Anything critically wrong?

[Squaggleboggin]

This is my routine and my goal is strength. All of my exercises use free weights and I do not have a spotter. I do one set of eight reps as a warm up and three sets of five reps as the workout for all exercises (the weight is obviously adjusted as necessary).
Day 1: Barbell spider curls, dips, crunches.
Day 2: Off
Day 3: Dumbbell presses, flies, arnold presses (Note: I haven't done this workout in a few weeks because of a shoulder injury, but I hope to start again this coming week.).
Day 4: Off
Day 5: Squats, deadlifts.
Day 6: Off
Day 7: Off
I've been using this routine for quite a while now, and I've been making what I consider to be satisfactory progress, but I would just like to know if it has any major faults. Thanks for the input.

 

[Cardinal]

I like that you have a sane 3 day/week setup. If you are wanting to get all around stronger, I would include some heavy ass rows and/or chins and pullups. You could put that in place of your isolation bicep work. Or just do a set or two of curls as an afterthought to finish heavy lat work.

You also may want to refine your ab work to include quite a bit of resistance. Check out Westside Barbell for some ab work suggestions. They go crazy emphasizing core strength.

Since your progress is satisfactory, I don't see the need to change a whole bunch. Just some minor modifications here and there maybe.

 

[Squaggleboggin]

Thanks for the advice. Is it okay to do these instead of rows for some back work, or would I still need something else? http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/LatissimusDorsi/BBBentArmPullover.html

You wouldn't happen to have an example of an ab workout or a link to something similar, would you? Thanks again.

 

[Squaggleboggin]

I'm thinking that I'll change my crunches to bicycle maneuvers. Apparently they're great for the front (for lack of a better word) abs and the obliques.

 

[Cardinal]

I think you should still get either rows or pullups/chinups somewhere in your routine. A lot of people really like pullovers and certainly, you can include them as a useful move. But you just can't employ as much weight on that lift as you can row/pullups. Hence I think the latter two lead to more functional strength capacity. It is just a personal preference of mine that I include and sometimes alternate a horizontal pull like barbell row and a vertical pull like chins.

For bench training, a good barbell row is often chosen since it more closely mimics the motion of the bench press in reverse. When I do a lot of overhead pressing work I tend to prefer chins/pullups.

For a good article and suggestions on ab work, try elite fitness systems website, home of westside barbell. Pavel's site, dragondoor will also focus quite a bit on ab work. You can wade through the tome of articles that is t-mag to find some useful stuff there too. Keep in mind why you are training your abs and what you want to get out of the work. If it is stability under heavy ass loads like squat/deadlifts, you are probably best with a westside protocol.

If you just want to see a bunch of exercises check this link Video Index

 

[Cardinal]

Here is another link I found the other day Stength Training Forums

It is likely you will find links to most of what you would ever want to know about strength training there.

 

[Squaggleboggin]

Should I do bent over rows, dips, and bicycle maneuvers for Day 1, or should I have some direct bicep work as well? I tried spider curls after the rows, but that didn't go too well and I was unable to complete the usual workout (I had difficulty with the second set and I usually don't have that much difficulty until the last rep or two of the third set). Thanks and let me know what you think.

By the way, the link you gave in your last post doesn't work for me anymore. I checked it out a couple days ago from a different computer, but when I went to add it to my bookmarks on this one, it couldn't find the site.