Hi At the moment im taking a small break from my MA training so this is the only training im doing. I was wanting to get an few opinions on the work out im doing at the moment. Im doing this every second day, im taking protein shakes every day to help with recovery. Its mostly the reps and sets im wanting opinions on but any suggestions are much appreciated Im increasing the weights as I feel it get easyier. The first lot of exercises im doing to build up strength. Tricep curl - 10kg 5 sets of 5 Bicep curl - 13.5kg 5 sets of 5 Hammer Curls - 13.5kg 5 sets of 5 Dumbbell Lateral Raise (shoulders) 11kg 5 sets of 5 Barbell Front Raise (shoulders) 15kg 5 sets of 5 Standing Calve Raise (self body weight) 5 sets of 20 Back Raises (self body weight) 5 sets of 5 The next lot of exercises i was given at gymnastics to help with a few tricks, I need to build strength in these exercises. Hand strand straddle (where you do a handstand against a wall and lower yourself and lift your legs back up before your feet touch the floor) 5 sets of 5 Straddle leg raises (when you sit with your legs apart and you lift them off the floor) 5 sets of 10 Side crunchs (i have no idea the name of the muscle that is worked here, its the muscles on the side of your abs, it wraps around your side) 5 sets of 20 These exercises im doing to build muscle Dumbbell Bench Press 15kg 5 sets of 10 Incline Dumbbell Bench Press 15kg 5 sets of 10 Decline Dumbbell Bench Press 15kg 5 sets of 10 This is for weight loss Tabata 30kg Im finding my left bicep is a lot weaker than my right one (which is funny cuz im left handed), Should i keep the weight on both biceps the same untill my left one catchs up with my right one, or should i try working my left one harder to catch it up with the right one? Thanks in advance for your help
I think you do WAY to much work. Keep it simple. Pick 3 compound lifts, and work with them mainly. Benchpress, squat and powerclean or something. Your routine sounds like a fast way to injury or a big headache haha.
really? I forgot to mention it in my original post (have edited it now tho) I am taking a break from my MA training so this is the only training i am doing currently. Ive been doing this for about 1 1/2 months so far and i havent had any problems (so far that is) There are a few things i could take out tho, such as hammer curls and the gymnastic exercises This only takes me about 1 1/2 hours to do all this as the reps are pretty low. Would it be better if i were to do the same exercises perhaps once every 3 days? Or even if i were to space the exercises into muscle groups, such as shoulder exercises on one day and them chest exercises on another instead of doing them all on one day?
I think the best thing you could do for strength/power/size is to adopt a simple beginner powerlifting routine. HERE And 1.5 hours is quite the long workout acctually. And you wont get really strong doing curls. Pullups or deadlifts get you strong, not curls. You mention that you have been doing this for 1.5 months now, can I ask how much progress you have made?
Ive bulked up quite a lot from this, im not sure how much i should have progressed in terms of strength from this tho. The weights i started off at are........ Tricep curl - 6kg < 10kh Bicep curl - 9kg < 13.5kg Hammer Curls - 9kg (i havent been very strict on these) < 13.5kg Dumbbell Lateral Raise (shoulders) 8kg < 11kg (i havent always been strict on doing these either) Barbell Front Raise (shoulders) 10kg < 15kg Standing Calve Raise (only just started doing these in the past 3 weeks, my coach recommended them for jumps) Back Raises (only started doing these recently) Dumbbell Bench Press 10kg < 15kg Incline Dumbbell Bench Press 10kg < 15kg Decline Dumbbell Bench Press 10kg < 15kg tababta 10kg < 30kg Looking over this, there are a few things i dont really need to do, such as calve exercises, back raises,hammer curls. Im not really sure how much i should have progressed in this time (tho i am happy with my progression, i have bulked up heaps which im happy about) Interesting about what you said about curls,Why is this? Thanks for your help.I really do appreciate it.
I 2nd what Prophet said, compound movements are the way to go for power and strength, isolation excercises are good for adding mass but dont offer much carryover to athletic activities. You need to do lower body and PC excercises if you want to be athletic, you can't go wrong with that PL routine Proph posted. One thing I've noticed with isolation vs compound excercises was that my movements felt very sluggish back when I was a teen doing isolation stuff only. It seemd like my body was going in slowmotion and lacked any kind of explosiveness.
