Refreshing to see someone new who has done their research
Thanks. I am not taking this lightly and am not a person to just 'dive in' to something. I am a nerd, and therefore like to understand something before doing it to avoid, as the phrase I've seen says, '***arounditis'.
Standard list:
Planks
Ab wheel roll outs
Reverse crunches
Pallof press
I'm stealing this for my core workout.
As long as you have a rest day in between, full body could well be better. You can still do different things each day, just have an A and a B workout.
The important thing to remember about splits: You guys are bodybuilders who are advanced in their training progressions. It's unnecessary to decimate your muscles in body part splits until you've made significant physical adaptations.
The reason I was given upper/lower, was essentially because my shift pattern is annoying and changes each week between days and nights. For recovery/fatigue/keeping motivation, after night shifts, it was suggested I do the following:
U= Upper body
L = Lower body
I understand completely that for a beginner, things like Stronglifts are good because you're doing the big compound lifts x3 a week, but SL also typically looks like A, day off, B, day off, C, weekend off, repeat. When I have those 6-7 days off in the first week, it's feasible, but the other chunks of days off, it's not, and I guess the idea was to not overcomplicate things for me early on by swapping things about too much, and meaning I can do 2 days straight heavy lifting in order to recover from night shifts (I wake up in the afternoon a zombie) and prepare for night shifts (I stay up really late the night before).
I'm fully open to ideas about routines to work around this pattern, and have a couple of weeks to finalise things. If I have a routine for that first week off, and a different routine for those 2 sets of days off, fine. I do feel that trying to work out, for example, when I've got in from work at 10am that day and then woken up at about 4-5pm, just isn't going to happen. I feel like death and then have to get my body sync'ed back to doing days again.
1 arm DB rows are as easy as BORs to cheat on
BORs it is then.
If you're going to do bicep curls, you need to be doing a tricep isolation too.
Skullcrushers, presumably (w/that bendy bar), or bench dips.
Deadlifts on the same day as squats is going to be tricky...
Is this not what you do w/Stronglifts though, on workout B? My understanding is that it should be fine, up to the point where I'm lifting more impressive weight, at which point my deadlift will suffer. I hope by that point, I'm not doing the same job and can do a 3 day split. Also, while I could rotate which one goes first, my intuition is that it's easier to bail a deadlift than a squat, and the squat uses more muscles, therefore the squat should stay first.
Reverse DB lunges would be my choice of those two.
Ta.
This is really common, but people have no idea what it's for.
Stick with a simple 3x8-12, or less reps and more sets on lower body stuff.
Warming up is as simple as raising your body temperature a little and activating your muscles. You can normally just do this by doing certain exercises first with a few lighter sets (squats, deads, etc.), but some people like to do 5 mins of easy jogging or rowing.
I will be jogging to the gym and back. It should take about 15mins. I am not completely alien to exercise, I used to jog a bit before extended cardio got boring, I cycle around a bit in a hilly area and I have ****ed about with kettlebells and bodyweight stuff. Strength wise, I can do about 8 chin ups with decent form (154lbs/11 stone-ish) and body-wise if you stripped whatever % of fat there is on this frame, I wouldn't be a complete weed. My failing has always been diet - I guess I eat about maintenance now, but I'm still carrying fat from my teenage years.
The diet part is probably daunting me the most - I really feel like I need to get all scientific about my macros and know how much I need to be eating vs how much I am, and obviously what I'm eating. I'm prepared to start buying a load of food for myself (live at home), it's just working this around what I'm given for dinner. In a way I wish I could just pay someone to prepare and put food down in front of me every day, but you only learn by doing...
I'd point out I do know my proteins from my fats from my carbs now, it's just the whole procedure of trying to ensure I'm hitting my 'x1.5' protein target and thinking of what I can eat, if I do Leangains, on gym days and rest days.