Thread: I need my 5 days

I'm curious why you split biceps and triceps into seperate 90 minute workouts. I don't know your training regiment but I'm guessing you are doing way too much. You also need to start doin more legs. One exercise dedicated to legs is cutting it a little thin don't you think? I'm not an expert but these are the obvious issues that I see.
More legs. More deads. Less bis and tris. I also wouldn't dedicate a whole workout to abs. Just adjust your diet and throw in abs after a muscle group.

I've been sitting here thinking about your thread and I had to come back and ask if you wouldn't mind posting a more in depth version of your training. I can't fathom what you could be doing if you spend 90 minutes on biceps one day and 90 minutes on triceps one day. I'm not tryin to be a dick but is there any intensity at all in either of these workouts. I just can't see it.

Work out your legs and stop working out your arms four days a week. You hit the bi's and tri's pretty hard when you do back and chest. I recommend you do the opposite of what your are doing and do a day dedicated to doing squats, deadlifts, clean and press, and bench with some accessory work after.

colour me confused as well, 90 minutes on biceps/triceps? if i do 3 sets with maximum intensity on just biceps or triceps along with all the other exercises that hit those muscles as secondary i wouldn't be able to do more, so how you can spend 90 minutes which must translate into 20 sets or something for just biceps or triceps is insane?

I agree. Hope he's not a one thread wonder. I want some details.

I would agree with the gentlemen above. You need to put in a leg day in your routine.

Here is my routine that has worked great for me:
Saturday: Chest / Calves
Sunday: Back / Rear Delts / Traps
Monday: Front / Side Delts
Tuesday: Bi's / Tri's / Calves
Thursday: Legs (Leg Extensions, Squats, Lunges, Lying Leg Curls, Seated Leg Curls, Deadlifts.

Deadlifts are a great finisher for hamstrings and you also get some upper body work in as well, especially in your back & traps.

You have front/side delts on it's own day?? Why don't you just work the shoulders on day. All three of the shoulder heads contract when you do any shoulder exercise. That's like trying to work the three triceps muscles on different days.

My workouts aren't exactly the same every weak but similar to this:

My daily warm up is pretty standard everyday. with small changes:

Med ball push ups, 2 sets
1x10 2hands
1x10 ea side
lunges 25lb plate, 1x20 ea
Fitball crunches
Squats 25lb plate 1X20

3/7/11
Squats 1x10-135lbs, 3x8-205lbs
Incl DB Bench 1x8-40lbs, 3x8-45lbs
Cable Fly H-L 1x10-40lbs, 3x6-60lbs
Tension tube pulls 1x50
Tension tube press 1x30, 2x10
Flat Bench 1x8-115lbs, 1x5-165lbs, 3x6-135lbs
Bent BB rows 3x10-115lbs

3/8/11
Hanging Curl-ups 3x7
Dead Lift 1x20-135, 2x15-135
Tension tube curls 4x25
Seated Leg curl 1x10-100,3x6-160,1x4-180
WG BB curls 15x2 on 30sec intervals
Hammer grip pull-ups 20 break set

3/9/11
Clean&Press 1x10-65,3x4-115
Frnt cable shldr raises 5x8-15lbs
hip abduction 5x8-110
PWR set 2x thru
Compound shldr press 1x10-30lbs
Wide shoulder press 1x5-25lbs
Frnt Shldr raises 1x10-25lbs
bent shldr raises 1x10-20lbs
side shldr raises (dropset) 1x6
Standing BB calf raises 1x75-135lbs
Shldr shrugs 3x6-320lbs
cable pull downs 1x10-70lbs,3x10-90lbs
Tibia 1x75-50lbs
Tension tube shldr press 3x10
box jumps 1x20,1x10-12lb med ball

3/10/11
cable crunches 1x10-120, 3x6-160
curl ups 3x6
Squats 1x20-175
hip abduction 3x6-190
Oblique push/pulls 1x10-25,3x8-45
WG pull-ups 3x6
Turk get-ups 1x10ea-10lbs

3/11/11
overhead rope pulls 2x8-110,1x8-90,1x15-80,2x8-100
DB tri ext 1x8-30,1x8-25,1x15-15,2x8-27.5
Reverse grip cable ext 1x8-140,1x8-100,1x15-80,2x8-130
seated Leg ext 1x8-180,1x8-140,1x15-100,2x8-160
Machine Tri Ext 1x8-70,1x8-50,1x8-40,2x8-70
Hip adduction 1x8-150,1x8-130,1x15-100,2x8-150
WG pull-ups 1x10

