Tear My Routine A New One!

Bigger Stronger Leaner Beginners
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Hey everybody, I’m just another newbie prick trying to make his own program, but I put quite a bit of thought into it and wanted some opinions… I think…

First about me: Former Fat Boy, 13 months lifting, 6’0" 210lb, 20%± bf, ssssllllooooowwwwwwww metabolism (but not with this workout!!), high work capacity (i think, for the first year way too much in the gym by what I read and everybody told me, 4-5 days 2-3 hours/day, but still made great gains in my opinion. I’ve now decided to cut for the first time and have been working on my routine and have just started the Anabolic Diet - which I feel fuckin GREAT on by the way, I definately think it’s for me.

All of my workouts are EXTREMELY low volume compared to what I’m used too, and at the end of each workout (which lasts 30-40 min.) I do a short 10-15 min session of “HIIT My Way”. I kind of invented this, but with all the info and ideas from T-Nation. I try to not go to failure in the first, weightlifting part of the workout, I try to fall one rep short. OK lets get to it.

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You can go back and edit your posts man.

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Mon: Chest/Triceps -

Bench Press (4x6, 5x5, or 6x4)
Close G.Bench(1-2x5-7)(depends on fri)
DB Fly (1x8-12)

HIIT - 2 hand DB swings (until fucked) with 30 sec low
intensity bici. 10 - 15 minutes

Tue: Quads/Calves -

Front Squat (4x6, 5x5, 6x4)
Standing calf raise(machine)2 triple drop sets

HIIT - Front Squats(25% max, fast reps, 20 reps or
U.F) with 30 sec. walking incline treadmill,
10-15 min

Wed:off

Thu: Hams/Glutes/Calves -

Deadlift (5x5, 6x4, 8x3)
Romanian Deadlift (2x8)
Sit calf raise (1 triple drop set)

HIIT - Deadlift (25% max, fast reps, 20 or U.F.) with
30 sec bici, 10-15 min

Fri: Shoulders/Traps/Triceps(bit of chest)-

Hang Clean to Push Press (4x6, 5x5, 6x4)
Incline DB Press (1x6-8)
Standing (triceps)Military Press to Head (1-2x5-7)

HIIT - Hang Clean to Push Press (50% max, 10 or U.F.)
with 30 sec eliptical, 10 - 15 minutes

Sat: Back/Biceps -

Weighted Pull ups (4x4, 5x3)
Row variation (3x8, 4x6, 5x5)
BB curl (1x8-10)
One Leg DB Calf Raise (2 double drop sets)

HIIT - (Traditional) bici or treadmill 10-15 minutes

Sun: off

Mon: repeat

ANY input is GREATLY appreciated, but at least try to keep the critisism constructive please, as I have a feeling there will be more than not. My metabolism is fuckin FLYING with this routine, even though I’m still in the first week, what do you think?

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[quote]Scott M wrote:
You can go back and edit your posts man. [/quote]

ok great tip! didn’t know I could do that, workin on it now…

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[quote]danian1 wrote:
My metabolism is fuckin FLYING with this routine, even though I’m still in the first week, what do you think?
[/quote]

I’m wondering what you meant by that comment. Really. :slight_smile:

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[quote]goochadamg wrote:
danian1 wrote:
My metabolism is fuckin FLYING with this routine, even though I’m still in the first week, what do you think?

I’m wondering what you meant by that comment. Really. :slight_smile:

[/quote]

uuuuuhhhhh, maybe my english is a bit off, what I meant is:

My metabolism seems higher since I started this program, even though I’m still in the first week. I have more energy throughout the day, my heart rate is elevated throughout the day as well, and even as I lay in my bed at this very moment when I would normally be sleeping, my heart is still bumbin at about 90/min. Really! :wink:

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Man I made a post with my thoughts how I thought someone who was in your situation should train but I can’t find it. I’ll either get back to you with a cut and paste later or convince my lazy butt to retype it soon. Post your diet as well because that’s more important than how you train while trying to lose bodyfat.

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[quote]Scott M wrote:
Man I made a post with my thoughts how I thought someone who was in your situation should train but I can’t find it. I’ll either get back to you with a cut and paste later or convince my lazy butt to retype it soon. Post your diet as well because that’s more important than how you train while trying to lose bodyfat. [/quote]

I just started the anabolic diet, so far I feel great! I really like the idea and it makes a lot of sense, I decided that if it works for me it is definitely something that I could stick to for a VERY long time.

I’ve always been big on the diet end, and have had success because of that. Hasn’t been perfect the whole time, but it wasn’t because I was eating bad foods, was mostly because I was eating too much good food!

I spent a week before deciding to try the Anabolic Diet (figures) making a different diet, it was more or less a 40% protein 20% carb 40% fat ratio. I stuck with it for about a week, and wasn’t happy at all with my performance in the gym, it is my first cut though and maybe I just had to realize that just a part of the game. It’s very large and I don’t want to ruin this thread with it… I’m posting it in another thread in Supplements and Nutrition so you can check it out. At least you can see that I’m serious anyway, or as my girlfriend would say, obsessive.

