Many thanks for the kind and supportive responses above; I really appreciate it.
This post is about my training, both past and present. First the past. Once I got serious about lifting, I hit upon a few fundamentals that worked very well for me:
- a 3/1 split (ie, work everything once over three days, taking the fourth day off);
- perform 4-6 sets of 2-3 compound exercises (+/- a ‘finishing’ exercise) per bodypart;
- work in the 6-12 rep range (someone wrote on TN recently that ‘bodybuilding is the process of getting stronger in the 6-12 rep range;’ I couldn’t agree more);
- structure weight selection in ‘reverse pyramid’ fashion (ie, the first non-warmup set is the heaviest, and the weight is dropped on succeeding sets as needed to stay within the rep range);
- take every set to near-positive failure (ie, don’t rack until you can’t do another rep), and
- do 1-3 forced reps on the last 1-2 sets of each exercise.
The split I used (and which I would NOT recommend–more below) was:
Day 1: Chest and Back
Day 2: Legs and Shoulders
Day 3: Arms
Day 4: Off
Lather, rinse, repeat.
While I made great gains on this program, it had a significant flaw that I failed to recognize (until it was too late)–it seriously overstressed my biceps tendons. It’s so obvious in retrospect–heavy rowing and flies one day, heavy upright rows the next, heavy curls the day after that. It wasn’t long before I developed a nagging pain in my proximal forearms. However, because of its location, I (mis)interpreted the pain as brachioradialis irritation, and shrugged it off as a nuisance injury. Then, in the summer of 2001, while–of all things!–playing 4-Square with some kids at the church camp where my wife and I volunteer, I spiked the ball with my left hand, and felt a searing pain in that forearm. In an instant, I realized that:
- I had ruptured my distal biceps tendon;
- all those years of ‘brachioradialis’ pain had in fact been biceps tendonitis;
- my workout split had been absurdly biceps-intensive; and
- I was an idiot for not recognizing all of this prior to that moment.
While my left biceps tendon has done well post-repair, my right insertion aches still, and every workout-related decision must address the question ‘How will my biceps tendon respond to this?’ If I could go back in time and talk to young me…Other than correcting some awful fashion decisions (a Member’s Only jacket? Really?), and helping me step up my Game, I would implore me to use a more biceps-friendly split. (Not that I would have listened to an old guy like me, of course.)
Now the present. My thought process regarding workout programming changed dramatically after I did a 12-week program with John Meadows. He made me realize that a joint/tendon-friendly workout scheme is actually the opposite of the ‘heavy compound movement first, isolation finisher last’ approach I had followed for so long. Here is the blueprint I follow for each muscle group now:
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The purpose of the first exercise is to begin getting blood into the muscle without putting undo stress on the tendons and joints. To do this, an isolation exercise is employed, light loads are used, and the ROM is limited to the final third (ie, approaching the fully contracted position) portion of the movement. The stretched position is avoided at all costs. For example, my first chest exercise is the pec deck. The weight is very light, allowing me to easily complete 20-or-so reps. The pads never travel farther than 45 degrees away from the midline (ie, if you looked down on me from directly above, my upper arms would form a 90o angle with respect to one other). As I start feeling warmed up, I begin to emphasize holding and squeezing my pecs in the fully contracted position. I will pyramid the weight for 4 working sets, but never to the point where it feels like a ‘heavy’ exercise.
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The next exercise(s) is/are the ‘main course.’ It is a compound exercise, and the only portion of the workout that feels heavy (reps will be in the 8-12 range). It is also the exercise on which I will use intensification techniques (drop sets, rest/pause, etc). The ROM will be the middle third of the movement; the stretch position is (still) avoided to minimize the risk of injury, and the lockout position is avoided to keep continuous tension on the muscle. For Chest, this will be 4 sets of an incline movement and 4 sets of a decline movement. I do these on the Smith machine as it 1) allows me to precisely control the depth of the movement, and 2) frees me from balancing the bar, thereby allowing me to focus more on the movement itself.
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The purpose of the last exercise is twofold. First, it serves to drive as much blood as possible into the muscle; second, the now-fully-warmed-up muscle can (and should) be safely stretched by working throughout its FROM. For Chest, I use a bench-press machine that allows my hands to move back past my torso. The loads are light again (reps are 12-20 range), and I am careful to get a full stretch on every rep before accelerating the handles into the fully-contracted position, at which time I squeeze the muscles tight. Four sets, and done!
It seems I oversold my ability to keep the workout post brief! Apologies for the logorrhea. I’ll stop here for now, and make a separate post about the specific workouts (and conditioning/aerobics stuff) I’ve been doing during my cut.