Good basic program; Lower body move, horizontal push, horiz. pull, vert. push, vert pull. Can’t go wrong with that.
You can probably lose the isolation exercises and just really hammer the compound exercises, since you’re looking for functional strength. Then you can go full throttle on the most taxing movements without trying to hold something in reserve for the isolation ones. Fer instance, if you do treadmill, put it on an incline and run on your toes, that’ll pound your calves pretty good while filling the cardio checkbox of the routine.
Leg extensions are not a functional strength exercise. Most of the power in the legs comes from the butt and hamstrings - concentrate on those. Throw in front squats every third workout if you want the quads to get bigger.
I’d watch the volume as the the weights get bigger, unless you’re going to eat more. there are 2 types of 5x5: 5 sets of 5 reps all at the same weight and 5 sets of 5 working up to 5 rep max. At the low end the first is great for general conditioning building a strength base. At the higher end the latter is better for strength advancement. Trying 5 sets with a 5 rep max can lead to overtraining pretty quick. Could be fun before a planned layoff however.
Good Luck Ernie! Welcome to the old guys and Gal’s forum! (Although I havn’t seen allot of ladies post over here but I’m sure they are checking us out…yeah right…)
[quote]joburnet wrote:
Do you know your max for squat, bench, deadlift? [/quote]
Joburnet,
Squat is 200#
Bench is 175#
Deadlift is 225#
When I first began training in December I just started picked up the weights and started lifting. As of recently I’ve backed down on the weights to insure that I have good form. I will increase weights every time until I reach these loads and beyond or until I stall out.