3 weeks ago I tweaked my shoulder muscle and stopped working out. I planned to take a week off but I got lazy and also couldn’t think of a good program.
I have almost no equipment, just a bar, dumbbells, and not enough free weights to keep up with my strength levels. For this reason I mostly have focused on TUT and moderate to high rep ranges.
I was thinking of going extremely simple with the lifts while keeping rep ranges moderate to high and utilizing TUT and whatever other techniques allow me to keep the weight low and continue beating my friends in strength contests.
Come warm weather I will be utilizing farmers walks and other outdoorsy things to build strength but until then I need to maintain my indoors workouts.
I was thinking something like this:
Incline DB Press
Bent Over BB Row
Goblet Squat
Deadlift
5x10 for all/until failure.
Then maybe finish with some direct arm work supersets and my wrist roller.
[quote]corynonymous wrote:
Main goal strength, health, longevity, secondary goal bodybuilding/hypertrophy.[/quote]
If your main goal is strength, and you don’t have access to heavy weights (I would highly recommend trying to solve this issue if you want long term progress), you’re limited to a “grease the groove” style approach a la Dan John’s Easy Strength program. It’s kinda dull and does mean training with more frequency than most people are comfortable with, but it will work.
[quote]craze9 wrote:
You have a barbell but not enough plates to load it heavy? Buy more plates.[/quote]
Weight plates can be expensive, it’s not unreasonable to assume that a 23 year old might not have those kinds of funds available.[/quote]
Yes, thank you. That shit’s expensive. Also, training volume isn’t a huge problem, all my rights are in the basement. It’s safe to assume I can throw in one quick session a day.
[quote]craze9 wrote:
You have a barbell but not enough plates to load it heavy? Buy more plates.[/quote]
Weight plates can be expensive, it’s not unreasonable to assume that a 23 year old might not have those kinds of funds available.[/quote]
Then why did he buy the barbell in the first place, versus a monthly gym membership?
The point is, lifting heavy is pretty important to getting stronger. There have been a lot of these questions lately, “what do I do?” under really suboptimal circumstances. It’s setting oneself up for failure. Yes, you can get stronger without heavy weights, but the first question to ask is whether you REALLY have to, or are just doing what’s easier in the moment.
Maybe he really has no choice about the weight circumstances, but then he doesn’t even list his strength on the big lifts, his goals, or what poundages he has available. He wants help, but he expects to be spoon-fed easy answers.
I would say do something like HP Mass, but again, that depends on what weights he has available.
[quote]craze9 wrote:
You have a barbell but not enough plates to load it heavy? Buy more plates.[/quote]
Weight plates can be expensive, it’s not unreasonable to assume that a 23 year old might not have those kinds of funds available.[/quote]
Then why did he buy the barbell in the first place, versus a monthly gym membership?
The point is, lifting heavy is pretty important to getting stronger. There have been a lot of these questions lately, “what do I do?” under really suboptimal circumstances. It’s setting oneself up for failure. Yes, you can get stronger without heavy weights, but the first question to ask is whether you REALLY have to, or are just doing what’s easier in the moment.
Maybe he really has no choice about the weight circumstances, but then he doesn’t even list his strength on the big lifts, his goals, or what poundages he has available. He wants help, but he expects to be spoon-fed easy answers.
I would say do something like HP Mass, but again, that depends on what weights he has available.[/quote]
My first bar cost me £15, the weights to go with it cost me ~£60, and that was just for about 80kg total. At the time I thought it was a worthwhile investment, looking back I was wrong, but I understand his thinking.
Having said that, I agree with what I think was your point that if the OP is really serious about getting strong or making serious changes to his physique, he needs to be willing to make it a higher priority in his life and to make sacrifices accordingly.
It’s by Josh Bryant. It should be helpful for someone with limited weight.[/quote]
Thank you for being the only person to not over think this.
As for the other guys, I am well aware I need more weights, it’s just not practical at the time. A gym membership is also not practical for me. I’m not above high training frequency, unusual methods, bodyweight movements, etc. I didn’t list my PRs for the big lifts because I don’t really have any way of doing them safely very often. I know my bench press sticks, haven’t done a barbell squat in years (since I did have a gym membership), and as mentioned quite a bit of times I don’t have enough weight for a big deadlift.
Thank you for being the only person to not over think this.
