RATE this strange training system...

[musketeer]

Based on 8 key basic movements, paired up and all worked each week plus two accessory days (wed & sat). Sets and reps for the 8 key movements are 3-5 sets of 4-8 reps and accessories are for 4 sets of 8-12 reps:

Mon : Legs, Shoulders
Squat
Military

Tues: Back, Chest
Pullover
Row

Wed: Lower body accessories
Lunges
Leg Curls
Leg Extensions
Calves

Thu: Chest, Back
Bench
Chin

Fri: Back/legs, Upper Pushing
Dead
Dip

Sat: Upper body accesories
Dumbell Curls
Pressdowns
Laterals
Abs

Sun
off

 

[Mr_MAX]

i have always had trouble with working shoulders one day..and the fallowing day chest... because of still working the anterior head of the delt.. they always feel week... or sore.. like it is to much... same for the reverse..
if i work shoulder and chest on different days... i like at least a day in between..
....anyone else feel this way??

 

[musketeer]

If you look at the chest exercise on Tuesday, following the shoulder exercise on Monday, you will see that it is the pullover, which does not use the delts at all.

Please critique, I like the look of this routine but want to get it perfect.

 

[H_T_]

i can't knock anything that has you doing all of the important compound movements. where i train, i've yet to see someone deadlift off the floor and never see full squats. but i do see lots of preacher cable curls and crossovers.

 

[Mr_MAX]

If you look at the chest exercise on Tuesday, following the shoulder exercise on Monday, you will see that it is the pullover, which does not use the delts at all.

Please critique, I like the look of this routine but want to get it perfect.

true.. looks good..

 

[musketeer]

Yeah, I'm saying fuck off to all of those isolation exercises for a few months, and just trying to get my poundages up on everything. I've been doing plenty of high reps, drop sets and force reps. For this routine, I want to just do straight sets maybe to failure on just the last one. Workots wil be relatively brief because I'm just doing two exercises, or about 6-10 sets. Ancilary days will have rather short rest periods and I may adopt a circut system (eg):

Sat: Upper body accesories
CIRCUT:
Dumbell Curls 10 x 60lbs each
rest 1 min
Pressdowns 10 x 150lbs
rest 1 min
Laterals 12 x 55lbs
rest 1 min
Weighted crunch 1 x 20

REPEAT THE ABOVE 4 times

 

[guldukat]

Yeah, I'm saying fuck off to all of those isolation exercises for a few months, and just trying to get my poundages up on everything.

*snip*
Ancilary days will have rather short rest periods and I may adopt a circut system (eg):

I honestly think those two things are mutually exclusive. You might be able to move a little more weight here and there on the circuit stuff, but I feel that kind of pace is only making things harder than they need be (and for no tangible gain...as far as I know, circuit training or "supersets" are predicated solely on the erroneous belief that pumping = growth).

If I was in your shoes, I'd probably go with your first impulse: tell those isolation moves to fuck off. Maybe keep curls and a triceps extension, but work them just as you would anything else: progressively heavier, and with plenty of rest between sets.

 

[musketeer]

I honestly think those two things are mutually exclusive. You might be able to move a little more weight here and there on the circuit stuff, but I feel that kind of pace is only making things harder than they need be (and for no tangible gain...as far as I know, circuit training or "supersets" are predicated solely on the erroneous belief that pumping = growth).

If I was in your shoes, I'd probably go with your first impulse: tell those isolation moves to fuck off. Maybe keep curls and a triceps extension, but work them just as you would anything else: progressively heavier, and with plenty of rest between sets.

Maybe you know what I mean but let me clarify:

They are nothing like supersets or compound sets or anything else. The circut like this allows for max local recuperation in min time:

Do 10 dumbell curls
then REST for one minute
then do 10 tricep extensions
then rest one minute
do 12 laterals (for the shoulders)
rest for one minute
and then do 20 crunches and
rest for one minute
repeat this circut 4 times for 16 sets in about 30 mins.

They are nothing like supersets or compound sets or anything else.
The body gets a full minute's rest between sets and as the muscles are small, that should be enough rest to catch your breath. As we are moving from muscle to muscle, local muscluar recovery should most definitely occur - each muscle is worked every 7 mins or so, having plenty of time to recuperate for another near max attempt. Tom Platz recently wrote a great paper on this, I'll repost it again below for the non-platnums.

Notice that even the ancillary exercises are done for lowish reps, and only one exercise is utilised for each ancilary just once per week.

 

[tzan]

Looks pretty solid. If you want me to get nit picky, I would ditch the press downs and choose a better exercise(incline skulls or decline db extensions).

 

[musketeer]

Looks pretty solid. If you want me to get nit picky, I would ditch the press downs and choose a better exercise(incline skulls or decline db extensions).

To be honest, I'll probably change the ancilaries every other week or so, as long as they target the same muscles.

 

[BOOEY]

Not sure if I like pullovers as your main chest exercise on Tues. I would put Incline's there instead. And if you want to get picky, if you switched to inlcines, I would swap them with military's on mon. So it would look like:

Mon
Squat
Inclines

Tues
Rows
Military

Just a thought.

 

[tzan]

To be honest, I'll probably change the ancilaries every other week or so, as long as they target the same muscles.

Good idea. You like splitting it up so you hit your larger muscle 2 times per week?

 

[musketeer]

Not sure if I like pullovers as your main chest exercise on Tues. I would put Incline's there instead. And if you want to get picky, if you switched to inlcines, I would swap them with military's on mon. So it would look like:

Mon
Squat
Inclines

Tues
Rows
Military

Just a thought.

Thank you, I want to hash this out now before I start. Check it again below please, and then Ill explain.

