i think that a good looking body with a lot of power is what every one is looking for ( well i am looking for that any way ).
i am currently training 3 days a week with 4 exercises: bench, squat, a pulling exercise and the deadlift.
I have read a lot of articles here that these are the best combination of exercises, but what about the biceps and triceps? What about the abs? what about endurance?
[quote]nobody wrote:
i think that a good looking body with a lot of power is what every one is looking for ( well i am looking for that any way ).
i am currently training 3 days a week with 4 exercises: bench, squat, a pulling exercise and the deadlift.
I have read a lot of articles here that these are the best combination of exercises, but what about the biceps and triceps? What about the abs? what about endurance?
[/quote]
Training big compounds which involve large muscle groups triggers an increase in several key hormones, which make everything grow, as long as a stimulus is present.
Abs are worked in every movement in which the torso has to be stabilized against the hip joint (e.g. Squat, Deadlift, any kind of overhead pressing). Biceps and Triceps are very small muscles so you shouldn’t worry about them. They are used at least in one of the compounds you’ve listed above. If you feel that you lack progress because of small muscles (e.g. your bench is lacking lockout strength because your triceps is too weak compared to your pec/deltoid) you can do a few sets of isolation after the compound movements.
Endurance, however, has to be trained specifically, e.g. by doing some sort of cardio on non lifting days.
Many advise against long periods of steady-state cardio, as it is somewhat detrimental to hypertrophy. Short intervals of high intensity cardio activity is preferable most of the time.
Depends on what kind of endurance you are looking for. As was already mentioned Marathon run kind of endurance should be trained with steady state cardio but unless that is your specific goal it’s pretty unneccessary.
If you work to constantly decrease the rest times in your workouts then you will build another kind of endurance. Additionally as you get stronger your endurance will appear to improve as tasks are much easier so you can do them for longer.
Basically you have to figure out what kind of endurance you want and train for it, theres no single way to build it up.