I’m about to do a two week cycle. My usual work outs are: Monday(back),Wed.(chest), Fri.(arms), Saturday(legs)-I dont do shoulders to avoid injury. I usually do cardio for a 1/2 hour after the workouts. I would do 16 sets/bodypart when juicing, 9 when off the juice. My first set is a warm up of 12 reps, the other three are heavy reps of 5-8. How is this program? Is there too many days off? How would you workout during the 2 weeks on? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Four days per week training is by no means too many days off. I’m guessing by 16 sets per bodypart you mean 16 sets total for arms, 16 sets total for legs, etc. rather than say 16 sets each for biceps and triceps, etc.
So if that’s correct you’re doing 64 sets per week. This is somewhat less than I’d usually recommend but then again you’re saving reps by not training shoulders.
(Which brings up, aren’t there any shoulder exercises you can do safely, e.g. machine lateral raises only to parallel, or rear delt raises on a Hammer Strength rear delt machine, some sort of cable work, or something?)
One thing I’d do differently unless it’s a question of deliberate prioritization is that 16 sets for chest is targeting for the most part one muscle with 16 sets, whereas on other days those 16 sets are divided among several muscles. For example, I don’t know exactly how many sets quads are trained, but it’s 16 minus however many calf sets you do, and minus however many hamstring-specific sets you do. Maybe you are doing 5-8 sets for quads.
Generally speaking, I’d train the back with more sets than chest. I’m not saying you’re
overtraining the chest – 16 sets can be fine – but if that many sets per muscle is
working well for pecs, perhaps that would be so for calves or hamstrings for example, or perhaps a greater variety and volume of back work would be appropriate.
I’d keep reps down in the warmups. There’s no value (in my opinion) to actually fatiguing the muscle. If one set of five reps with light weight (e.g. 50% 1RM) doesn’t seem like enough, then I’d do two sets with a minute rest inbetween instead of doing 10 reps all at one shot.
I’d skip the cardio. Two weeks without it won’t hurt you at all.