Obviously anybody exercising knows that you don’t just do one muscle group, you alternate and get more well rounded in your skills. But that being said, we all have areas that we want to improve on. I have pretty decent arms and chest, but now I think I need to work my traps and and shoulders. I have some notes that I’ve been writing down for what exercises to focus on and what the muscles do. What do y’all wanna work on? I love exercise and talking about it, everyone interacts with it in a different way, gets tired at different paces, sweats more or less, does more or less reps or sets.

  • @redtea
    4•2 years ago

    Full body. Although I tend to focus on the posterior chain to keep my posture tip-top. I’ll do isolation exercises to support compound lifts and improve posture, though.

    My main routine, when I have the health* and equipment to train regularly is very similar to what @SpaceCowboy suggests but using a barbell (to ensure good joint-rotation) rather than dumbbells where relevant. With this split, I’d do 3x8 for all the big lifts, but maybe 4x10-12 for the smaller lifts, like the reverse flies.

    [* Unfortunately, I’m not always able to train due to injury, etc, and if I do, it tends to be rehabilitative. So, what I want to work on and what I have to work on are not always aligned.]

    I have had some fun and made progress (in fact it’s my favourite routine) with a 5x5 full body, two days on, one day off split, focusing on form, breathing, and mechanics. The weight would be 60% of my one-rep max, following warm-up reps (including for rotator cuffs, regardless of the main exercise), and followed by mobility exercises (mainly with a foam roller and balls). I wouldn’t do this for long, though. Maybe 4-6 weeks.

    • Day one would be e.g. squat, bench, pull ups.
    • Day two would be e.g. deadlift, rows, overhead press.

    It’s intense because it’s full body, but as you’re never working to failure, it’s manageable and can feel like a rest from constantly increasing the weight on a more traditional split (leaving 3–4+ days between muscle groups).

    Edit: correct the @

    • @CriticalResist8A
      4•2 years ago

      Day one would be e.g. squat, bench, pull ups.

      Day two would be e.g. deadlift, rows, overhead press.

      That looks very similar to phraks, which I would suggest if you want to switch it up! Phraks is based on greyskull and you can find the pdf online which explains the rationale behind it. One thing is legs are the last exercise so that you don’t exhaust yourself too much by the time you get to them. Phraks is also 3x5 and last set is AMRAP with at least 5 – this is where you put everything but to be honest when I was doing it, I could rarely get above 5 reps on the last set.

      • @redtea
        2•2 years ago

        I’ll take a look, thanks.

    • @redtea
      3•2 years ago

      I forgot to say, thanks for starting this discussion! It’s motivated me to put more effort into getting back into a solid routine.

    • Muad'DibberA
      2•2 years ago

      I also do full body, just two days a week because I don’t have a ton of time, and also with just various sets of dumbells ( no access to a gym, and I like to roll out of bed and start exercising ) to make sure i can progressive overload.

      I follow along to various 10-30 min videos that I’ve found to be the best ones for me, that do a lot of different exercises, but I do cardio, chest, legs / lower body, arms / biceps, back and shoulders, then a good posture / stretching one for a cool down.

      Overall it takes about 1-1.5 hours.