Alright Routine and Diet?

Training Beginners
1

age-22
height-5’10"
experience-3 months shy of 2 years (started at 145 16% bf)
current weight- 179.0 15% bf

I was wondering if this routine and diet looked ok. I think the basics are ok (please correct me if i’m wrong), just thinking about tinkering around with it. THE NEW ROUTINE IS AT THE END OF THIS POST.

I’m changing it up because if i stick with one lift and go heavy with it for much more than a month, i tend to start hurting my shoulders and knees. Here’s the diet… which probably needs the most work. Priority for the short term is gaining weight with an emphasis on my traps and upper chest

One more thing, should I be making better progress (35 pounds lbm for 2 years, remember they’re newbie gains)

2 egg cheese+veggie omlet, 20oz milk, bowl cereal

pasta or stir fry w/ 3/4 cup chicken, marinara/shezuan,lots of veggies

nuts and/or whey and casein protein shake

pwo drink= 700-950 cal carb+protein shake (70g protein)

chicken+tater or stirfry/pasta w/fruit

3 egg omlet w/cheese+turkey sausage+ham+veggies (when i can afford it) or 16oz milk+apple and peanut butter

supps: tribulus, dhea, 8-12g fish oil, Mg+Zn, occasionally glucosamine when a joint feels funny

Monday (chest and tris)

  • bench press 3-5 rm
  • floor press 10, 8, 6
  • close grip bench press 3x10
  • twist bench press 2x14

Tuesday (posterior, all of it)

  • deadlift 3-5 rm
  • barbell row 10, 8, 6
  • good morning 2x10
  • a row variation or ham + glute exercise depending on ?sticky point? on dl

Wednesday (off or metabolic)

Thursday (shoulder and bis)

  • hang clean mid thigh to push press 3-5 rm
  • machine neutral overhead press (cybex) 10, 8, 6
  • laterals 2x14
  • easy bar curls 10, 8, 6
  • cable rope curls 2x14

Friday (legs)

  • front squat 3-5 rm
  • leg press 14, 12, 10
  • abs 2 exercises (dragon flags, pikes, decline crunches, and/or cable crunches)

Saturday (light upper chest, may not do depending on energy level)

  • incline squeeze press 12, 10, 8
  • low pulley standing cable press 3x12-14
  • low pulley standing cable fly 3x12-14
  • (small to medium protein shake)
  • With your weekend eating habits and budget, this is all you can do!!!

Week 1 bw=175.0
Bench- 195 3 rep
Dead Lift- 365 3 rep
Hang clean mid thigh to push press- 155 2 rep nearly 3
Front squat 205 5 rep (up weight next time)

Week 2 175.4
Bench- 195 5 rep easy (up weight next time to 205)
Dead Lift- 365 4 rep hard (keep working on that weight)
Hang clean to push press- 145 4 rep very easy (up weight next time to 155)
Front squat- 225 3 rep medium

Week 3 176.5
Bench- 205 4 medium
Dead Lift- 365 5 hard (up weight to 385 next time)
Clean (3) to push press- 155 3 rep medium
Front squat- 225 4 rep medium

Week 4 179.0
Bench- 225 2 rep hard
Dead Lift- 385 3 rep medium
Clean (3) to Push Press- 155 4 rep medium
Front Squat- 225

Monday

  • incline (2 notches) bb press 3-5 rm
  • incline bb press half point 8, 6, 4
  • neutral grip db press + flies (superset) 2-3x8-10+10-12
  • feet on bench push ups 2xmax

Tuesday

  • rack dead 3-5 rm
  • sldl 2x10
  • t-bar row (neutral grip) 10, 8, 6
  • leg curls 12, 10, 8

Thursday

  • hang snatch 3-5 rm
  • snatch grip behind neck press 12, 8, 6
  • narrow grip incline bb press
  • concentration curl 10, 8, 6
  • incline alternating curl 2x12

Friday

  • Olympic squat
  • lunges
  • Leg extension?
  • Abs 2 exercises
  • Calves 2 exercises
2

Looks thorough. It’s hard to critique a program with what you’ve got here. Try it out and see. Im sure if you put effort into it it will work. Why not choose a pre-made program unitl you are out of the beginner level?

Apart from that I would say to eat more protein in the form of meat. double it. no reason not to at any level.

-chris

3

[quote]Avocado wrote:
Looks thorough. It’s hard to critique a program with what you’ve got here. Try it out and see. Im sure if you put effort into it it will work. Why not choose a pre-made program unitl you are out of the beginner level?

