Thread: Massively stuck for routine

Alright, this is my first post; I hope I've put it in the right place etc... If not I can cut it out and bung it in the right place. Sorry its also a massive post, but if you can stick with it I do need a push in the right direction. Cheers

I'm really looking for advice that people have based on experience about where to go next with routine please.

I've been training for a few years, I'm about 5'9 and started off about 4 years ago weighing about 11 stone, since then I've got up to 15'7 stone using full body heavy lifting, starting off getting my main lifts up using Rippetoes SS, then moving onto the madcow 5x5. I can deadlift 3 x 5 at 155Kg, Front Squat 3 x 5 105Kg (After SS and 5x5 I never want to back squat again lol), Power Clean 5 x 3 90Kg, Bench 3 x 5 100Kg and I think I was Push Pressing about 75Kg.

So my core lifts were pretty good and with the right diet (eating everything in sight every 3 hours) I added a lot of mass. My goal at the time was to add mass as I did loads of martial arts and wanted to add a bit more power/strength.

There's a lot of chat on the net about how full body can be the best blah blah blah, and personally I think frequency of muscle works is effective for me, but I want to lean up a bit and pull the muscles out of the mass shall we say, so I'm thinking of doing a split but I've never done one before and don't really have much faith in volume over frequency. Every time I have tried a split I do it for a couple of days, don't really feel much CNS drain after the session, assume its not working and just go back to throwing heavy weights around - which I've way gone beyond effective growth with.

I'm looking to do this:

Monday 1: Chest + Abs
Tuesday 2: Back
Wednesday 3: Arms + Abs
Thursday 4: Shoulders
Friday 5: Legs

I dont want to do chest/tris etc...so I can concentrate on each muscle without fatigue setting in, also I'm not worried about overtraining as in my case the CNS drain from this will be nowhere near what I got from the heavier lifting plan. I will still doing linear progression and trying to add to the bar, but it wont be the same rate as 3 x 5 or 5 x 5. This is the plan (with about 1.5 mins rest in between sets I can get through the main muscle lifts in 30 mins, then spend another 10 mins on abs or cardio)

chest+Abs

Inc chest 3 x 6 - 10
Cable chest press 3 x 6 - 10
decline press 3 x 6 -10
dips 3 x 6 - 10
Ab Pulldown 3 x 12 - 15
ball crunch 3 x 12 - 15
leg raise 3 x 12 - 15

Back

Assisted Pull Ups 3 x 6 - 10
asssted chin ups 3 x 6 - 10
cable row 3 x 6-10
v cable row 3 x 6 - 10

10 mins rowing machine

Arms + Abs

db hammer curl 3 x 6 -10
cable curl 3 x 6-10
bb curl 3 x 6- 10
tricep pushdown 3 x 6 - 10
rope extension 3 x 6 - 10
skull crushers 3 x 6- 10
Hanging leg raise 3 x 6 - 10
aB pulldown 3 x 6 - 10

Shoulders + calves

seated press 3 x 6 - 10
hammer db press 3 x 6- 10
arnold press 3 x 6- 10
machine press 3 x 6 - 10
standing calf raise 5 x 6 - 10
seated calf raise 4 x 6 - 10

Legs

Front squat 3 x 6 - 10
sldl 3 x 6 -10
leg press 3 x 6 - 10
lunges 3 x 6 - 10

20 mins swimming

weekend - complete rest

Any adjustents based on peoples successes or experiences would be really appreciated or even wiping out the routine and suggesting a different split entirely.

Nice one - just need some help before I decide to give up entirely and do loads of cardio and drop back to 11 stone lol

I think your routine looks good there mate... I would only make some minor adjustments:

For Back - I'd swap a cable row and do it with dumbbells or a barbell just because I feel its better for building muscle... Also I'd add a lat pulldown type exercise so wide grip, reverse grip or straight arm in there

For shoulders - I think maybe there are too many pressing movements so I'd take out two pressing movements and add a lateral raise type move so lat raises, cable lat raises, incline lat raises etc. and also add shrugs for traps!

I also find that for calves a higher rep count is most beneficial so maybe 15-20 reps or something!

Hope it helps

Nice one, I always kind of stuck to compounds as they're meant to stimulate more muscle fibres than isos, I'll change it and drop in the shrugs and see how it goes. I always did BB row, I only recently changed it to that because I got sick of it, but I'll sling it back in as it is meant to be the way forward lol

I won't add in lat pulldown as I like to keep horizontal and vertical pulling equal, and I've got pull ups in there.

cheers anyway - still not convinced that blasting the muscle once a week is enough though.

Lifter I tend to do a 4 day split where I'll do

Chest/Back/Tri's
Shoulders/Legs/Bi's
Rest
Rest
Back/Chest/Tri's
Legs/Shoulder/Bi's
Rest

On each of my sessions I'll train a heavy chest and then a light back and then switch it around for the next session so day 5 I'm doing heavy back and light chest. Coupled with cardio and abs in every session I've found some good gains form it. Food for thought?

Nice one - I've done a week of the split I posted, but personally I think leaving it a week is excessive. I think I'l ltry and do something similar to yourself; I presume you do roughly 2 exercises for each body part otherwise you'd be there all day? When you say heavy do you mean 1 - 5RM? And I guess the restis the usual 6-10RM.

I was looking at this kind of stuff here:

http://www.ivannikolov.com/bodybuild...y-splitII.html

You can squeeze in volume and frequency, you just need to be in the gym a lot lol

Thanks mate

That looks a bit more convincing to me, I presume you do roughly 2 exercises per body part so you're not there all day and also the work done on day 1 doesn't affect whats done on day 2.

Nice one cheers