After reading through the rest of this thread I’ve chosen to ignore ATP in this forum, as I don’t waste my time arguing with idiots, but I will provide a few comments for everyone else.
First, the proper terms are midsection, lower trunk or abdominals, not core. Please read Ken Hutchins’ article A Plea for Elevated Discourse on my web site.
Second, the abdominal and lower back muscles are very important, and I’ve never said otherwise. I have pointed out it is not necessary to directly train the abdominal muscles to have ripped abs, however this does not mean I don’t believe there is value in working them.
My workouts include deadlifts, stiff-legged deadlifts, weighed crunches, and weighted lateral trunk flexion (using a 45° station), and have for a while. I will post my current routine below as an example, but don’t have time to answer questions about it.
Trunk flexion and extension under load is not harmful provided you avoid rapidly accelerating into the extremes, or imposing a significant load on the spine in a fully flexed position. This should be obvious to anyone who understands how injuries occur and is not a complete idiot. We have trained hundreds of people over the past few decades on a variety of Nautilus, MedX, SuperSlow Systems, and RenEx machines through a relatively full range of motion in trunk flexion, extension, and rotation with absolutely no problems, no injuries caused, and have in fact provided many people suffering from lower back pain with significant relief by doing so.
I have been alternating between two weekly full-body workouts for a long time, with a focus on a few basic compound pushing, pulling, and lower body exercises rounded out with simple exercises for the muscle groups not effectively targeted by those. This has worked very well for me, but I recently decided to divide these up into two upper and two lower body workouts since I find I require a bit more recovery between workouts for individual body parts when I reduce my calorie intake. I currently weigh about 215 (see the attached picture) but am nowhere near as lean as I ought to be and am leaning down to around 180-185 over the next few months.
I am training twice weekly, rotating through the following four workouts every two weeks. I perform one set to failure of each exercise, using a 10/10 cadence and a repetition range of 2 to 4, for a total TUL of around 40-80 seconds. When I think I’ve achieved failure I keep contracting for another 4-5 seconds then lower the weight as slowly as possible. No rest pause, no drop sets, no forced reps, no negative-only, or any other set-extension techniques. They’re not necessary if you inroad deeply enough to begin with.
I rest only long enough between exercises to record the reps performed on my chart and to load or unload plates or change equipment settings. Timed static contraction (TSC) exercises are performed for sixty seconds, with three twenty second phases (moderate effort, near maximum, maximum).
I am using free weights instead of machines because that’s what we have at our home gym (which has been upgraded further since the photo was taken).
Workout A: Lower Body & Spine
- Safety Bar Squat
- Trap Bar Stiff-Legged Deadlift
- TSC Hip ADduction
- TSC Hip ABduction
- Dumbbell Crunch
- TSC Neck Flexion
- TSC Neck Extension
Workout B: Upper Body
- Chin-Up
- Multi-Grip Bar Bench Press
- Barbell Bent-Over Row
- Barbell Shoulder Press
- Dumbbell Wrist Extension
- Dumbbell Wrist Flexion
- TSC Pinch Grip
Workout C: Lower Body & Spine
- Trap Bar Deadlift
- Dumbbell Sisy Squat
- Belt Heel Raise
- TSC Dorsiflexion
- Dumbbell 45° Trunk Lateral Flexion
- Dumbbell 45° Trunk Lateral Flexion (opposite direction)
- Dumbbell Shrug
Workout D: Upper Body
- Pull-Up
- Parallel Bar Dip
- Barbell Underhand-Grip Low Row
- Dumbbell Incline Press
- TSC Pronation
- TSC Supination
- TSC Crush Grip
