If you had a half hour, three times a week...

[m.c]

what would you do with it?

I'm 34, in good shape, I've run GST and HIIT programs when I wasn't working in an office so much and know what I'm doing in the gym.

Basically my issue = should I do Push/Pull/Leg days? or should I go for fullbody days where I can move quickly through the movements (ie Squat/Dip/Pullup) without having to wait for recovery?

Make sense? Sorry if not. And thank you for the advice.

[CookAndrewB]

Honestly, with those restrictions, I would probably do a quick full body every day.

My vote would be something like this:

Monday:
Squat (Heavy 3x3)
Rows (Med 5x5)
Dips (light 3x10-15)

Wednesday:
Pullups (Light 3x10-15)
Overhead press (Med 5x5)
Rear foot elevated Split squat (light 2x10-15)
Triceps (light 1x20-30)

Friday:
Deadlift (Heavy 10x1)
BB Bench (Heavy 3x3)
Abdominals (light 3x10-15)
Biceps (light 1x20-30)


Progression:

For heavy work, I would ramp working sets month to month.

Example:

Lets take bench press. Say you have a 200lb max (makes my math easy). Always round down on fractions, unless you have access to fractional plates. Thus, 157lb would be 155, 159 would be 155, etc.

Week 1 working sets would be 3x3 at 80% of your max (160lbs)
Week 2 3x3 at 83% of your max (165lbs)
Week 3 3x3 at 86% of your max (170lbs)
Week 4 3x3 at 89% of your max (175lbs)

If you make all of your working sets for the month, add 2% to your max, and run it again. Over the course of a year, if you make steady progress, that would be about a 24% increase and would take that 200lb max to roughly 250. About once every 3 months I would encourage you to Take your week 4 day and work up to a true 1RM using singles. I would suggest something like this, as a protocol for testing your max (assuming you can test safely):

Warmup at 50% current estimated max
60% x 2
65% x 2
70% x 1
75% x 1
80% x 1
85% x 1
90% x 1
Max attempt x 1

I am a firm believer that if you hit one max, then you call it a day and move on. No need to keep testing for more. Whatever your max is, for the day, plug it in as your new 1RM and start the entire cycle over again.

Progression on Med rep/weight work (5x5)

Same basic principle, but run the percentages as 70%,73%,76%,79%

I wouldn't bother testing a 1RM on these, just run the progression until you fail. If you hit a wall, I would pick a similar exercise, knock 10-15% off of the weight you were using and run it again. For instance, if you were using BB rows, you might switch to seated rows, or DB rows, just adjust the weight accordingly (BB to seated may require some guess work if you use a pulley machine since most of them create some mechanical advantage and 200lbs on the weight stack rarely feels like 200lbs of weight).

Light exercises, increase your reps by one each week until you hit the upper rep limit, adjust the weight up by a "reasonable" increment and start back with sets at the lowest rep limit.