*** The 2012 Gym Rats Thread ***

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djcj said:
Got a noob question regarding exercise. I am gonna be starting daily exercise in order to generally get more fit and healthy. The question is about rest periods, is one day of rest per muscle group fine between workouts? Or is it better to have complete rest days with no workout at all? I am not joining a gym but will be using my home equipment. I have a little weight bench with barbell and weights plus a rowing machine and elliptical machine, does the following plan look ok?

MON - WED - FRI

CROSS TRAINER 30 MINS
BENCH PRESS 3 X 10
BUTTERFLY CURLS 3 X 10
LAT PULLDOWN 3 X 10
SHOULDER PRESS 3 X 10
BICEP CURLS 3 X 10
UPRIGHT ROW 3 X 10
BENTOVER ROW 3 X 10


TUE - THUR - SAT

ROWING MACHINE 30 MINS
SQUATS 3 X 10
CALF RAISES 3 X 10
LEG EXTENSIONS 3 X 10
LEG CURLS 3 X 10
WRIST EXTENSIONS 3 X 10
WRIST CURLS 3 X 10
SIT UPS 3 X 10
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Remove the exercises in red and it looks ok. Provided you are using enough weight, you probably won't be able to do that everyday.

Try it and see how you feel, but it might be better to just alternate those two days monday/weds/fri
 
My 'back to basics' routine for the next month or 2. I work out every other day, so basically day on, day off.

Mon, wed, fri, sun, tue, thu, sat...

Day 1
BOR or Seated row
Flat bench or incline bench
Deadlifts

Day 2
Squat
Standing or seated Overhead press
Lat pulldown or chin up

Sets and reps... 7x7 sounds pretty good to me for some reason. Moderate weight. Try and keep the rest periods fairly low. Might throw in a few curls, tricep extensions, calve raises if/when time allows. You know, to keep ladies happy ;)

Thoughts or criticisms anyone?
 
Batf1nk said:
My 'back to basics' routine for the next month or 2. I work out every other day, so basically day on, day off.

Mon, wed, fri, sun, tue, thu, sat...

Day 1
BOR or Seated row
Flat bench or incline bench
Deadlifts

Day 2
Squat
Standing or seated Overhead press
Lat pulldown or chin up

Sets and reps... 7x7 sounds pretty good to me for some reason. Moderate weight. Try and keep the rest periods fairly low. Might throw in a few curls, tricep extensions, calve raises if/when time allows. You know, to keep ladies happy ;)

Thoughts or criticisms anyone?
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What sort of stuff do you normally do in terms of sets and reps? At the meet I thought your muscles looked like they had quite a lot of volume. So maybe you do a lot of reps?

Personally I think 2 months of that would be too much and I imagine you would burn out if you are keeping short rest periods. I tried 10x10 with a push pull style split and found it horrid. Everyone is different though of course.
 
milgo said:
What sort of stuff do you normally do in terms of sets and reps? At the meet I thought your muscles looked like they had quite a lot of volume. So maybe you do a lot of reps?

Personally I think 2 months of that would be too much and I imagine you would burn out if you are keeping short rest periods. I tried 10x10 with a push pull style split and found it horrid. Everyone is different though of course.
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Last few months have been a normal(ish) 3 day split. Typical week would be...

Chest/shoulder.
Flat bench
Inc db press
Cable flies
Seated db shoulder press or front raises
lateral raises
Rear delt flies

Legs/arms.
Squats
Seated leg press
Calve raise
(hamstrings hit on back day)
2 variations of curl (ez bar, preacher, db, hammer etc etc)
2 tricep movements (close grip bench, skull crushers, dips, cable pulldown etc)

Back.
Stiff leg or Romanian DL. Occasional regular DL.
BOR
Lat pulldown
Seated or cable row
Hyper extensions

Normally 3-4 sets of 8-10 reps. So fairly normal I think?
 
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Skillmister said:
7x7 sounds brutal! Guess it's not too many exercises though
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I'm hoping it won't be too bad! Lol. Done a little bit of gvt in the past (10x10 like mr milgo said) I found the hardest part was keeping interested. I'm hoping by having a slight variation in exercises I won't lose interest too quickly.

Might try 4 weeks and see how I go.
 
If it was me I would be more tempted to do upper and lower body days.

Day 1:
Flat bench press
BOR
Shoulder press

Day 2:
Squats
Deadlifts
Core? Like pallof press or something.

Maybe spend 2 weeks doing this and then a week to recover physically and mentally a bit and fill in the gaps doing some other exercises like dips, lunges etc. that you haven't been doing.

I have always found 2 week periods work well. First week is hard then the second week you are tired, but your body starts to adjust to the routine. Then either do light work or heavy reps for a week with lots of rest.
 
That's a possibility. Never really considered an upper/lower split before. The only thing that puts me off is doing squats and deads in the same session. Might need to borrow my grans mobility scooter for a day or 2 after :D
 
Lol totally. But that's why it's beneficial. Your body won't know what's hit it. Imagine how easy it will feel when you go back to doing 3x 8 to 10reps of just squats. To me that is the point of doing so many sets and reps. It's a relatively short term shock.

Same goes for the whole upper body.
 
4 years for me I think. How about you skillmister?

4 years sounds a lot. Feels like I should be better really. I wasted the first year or two not eating enough kcals and smoking 20 a day. All part of learning I guess.
 
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Oooof, up at 5:30 to get to the gym at 6:30 - I forgot how this feels! Back on to IF and fasted training from now on tho, time to engage beast mode. Haven't actually figured out my bulking diet yet, but that shouldn't be such a problem seeing as I don't need to eat anything until lunch time :D
 
Legs today! Hell yeah!

Trained them Saturday but hey ho! Going to get some hang cleans on the go as well

Today cannot go quickly enough!
 
Steedie said:
You need to stop getting wasted every weekend too ;) :p
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Haha, tell me about it :D The Christmas/New Year period is over now so apart from going back to London on the 4th Feb, I should be sober for a while :)

Back to drinking black coffee as well, dedicationtoleangains.com

Also, my DOMs from our meet REALLY kicked in last night just before I went to bed, horrifically achey. Still there this morning as well!

Managed the following this morning tho:
Front Squat (cleaned from the floor each set):
60kg 5x5

Pull Ups:
5x5 (missed the very last rep on the last set)

BB Raises:
15kg 5x5

BORs:
40kg 3x5 (lower back really aching didn't wanna stress it)

Bench was in use, so it looks like I'm going to be doing DB bench for 6 weeks or so!
24kg 5x5

I forgot how much extra stretch in the pec you feel when doing DB bench, I've missed it. However was finding it quite difficult to lift the DBs up to my legs and then chest for each set. That may have been due to my aching back tho!
 
Saytan said:
did the boys at the meet fix your squatting problems?
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Talking to moi?

Milgo had a little peek, nothing too wrong now I believe. The obvious issues are slight bum raise when exploding up, this is fixed by just thinking about the lift more really, only do it occasionally :)

Other issue is bum tuck at the bottom, not sure how much or how often I do this, but I know it happens from time to tme. So it's something I need to work on via stretches etc.

I got some pointers by Milgo for my bench and fly form, which more than likely where some of the direct causes for my prolonged shoulder issues. So hopefully that will be sorted from now on, however I do have some shoulder rehab that I need to look in to.
 
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