Rate My Workout - Will it Work for Muscle Growth?

Training
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Hey there! So after research and some months following full body and experimenting with weightlifting workouts I’ve developed the following one and I was wondering if it will more or less work ok to obtain muscle gains.

I do it at home with adjustable dumbbells, pull-ups bar, gym rings, cables and bench.

I’m 21. 178 cm tall and weight 74kg. 17.8% bodyfat.

It’s a 4 day/week workout, with push exercises on Monday and Thursday and pull/legs on Tuesday and Friday.

All sets are to 12 reps. When I achieve this, I upgrade weight.

Monday and Thursday:

-3 sets hand-release push-ups. (Very close to add a bag with weight).

-2 sets of close grip push-ups to failure.

-3 sets of incline dumbbell press. (13.5 kg per dumbbell).

-3 sets Shoulder Press. (9kg per dumbbell)

-3 sets of lateral raises. (5.5 kg per dumbbell)

-3 sets of tricep dips.

Tuesday and Friday

-4 sets of goblet squats. (20kg dumbbell)

-3 sets of cable row.

-3 sets of dumbbell rows. (18kg per dumbbell)

-3 sets of half pull-ups with gym rings (don’t have the strength yet to do more than 4-5 pull-ups on first set)

-3 sets of bicep hammer grip (9kg per dumbbell)

-2 sets of bicep curl (10 kg per dumbbell.

-2 sets of Bulgarian squats

Any recommendation are very welcome :). Also, deadlifts are kind of off the table :sweat_smile:. Thanks!

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Hey mate, welcome to the forum!

Muscle growth is stimulated by taking an exercise within 5 reps of concentric failure with a load equal to or greater than a 30 rep max. If you are doing this, you will be stimulating muscle growth. However, having a look at your pull+leg day, I don’t think the leg exercises you are doing are challenging enough to be at this 5 rep from failure benchmark (you tell me).

If those leg exercises are within that threshold, keep doing what you’re doing. If not, consider:

  • Heavier dumbbell
  • Bulgarians before goblet squats, as they have a better chance of bringing your quads within 5 reps of failure
  • Adding sissy squats or reverse nordics to pre-exhaust the quads

It is also probably a good idea to add some hamstring work, such as nordics

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So some different points to @j4gga2 - but please don’t think I’m contradicting him. There are lots if ways to get bigger.

Personally the fact that you have given 1 whole day to pressing but back and legs share a day is a mistake. If you have 4 days to work out do push pull legs. But over 4 days.
Week 1 - push,pull,legs,push
Week 2 - pull, legs, push,pull
Week 3 - legs,push,pull,legs.

However if this was all the equipment I had - I’d focus on just getting into great shape. You’re never gonna be huge with out access bar bell and more weight. But you can be impressive doing circuit style work outs and complexes.

You can look those up on the internet. Or these are some ideas to show you what I mean.

How quickly can you do 100 press ups, 50 Burpees and 10 pull ups?

How quickly can you do 50 thrusters with 12.5kg in each hand?

What’s the max number of 25kg goblet squats you can do unbroken?

Push hard on these and you’ll gain a modest but noticeable ammount of muscle. But you’ll look better as you’ll be leaner.

As an fyi incase you don’t dance that - legs with no weights:

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As always, as I appearantly like to curse in the church, I suggest a different approach following High Intensity Training.

This means a full body program each workout, bigger musclegroups prior to smaller, 10-12 sets in a workout, 2-3 times a week. Suggesting you follow the Ellington Darden 30-10-30 principle.

For the love of God - Why? Well consistency over time is easier with fewer workouts, this routine allows for lower weights or bodyweight excercises, higher intensity may mean some conditioning, it is a time efficient way of training with shorter more effective workouts making more time for other stuff in life - and last but not least - the gains are great as I personally have encountered.

Never mind the sensational features in this article. It actually works - but as always maybe not forever. See more in the Darden forum.

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Hey! Thanks for answering. I’m still extremely far from those numbers. I can do around 15 press ups on my first set, never really tried burpees, and can perform about 4-5 pull ups on my first set before muscles give up.

I do not intend to get huge o very big. I train to gain some muscle for an “aesthetic lean physique”. My long term goal is to weight something around 76 - 78 kg with 12 - 14 % of bodyfat, having visible muscle shapes. I’m currently working on the building muscle/bulking phase, and expect to be able to start a cut in 5-6 months.

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Thanks! I’ll be taking your advice on legs. I understand then that the rest of the routine is actually well designed? I challenge myself on every exercise to come close to failure. When I can complete 3 sets of 12 reps on one exercise I make it harder by adding weight or cutting rest time between sets. What worries me is that my routine is either too much or too little work/volume per muscle in order to estimulate growth… Would you say that the amount of volume is adequate?

Thank you again for your answer!

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Given your goal is to look “aesthetically lean” honestly - I’d forget about bulk and cut. And just work REALLY hard on things like complexes and conditioning challenges. Especially if you have limited / no access to a barbell. You see a bulk is when you work SO hard you need to eat a ton of food to recover. With out a barbell - your need for recovery will not be the same. And that is because although you can do more reps, you can never replace load completely.
You’ll never replicate doing 50 reps with 100kg barbell with goblet squats.
With out this stimulus any extra calories are likely to turn into fat. I’d save a bulk for when you have access to the right equipment.

This is GOOD news. It means that you have the best 6 months of your life in front of you. The first few months size and strength gains are simple.
Here is a starter - how quickly can you do 5 rounds of:
15 buprees, 10 dumbell squat, 10 press ups, 3 pull ups?
It might take a while. When you get to doing all 5 rounds in 15mins add a reps to each of the exercises. And go from there.