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Hmmm…honestly you might actually want to cut back on the HIIT. Reading that bit you wrote about having a constantly elevated heart rate sends up red flags for me that you may be pushing it a little too far.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking about body transformation in terms of “this workout” or “this week”. Sure, if you kill yourself in the gym this week (or in a single workout), you’ll burn lots of calories, and yes that’s good.

But, you’ll also burn yourself out pretty quickly too. You need to think about this on a long term scale. In other words, you don’t need to do 5 resistance training sessions and 5 HIIT sessions a week to see progress.

Why not try consolidating the resistance training sessions into say 3 sessions (either Push/Pull/Legs, or Upper/Lower alternating between the two) and 2 HIIT sessions. That’ll still be a substantial amount of work (especially since it should allow you to push harder, since you won’t already be tired from your previous workouts) while still not over doing it.

Also, as Scott mentioned, diet is extremely important. I’m not all that familiar with the AD (never did it myself), but hopefully it’ll work well for you.

Good training,

Sentoguy

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[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Hmmm…honestly you might actually want to cut back on the HIIT. Reading that bit you wrote about having a constantly elevated heart rate sends up red flags for me that you may be pushing it a little too far.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking about body transformation in terms of “this workout” or “this week”. Sure, if you kill yourself in the gym this week (or in a single workout), you’ll burn lots of calories, and yes that’s good.

But, you’ll also burn yourself out pretty quickly too. You need to think about this on a long term scale. In other words, you don’t need to do 5 resistance training sessions and 5 HIIT sessions a week to see progress.

Why not try consolidating the resistance training sessions into say 3 sessions (either Push/Pull/Legs, or Upper/Lower alternating between the two) and 2 HIIT sessions. That’ll still be a substantial amount of work (especially since it should allow you to push harder, since you won’t already be tired from your previous workouts) while still not over doing it.

Also, as Scott mentioned, diet is extremely important. I’m not all that familiar with the AD (never did it myself), but hopefully it’ll work well for you.

Good training,

Sentoguy[/quote]

Thank for the opinion! It’s a great answer, and exactly one that I expected here. But in my opinion, considering the workload I’m used too, I should be able to handle this routine with ease. My average workout so far is around 45 min, with everything! The volume in this routine without HIIT is 3-4 TIMES LESS than what my body had been used to over the past year.

I’ll admit, I probably was doing way too much before though, but I did gain some endurance in my opinion. Who knows, maybe I am underestimating the power of HIIT, time will tell, for now I’m going to stick with it and see what happens.

By the way, every day I’m on the Anabolic Diet, I feel better and better. Never in my life have I eaten so much fuckin fat in one day, not to mention without any carbs, and I feel GREAT! Even feel good in the gym, which before I though would be impossible with this diet. I am a meso-endomorph, leaning towards endo, and this type of person does respond well to this diet, I read. If things keep going like this, this could be my eating lifestlye until I die! It’s a hell of a lot easier and tastes a hell of a lot better than what I’ve been eating over the past year. Something I would look into if I were you…

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Your resistance training is fine if you like it. Personally I wouldn’t recommend someone weight training five days a week, 3-4 would be the limit for me. Maybe think about 4 days a week and rotate through Biceps Back, Chest Shoulders Triceps, Calves Hamstrings Quads. Something like Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday, you’d be getting fairly good frequency but without burning up so much glycogen being in the gym so often.

I agree with HIIT training being a little excessive with your diet choice. You want to save your glycogen during the week for your training. If it was up to me I’d be doing low intensity cardio first thing in the morning after some BCAAs and a small amount of protein in water for 30-45 minutes.

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[quote]Scott M wrote:
Your resistance training is fine if you like it. Personally I wouldn’t recommend someone weight training five days a week, 3-4 would be the limit for me. Maybe think about 4 days a week and rotate through Biceps Back, Chest Shoulders Triceps, Calves Hamstrings Quads. Something like Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday, you’d be getting fairly good frequency but without burning up so much glycogen being in the gym so often.

I agree with HIIT training being a little excessive with your diet choice. You want to save your glycogen during the week for your training. If it was up to me I’d be doing low intensity cardio first thing in the morning after some BCAAs and a small amount of protein in water for 30-45 minutes. [/quote]

Hey scott,

The idea I had with this one is I like to focus on one big compound lift, even though only a few sets, every day. For me, I think that 30-40 min/day with the weights 5 days a week works better than a little more time in the gym, but only 4 days a week, and I come in with full force to each lift for each - which brings me to another point -

-this is the first week I’m doing this routine, and today was my deadlift day. So far I haven’t noticed any loss in strength, but who knows, I’ll have to see after a couple weeks. Today, only did 10 min HIIT, I loaded 120lb and did deads for 20 reps and bici for 30 secs low intensity, deads for 20 reps and so on until 10 minutes. Only ten minutes, but I have SO much energy right now! And my workout today was only 40 minutes, with the heavy deads and hiit!!