Mon : Legs, Shoulders
Squat
Military

Tues: Back, Chest
Pullover
Row

Wed: Lower body accessories
Lunges
Leg Curls
Leg Extensions
Calves

Thu: Chest, Back
Bench
Chin

Fri: Back/legs, Upper Pushing
Dead
Dip

Sat: Upper body accesories
Dumbell Curls
Pressdowns
Laterals
Abs

Sun
off

My bench press (thursday) will be on a low incline (25 deg or so). Chest will also be involved in the Friday workout when I'm dipping. In all, the chest will be doing, low inc bench, dip and pullovers on three workouts each week.

 

[peterM]

Can you post the Platz article please.

 

[WalkingBeast]

Based on 8 key basic movements, paired up and all worked each week plus two accessory days (wed & sat). Sets and reps for the 8 key movements are 3-5 sets of 4-8 reps and accessories are for 4 sets of 8-12 reps:

Mon : Legs, Shoulders
Squat
Military

Tues: Back, Chest
Pullover
Row

Wed: Lower body accessories
Lunges
Leg Curls
Leg Extensions
Calves

Thu: Chest, Back
Bench
Chin

Fri: Back/legs, Upper Pushing
Dead
Dip

Sat: Upper body accesories
Dumbell Curls
Pressdowns
Laterals
Abs

Sun
off

Looks like an interesting routine. Way too low volume for my tastes. The giant set you mentioned looks pretty intense, but even after repeating it 4 times thats only 4 sets per body part. Even if you did that routine twice a week it would be only 8 sets for each bodypart. Some may not need alot of volume to grow. I find I need both high volume and high intensity just to maintain. I dont find pullovers too useful at all either. Ive done them with 130lb+ dumbbells and even racking a pullover machine for reps. The dumbbell version gave me a stretch but I never felt any actual muscles working or getting sore from them. The machine version by Nautilus actually seemed better, but still no replacement for freeweight chest exercises IMO. I did them on back day usually. Didnt feel much in my chest at all. Nothing wrong with doing the exercise, but Id choose incline or flat bench work over those for chest development. If I had to choose one exercise for chest (and great for shoulders too) it would be inclines. Id reccomend fitting both incline and flat benching into your routine somehow. I prefer the barbell, but plenty of people get great growth off of dumbbells. So thats a personal prefferance. Id also replace lunges with either leg presses or squats. Unless you are doing VERY heavy lunges. I believe the extra resistance youll get on a leg press or heavy squat will give you better development. Also I see on thursday for your back youre only doing chins. Are they weighted? Chins are great, but often become an endurance exercise and I feel the heavy movements are more needed to develop size and overall strength. Heavy lat pulldowns or rows of some sort. If youre only going to choose one exercise and width is your goal (judging by your choice of exercise on this day) Id go with the lat pulldowns. You could also do the chin-ups weighted. I see you also have bench listed for thursday. You could do flat bench on this day and inclines on tuesday for your other chest day. Id probabally start the first chest day on monday for recovery purposes. Two days recovery is often enough for me to get another strong chest workout, though not full recovery. Thats really dependant upon the individual and thier recovery ability. I find soreness to be a good indicator of recovery, though it doesnt show the level of CNS fatigue. Ill usually take some caffiene or ephedrine to push through that however. Sometimes theres only so much you can do though, regardless. Ive had some of my best workouts being up over 24 hours and even without "sufficient" recovery. Alot of people fail to realize you can train through many things if your mind is strong enough. If you can push yourself to the limits regardless of outside circumstance. Though you can tear yourself apart also this way. So its good to rest sometimes. The days where you cant lift shit regardless, youll know. You also might want to move dips to your chest day to allow for more recovery. The selection of exercises looks pretty solid though overall. Except for the few changes I mentioned. Also, like I said the volume seems only about a fraction of what Id use or reccomend. It all comes down to experimentation though. Everyone responds differently to different types of training, diet,etc.Cant hurt to try the routine atleast. Hope that helps. KEEP KILLING THAT SHIT!!

 

[musketeer]

Can you post the Platz article please.

Sure thing Iron Bro!

I posted this up two weeks ago but no-one really took much notice then:

http://www.otsdirect.com/pages/report/platz_report.pdf

I think that it's a great article, esp for free!

 

[peterM]

Musketeer,

Thank for the link but it is of course part of the advertising blurb put out by OTS so its
purpose is suspect. The system seems to have had so many incarnations starting from the original Bulgarian Burst system which undermines its credibility. The points about partials and using full reps, partials and statics within a set are interesting but who uses this approach and why is it not more popular if is that effective?

 

[musketeer]

Musketeer,

Thank for the link but it is of course part of the advertising blurb put out by OTS so its
purpose is suspect. The system seems to have had so many incarnations starting from the original Bulgarian Burst system which undermines its credibility. The points about partials and using full reps, partials and statics within a set are interesting but who uses this approach and why is it not more popular if is that effective?

I dont know about all of that, but the stuff about moving from bodypart to bodypart sounds inspired. I have to say I believe that Platz has the most integrity of anyone in the field of BB these days.

 

[guldukat]

Maybe you know what I mean but let me clarify:

They are nothing like supersets or compound sets or anything else. The circut like this allows for max local recuperation in min time:
*snip*

Yeah, I understand better now.

Initially, that one min. rest thing threw me; I guess I was thinking the curls, ext., etc. would be more taxing than they really are. Don't know why I got that idea *blushes*

Anyway, it's an interesting split. You're planning to give it a go for a few months?

 

[Illuminati]

Yeah, I'm saying fuck off to all of those isolation exercises for a few months, and just trying to get my poundages up on everything. I've been doing plenty of high reps, drop sets and force reps. For this routine, I want to just do straight sets maybe to failure on just the last one.

you want to get your poundages up and get stronger, why dont you try a westside barbell routine? try something that has been proven time and time again.