Cool, thanks for that. In all honesty im getting a bit confused with the terms being thrown around (im pretty new at this type of training) Im guessing when you said PC you ment power compound? I did a bit of googling and came across this and it sort of explained a few things, i have a vague idea what compound exercises are. Is this what you are meaning? http://www.criticalbench.com/compound-exercises.htm So i should be doing these exercises as compound exercises and i should be doing them explosively to get atheletic gains from them? Ill look into the one Prophet posted when i get home. Thanks again guys
PC means Posterior Chain, the PC includes pretty much all the muscles on your backside, from your calves up to your traps including the hips. When doing pulling movements your always working part of your PC imo. Do a search on www.t-nation.com on PC and you'll find a whole bunch of info on it. Ya that's the idea, compound excercises let you use the most amount of weight (compared to isolation stuff) and therefor the bigger and stronger muscle fibers in your body are activated. You should build your strength foundation on solid ground (compounds) and not sand (isolation stuff) Once youi got a good strength base you can always throw curls tricep extensions, etc in there. Instead of doing a Leg Extension do a Squat Variation. Instead of a Curl do a Pullup with an underhand grip. Instead of doing a legcurl do a good morning, GHR, or DL variation. Instead of doing tri extensions/skullcrushers try dips etc Theres nothing wrong with calve raises, eventhough stuff like power shrugs, highpulls, cleans and snatches work them alot aswell. You dont want to seperate excercises by what muscles they work, I like to categorize them by moving patterns like Horizontal Push/Pull, Vertical/Push Pull, and then Upper/Lower and WHole Body variations. Check out these Threads for some more info on compound movements and strength training for athletes/fighters. Top 2 reasons to lift weights: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54809 Strength Training for athletes: (breaks down compound movements into upper/lower, push/pull, unilateral, as mentioned earlier) http://www.elitefts.com/documents/program_design_for_athletes.htm MAs And Strength Training http://www.strongerman.com/martial_arts_strength_article.html You should always try to accelerate the weight as fast as possible. As long as the load is pretty light you can do any compound movement explosively, it doesnt always have to be olympic lifts. Here's a good explanation on the diffferent kinds of strengths: http://www.rosstraining.com/articles/strengthtraining.html Here's a post I wrote a while back that covers some of the stuff that I believe in when it comes to training: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1263835&postcount=5 It'd be a good idea to read all the articles on Ross' site, the man knows his stuff. I got both his books (II and NG), and I can't recommend them enough to anyone interested in training for combat sports. Hope this info helps, it's all a bit overwhelming when reading up on all this stuff, just remember to keep it simple, put forth 110%, and get adequate rest. If you got any mroe questions dont hesitate to ask, theres a bunch of people on here that know their stuff, especialy the H&F mods. Hope this helps, and good luck with your training.
Cool, thanks for your help. Ive read over those articles and ive made a few changes (by few i mean nothing is the same lol ) my new routine (which ill try for a week and if i like it ill post it on here and get some thoughts on it) consists of the 6 main compound exercises (minus pull ups cuz i cannot find a place to do them) I did the new exercises for the first time last night, and while the compound exercises were good, and they definately saved me a lot of time, there were certain muscles which didnt feel very well worked. my triceps got a great work out, but not so much my biceps, and my shoulders didnt get much of a work out either. I might keep a few isolated exercises just for my bicep and shoulders. I read that doing standing bicep curls (instead of sitting bicep curls) work the stabilisers aswell, does this sound true? If so ill probably do some standing bicep curls, where as before i was doing completely isolated curls. Thanks again for all your help
Good thing your willing to learn new stuff, but I think you'd be better off following a program made by someone with more experience. I'd suggest either Starting Strength: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58907 or WSFSB: http://defrancotraining.com/articles/articles.htm Good luck
haha, its amazing how much people overlook the compound lifts for gaining strength and go straight to the isolation stuff. and also, i'm a fan if you are trying to get strength, powercleans, deadlifts, goodmornings or stifflegged deads, snatch(light weight, i've never done it cuz its always been a scary one for me.) , squats, front squats,benchpress(and all of them, not just flat), and i've always been a fan of flies for building strength, and military press and hitting them hard. i might throw in heavy bicep curls as long as you don't cheat and keep up intensity, oh and use an ez curl bar instead of dumbells, imo. and if you do preacher curls, don't go all the way down, as it is very bad on your elbows. and the good thing is a good workout w/ these things will only last 30 mins or so.
