Check out my routine. Need serious help fixing it!

[liquidsky88]

I've read some great articles on this board and figured there has to be someone out there that can help me out. I've been lifting for about 15 years now. I'm 35 and going no where with my routine. My goal is to gain size and cut down on body fat. Please review my routine below and let me know what I'm doing wrong. I'm aware my diet might not be the best and I'm open to advice.

Daily Diet:
8:30am-Oatmeal, 6oz OJ, yogurt, 8 oz water,multi vitimin
11am-Muscle Milk Light RTD
1pm-Chicken fahita, 8oz water, fruit cup
4pm-Muscle Milk Light RTD
6pm-Work Out. 2 creatine tabs
7pm-Protein bar
8pm-Muscle Milk Light shake, BCAA tabs
8:30pm-Baked chicken, salad, orange (I don't get home until 8pm, takes a half hour to bake chicken.

Workout:
Monday: Shoulders:
Front military presses. 1x10 135lbs 3x5 225lbs
Shrugs 1x10 135lbs 1x8 225lbs 1x8 315lbs 1x8 405lbs
Side raises 1x10 25lbs 3x8 35lbs
Reverse peck deck 1x10 100lbs 1x10 110lbs 1x10 120lbs 1x10 130lbs

Tuesday: Back & Tris
Seated Rows 1x10 110lbs 1x8 225lbs 1x8 240lbs 1x8 255lbs
Lat Pull Downs 1x10 110lbs 1x8 160lbs 1x8 180lbs 1x6 200lbs
Upright Row t-bar 1 45lb plate 1x10 2 45lb plates 1x10 3 45lb plates 1x8 4 45lb plates 1x6
Skull crushers 1x10 80lbs 1x10 90lbs 1x10 100lbs 1x8 110lbs
Rope Pull Downs 1x10 100lbs 3x10 160lbs

Wednesday: Legs
Squats 1x10 135 1x10 185 1x10 225 1x10 245
Leg Press 1x10 255lbs 1x10 345 lbs 1x10 435lbs 1x10 525lbs
Leg Curls 1x10 110lbs 1x10 190lbs 1x10 200lbs 1x10 210 lbs
Hamstring curls 1x10 110lbs 1x10 125lbs 1x10 140lbs 1x8 155lbs
Seated Calf Raises 4x12 205lbs

Thursday Chest and Bis
Flat Bench 1x10 135 1x10 225 2x6 315
Incline Bench 1x10 135 3x8 225lbs
Peck Deck 1x10 200lbs 1x10 220lbs 1x10 240lbs 1x8 260lbs
Decline Hammer Machine 2 45lb plates 1x10 4 45lb plates 1x10 6 45lb plates 1x10 8 45lb plates 1x8
Standing Dumbell Curls 35's 1x10 40's 1x10 45's 1x10 50's 1x8

30 Min of cardio M-Sat

[iron_worker]

Do you do the same weights every time? If so, thats a big problem. Or is that just the last weights that you lifted?

[liquidsky88]

Originally Posted by iron_worker

Do you do the same weights every time? If so, thats a big problem. Or is that just the last weights that you lifted?

I lift the same weights every time. That's my problem. I've pretty much been stuck at these weights for about 4 years.

[Darkhorse]

Well, how often do you change your routine? That includes sets, reps, and especially exercises. It's usually difficult to start increasing the weights when you're doing a pyramid scheme like that. I'd certainly advise against that since you're essentially wearing yourself out before you get to the sets that actually matter. It is also just as difficult to try and increase your poundages when you're doing a volume routine. I've had my best results going from mesocycle to mesocycle of hypertrophy for 3-5 weeks, deload, then doing a strength routine (westside influenced) for a hard 4 weeks. Never, ever squat on any one program (same exercises, format, ect) for a very long period of time IME.

[Darkhorse]

Workout:
Monday: Shoulders:

Tuesday: Back & Tris

Wednesday: Legs
Squats 1x10 135 1x10 185 1x10 225 1x10 245

Thursday Chest and Bis

Just to add along to what I wrote since I just totally missed a few things with your actual layout.

1) If you're doing shoulders by themselves on Monday (which isn't the best idea dealing with volume), you're wearing your delts AND triceps down enough with that volume to where you're probably not recovering enough for your next day doing back and triceps! That's a very big reason why you're stuck I can tell you right now. I don't know how the hell you can do all that shoulder and shrugging work, then in 24 hours doing a full back and triceps workout.

2) What's up with your squats? Compare your chest pressing to your squats and think to yourself that you SHOULD be squatting roughly a hundred pounds over what you're benching. Injuries? Or where you like me back in the day when you thought you'd rather spend your time with the upper body than legs! Boy was I wrong! I wrote a nice post on all that I'll link for you to read if that's the case. Click Here

[liquidsky88]

0311 you hit the nail on the head. I know my exercise routine needs change, I just don't have a clue how. I've pretty much always trained by myself picking up exercises here and there and trying to see what worked and what didn't. My squats aren't that heavy because I blew out my knee playing football back in the day. So I'm cautious how heavy I go.

What kind of recommendation can you make to change my routine? Type of workout, when to change it around, how many sets, reps etc. I would guess I'm over training in some areas and lacking in others.

