I've decided to start working out again, but I realized that I have new goals now than when I used to frequent the gym. My knowledge of fitness is limited mostly to what I used as an athlete trying to improve performance in my sports, knowledge that is now fairly useless to me in terms of improving my physical appearance, which is my current desired result. So I'm looking for suggestions about workouts that can achieve these specific goals for me: - Increased core strength, without gaining size - Reduced body fat, particularly lower abdominal and chest - Slightly increased arm strength, without increase in size - Better muscular definition (goes hand in hand with body fat) - Improved VO2 max Notice that the goals I have are counter to what traditional gym rats strive for. I'm looking for a smaller, more effective body (my body type is bulky as is). I work constantly, often at different times every week, which means that I'm looking for shorter gym visits and fewer per week, but I'm open to suggestions. Also, most of my free time is late at night, so these would be workouts either early in the morning or before bed. Any input you guys have would be appreciated.
Obviously reduced bodyfat will come from reducing kcals. If you're in a caloric deficit, then you're not hypertrophing. Google how to figure out your BMR through the Benedict method. What do you mean by core strength? Abdominal strength...posterior chain strength...overall ability to lift heavy objects? How many days a week are you planning on frequenting the gym?
I'm not worried so much about the nutrition side of things. I eat healthy and monitor what I take in--food isn't the issue. My sedentary lifestyle is I'd like to improve the strength of my stabilizers and major torso muscle groups. My posterior chain isn't really a priority (many years of hockey have worked that out for me). That's what I'm trying to figure out. I'm assuming that any program will require at least two visits per week, but I'm willing to add more visits if I have to. That's part of the reason I made this thread, to get help developing a few maximized workouts that don't take 10+ hours out of my week.
Easy enough. That will be accomplished through free weight work. I'd hit the gym 3-4 times a week. I've been a fan of the following pre-made templates: WSFSB- http://defrancotraining.com/articles/archive/articles_westside.htm Tier Training- http://www.itransforum.com/showthread.php?t=67 5X5- http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow1/5x5_Program/Periodized_5x5.htm I've been a fan of late of fullbody workouts 3Xweekly. Work in the 80+% intensity level for 2 core lifts then a supplemental lift for posterior chain or legs, back, and chest supersetted, and then 1 cable circuit with no rest between movements that looks like cable pullthroughs, cable crunches, cable curls, cable tricep extensions, cable external rotations, cable face pulls. Then one day of GPP-keg thrown sprints, sledgehammer swings, 20+rep power cleans and presses Of the premade templates, the Tier Training is my favorite.
I'm stealing that second one for the weightlifting nub thread! For some reason I thought it was Colluci that was prescribing that to people, I always get you 2 mixed up.
I don't recall Colluci prescribing that routine. It's been a favorite of mine for a bit now. It's the one I'll be using for my Varsity soccer players.
While these look like great workouts (I particularly like the second one), all of them seem to have a lot of weight work. While I'm not allergic to freeweights (on the contrary, I used to lift every day), they tend to add a lot of mass to my body, something I'd like to avoid. It's possible I could modify the workouts to include lower weight, but then I'd be defeating the purpose.
If you like the second one, you could easily adjust it to work with kettlebells, GPP work (dynamic work could be sledgehammer swings, etc). Or just use 2 days to life and pick 1 day for GPP stuff (keg throws, high rep Oly stuff, sledgehammer swings, sandbag work, etc) and 1 day for sprint work. Of course if you start gaining mass, cut down on your food.
Yeah, I don't think I recommend any of those routines with any consistency. I actually haven't seen that write up of the Tier System before. I'll look into it. And if you ever have any doubt about Samurai and myself, it's pretty easy: One's not so tall, the other is; one's southern, one's a New Yorker; one wears a kilt, one wears a dress. Um, wait, what? Sandus, if you know that you tend to add mass quickly (ya lucky so-and-so), you'll want to scale back on the overall daily volume of the weight training workouts. Strategically trimming off a set here and there will go along way in reducing the total amount of stimulus you're providing the body, without negatively effecting strength gains. This would be especially true for you, since you seem to have been lifting for a while. Advanced trainers usually need less volume to be just as productive. Low reps, low sets, heavy weight. Try to keep total volume per exercise under 15 reps (sets multiplied by reps). Exercises like windmills, Turkish get-ups, full contact twists, lots of 1-armed work. Anaerobic cardio. High Octane Cardio is one of my favorite programs. But you know to ix-nay the thought of spot-reduction, right? The fat will burn from all over. There's not a whole heap we can do to direct the attention to any particular bodypart. See answer to #1, Re: core strength. See answer to #2, Re: bodyfat. (Yep, you were right.) Anaerobic cardio, especially with lower rest periods and/or against resistance. Car pushing, though probably impractical for your situation, would be great. Tabatas with a weighted exercise would be great. Dan John has talked about an inverse relationship between chaos and order, as it pertains to your personal and training life. The more chaotic (meaning sporadic, unpredicatable, erratic, etc.) your personal and/or work week is, the more you'll benefit from a "standard", non-random type of workout with minimal variety. And vice versa. If you've got a super-dull humdrum job, you'll excel at training that's the polar opposite, like textbook Crossfit stuff. I think it's an interesting point of view, and I've found it to be fairly accurate, in my own experience. When I have a lot of monotony in my "real life", I get a great rush and solid results from Random Type workouts. When my days were completely up in the air from one to the next, I did great with something "easy to remember" like OLAD.
