Is this a good routine?

[mad_monkey59]

Ok. First off, not enough quad work. Massive muscle group, needs more angles and exercises. Chest & shoulder day is all over the place...dips are a mass building compound exercise, unless we are talking about bodyweight dips to pump the area then why would anyone do them after 3 shoulder exercises - its far more chest and tris. Back day is off too, you need to pick exercises that work the muscle differently and together with the rest of the routine completely....no offence, and i mean that, but it seems like you have picked your favourite lifts and made a random routine.

For an example day i have critised, id rather see something like:-

Legs:-

Squats 4-5 sets
Leg Press 4-5 sets
Hack or front squat 3 sets
Romanian Deadlift 4-5 sets
Lying Leg Curl 3 sets
Standing or seated leg curls 3 sets
Standing or donkey & Seated calf raise 5 sets each


That routine works all 3 muscle groups from different angles. More advanced bb's could include a superset at the end, such as leg extensions & seated leg curls (which is an awesome way to finish - give it a try - 3 sets, 20 reps each.....ouch!).

Obviously everyone is different and has different strengths and weaknesses, for example, my calfs are terrible but my quads are strong, i still use 3-5 exercises for quads but only train them once a week. Calfs i hit 2-3 times a week using as much variation (high reps, drop sets, heavy low rep sets, supers etc) as i can. Hope this helps anyway.

Cool, I can see what you're saying all I was trying to do is open debate a little bit, as the whole point of the forum is to give advice not just to be negative.

I banged out a quick routine to give him some sort of idea of structure using more compound elements and some isolation, hence why I didn't go into sets and reps etc... its just meant to be a starting point.

But anyway whilst I am on the subject let me explain a little bit about why its been set out like this.

Firstly legs.

Okay so I always do quite a high amount of squats normally around 5-8 sets not including warmup. By the time I've done the squats and the stiff leg dead lifts, my legs will be cooked, so jumping on the leg press will let me put some extra weight on without the risk of killing myself and allow me to focus on maxing out my quads. I would just say your routine just has far too much isolation, although I can see what your trying to do, but heavy compound, I find is the way to go with legs, personal choice.

And secondly chest...

I take what your saying, but I didn't write it up in any particular order. What I'd do to be honest is the flat, then incline then dips and then then shoulders. Heavy presses and then isolate the medial and posterior heads. Throw in some crunches at the end.

Obviously you can fine tune this for each person, some people respond to dips and some don't and to be honest if I was writing someone like yourself a routine then I might not include them...

The whole of the routine that I wrote is to show Kyle a way structuring his routine so it hits each body part, so it comprises of compound and isolation movements. He could pick this up and be confident that he'd get a good workout.

.. lets be honest anyone that can write a routine which involves benching twice a week and not doing any squats is hardly going to notice the difference between a standing and lying leg curl...

- I appreciate your comments though Unit... I was just after an explaination.

 

[Unit 2005]

No worries pal. Didnt wanna put anyone down, like you said we are all trying to help. Basically my point was that the legs are a massive muscle group and, beginner or not, need alot of work. you walk around on your legs all day long, unlike your chest or shoulders, so they are the most used bodybuilding muscle group and require the most work in the gym....at least for most guys anyway. Compound is the best way, you are right but anyone who has been training a few years will need a bit more than just squats and leg press to maximise their potential. Not to say squats and press are not great exercises, think we all know they are the two best quad builders. But if someone does say 15-20 sets for chest, which most bbers will do, we need to be doing the same for quads, and slightly less for hammys and calves. See what im saying?

 

[mad_monkey59]

sounds good to me..