I've been training on and off at the gym for about 5 years now. I started when I was 14 back in 2004. I've been successful in losing a lot of weight (about 40kg) and enjoyed healthy life since then (though I've had my share of bad experiences health and diet wise, though I wont go into those). Toning up or building muscle is a concern for mostly everyone; even someone who is primarily concerned with weight loss will want to build muscle to fill their excess skin once they have rid themselves of raw body fat. Thus, a good training program is essential.
What makes a training program good? This is a question that I've never really been able to answer. I've tried my fair share of 'get fit quick' schemes and crazy workout plans guaranteed to get you the distance (a lot of which were thought up by yours truly with my insane logic), but I've recently come to a realization.
I've been using the same 'ideology' when it comes to training for lets say the past year now. Since a muscle requires a minimum of 24 hours rest period in order to grow and to recover, I figured the best solution would be to work one completely different muscle each day. I'm mostly concerned with upper body strength, so my weekly routine would consist of chest, shoulders and arms on 3 different days. Then the routine would repeat.
I've noticed that in general, any one of my 'sessions' would consist of a 10 minute jog on the treadmill to kick-start my metabolism, energy burning, and to warm up my muscles before I hit the weights. After that, there would be perhaps 5 or 6 machines to hit during a 45 minute to 1 hour workout. It took me a while to realize this, but eventually I noticed that if I overdid it (and overdo it I shall) in the first 2 exercises, the rest of my game would suffer. I felt like I was wasting my time after the first 2 machines since I knew I wasn't performing my best for the rest of the session. So I was left with two options:
1.Moderate my session so that I'm not straining myself too early in the session, and allow myself to perform at a constant rate throughout the routine. This however will mean that I will be lifting less throughout the session. Instead of going hard jumping right into the heavy stuff, I'll be carefully keeping it light throughout the session the entire way through so that I don't strain my body. This is acceptable for an endurance or 'cut-up' training goal, but anyone who wants to put on muscle mass needs to lift heavy weights.
2.Choose a new training ideology
So I came to thinking maybe it was time to try a new scheme. I personally believe its better to thrash a muscle in one or two exercises than to lightly work it over a number of exercises (I'm aiming to bulk up, not to cut up. If you wanted to get ripped, you would do the latter). Therefore, I decided that I would create a new program for myself, in which I would only do two exercises for one muscle group, and just really thrash it. Then I'd move on to another muscle group. For example:
1.Chest- Bench Press
2.Chest- Pectoral
3.Back- Pulley
4.Back- Upper Back
5.Biceps- Arm Curls
6.Biceps- Lat Match
7.Triceps- Arm Extension
8.Triceps- Dips
9.Shoulders- Shoulder Press
10.Shoulders- Cross Pulley
11.Abdominal- Crunches
12.Abdominal- Leg raises
This program will be divided into two days. Each exercises will have four sets- a warm-up, two thrash sets and a cool-down. A warm-up will be weight x of 12 (2y) reps. A thrash set will consist of weight 3x and 6 reps (lets define y as 6), and a cool-down set will consist of weight 2x and have 8 (1.5y) reps. During a thrash set, if you can do more than 6 reps, then you need to increase x. This way, muscle fatigue should be minimal since each muscle group only gets worked twice, and there will be a minimal 24 hour resting period. Ideally, once these routine has been executed, there should be a 1 day break before beginning it again. This ensures that the muscles have had enough time to rest (24-48 hours).
What do you think? Agree / Disagree? Comments?
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