Need advice on a lifting routine

I’m having trouble deciding where to go with my workouts. I’ve been lifting and running regularly for the past six or seven months. I dropped a bunch of weight, mostly back in January and February, and I’m now around 13 or 14% BF at 6’5" and 217 pounds. I’d still like to drop some fat, but I also want to increase my strength and power, especially since I’m playing sports more now. I could probably use bigger arms, but I’m not generally that concerned about size right now.

I know what I need and want to do for cardio and diet (although it’s sometimes tough to stick to with my summer social life, heh), but I’m not so sure about lifting. I go to the gym three days a week, and awhile back split my lifting into upper body on Monday and Friday, legs on Wednesday, abs and core all three. Partly I don’t feel like my strength is improving like I’d like and partly it seems like there are a lot of upper body exercises to fit in if I don’t further split between Monday and Friday (I’ve been doing roughly the same for both).

Between here and other websites there are probably thousands of workout suggestions and they’re all different, so I’m looking for advice. I like the idea of workouts with just a few exercises that work multiple muscle groups, like Men’s Health’s Fully Loaded, as long as they’d work everything I need to. I can also see the appeal of circuit training. Any suggestions?

It sounds like you have the right basic idea, and made good initial progress, but now you need a real plan. If you don’t have a quality trainer you trust to design a workable program for you, there are some online e-books that might work well instead.

One program you might want to look into is Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training program. He structures his workouts to be efficient, working multiple muscle groups and saving you from having to spend hours at the gym to get a good workout. He has many muscle-building programs, although I think more people use his programs for fat loss.

Disclosure – I am a Turbublence Training affiliate, and if you were to purchase the program from a link on my blog, I would receive a commission. However, I personally used the program and had great results, which is why I am affiliated with it. That being said, here’s a link to my site: http://lookinggoodmom.blogspot.com

Other ideas: I have heard good things about Jason Ferruggia’s program for muscle building, although I don’t have personal experience with it myself. Here’s his site: http://www.jasonferruggia.com/
And you can purchase his program here: http://www.thehardgainer.com/
(I’m not an affiliate for this program.)

I’m curious about Jason’s program, but don’t need anything new right now. If you do go that route, I’d love to hear your opinion.

Thanks! I’ll take a look at those.

I’m currently losing weight via dieting and cardio, but I’m also building up my strength and muscle mass quite a bit. I go to the gym 4-5 times a week. Day 1 is usually biceps, triceps, deltoids, abs (as well as cardio). Day two is Pecks, back. Day 3 is the same as day 1, and so on and so forth. I just work out a muscle group every other day. I take weekends off. I’d watch some videos on youtube to get proper form, search vics natural. He has some great videos on how to do different exercises with the proper form. His techniques have helped me a lot. My bench press has gone from 175-205 in less then a month, and my overall strength and muscle size is quickly improving. Make sure you consume enough protein as well to promote muscle growth. Good luck

Here’s a link to my blog which follows how I’ve been working out and dieting, feel free to pull any suggestions from there.

http://buildingabetterhealthierbody.blogspot.com/

Rippetoe’s Starting Strength.
Eric Cressey’s Max Strength
Dos Remedios’ PowerTraining

If you’re not sure what to do, then let someone else tell you. The three books above are can’t miss!

Thanks, Chad. I think you may have also indirectly answered one of my questions there. It looks like programs tend to involve fewer exercises and focusing on ones that work multiple muscle groups. Is that right?

Is there one in particular you’d recommend? Starting Strength looks like it’s sort of the gold standard, but it seems to emphasize getting big, compared to PowerTraining, which emphasizes functional strength for stuff like playing sports. I’m more interested in being athletic than being huge.

Well, there you go. You’re figuring it out. Yes, the better (i.e. proven) programs tend to have fewer exercises, but use bigger movements with heavier weights. The idea being that a 135lb. barbell row provides more stimulus to your bicep than 35lb. curls….not to mention they also work many more muscles at the same time. They also tend (though not always) to train a body part more often in a week. It’s sort of a trade off. You’re not doing tons of exercises with tons of reps. Instead you’re doing fewer reps, heavier weight, more often.

And, I almost forgot, the better programs take into account the balance between stimulus and rest. Too many programs that you get from the magazines, local meathead, or even local trainer tend to overwork small muscles, and over compensate by not training that part again for 6 days!

I’ve been following the routines in the book called “New Rules of Lifting” by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove. It emphasizes compound exercises with heavier weights. Every routine includes some variety of squat or deadlift.

It also includes several workouts and more importantly workout plans tailored to folks with different goals. It’s usually on the shelf and Barnes and Noble, so you can check it out there. I’ve had a lot of success with it.

@hardisty
Sounds to me that they might have named it Old Rules of Lifting, or Lifting Oldschool, or how big dudes got big before the era of steroids. Not that I know this book. ;)

@arnthorla – Good point. It’s a good book. The “new” part to it has more to do with its approach to fat loss.

This is a bit off topic, but….