Jesusss man you do more in one day than I do all week. You need to stick to heavy compound movements and base your workout around them, you wanna get bigger you need to eat bigger, rest plenty, and train big movements. do something simple like

squats, leg press, calve extensions

bench press, dips(if you can do them with weight), incline press, military press, rope pull downs

deadlifts, cleans, abs

weighted pull ups(if you can do them with weight), rows, t bar rows, curls

You don't have to do those exact movements but you get the point. Do like 3-4 sets on each of those if you can do 10 reps up the weight next set or workout. Train hard not long.

Very confusing and it must have taken you 2 hours to type all that but good work.
I would suggest splitting up your exercises into body parts a little better. You kinda slide movements into a workout that would be better placed elsewhere. Why not try doing a 4 day split instead of 5
1. Back Biceps
2. Chest Tricep
3. Legs
4. Shoulders

I would knock the volume down just a tad on shoulders, bis, and tris. If I counted near correctly you are doing around 20 sets. Remember the shoulders have to last you until you die.
Group up all of the hip and Leg movements into one day and go high intensity. Same with the back movements. You have some different rows and deads scattered about. Group them up into one day.
You said you wanna put on mass. Lower the rep ranges and up the weight and intensity, and make sure you are eating enough.
Id also recommend taking a day off in the middle of your week to let the muscles recoup.

Wow...That's a suck ass workout. And yes that's all the criticism I have to offer. But hopefully it will hit home and let you know just how shitty your workout has been. Some of these guys that like reposting workouts will help you. Between that and my training business and other business I can't do it. I will say this. Be prepared to UNLEARN so you can Learn some real shit now. Stick around. Good luck.

Originally Posted by Work IN Progress

...

I would knock the volume down just a tad on shoulders, bis, and tris. If I counted near correctly you are doing around 20 sets. Remember the shoulders have to last you until you die.

a tad? A quick count had him at 220 or so shoulder involved reps on 3-7, snuck in a set of pull ups on 3-8 then after one day of "rest" came back with 170+ reps on 3-9.

No lower posterior chain work.
Lots of ab crap.

typical workout from someone that has been brainwashed by the fitness industry. And I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm more pissed off at the industry.

What are your goals? You mention weight gain, but that part's diet and you're asking here about training. If you're not gaining weight, you're just not eating enough and if you didn't know that kindly review Newton's laws of thermodynamics. With your training, are you trying to bring up some part or parts, or just overall growth?

For reference, give us some measurements:
Height
Weight
calf
thigh
hip
waist at navel
chest
shoulders - all the way around your body
bicep

The other thing is if you're trying to gain mass, you're doing fairly high volume as called about above, and you're probably able to do this because the weights aren't all that heavy. So to that I'd say you're overtraining the same upper body muscle groups and also doing high volume - if you can do all that in 90 minutes - I have no sense of the speed you're doing, but I'd say it leans more towards aerobic than anaerobic rates - thus more 'fat burning' / cardiovascular-oriented than muscle building. I also want to call out that the joints you're working are those that tend to get strained the most - shouders, elbows, forearms, wrists - overtraining w/o sufficient recovery time can lead to various flavors of tendonitis, bursitis, frayed tendons, and particularly scary - rotator cuff issues. Rotator is something that never really seems to heal correctly and if you do jack it at some point, it can propagate to your upper back if you start relying on secondary muscles to do the work of the primary movers as part of favoring a sore rotator.

And absolutely to Built's point and a couple other people - whatever your goal is, you gotta start w/ your diet - how are you fueling for that goal, and then let your training work on that fuel - i.e. if you want to build, you need to eat. My bulker diets run around 3500 cals off season. My lifts go up correspondingly. I don't incorporate a lot of cardio stuff until I start heading into my contest prep.

Also to Built's point, I'd be wondering what is your body type - hardgainer or not - high metabolism, etc. Where are you at and where are you heading?

Measurements:
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 171
Thigh: 22 1/4"
calf: 15"
hip: 37"
waist @ navel: 31 1/2"
chest: 39 1/4"
shoulder: 47"
bicep: 13"

As for nutrition I've been trying to get about 1.5-2 g/lb protein and getting between 2500-3000 cal a day. between whole foods and protein/gainer shakes.