Apart from that I would say to eat more protein in the form of meat. double it. no reason not to at any level.

-chris[/quote]

Agreed.

4

Honestly, I’m never able to complete pre-made programs. I get bored and end up doing my own thing anyway. I even thought about joining a powerlifting club so I took the class for 2 credit hours and decided there wasn’t enough variety in it.

Omg, i would love to add meat in there, it’s my favorite food… but it’s so expensive :frowning: . I know i can get 2.5lb frozen chicken for 7$, but as poor as i am i even have to ration that. Is there a cheap protein that approximates meat?

Oh, and thanx for the advice. As soon as i can afford it, I’m gonna add some meat in there

5

dude fuck chicken. look at the cheap as hell cuts of pork and beef. more pork and beef equal more beef on your ass.

The shittier cuts should be cheap. blade steak and so forth. also fuck frozen, fresh tends to be cheaper.

What about all that texas longhorn beef or whatever you all get your panties in a knot about down south. CAnt you cop one of those fellows and eat him? Look around and see what creature come in at the lowest $/lb and buy him, consume his soul and sleep.

The cheaper alternative is beans. you can get them dry from the bulk bins for a handshake and then cook that shit up in a pot and eat it. add it BBQ sauce or whatever helps you get them down. remember you’re trying to cop some mass here. the fiber will also help keep you in the shit, as it were.

-chris

6

Also include oats and whole milk, the training looks solid pst the results.

7

With rack deads, i mostly felt it in my lower back. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t rounding so i’m wondering if that’s where i’m suppose to feel it.

8

yeah it happens. that sensation will go away in a bit. its just cause you put more force through your back doing rack deads or pulls off blocks.

All the force that is used going from the ground to 2nd pull [where you begin rack pulls] can go right into the bar from the beginning of 2nd pull. That’s why they are so fast and hard. Also why you can put a fat camp on the bar with rack deads and still be fast. you sure dont put that kinda weight on your pulls or deads from the floor, or even shrugs.

-chris

9

Yeah, the soreness from those rack pulls was pretty intense, but the soreness was almost all gone by the end of the next day. Regular dead lifts are opposite of that for me. They leave a very dull soreness that last between 2 and 3 days making me have to work the rest of the program around them. I think I’ll replace Olympic squats with pl style squats for leg day because i didn’t feel my hams worked very much.

10

No real need to replace if you want to “feel” it. You will “feel” the Oly Sq if you get the reps at 6 or above. reps under 5 will keep you “unsore” and/or you wont feel it as much. So do a 5x8 and you will “feel” it. Id say the extra ROM is worth the lack of feeling.

-chris

11

Have you ever regressed in a lift? Week one of incline press I got one rep 185 easy, but the next, I only got 175 with some difficulty. The rest of the workout was fire though. All of the other lifts went up in weight and/or reps.

What i meant by feel is that in the deadlift variation workout, the hamstring exercises (sldl’s and leg curls) utilized my hips far more than my hams. In the past I’ve found that pl squats do a very good job making my hams bigger and stronger while making the rest of leg grow too. Olympic squats for me are almost purely a hip and quad exercise for me (not even the bottom portion of the glutes fire much).

Unfortunately, high volume squat routines leave me feeling not just extremely sore, but sickly feeling and leave me more susceptible to illness. (low work capacity?)

My bw is climbing, 183.4 last time I checked. Time for me to go eat something now. And I did find some cheap cuts of pork (pork shoulder for 2.25/pound!). Hopefully, i just don’t get caught cooking it in my dormroom on my foreman lol.

12

if you are not constantly regressing it’s just a bad day.

If someone give you shit about cooking in the dorm… eat them.

-chris

13

I agree with Chris. Soreness is nothing. Sometimes I can put a good % load on to squat for 3x5 I feel nothing then a few days later the same %+0.01 has me falling down the stairs afterwards.

You need to be getting good depth, parallel and below is where you want to be. I have found that filming myself has been of great help. There is a fine line between a squat and a non-squat look at, both me:

@ The squat at 2:10 is a “miss”

and

@ Hamstrings are parallel with the ground, if a but below

I hope you get the picture

14

Usually on squats, I like to go to the top of the thigh (quads) is parallel to the ground. I guess i do this because when i took a powerlifting class, the instructor said their competion rules stated the butt must be 2 inches below the knees and ever since that’s what i have done.