Trying something New

I have decided to switch up my workouts from something that is body part focused to something that is total body focused. I will still keep the HIT principles which have been good to me so far (modest gains, no injuries :)). I am going to base my new consolidated routine on Dr. Elington Darden's 5 minute workout.



I really like the idea of using 3 very large compound movements every workout. He advocated 1 lower boy exercise, a pull exercise and a push exercise. I modify this by starting out with either a squat or deadlift rather than just a lower body exercise. Right now I am thinking about going three squat days for everyone deadlift day but this may change. This ratio actually remains the same as my original workout plan, doing a deadlift once in every four workouts.

For the upper body exercises I will use the pullover on a Nautilus machine and a smith machine incline press. I absolutely adore the pullover exercise and will probably right a blog about it later. As far as the smith incline press goes, I chose the incline press movement because of all the pressing movements it has the most range of motion. Like all presses its good for the triceps and the anterior deltoids. I also chose the incline press to target the clavicular head of the pectoralis major, an area I'm currently weak in. The incline press also places the shoulder joint in a very vulnerable position, which is one of the reasons why I chose to do it on a smith machine. Another reason is that on a machine, you are no longer needing to concentrate on balance so you are able to work on contractions of muscles you are looking to target. Free weight presses are great to but for now I'm going to stick to the machine to build my pressing strength first. I'm a fan of free weights but if there are machines available to you that will make your workout more efficient than why not use it. As far as the exercises go, I plan to alternate the incline press with dips, a pushing movement I'm very strong with, every four workouts or so. I'm still tentative about whether I would switch up the pullovers for anything considering its an exercise that is so good at what it does. If I do alternate, it would be with narrow palms up pulldowns.

In addtion to three big compound movements I will do 1-2 isloation movements for smaller body parts in an alternating fashion. This workout I included a set of biceps curl. The other exercises for the upper body are triceps pushdown, lateral shoulder raise, and reverse deltoid fly on the pec deck. For the lower body I will alternate between leg curls and calf raises. I may also do an ab workout of planks, standing crunches, and the plank again every 2-3 workouts.

145.8 lbs

Deadlift 215/6
Pullover 115/6
Incline Press 45s/4
Biceps Curl 65/5

I did not do a leg isolation exercise. I again attempted another set of calf raises but whether they are still fatigued from the last leg workout or whether the deadlift set put them through to much strain, I felt them cramping after two reps. Deadlift set was great with an increase of weight and reps. The pullover set came with an increase of weight. Since this was the first time I've done incline presses, I had no base number of weight or reps to start with, I played around with quite a bit of warmup sets. I eventually settled on 45 lbs on both sides to failure at 4 reps. Next workout I plan to keep the weight the same and aim to get within the 6-10 rep range.