Back fro the drawing board

[FMJ]

Okay guys,
Took your advice and went back to re-eval my "very poor" training routine. Read all the stickies in the training forum to determine a more productive plan and found a ton of great info. P-funk had posted one split in particular that I thought would be a good starting point.
I decided to go with the 3 day push\pull plan although, later on I may go with the 4 day full body only because I prefer working each body part more than once a week. For now, the new plan will be:
Day1 Upper push, day2 Legs and day3 upper pull with a day off between and weekends off.
The exercises I chose will be: Flat presses, incline or decline presses, Military press(bb then db), skull crushers and dips for the upper push.
Front squats, deadlifts and standing calves for the legs.
Bent rows, pull ups and chinups for the upper pull.
The rep range will be in the 6-12 and I will periodize the sets from week to week.
I have just a few questions if you guys don't mind helping me out?
Do I pyramid the weight or leave it at whatever I start with?
For example, yesterday I did day 1 and I was able to stay in my rep range for the first 2 sets but the third I couldn't get out 6 reps. Not to mention I wasn't used to doing shoulders after chest so I had to drop my weight to get to 10 reps on the military press, but again, into the third set, I couldnt get the reps out. So do I knock off 5 pounds after each set to hit the rep range or just keep the weight the same and accept the half assed 3rd set?
Also, Gazhole suggested the following periodization:
Week 1 - 3x10
Week 2 - 4x10
Week 3 - 5x10
Week 4 - 3x5
Week 5 - 4x5
Week 6 - 5x5

I like this and plan on putting it in, but just to be clear, I'm lowering the volume in week 4, upping the weight and the rep range. Correct?
I appreciate you guys offering your advice. If you see any holes in this new routine, please share before I waste another 3 weeks of training.
Thanks!

 

[Phineas]

Okay guys,
Took your advice and went back to re-eval my "very poor" training routine. Read all the stickies in the training forum to determine a more productive plan and found a ton of great info. P-funk had posted one split in particular that I thought would be a good starting point.
I decided to go with the 3 day push\pull plan although, later on I may go with the 4 day full body only because I prefer working each body part more than once a week. For now, the new plan will be:
Day1 Upper push, day2 Legs and day3 upper pull with a day off between and weekends off.
The exercises I chose will be: Flat presses, incline or decline presses, Military press(bb then db), skull crushers and dips for the upper push.
Front squats, deadlifts and standing calves for the legs.
Bent rows, pull ups and chinups for the upper pull.
The rep range will be in the 6-12 and I will periodize the sets from week to week.
I have just a few questions if you guys don't mind helping me out?
Do I pyramid the weight or leave it at whatever I start with?
For example, yesterday I did day 1 and I was able to stay in my rep range for the first 2 sets but the third I couldn't get out 6 reps. Not to mention I wasn't used to doing shoulders after chest so I had to drop my weight to get to 10 reps on the military press, but again, into the third set, I couldnt get the reps out. So do I knock off 5 pounds after each set to hit the rep range or just keep the weight the same and accept the half assed 3rd set?
Also, Gazhole suggested the following periodization:
Week 1 - 3x10
Week 2 - 4x10
Week 3 - 5x10
Week 4 - 3x5
Week 5 - 4x5
Week 6 - 5x5

I like this and plan on putting it in, but just to be clear, I'm lowering the volume in week 4, upping the weight and the rep range. Correct?
I appreciate you guys offering your advice. If you see any holes in this new routine, please share before I waste another 3 weeks of training.
Thanks!

Push: Rather than doing DB AND BB shouder presses, why not drop one in favour of a different shoulder-dominant push? How about hang cleans, corner press, or Arnold Press? Also, unless you happen to just really love skullcrushers, with all those compound pushing movements they're pretty much unncessary. Trust me, after a truly good push workout your tri's will be feeling it more than they would on an "arm" day

Legs: good choices of exercises, but you might want to include one more push and pull to balance out your body. Remember, the lower body is just as big as your upper and has some of the largest muscles. For push why not try box squats, DB Bulgarian Split Squats, Lunges, Leg Press, etc. And, for a pull why not try Rack Pulls, Good Mornings, Unilateral Romanian DB Deadlifts, etc.

