Switching Training Programs

there is a lot of good info on here dealing with trianing programs that would seem to fit what you are looking for...

judging from your post i would suppose you are doing quite a bit of "isolation" type exercises now. theres nothing wrong with that really, but you might try to cut your number of exercises way down, this has worked for a lot of people.

if you use less exercises, but the ones you do use are the "bigger" multi-joint exercises, like squat, military press, bench press, row, chin, deadlift, etc... you might find that you can get an even better workout in less time, and just plain not have to be at the gym as many days or as many hours. seems like that might be important to you.

a good strategy for someone who doesnt want to cut the exercise list down too much, but still wants to do a 3 day a week program, is to pick for instance your 3 favorite back exercises. might be chinups, barbell rows, and say some sort of seated machine row, or a dumbell row, whatever you like. then do the chinups on monday, the rows on wednesday, and the third exercise on friday. you can do the same thing with your chest/tri/shoulder pressing movements. a person could bench on monday, incline bench on wed, and do military press on friday. you could also substitute deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, or cleans for a back exercise on one of the days. i would recomend doing squats or front squats every workout day, though.

try to do only 3-4 exercises per workout day, this still leaves you with as many as 10 or 11 total exercises for the week if you want, even if you do only squats, or squats and front squats for legs.

doing few exercises per workout, and only one execise each workout using a particular set of muscles, will leave you able to train much harder and more intensly on what you are doing than you could if you are doing more.

you might also look at some of the posts on this board concerning progression, and setting up your workout weights and set/rep scheme. this is just as important, maybe more important, than the particular workout and exercises that you do. there is a lot of info here on how to set up sets/reps and progression for the type of workout i am describing.

Yea, that's the type of plan I was thinking. But, can doing only 8 sets per week on a muscle group be enough to grow and progress?

I don't see where Glenn said 8 sets per week on a muscle. Mainly it was total exercises. 3-4 per day X 3 days = 9 to 12 exercises (since you will squat 3x or squat 2x and front squat 1x you just need to fill in chest and back). Personally, that should likely be the high end as frequency of performing a given lift can be very advantageous to progression. The more often you can do something the better but you have to control for the amount of work you do each time so as not to build up too much fatigue (btw accumulated fatigue is overtraining - it is the CNS not at the muscular level). So if right now you do 9 sets of squats 1x per week, maybe you start doing 3 sets 3x per week or 4 sets 2x per week. Frequency distributes workload over a period. As far as workload (i.e. total number of sets and reps X weight used) that's a very individual thing.

Here would be a few of the recent threads Glenn was refering to: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=439932
http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=439621

If you don't know who Glenn Pendlay is - IMO and that of some others who carry more weight than I do, he is one of the best S&C coaches in the nation and absolutely one of the finest OL coaches. Here is the interview he did with Matt Reynolds.
http://www.readthecore.com/200503/reynolds-glenn-pendlay.htm

You'll find a lot of stuff on training and programming here:
http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow1/table_of_contents_thread.htm

A program that's fairly popular here is the "5x5" and although there are infinite variations based upon the trainee the basic cookie cutters are in the first couple of links in that geocities Table of Contents link above, just scroll down to the program section (1st one) and you'll find a more novice and more advanced program. You don't need to do either of those but they've worked pretty well here for a lot of people so maybe get some ideas or if you want to give it a go feel free to ask questions here.

For this program Madcow, I had a few questions... what are weighted hypers? High pulls? triple? back-off? Also, is 3X8 enough for arm development? Thanks, great advice.

Monday – Heavy Day
Squat – 5 sets of 5
Bench – 5 sets of 5
Powercleans – 5 sets of 5
2 sets of weighted hypers
4 sets of weighted Sit-ups

Wednesday – Light Day
Squat – 4 sets of 5
Incline Bench – 4 sets of 5
High Pulls – 4 sets of 5
Sit-ups – 3 sets

Friday - Medium
Squat – 4 sets of 5, 1 triple, back-off
Bench – 4 sets of 5, 1 triple, back-off
Powercleans – 4 sets of 5, 1 triple
Weighted Dips – 3 sets of 5-8
Triceps and Biceps – 3 sets of 8 each