As for the other guys, I am well aware I need more weights, it’s just not practical at the time. A gym membership is also not practical for me. I’m not above high training frequency, unusual methods, bodyweight movements, etc. I didn’t list my PRs for the big lifts because I don’t really have any way of doing them safely very often. I know my bench press sticks, haven’t done a barbell squat in years (since I did have a gym membership), and as mentioned quite a bit of times I don’t have enough weight for a big deadlift.
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No problem. I learned a few years back that you can’t reasonably expect to change someone’s entire lifestyle over a forum so the 2 best choices are to either help what can be helped or not post. It has been good for my blood pressure, haha.
Thank you for being the only person to not over think this.
As for the other guys, I am well aware I need more weights, it’s just not practical at the time. A gym membership is also not practical for me. I’m not above high training frequency, unusual methods, bodyweight movements, etc. I didn’t list my PRs for the big lifts because I don’t really have any way of doing them safely very often. I know my bench press sticks, haven’t done a barbell squat in years (since I did have a gym membership), and as mentioned quite a bit of times I don’t have enough weight for a big deadlift.
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No problem. I learned a few years back that you can’t reasonably expect to change someone’s entire lifestyle over a forum so the 2 best choices are to either help what can be helped or not post. It has been good for my blood pressure, haha.
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I see what you’re saying and it makes sense. I had my reasons for asking what I did. Phenomenal gains have and are made by other people with little to no equipment and who also work 50 hour weeks. So if that’s the case for them, I should be allowed to at least try to make that the case for me.
[quote]corynonymous wrote:
Make more stupid comments is my suggestion to you.
…
Thank you for being the only person to not over think this.[/quote]
First impression is that you’ve got kind of a shitty attitude towards people who offer help. If you don’t like the advice you receive (based only off the info you presented), don’t be a brat.
How much weight do you currently have? What are your current PRs (even if they’re for reps and not 1RM)? What does your current weekly plan look like - days, exercises, sets, and reps?
As was said, the best case scenario would be to pick up some more weights. If you can’t save a few bucks a week for next few months, that’s fine. Budgets are a personal decision. But, at the end of the day, if strength is your number one priority like you said it is, everyone’s right when they said you need to invest in more plates some time down the road.
Keep an eye on Craigslist to pick up weights when they pop up. Hell, I just checked online and Dick’s Sporting Goods has a 300-pound Olympic set, barbell included, for $200. How reasonable it is for you to drop $200 on bunch of decent weights that’ll basically last your lifetime is your decision.
Mechanical advantage work can certainly be a great tool to get the most out of limited weights, but it does generally tend to be used more for hypertrophy. And also, it still requires you to bench, squat, and deadlift to fatigue (not failure). For example:
I second the suggestion for “grease the groove” work like Dan John has laid out here:
In that plan, the weights are never supposed to feel heavy, so it’s perfectly acceptable, even intentional, to use a lighter to moderate load.
Another option to consider, since I see you’re a pretty large kid from your stats (5’10", 235, “roughly 15%” bodyfat [um, okay]), is heavy complexes. Kinda-sorta related to mechanical advantage work in that you’re working similar movement patterns consecutively. But you do them in a row, with the exact same weight, without resting between.
So you could do something like: high pull 2 reps, Romanian deadlift 2 reps, deadlift 2 reps. Or even as basic as: Deep pause squat 3 reps, parallel squat 2 reps, quarter squat 2 reps. Dan John has also written a ton about complexes and their multiple uses.
[quote]corynonymous wrote:
Thank you for being the only person to not over think this.
[/quote]
In my experience on these sites, the guys who have the big success stories (there have been some really impressive ones recently), are rarely the ones who complain about advice freely given. Just a thought.
[quote]corynonymous wrote:
I see what you’re saying and it makes sense. I had my reasons for asking what I did. Phenomenal gains have and are made by other people with little to no equipment and who also work 50 hour weeks. So if that’s the case for them, I should be allowed to at least try to make that the case for me.
[/quote]
I am curious which people in particular you are referring to here. It would be an interesting case study to analyze the common traits in their training.
I hope you all realize that I’m not complaining about the advice given. When i commented that most of you were over thinking it, I wasn’t complaining, I was referring to the fact that I asked a very simple question.
Now this is my first post so I didn’t know exactly what you wanted me to write, as far as PRs and so forth. I am currently moving and have not really made space to workout yet but it will happen soon. I’ll post how my first workout goes if that makes you happy.
I appreciate all the advice and the time you’ve all taken to write on this.