Hey all First off, thanks for reading, I appreciate your feedback! I always did compound and isolation movements as my goals were for the most part always hypertrophy. I had extensive rotator cuff surgery on my right shoulder in April 2015. It feels pretty good now. My left one has been giving me issues lately, with the main issue being where long head of the bicep tendon attaches in my shoulder. My biggest issues are with compound movements. Squats (because of the position of the shoulder), deads, pullups, and heavy barbell curls (because of the stress on the bicep tendon), and bench pressing movements cause me the most pain. At 52 now, I just want to remain in the game as I love to lift. For now (at least) I need to exclude these movements. I have been doing this for the last few weeks, still going intense and to failure, and getting good pumps.
I am looking for your opinions regarding long term can I add muscle only doing isolation movements, if I go with the same intensity and to failure? While my shoulder is healing (which I hope it does without that dreaded surgery) I need to an upper / lower split (upper / off / lower / off / repeat) to give my shoulder 3 days of rest in between upper body workouts. This is what my workout will look like:
Upper (31 total sets; sounds like a lot but remember they are all isolation exercises)
Chest - 6 total sets
--- Machine Pressing Movement 3 sets
--- Cable Flyes (this doesn't hurt as most of my pain is sourced with the bicep tendon) 3 sets
Shoulders - 7 total sets
--- Overhead Dumbbell Press (this doesn't hurt as most of my pain is sourced with the bicep tendon) 3 sets
--- Lateral Raises (very light with thumbs up) 2 sets
--- Rear Delts 2 sets
Triceps - 6 total sets (superset with biceps)
--- Tricep Pushdowns 3 sets
--- Reverse Pushdowns 3 sets
Biceps - 6 total sets (superset with Triceps)
--- Preacher Cable Curls 4 sets
--- Concentration Curls 2 sets
Lats - 6 total sets
--- Pull Downs 3 sets
--- Rows (Machine or dumbbell) 3 sets
Lower (17 total sets)
Leg Presses 4 sets
Leg Extensions 3 sets
Leg Curls 4 sets
Calves 6 sets
Note: I realize I should be doing more sets on my larger muscles (chest, back, shoulders) than smaller ones (biceps, triceps), but the smaller muscles groups are the ones that (at least for now) cause me no pain when training them
Thanks!
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