But then again, you could be right about the diet, maybe in a couple weeks I’m really going to see a change in strength throughout the week when I’m more settled in to the diet, time will tell. If this happens, I think I’ll keep my days, but cut back a bit on the HIIT, maybe incorporate a bit of low intensity like you say…

What would you about this: For example, my carb reload days are friday and saturday, if this were the case would you think it would be ok to do HIIT only friday, saturday, and thursday of the next week? and maybe 2 sessions of low intensity like you recommend earlier in the week?

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As long as you continue to get stronger and thinner I don’t see anything wrong with your program. Because of your use of HIIT you’re obviously not able to get in as much normal weight training that would be better for strength gains.

Most programs will work if you put enough effort in. I’m sure you can get good results out of this.

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[quote]FightingScott wrote:
As long as you continue to get stronger and thinner I don’t see anything wrong with your program. Because of your use of HIIT you’re obviously not able to get in as much normal weight training that would be better for strength gains.

Most programs will work if you put enough effort in. I’m sure you can get good results out of this. [/quote]

Thanks Scott! Hey, what’s your opinion the “HIIT My Way” I’ve got listed? I didn’t know, and have never read about, doing high rep work with the HIIT after the heavy work of the same exercise, is there some kind of taboo about this? Or could it actually be beneficial, like in an active recovery sort of way? Maybe I would be better off moving the HIIT up a day, ie Tuesday - Front Squat heavy work and the next day in the gym (thursday) front squat HIIT? Another example - Thursday - heavy deads and friday - deads HIIT? What do you guys think?

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Well since the point of HIIT isn’t to practice progressive overload but to burn calories I don’t really see the harm in lifting heavy and doing HIIT afterwords. So what if you can’t do your dumbbell swings as heavy as you normally could because you just busted your ass doing heavy squats? As long as you can come back next week and put more weight on the bar for Front Squats, then doing your HIIT after lifting heavy seems fine to me.

If you’re doing HIIT with any sort of intensity, then I can’t see how it would give you any active recovery benefits. It always gets me when programs list swimming as a method of active recovery. If you’re doing 100 X 100 yard swims on 1:15, then you’re not recovering. To me, the idea of active recovery is some very light, very tame physical activity that gets blood moving through the muscle that needs recovery but doesn’t result in any more microtrauma to the muscle and doesn’t cause you to experience anything more than a light sweat…if that.

It seems to me like your program setup will work. The only question remaining is will HIIT actually work for fat loss? Again, it probably will if you put in enough effort. But what you do in the gym is only half the equation. What you do at the dinner table will determine how much fat will stay on your frame.

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[quote]FightingScott wrote:
Well since the point of HIIT isn’t to practice progressive overload but to burn calories I don’t really see the harm in lifting heavy and doing HIIT afterwords. So what if you can’t do your dumbbell swings as heavy as you normally could because you just busted your ass doing heavy squats? As long as you can come back next week and put more weight on the bar for Front Squats, then doing your HIIT after lifting heavy seems fine to me.

If you’re doing HIIT with any sort of intensity, then I can’t see how it would give you any active recovery benefits. It always gets me when programs list swimming as a method of active recovery. If you’re doing 100 X 100 yard swims on 1:15, then you’re not recovering. To me, the idea of active recovery is some very light, very tame physical activity that gets blood moving through the muscle that needs recovery but doesn’t result in any more microtrauma to the muscle and doesn’t cause you to experience anything more than a light sweat…if that.

It seems to me like your program setup will work. The only question remaining is will HIIT actually work for fat loss? Again, it probably will if you put in enough effort. But what you do in the gym is only half the equation. What you do at the dinner table will determine how much fat will stay on your frame. [/quote]

Right on, thanks dude, no active recovery HIIT, seems like a stupid question now that you put it that way. Good answer!

You do realize that the HIIT “exercise” i’m doing now every workout day is directly related to THAT DAY’S WORKOUT, right? With the exception of Monday and Saturday (because I won’t do Benches with HIIT and can’t do pull ups with HIIT), the HIIT exercise is the same as the main compound exercise of that day, but with much lighter weight. ie:Tuesday - main compound exercise - Front Squat, HIIT - Front Squat (25% max)20 reps or U.F. with 30 sec walking incline treadmill.

Did you realize that this is the case? And would this be OK in your opinion?

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Yeah, I understand how your HIIT lift is geared to the main lift of the day. I also see that you’re going to use the elliptical machine for HIIT one day. Resist the urge to step on that demon machine. It teaches your body to be worthless.

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[quote]FightingScott wrote:
Yeah, I understand how your HIIT lift is geared to the main lift of the day. I also see that you’re going to use the elliptical machine for HIIT one day. Resist the urge to step on that demon machine. It teaches your body to be worthless. [/quote]

OK, guess you would have told me if you thought pairing the main lift with HIIT was bad, my bad. Actually, I haven’t touched the elliptical yet, I put it on there for some variety, I think I’m just going to stick with the bici because the way the gym is set up I can bring a barbell right next to the bike, and only the bike. Thanks for all the info!