Guy at school asked me to write him a routine, so I did, here it is..

[IronEagle86]

alright this guy at my school asked me to give him a good routine to use to workout with.. so I wrote him one, and some notes about nutrition, training, etc.. I wrote it in notepad format, but I'll just copy and paste it here... keep in mind, this guy has never picked up a weight in his life, so he's a total newbie.. here it is:



Monday: Legs, Forearms, Traps, Abs, Triceps
Wednesday: Chest, Back, Biceps, Shoulders
Friday: Legs, Forearms, Traps, Abs, Triceps
Sunday: Chest, Back, Biceps, Shoulders



Legs: Squats - 2x8-10
Leg Press - 2x8-10
45 Degree Calf Press - 3x8-10

Forearms: Barbell Wrist Curls - 2x8-10
Reverse Grip Curls - 2x8-10

Traps: Dumbbell Shrugs - 3x8-10

Abs: Weighted Crunches - 2x8-10
Leg Raises - 2x8-10

Triceps: Close Grip Bench Press - 2x8-10
Skull Crushers - 2x8-10

Chest: Incline Barbell Bench Press - 3x8-10
Flat Barbell Bench Press - 2x8-10

Back: Lat Pulldowns - 3x8-10
Deadlifts - 3x8-10

Biceps: Straight Barbell Curls - 2x8-10
Alternating Dumbbell Curls - 2x8-10

Shoulders: Barbell Military Press - 3x8-10
Shoulder Side Raises - 2x8-10



Each set should be done to positive-failure. This means that the final rep should be the last rep you're able to complete on your own (you should be struggling like hell on the last rep, bitch). This insures more overload on a muscle, causing it to grow. If you can't complete 8 reps on your own, decrease the weight; if you can complete 10 reps easily, increase the weight. You'll be doing this routine for about 2 months. Right now you're working the same muscle group twice a week, after 2 months I'll have you working the same muscle group once a week, I'll have you decrease the amount of reps to about 4-6, and I'll spread out the muscle groups over more days for your routines. As it comes for nutrition, make sure you take in about 1 gram of protein per pound you weigh daily. For example, lets say you weigh 130 pounds, that means you eat 130 grams of protein per day. Eat smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day. Break up your meals to about 6 a day, each meal getting around 25 grams of protein. Carbohydrates and fats are important too, but its too complicated to explain for right now, so just dont worry about it. As supplements go, if you're going to buy protein, go with Optimum Nutrition's Whey Protein. Whey protein is a type of protein that's fast acting and absorbing, so the best time to take it is immediately after a workout so it'll absorb into those broken down muscles. Eating/drinking carbohydrates is important after a workout too. When you take in carbs after a workout, it raises your insulin levels therefore it absorbs more protein in your muscles. So take some whey protein and carbs after a workout. As it goes for glutamine, glutamine is an amino acid that plays a major role in repairing muscles and making them stronger. There's quite a bit of glutamine in ON's whey protein so you won't have to worry about buying glutamine itself. And now creatine, creatine is a cell volumizer. It's natural, and your body produces it. Creatine is also found in some of the foods you eat. But it enhances strength a great deal, because what it does is absorbs a lot of water into your muscle cells therefore enlarging them and making them stronger (your muscles are 70% water). So if you take creatine, be sure to drink a lot of water throughout the day to prevent dehydration. One more thing before I leave your bitch ass... drink a lot of milk throughout the day, and especially at night before you go to bed. It has quite a bit of protein in it. It's very important you drink a lot of milk before you go to bed, because milk contains a type of protein called casein protein, which is a very slow acting protein. When you sleep, your body is going through a long period of time wihtout food, so you need slow acting protein from milk to supply your body with protein throughout the entire night. Also, your body builds a lot of its muscle as you sleep, so having ready-to-be-used protein in your body is good to help that.

what do you guys think?

[AmateurWrestler]

Its crap, why would you work each body part 2x a week?

[IronEagle86]

why wouldnt you?.. newbies recover quicker than advanced trainers

[DoctorX2k2]

Originally posted by IronEagle86
why wouldnt you?.. newbies recover quicker than advanced trainers

They gain quicker... recover... not really. Why not go for total optimization without wasting his time?

[IronEagle86]

let me rephrase....... ANYONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT IS WELCOME TO COMMENT

[KaitheGuy]

One suggestion: change from doing the same workout on Mon/Fri and Wed/Sun to doing four different workouts. Like this:
Monday- Legs Forearms abs
Wendsday-Chest and Biceps
Friday-Back triceps abs
Sunday-Shoulders and Traps

Becouse he is working out each muscle one day a week, each workout needs to be a bit more intense. The # of sets for each, I would recomend
Legs: Squats- 3 sets of 12-15
Leg press " "
Leg extention 2 sets " "
Leg curl 2 sets of 12-15
Forearms: Same as yours, but with 4 sets of each
Chest: Bench Press-4 sets of 8-10
Incline press- 3 sets of 8-10
Db flyes- 2 sets of 8-10
cable crossovers 2 sets of 8-10
Back: Pullups-3 sets To failure, if less than 8 spotter help up to 8
Seated cable rows-4 sets of 6-9
Pulldowns- 3 sets of 6-9
Bent over db row 3 sets of 6-9

Sorry, GTG finish later............

