your routine is pretty similar to mine. Your diet is crazy, though, and I don't mean in a bad way. I have no doubt that if you lift hard and follow that diet to a T, you'll get jacked up.

I'll write a piece on nutrition later...perhaps in a different thread. Maybe I'll shoot you a PM and we can discuss some ideas.

thnx alot mate i been training dead hard 1996-2005 then stopped everything just getting back on track with training again i like your program as well very well-rounded will fit the majority of any person that goes to a gym
ye PM anytime mate your more then welcome
regards

[blink2000 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close blink2000]

PEskeptic: who lift legs after EVERY work out because they believe that it spikes testosterone levels

Yes. I am familiar with this of course. It's because your legs contain a large % of your muscle mass, so your legs are supposedly better at triggering a release of testosterone, whatever. On a different level, this is why guys that completely neglect their legs never gain quite as well as guys that do work legs. I don't know if you need to take your legs to complete exhaustion each workout to get the benefit of the testosterone either.

When I was trying to get bigger I cut the cardio to pretty short intense sessions & pounded the protein. However, by my late 20's this was no longer necessary anymore; I lost interest in getting bigger because I found at a certain size women found it unattractive.

Mike Mentzer: yes he sounds familiar.

I Prefer Higher Intensity / Longer Recovery (When I am Lifting for Strength):
I think the biggest difference between your methods & mine (pretty much everyone that posted here) is that I always gave each bodypart a week to recover.

I could never gain well hitting the same body part twice a week; it just didn't work for me.

For example, on a chest day, I might do 6-7 different things, & make sure I hit normal angles, incline, decline, whatever--I was like that with each body part. Often though, I would only do maybe 3-4 exercises per body part. I tried not to get too stagnant with my routine & I would change it from time to time.

Personally I gained better hitting deeper levels of fatigue with more recovery time. I found that if I did it twice per week, I never recovered, things just went downhill.

I tried lifting the way you guys do & I tried many other methods too.

In the end I figured out what worked for me, but that probably took me several years.

[vulcan Retired ModeratorPE Gym EditorPEGym Hero Find all posts View Profile Close vulcan]

I used to do back & triceps with push lower body / chest & biceps with pull lower body. A day or two rest in between - ongoing.

I always could recover easily & grow, naturally. I got huge doing this.

These days I just try to not get fat. It's funny, I think guys actually can get to their strongest in their 30's from what I have experienced & seen in training partners.

[blink2000 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close blink2000]

Yes, most bodybuilders are mid 30's or older I hear for that very reason.

Past that age guys tend to pack on muscle mass more easily.

More on Mike Mentzer, he probably has physiology like mine. More than once a week was 100% counter-productive for me. I don't know why, but it is.