@lizanneh I just read the Jason Ferruggia eBook…its not going to win a Pulitzer anytime soon, but he had some very good if not counter associated points (like real men don’t do X, but how a vegetarian diet was not bad for bodybuilding) anyway I think @amusil and I are going to incorporate his training style into our workout in a few weeks….I will try to let you know how it goes, but basically it is a system comprised of warm-up sets followed by 2 working sets of 5-8 reps (obviously heavy weight). He uses quite a bit of super-sets to limit the workout to no more then 45 minutes. I need a bit of size so this sounds like what I am after.

I haven’t jumped in prior because @lizanneh and @chaddukes pretty much covered what I would recommend.

With that said, I have recently come across this workout from Lyle McDonald which looks worthy of a try:

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Credit to Lyle McDonald for this routine. One of my personal favorites, obviously start with less volume and work your way up.

Since it gets asked about fairly often, here is the routine. Some notes follow

Mon: Lower
Squat: 3-4X6-8/3’ (3-4 sets of 6-8 with a 3’ rest)
SLDL or leg curl: 3-4X6-8/3’
Leg press: 2-3X10-12/2’
Another leg curl: 2-3X10-12/2’
Calf raise: 3-4X6-8/3’
Seated calf: 2-3X10-12/2’

Tue: Upper
Flat bench: 3-4X6-8/3’
Row: 3-4X6-8/3’
Incline bench or shoulder press: 2-3X10-12/2’
Pulldown/chin: 2-3X10-12/2’
Triceps: 1-2X12-15/1.5’
Biceps: 1-2X12-15/1.5’

For the Thu/Fri workouts either Repeat the first two or make some slight exercise substitutions. Can do deadlift/leg press combo on Thu, switch incline/pulldown to first exercises on upper body day. A lot depends on volume tolerance, if the above is too much, go to 2-3X6-8 and 1-2X10-12

Sets are work sets only, warm up appropriately.
****
A few notes:
1. This is an intermediate program. It is not appropriate for rank beginners (less than 6 months of consistent proper training) and tends not to be ideal for the very advanced (more than 3 years of proper training, near their genetic limits).

2. Folks who can’t handle 4 days per week can use this on an alternating three day per week ABABA type of program so that everything gets hit every 5th day.
Monday: Upper body
Wednesday: Lower body
Friday: Upper body
Monday: Lower body
Wednesday: Upper body
Friday: Lower body

this can also be useful for older trainees since recovery is usually down a bit.

2a. For folks who don’t do well training 2 days in a row (heavy leg days can be fatiguing for the upper day) and who can train on weekends, a schedule of
Mon: lower
Wed: upper
Fri: lower
Sat: upper

may be superior you get a day off after at least two of the workouts.

3. The program should be done across 6-8 week blocks of training. The first 2 weeks are submaximal run-ups where you are working below your best weight for the rep range. You might go something like 80-85% of best (e.g. if 100X8 is your best, go 80-85 lbsX8) in week 1 and then 90-95% of best in week 2. that means that sets will NOT be to failure and the workouts should be pretty comfortable.

For the next 4-6 weeks, the goal should be to make improvements as much as possible. When you get to the top end of the rep range on the first set add weight. Some may find it better getting all sets at the same weight before going up at the next workout.

3. People vary massively in how well they can handle weights across multiple sets. If you can do it, get all of the work sets at the same weight. If you can’t, you are better off warming up to your heaviest weight on the first set and then pyramiding DOWN (e.g. lower weight on subsequent sets). Ascending pyramids suck.

4. After the 6-8 weeks is up, you MUST backcycle. If you want to change exericses, do it during the two week submaximal runup. Even if you want to keep the same exercises, you MUST backcycle to 80-85% of your previous best and runup at to numbers again. You MUST listen to me about this, if you try to keep hammering past that point, you will burn out and start backsliding.

Why I prefer this program for bulking
-Max OTers may scoff at 4 or even 3 days a week. This is a taxing program. The volume and intensity are both high. I do not recommend this for cutting and I’m sure Lyle would agree, it is simply too taxing and one would most likely burn themselves out.
-This will work for both natural and assisted athletes, but more geared towards natural. The old 1 body part bombardment splits simply don’t work as well for naturals. Repeated stimulation, not annihilation (thanks Lee Haney), and adequate time for rest are very important to this routine.
-Though one can build both size and strength from most rep ranges, some are still better than others. The main goal of this program is hypertrophy, but when reps around 6 will build strength effectively as well. There is also ample opportunity to switch rep ranges with subsequent blocks of training.

Susan
www.CatapultFitnessBlog.com

Power Training (Remedios) just arrived today from Amazon. Looks pretty solid, if a bit more complicated than programs like Starting Strength. I’ll report back when I’ve had a chance to try it out for awhile. Thanks for the tips everyone!

Yep I second Ripptoe’s Starting Strength. However, for your needs you might want to look up a variation called the Witchita Falls Novice Program. It basically adds a Power Clean to the standard routine. After this figure out the Power Snatch and that’s all you’ll ever need for athletic performance. After you’ve mastered all this, if you want elite levels of athletic performance then go to crossfit.com and do the Workout of the Day. Just be careful not to over train, it’s easy to do with their workouts!

@gmillynn, The Power Clean has always been a part of the standard routine for Starting Strength.