[quote]L-Dee wrote:
Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
L-Dee wrote:
tuesday’s back and biceps w/o
-rack chins 110x8
-pinwheels 100x7
-alt db curls 60x6
How are things going for you?
Well this week I’m back after a couple of weeks of ‘cruising’. I’m slowly getting my strength back in my lifts. I was quite exhausted mentally so the ‘break’ was good as I didn’t even feel that motivated to go to the gym.
Right now I’m trying to figure out what approach to take. I seem to gain strength nicely with a higher (2xweek) frequency, but I apparently can’t keep it up for too long until i hit a wall and have no energy or willpower for other activities (life) in my day.
So i’m thinking that I’ll hit (upper) chest, biceps and forearms, and triceps twice a week, since those are the muscle groups that I have the hardest time developing.
My back seems to respond to 1xweek and still go up in strength and size. Legs are the same as long as I hit them hard.
I’m also noticing that I have too much fat. Nothing wild but it shows, so I’ve changed my diet up a bit; ingest most of my carbs peri-workout, rest of the time protein and fat, with only protein in the evenings. Now I can afford a bit more food-wise for a while anyway too. I’m keeping and adding more morning cardio.
Thanks for asking. thoughts?[/quote]
I’m not so fond of a “back once a week” approach if you’re training chest/delts/tris twice a week…
Btw, Ronnie has a 3-way outlined in his book for 2/week/bodypart frequency. Of course he does heavy low-back work like every other day, but that’s Ronnie lol.
Interestingly, it is mentioned in the book that he supposedly commits to a training cycle for 6 weeks and then takes a week off… No idea if that’s bs or not, but it would make sense considering how much squatting and deadlifting etc he has in there.
How about you follow a similar approach, train hard for 6 (or however long works best for you) weeks and beat the logbook, then perhaps either take a week off or just drop to training 3 times per week (each workout once) and with less weight and non-failure… ?
I changed my split a bit again, so now it is:
Day 1 Chest, Back, Traps A/B exercise A/B goal rep on top set (if I
can do that much, I’ll up the weight again by a decent chunk, like 20KG on presses or whatever I feel like… I’ll do that in the very same workout, even.
Weaker guys may want to do 2 sets in general, following the “if I get my target reps on the first set, do a heavier second set. If I don’t get my target reps on the first, keep weight the same for second set”-formula)
-(chest)low-incline BB / flat DB 12 / 14
-(backwidth)wide-neutral-grip pulldowns / rack chins 12 / 15
-(backthickness) Kroc rows / Yates Rows 10-25, bit open/ 15
-(traps) DB Shrugs / Smith Shrugs 15 / 12
(note: my traps were toasted after the yates rows… Someone else who likes to train their chest more could ditch traps on one of those days and do a second chest exercise after the first instead…)
Day 2 Quads/Hams/Abs/Calves A/B rep goal A/B
-Back Squats / Sumo Deads 12 / 8(still trying to figure out the optimum here)
-GH Raises / Leg presses 10 / 15
(leg presses are probably too much for me here over the long run… We’ll see)
-pulldown abs / roman chair situps, but maybe I’ll switch 20/failx2
-calves… Or at least, someone else would.
Day 3 Delts, Arms A/B rep goal A/B
-Alt. Offset Curls / Pinwheels with straps 12 / 15
-Close-Grip Bench / Standing DB OHP 10 / 12(?)
(changed my technique a bit. Tucking elbows on the way down, then mid-way off the chest I flare them. Feels ok thus-far)
-Lateral-upright-row-mix / same again 10 / 15
-PJR’s / Bent-Over-Overhead Rope extensions 15 / 15
Ok, looks a bit messy. Anyway… If anyone is wondering about the seemingly high reps… That’s just the cut-off number after which I up the weight… I’m going up in bigger increments now so I have periods where I’m only managing 6 or so reps on my top set and then I work my way up to 12 or whatever…
Also decided that it’s time to not go crazy with the weights anymore like I used to, particularly not with this frequency.
So I’ve increased reps on my “warm-ups”/sets leading to my top set to 8 per set (except on the sumo deadlifts… Just too taxing). Might lower to 6 still, we’ll see.
So basically the higher warm-up reps force me to use less weight /do less reps on my top set at first, though I’ll certainly blow past my old PR’s at some point…
Instead of my old way:
135x8
225x5
315x3
405x11 or whatever (top set)
I’m now doing
135x8
225x8
315x8
405xas many as I get, once I get 12 (or whatever the rep goal is on that exercise), I’ll go up to 450 or so and move 405 back to warm-up status (8 reps). Roughly like that…
Needed to do that especially on DB Presses as I was basically beginning to have real trouble controlling my top-weight bell’s, wrists/forearms began feeling tight despite the wraps etc.
You don’t have to do that kind of thing, but you could use my split if you wanted to… Or just keep the old one (was that one of mine as well?)… Maybe do what I think we discussed before, train 2on, 1 off instead of 3on, 1 off… Or do the 6 weeks training, 1 week light/off thing… You’ll find a way.
