ONE SMART COOKIE

Welcome & glad you liked the thread..

Tasty

Firstly hello, I'm loving the site so far

secondly, I have to make do with being a bedroom lifter as I live in central london and don't have £85 a month or more laying around for the gym quite yet. I have dumbells and a barbell and more than enough plates.. I was just wondering what I could do to compensate for the bench presses and incline presses as I don't have room for a bench in my flat!

samurai69

what about using a fitball

Tasty

Now if I wasn't such a muppet Id've thought of that, cheers!

NewbiePhil

i have to admit, as a newbie, ,i'm a bit stumped by this!

each of the sessions you've listed:


3 sets 8 reps(beginners)
5 reps 5 rest(reg park favourite)
6 sets 6 reps

etc.

these are on different days? or all part of the same session on the same muscle group? is this a progression of reps over time?

am i being thick? hehe

dmcc

Different programmes or routines, some of them fairly advanced. Don't do them all!

diaita

Not at all m8 every body learns by asking the question

NewbiePhil

so as you look down cookie's list, they're getting harder?

different people have given me different advice on weight and reps.

Right now I do 10 reps x 3

Will I get better results if I pick a slightly heavier weight and go 8 x3 ?

once that gets a bit easier do I then increase the weight, but keep the reps the same?

ONE SMART COOKIE

I find 8 reps to be a good place to start for new trainers as when the reps get higher they tend to loose form much faster...imo...

ba baracuss

Crikey! I'm a relative newbie, although I know my stuff from trying to workout when I was too young when I was at school.

I train each bodypart once every 5 or so days. Apart from anything else I wouldn't be fully recovered.

I've also tried training my whole body and it just takes too long frankly. Plus I don't think my body would grow properly if the whole of it was destroyed in one session.

I did chest back arms shoulders and traps thursday:

Chest:

A warm up set of smith benches, then 2 sets of 8
2 sets of 8 chest press machine
2 sets of 8 cable crossovers

Back:

2 sets lat pulldown wide bar 10 reps
2 sets seated row narrow grip

Shoulders:

2 sets 10 one arm cable pulls
3 sets 10 rear delt dumbell lifts lying face down on bench

Arms:

2 sets of 10 cable curls
2 sets of 8 tricep pulldowns

The bis and tris and front delts have taken a beating from other exercises, so I was careful not to overtrain them.

Traps:

3 sets of shrugs

I then did Legs, lower back and abs on Sunday:

Legs:

3 sets of 8 smith squats
3 sets of 8 leg press
3 sets of 10 deadlift
3 sets of 10 calf raises

Abs:

3 sets of 20 leg raises
3 sets of 10 dumbell side laterals (if that makes sense)

Didn't do lower back as I tweaked it on my last set of deadlifts, but would have done one of several machines or bench exercises for that.

I'm looking at adding some cardio in at some point, not sure whether to or not tbh.

I do go at it intensely, to failure, but if you think I'm training too infrequently, please let me know. I will probably go tomorrow (6 days break) and do upper body again.

ONE SMART COOKIE

ba baracuss

I can't see the face you're pulling but I'm guessing you must be joking!

Either that or you must have a gym all to yourself and run between preloaded bars!

winger

Well in my ever so humble opinion ba baracuss I would dump the machines and cables.

Chest: Drop the smith machine and do incline bar and flat bench and rotate the db's in.
Maybe db's one workout and bar the next, or bar and db's and swap next workout.
Stick to the basic compound lifts, ever see a small power lifter?

Back: Pull-ups are the daddy, if you can't do that many do pull-ups then do pull-downs to finish.
Seated rows are good and maybe alternate in bent over rows. I say that because of grip width.

Shoulders: Stick to the basics, military presses, db presses, and my favorite, standing over head presses. Could throw in upright rows.
The only isolation movement you should do is side lateral, only because that part of the shoulder is hard to hit.

Arms: Close grip bench, dips, tricep push downs, over head tricep ext or scull crushers. You only need to do one of these and if you do two don't exceed 4 sets of any of them.
For biceps, I like hammer curls, supinating curls, straight bar curls (if forearms can take it) or preacher curls.
Let's not forget, the tries get hit with all pushing exercises and the biceps get hit with all pulling exercises.

Traps: If you do dead lifts or upright rows or even side lateral raises, all these will hit traps and so will heavy supinating curls.
If you must work them, I would do shrugs with db's and make it heavy.

Legs: Squats, squats, squats, don't even bother with that other crap.
Squats will make your whole body grow, yes even arms. All your lifts will go up too. Nothing boosts natural HGH or Tes levels more.
IMO, this is the best exercise on the planet!

I like to stick between 8-12 reps, but find myself doing reps of 5 when I feel good and I am going heavier.

Just keep the body guessing and if you are not getting stronger either change your lifts around (db to bar or vise versa) or you are over training (doing to much) and you need more time off or better sleep.
Damn, I just did not write all this?

ONE SMART COOKIE

No joke or I would have added a smilie wink...

I train at home so all alone, plus I use a lot of compound exercises. Last week I banged out 30 sets in under 30 minutes using 50% of my 1rm squat using 4-5 different exercises..

Then there was *other* stuff added to the workout which pushed it beyond 60 minutes but that non weighted work..

It can be done..........

ba baracuss

I getcha.

Well if you saw the state of most public gyms this time of year rammed with fatties with their 5 week long 'new year's resolution' you'd see what I mean! It was crazy today - 3 times as many as I've seen before at 4pm. People waiting to get on machines.

I did go at it quicker today though and it was actually more enjoyable as I was pumped all over, so thanks for the hurry up.