For more inspiration @ChongLordUno does AMAZING things with burpees and pull ups and the like. The dude looks great as well.

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Especially the beard. He’s the reason I can’t bring myself to post pictures of my face; the shame would be too great.

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Sorry to go off topic OP. But this is my effort. I LOVE it.

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165347559271285350870389369591651920×2560 643 KB

My wife told me “it’s too big now. Get it cut”.
I poked her in the belly and went “it’s getting too big now. Go on a cut”.

But @ChongLordUno looks better than me. His beard is fire coloured. And he’s a hell of a lot leaner.

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Sounds good! Is there a name for this kind of workout so I can look for more info on round numbers, exercises, workouts per week, recommended nutrition… ? Thanks!

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Kind of.

Complexes are where you use the same bar or dubdell in a series of linked exercises non stop. For example you could do:
8 bent over row, 8 cleans, 8 front squats, 8 over head presses with 10kg in each hand. Then rest for 30 seconds. And do it again. For 8 rounds.
People will say that weight is “too light”. But you are doing 64 reps. Potentially very quickly. As I say - those are complexes. And they work very well.

But a lot of it is trial and error. Finding things that work. For instance - in Feb I loaded a bar with 60kg and did 10 squats, 10 press ups. As many times in 5mins as possible. Once I was doing 7 sets in 5 mins, I added some weight to the bar. This had nothing but a positive effect on everything.
A few weeks later I tried this with log press. Total disaster. No idea why. There is no name for that “style” of training as far as I’m aware.

Some other places to look for inspiration are cross fit WOD.
@T3hPwnisher is always a great guy to follow. He does a lot of conditioning. I plagiariser a lot of his stuff. He might also know of some guys on youtube that do this sort of stuff that you can look up.
Other than that look up body weight circuits

Fyi I’ll comment on the rest later if that’s okay? I’m off for a bike ride.

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And you’re showing me a picture of your new bachelor pad?

Nice beard, though!

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We have an understanding. I’m a highly unlikable person. And she has to deal with it.
To be fair it is not much of a deal. I just do it and she is yet to divorce me…

Back now.

Round numbers: start with too few and then add quickly. Start with 3-5 and then see where you are.
Exercises: there are loads. Just google “leg exercises with dumbbells” Or “pressing exercises with dumbbells”. Add in some stuff, take stuff away. Use the WOD from cross fit and borrow some.
Work out per week: Start at every other day. And then you can in theory work up. I can do on of these style work outs a day. Sometimes 2x a day.
Nutrition: Eat like a grown up. 3 or 4 meals a day. Eat protein every meal. About 50g (thats 150g of meat). Stop eating crappy food.

This might seam very simplified. But honestly it is this “simple”. The hard part is working hard 6 days a week for 6 months of the year and not eating crappy food.

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You are a strong negotiator!

OP, so I add something of dubious value, it really is that simple. For conditioning workouts, go hard until you’re tired. As your base builds up, you’ll start wanting to challenge yourself; it just kind of takes care of itself.

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Thanks mate! Fortunately, I have the consistency part worked up. I have been eating well, with enough protein, complex carbs, and no junk food for the last 5 months (that’s when I started training full-body) and working out a minimum of 4 times a week without missing one single day during all this time. Clearly, it wasn’t a well-planned enough routine, as strength and muscle improvement haven’t been all that significant. My only fear is to over-train if I do these routines too often.

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Alright - you’ve been worried about over training for the last 5 months - and you still can’t do more than 15 press ups in the row. I took my 43 year old wife from 5x5 press ups to 5x10 in 2 months. After 5 months you could be doing 100’s of press ups a day. And I’m not saying that to be an arse. Only to highlight you have under trained. So stop worrying about over training. If it happens you can deal with it. The best thing about over training is it is not a sudden thing. It takes weeks / months to get to a point where you are over trained. And in those weeks and months you get a load of solid training in. So if in 10 weeks time you are feeling sore all the time, you can;t sleep and your gains are slowing down take a week off. You will still be in a much better place than you are now (FYI this is not the best approach only a better approach than the one you have now).

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Yeah, it clearly hasn’t been enough! Time to change the approach. I’ll start training every other day with these rounds of exercises. Your first suggestion of 5 rounds of 15 burpees, 10 dumbbell squats, 10 press-ups, and 3 pull-ups sounds good! Would you add anything else? Don’t want to commit the mistake of undertraining again.

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Just work hard. Every work out should be better than the last. Every month you should look back and think - Wow I’ve made some great progress.

If you are a specifics:

  • Aim for a solid once a week strength / non conditioning work out. And do as many sets of 75% max reps on press up and pull up.
    So at the moment - that would be about 10 pull ups and 3-4 pull ups. Juts do set after set after set.

  • Ladder up / down goblet squat and press up:
    1 goblet squat - 10 press pus. Then 2 goblet squats 9 press ups ETC.
    You can do this lunge and press up as well.

  • Burpees in to chin ups. A race to 30/40/50

  • The Fran WOD

Cycle these and over time you’ll get to understand what works and why and you’ll be able to make your own up.

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I agree with everything @carlbm says by the way. Apart from the bits about his wife, obviously.

78kg at 5foot10 and only “fairly lean” is not that big, and well within reach for someone who just works very hard with bodyweight and light weights. No need to try and be a powerlifter or bodybuilder, just try and be an athlete, working hard on basic movements and keeping your nutrition dialled in. This will take you further than most of the people in most commercial gyms.

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I like how we’re scared of a woman multiple degrees away from us through the internet. These are the telltale signs of married men.

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