Pull: again, good choices of exercises, but (a) you should add at least one more horiztonal pull (how about DB Uni Rows, seated row, supine rows, or Close-Grip BB Rows, etc) to balance out with your two vertical pulls. (b) Then again, you had more push exercises, so maybe you should even it out completely. This is the nice part of the push/pull structure: it makes it easy to balance your training.

 

[FMJ]

I see where you're going..
I can certainly switch up the db press with arnolds and can even out some of the leg and back work too.
Thanks Phineas, appreciate those suggestions.
Any thoughts on the question regarding pyramiding the weight?

Thanks.

 

[Gazhole]

You're right about periodization, when it gets to 5's adjust the weight accordingly.

Theres not much reason to pyramid for everything, sometimes it might even be counter-productive. Using the same weight for three sets is going to get gradually harder anyways.

 

[FMJ]

Hey Gaz,
Okay so what you're saying is, even though my target reps are 6-12 for a given movement, it's fine to only get out 5 on the third set as opposed to knocking off 5 lbs to get the 8 reps or so?

 

[Gazhole]

Hey Gaz,
Okay so what you're saying is, even though my target reps are 6-12 for a given movement, it's fine to only get out 5 on the third set as opposed to knocking off 5 lbs to get the 8 reps or so?

Yeah, thats fine. You can either drop the weight slightly for all three sets so you get every rep, or just do as much as you can on the last set and beat it next time. Perhaps take slightly longer rest intervals if you find you aren't recovering quick enough between sets.

 

[FMJ]

Sounds good. Thanks for the help. Much appreciated!

 

[Gazhole]

Have you started a journal yet? If not a i highly reccomend you start one in the journals section. Great atmosphere in that section, and its a lot easier to fix any problems you might have because everybody can see what you've been doing.

Oh and no worries, thats what this is all about

 

[FMJ]

I have my manual journal that I keep, I certainly see the online journal being advantageous though. I will look at starting one.

On a side note, I did Day 2 of the new routine yesterday which was legs. Previously my leg workout involved the 20 rep squat and last performed with 220 for 20 reps. Well, The new routine called for 3 sets, 6-12 reps.
I thought I should be able to go up in weight since I didnt have to do 20 but I decided to stay at 220 just to see how things went. Well, the first set was almost easy. But during the rest, about a minute or so I started getting a good pump in my quads. When I started the second set, it was like being hit by a train. I barely got it done. By the 3rd set, I was praying for death. My wife found me lying on the ground in a fetal postion sucking my thumb like a bitch.
Even after doing 3 weeks of 20 rep squats which I thought were the most grueling experience, doing 3 sets of 10 with a rest was a whole different ball game. Today, I can barely walk down the stairs without my knees giving out. I really feel like I got something accomplished with that workout and I'm excited about this new routine. Thanks to everyone for helping me see that I needed to dump that old routine.

 

[Phineas]

I have my manual journal that I keep, I certainly see the online journal being advantageous though. I will look at starting one.

On a side note, I did Day 2 of the new routine yesterday which was legs. Previously my leg workout involved the 20 rep squat and last performed with 220 for 20 reps. Well, The new routine called for 3 sets, 6-12 reps.
I thought I should be able to go up in weight since I didnt have to do 20 but I decided to stay at 220 just to see how things went. Well, the first set was almost easy. But during the rest, about a minute or so I started getting a good pump in my quads. When I started the second set, it was like being hit by a train. I barely got it done. By the 3rd set, I was praying for death. My wife found me lying on the ground in a fetal postion sucking my thumb like a bitch.
Even after doing 3 weeks of 20 rep squats which I thought were the most grueling experience, doing 3 sets of 10 with a rest was a whole different ball game. Today, I can barely walk down the stairs without my knees giving out. I really feel like I got something accomplished with that workout and I'm excited about this new routine. Thanks to everyone for helping me see that I needed to dump that old routine.

You can squat 220 for 20 reps? Damn!

 

[FMJ]

Yeah, well, it took like 5 minutes and I racked it for the few seconds I needed while I caught my breath but yeah, I got out the 20 reps.
My legs have always been my best part. I can thank my mom for that. Living on that 4th floor apartment for 13 years as a child, sending me to the store 6 times a day. I really think thats the reason too!
Anyway, depending on who you ask, that isn't much.
Allot of these guys doing the squat and milk routine are pushing 320 for 20. Hell, I heard of a guy who did 225 for something like 50 reps. It was on youtube if I remember correctly.