Okay, this is great.

Your body is reasonably well-proportioned - you're just thin and you need to eat. Your legs could stand to come up, probably your glutes need size. More deads and squats, less dorky concentration work like hip abductors or whatever those are. Ditch those unless it's some physio thing.

Train lower as often as you train upper, and balance your push with your pull.

Your diet is too low in calories - I imagine you haven't gained any weight in a while on 2500-3000 calories a day. My husband is in his forties and at 180 lbs his maintenance is about 2700. Bring up your daily intake to 3500. I highly recommend olive oil for easy, healthy, testosterone-boosting calories if you're having trouble getting it all in.

Originally Posted by Built

Okay, this is great.

Your body is reasonably well-proportioned - you're just thin and you need to eat. Your legs could stand to come up, probably your glutes need size. More deads and squats, less dorky concentration work like hip abductors or whatever those are. Ditch those unless it's some physio thing.

Train lower as often as you train upper, and balance your push with your pull.

Your diet is too low in calories - I imagine you haven't gained any weight in a while on 2500-3000 calories a day. My husband is in his forties and at 180 lbs his maintenance is about 2700. Bring up your daily intake to 3500. I highly recommend olive oil for easy, healthy, testosterone-boosting calories if you're having trouble getting it all in.

Damn You get sexy when you get agressive.

This is my weight background:

2005- 21yr collegiate swimmer -155lbs 5.9%BF
1/1/2010- regularly active, no gym - 182lbs
7/1/2010- cardio/gym 3-5 days a week - 163lbs
1/1/2011- cardio/gym 5 days a week - 160lbs ~9%BF
3/11/2011- gym 5 days a week - 171lbs

I've been doing ok on my gains and I've seen noticeable definition results in my thighs/quads, chest and arms. I've had a hard time getting in calories which is why I have added a gainer. I use olive oil for everything as well. my ass is pretty big as it is do I really need to do more glutes?

Your shoulders seem out of proportion a bit. Your glutes might look big relative to your hams - how are your hams?

Originally Posted by Work IN Progress

Damn You get sexy when you get aggressive.

I must find a way to capitalize on this...

Originally Posted by Built

Your shoulders seem out of proportion a bit.

How so?

Originally Posted by Rohde

Measurements:
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 171
Thigh: 22 1/4"
calf: 15"
hip: 37"
waist @ navel: 31 1/2"
chest: 39 1/4"
shoulder: 47"
bicep: 13"

As for nutrition I've been trying to get about 1.5-2 g/lb protein and getting between 2500-3000 cal a day. between whole foods and protein/gainer shakes.

I'm about the same weight and height and I eat way more that 3k a day. Just curious, when you took your arm and leg measurement were you flexing? I am almost exactly the same size as you but my measurements are pretty different it's weird.

All measurements I took were relaxed. I watched individual videos on how to measure each part. so I'm pretty sure they're all right.

Oh for body building I am pretty sure you only measure chest relaxed. For arms and legs you flex. I know pro body builders are giving a flexed measurement when they say their arm size.

here's a guide of how how body builders give measurements. How Body Builders Take Their Measurements

update: flexed bicep 14 1/4"

I checked the other measurements again and pretty much all the same.

Flexed or relaxed, I just wanted a notion of proportion. Your shoulders are evidencing the focus of your training. Spend more of this focus on your lats, hams - the whole posterior chain, really. You simply cannot have hams or lats that are "too big".

rx: heavy deadlifts. Mmmmm... I love me a man with meaty hams...

editing to ask: are you really doing 15 and 20 rep deads? Good Lord man, why?

Originally Posted by Built

Flexed or relaxed, I just wanted a notion of proportion. Your shoulders are evidencing the focus of your training. Spend more of this focus on your lats, hams - the whole posterior chain, really. You simply cannot have hams or lats that are "too big".

rx: heavy deadlifts. Mmmmm... I love me a man with meaty hams...

editing to ask: are you really doing 15 and 20 rep deads? Good Lord man, why?

My shoulders are wide because I swam competitively for 7 years. It's just what happens.they really haven't gotten any wider from working out. I'll get right on those heavier dead lifts, lower reps. to answer your question my hands were pussying out on me and my grip was shot so I lowered the weight and did more reps to feel the burn.