Hi guys im back! happy fathers day! I’m getting great gains lately and upper lower off push pull legs off has worked for me but im always confused on rep range and sets and exercise for conjugate. this my workout today and i was strong and pumped but i’m not sure if this is effective. guys please help!!! thanks
monday- upper
warm-up:
rear delt flys 2 x 10
bench press 4 x 4
incline press 5/5/5/3
bb row 4/4/4
skull crush with preacher bar 4 / 4 / 4/ 4
preacher curl 4/ 4/ 4/ 4/
tricep cable lateral 5/5/5/3/3
later raise 4/4/4/4
If the question is more around designing a conjugate template, elitefts had one for raw lifters relatively recently that I thought was well-explained. Westside for skinny bastards (is it 3 or 4 is the version we like?) is always worth a Google.
I think you’ll do best Googling a conjugate template/ article, and then seeing what specific questions you might want to ask.
Westside barbell has plenty of blog posts on conjugate even outlining basic templates in a few series (such as the “base building” and “starting conjugate” series). They have outlines just for accessory work if you know your max effort and dynamic effort stuff (they also have plenty on ME and DE)
for example:
Then there’s all the elitefts and WS4SB like @TrainForPain mentioned
But if you’re getting a pump and feeling stronger it’s probably working so
Your exercise selection looks pretty good. The order of lifts looks pretty good. A lot of times conjugate guys use higher reps for the mass-building, hypertrophy, Repetition work. So maybe thunk about that. And in 3-4 weeks you might want to switch around assistance exercises.
To co-sign what @TrainForPain said, check out the template from Joe DeFranco for inspiration.
Max-Effort Upper Body
Max-Effort Exercise –work up to a max set of 3-5 reps in one of the following exercises:
Supplemental Exercise –perform 2 sets of max reps in one of the following exercises. (Choose a weight you can perform for 15-20 reps on the 1st set. Use the same weight for both sets and rest 3-4 minutes between sets).
Chin-ups (don’t perform these if you chose to do weighted chin-ups for your first exercise)
Horizontal pulling / Rear delt superset –Superset one exercise from “Group 1” with one exercise from “Group 2.” Perform 3-4 supersets of 8-12 reps of each exercise.
Group 1
DB rows
Barbell rows
Seated cable rows (various bars)
T-bar rows
Chest supported rows
Group 2
Rear delt flyes
Scarecrows
Face pulls
Seated DB “power cleans”
Band pull-aparts
Traps –Perform 3 – 4 sets of 8-15 reps of one of the following exercises:
DB shrugs
Barbell shrugs
Safety squat bar shrugs
Behind the back barbell shrugs
Elbow flexor exercise –Perform 3-4 sets of 8-15 reps of one of the following exercises:
I’m honestly wondering why you put these first. Apart from specialization, I really can’t figure out why these aren’t done later in the workout. Maybe I’m missing something (which is pretty probable), but it’s just not making sense to me right now.
This honestly confuses me. If it’s a warm up before, why not just throw it into the warm up, why notate it separately? If it’s not part of the actual warm up and not being specialized, why not go heavy on it and treat it like a work set, thus my previous reasoning for my question?
There is the logic that going heavy on this would “warm up” muscles for the next few lifts due to indirect stimulation, but the next two movements are bench and incline press, neither of which necessarily cares if rear delts are warmed up in my experience. So I’m not convinced of that train of thought either.
Which leads me back to my original question: why do rear delt flys first, other than “someone out there said so”? I will readily admit that an imperfect plan done at 100% effort will usually beat out a great plan done at 50% effort, but if this jumps out this much to me and still has no real rhyme or reason for why it’s put first, why not think about it and see about putting it later? At least that’s my take at the moment (not trying to throw shade, just curious and trying to understand it).
Now if there is a good reason for it being first, by all means someone/anyone please let me know, I would love to learn from the reasoning there.
Lots of times when people bench press or incline they let their shoulders come up off the bench and shift the work onto their front delts. Hitting rear delts first tunes them up to get your shoulders in position to press better.
Some guys do rows or chinups before bench or press, or superset push/pull lifts for similar reasons.