[Darkhorse]

Well, I tore the cartilage out of my knee back in high school, had surgery to repair it, and made it through 4 years in the Marine Corps Infantry lol.. So I'd always err on the side of caution sure, but it looks like you should be able to do a lot more than 225 when your leg pressing is over 500 lbs (although leg presses don't have any real carryover to squats IMO).


Well, the simplest way to explain what you need is to start with your split and work backwards. You're only directly hitting your muscles once a week, so to change that up try twice a week.

Real fast. Just take what you do for a muscle in one day and divide it by two. So if you do 10 sets in a day, now you do 5 sets in two days. Just go from there. I try not to write anything specific nowadays, but you can get the jist of it from this explanation.

[Darkhorse]

Good idea..

Originally Posted by Kelley Baggett

38. A Sample Split

One approach that works well for a lot of people is a variation of the heavy/light format. With this approach you train a muscle twice per week. On the first day you really focus on upping the poundages with a take no prisoners attitude when it comes to putting more weight on the bar each week. You’d simply take a body-part and knock out several heavy sets of a basic movement for that bodypart, with the basic idea being to generate progressive tension increases in that exercise on a weekly basis. Then you might do a couple of “pump”sets to get some fatigue in. You would then hit the muscle group later on in the week but with less intensity and intensiveness. On this lighter workout, the idea is to stimulate the muscle to keep growth signaling elevated, but not to totally annihilate the muscle. You could even hit it indirectly (eg. Shoulder press one workout, Incline Barbell press the next) A sample routine is as follows:


Mon: Lower (Quadricep focused)

Squat: 4-5 x 6-8 with full rests
SLDL: 3 x 6-8 with full rests
Leg press: 2 x 15-20 with full rests
Leg curl: 3 x 5-8 with short rests
Calf raise: 4 x 5 (5 seconds down, 5 seconds pause at bottom)

Tue: Upper (Chest and back focused)

Flat bench: 4-5 x 6-8 with full rests
Row: 4-5 x 6-8 with full rests
Pec Deck- 2 x 12-15 Lateral DB raise- 2 x 10-12 with full rests
Pulldown/chin: 3 x 5-8 with short rests Triceps (your choice - preferably something compound like lying decline ez bar extensions): 2 x 8-10 with full rests
Biceps (your choice): 2 x 8-10 with full rests

Thurs: Lower (glute/ham focused)

Deadlift- 4-5 x 6
Front Squat- 3 x 8
leg curl - 3-5 x 6-12 with short rests
leg ext- 2 x 15
Calf raise - 3 x 10-10-10 (triple drop)

Friday or Saturday: Upper (Shoulder and arm focused)

Incline Dumbell press 3-4 x 6-8
wide grip chin 3-4 x 6-8
Lateral- 3-5 x 8-12 with short rests
One arm DB Row- 2 x 12-15
Triceps (your choice): 2 x 10-12 with full rests 3 x 8-12 with short rests
Biceps (your choice): 2 x 10-12 with full rests 3 x 8-12 with short rests

You can see we basically hit a muscle group directly hard and heavy once per week with one exercise and then hit it a little lighter that same week, often indirectly, with a different exercise.

39. Borrowing Something From Powerlifters - Increasing the Weights While Decreasing the Reps

To fully maximize strength gains, ideally on your tension driven compound movements (typically the first exercise in a workout for a given bodypart), the reps should decrease over the course of a mesocycle. An example of how you might jack with the reps on compound movements is this:

Week 1 and 2 – Sets of 8-10 (ex: 3 x 8-10)
Week 3 and 4 – Sets of 6-8 (ex: 4 x 6-8)
Week 5 and 6 – Sets of 4-6 (ex: 5 x 5)
Week 7 and 8 – Reduce training to just twice a week and take it easy, recuperate, reduce training frequency and volume.
Week 9 – Start over with week 1.

When strength increases enough to perform 2 to 3 reps above the predetermined absolute RM in the last set, the load should be increased to match absolute RM strength.

The above is just an example. In reality you might continue on and go another couple of weeks of 3 reps on your compound movements. Or you could simply drop the reps each week instead of every 2 weeks. Or you could stick with a given rep range for a month or more. As long as you're making continual strength improvements it doesn’t matter really. The idea is the bar weight is gonna be consistently increasing over time on your “tension” generated movements. On your fatigue movements, bar weight increases are not quite as important yet should still be sought after.

[Ross86]

Your calories are WAY low. The amount of protein is way too low also. I can tell that just from the amount of weight that you're moving. What are your physical stats?

[Riddick2112]

i agree, your diet is really light. i dont know much about muscle milk so i cant say about your protein intake but your carb intake seems really low.

also agree with 0311, doing a day just for shoulders is probably doing way more harm than good for your overall progression. i also dont see the need for 4 chest exercises, especially the day after a hard leg session. Exercises like pec deck, reverse pec deck and seated rows can all be ditched imo.

you stated your goal is to add size and cut down on bodyfat but in reality those are 2 seperate goals. trying to do both at the same time is possible, BUT generally you end up shortchanging yourself on both. imo, a person is much better off accepting and working towards one goal at a time. To train for size you have to eat for size too and eating for size and trying to drop bodyfat at the same time is generally counterproductive.

just my $.02