[IronEagle86]

I'm working his muscles twice a week because newbies recover quicker.. and to back it up, I'm going to quote a stickie, written by poppa pump

Beginners in bodybuilding have 2 main advantages. One is when you have never weight trained before, you can see remarkable growth since everything is new to you. THE OTHER IS, YOUR MUSCLES RECOVER SIGNIFICANTLY QUICKER THAN MORE ADVANCED BODYBUILDERS, SO YOU CAN TRAIN EACH MUSCLE GROUP MORE OFTEN.

[some kid]

sorry to be an ass.

too lazy to read.

[Liquid]

Originally posted by some kid
sorry to be an ass.

too lazy to read.

lol thats a nice one =)

[btb925]

Well, it's a ok routine but I also do personally agree that noobs could (I didn't say should) work out the same bodypart twice a week. But yeh, they should definitely increase recovery time after a month or so. However, one major thing you should look into your routine is the intensity of it... this guy is a newb so do you really expect he can keep up with that routine... let alone do it? Plus, he's going to failure on EVERY set and some of your days have a total of 21+ sets.

Biggest mistake a beginner can ever make is going "too fast" because they'll eventually get tired/sick of it and drop out thinking they were meant to BB. I say you ease the routine a bit so he can get his feet wet first. Otherwise, he'd be taking a dive into a pool too shallow for him. BTW, do include the importance of fats/carbs ... you make it sound like he shouldn't worry about it. Nutrition = carbs/fats/protein ... not just protein.

[Heisman]

Does he want to train to be a bodybuilder, powerlifter, olympic lifter, sports, or what?

If it is powerlifting or olympic lifting, PM me.

[EAE]

A three day a week full body program might be better for the first few months so that he can get into his groove, get used to those neurons firing and such. Volume would obviously need to be kept very low, probably just 2 or 3 sets per body part.

As for your program:
I disagree leg press AND squats, seems redundant. I'd say remove the leg press.
Not a fan of reverse grip curls, personally.
I'd replace flat bench presses with either dips or decline bench.
On Sunday you have deads and on Monday you have squats, that might be hard on the lower back. You might consider moving the deads to leg day (now you have room for another lat exercise too). Same situation with doing chest and Sunday, then triceps on Monday, you might consider putting them on the same day.

Other than that, it's a decent program. DFHT is a 2x per week program as well, you might want to read up on it if you're interested in a more advanced program.

[FATHER FLEX]

Originally posted by IronEagle86
why wouldnt you?.. newbies recover quicker than advanced trainers

Read up some more, you can even do it three times a week with programs like HST.

[IronEagle86]

he says the most days he would train a week would be 4 days.. and I want him working the same muscle group twice a week as hes just starting out, so thats the best I could do.. but btb925 is right, I do need to reduce the number of sets total, so I'll do that and make it less boring

[IronEagle86]

thanks for the input

[sconroy]

Originally posted by KaitheGuy
One suggestion: change from doing the same workout on Mon/Fri and Wed/Sun to doing four different workouts. Like this:
Monday- Legs Forearms abs
Wendsday-Chest and Biceps
Friday-Back triceps abs
Sunday-Shoulders and Traps

Becouse he is working out each muscle one day a week, each workout needs to be a bit more intense. The # of sets for each, I would recomend
Legs: Squats- 3 sets of 12-15
Leg press " "
Leg extention 2 sets " "
Leg curl 2 sets of 12-15
Forearms: Same as yours, but with 4 sets of each
Chest: Bench Press-4 sets of 8-10
Incline press- 3 sets of 8-10
Db flyes- 2 sets of 8-10
cable crossovers 2 sets of 8-10
Back: Pullups-3 sets To failure, if less than 8 spotter help up to 8
Seated cable rows-4 sets of 6-9
Pulldowns- 3 sets of 6-9
Bent over db row 3 sets of 6-9

Sorry, GTG finish later............

make it chest triceps back bis...makes more sense

[my man bethel]

dude, if you want advice, dont shoot people down.

[kraZi]

If he's a noob, just give him the sticky's full body workout routine.

[The Apocalypse]

The routine doesn't look too bad, but the info you gave him is top notch for sure. And just remove a couple sets here and there from each day because if he's just starting out, he'll gain no matter what he does.

[Davesta]

It looks pretty good overall, but I would make a couple of adjusments.....

1) Move deadlifts to Leg/forearm/trap day
2) Move triceps to Chest/back/shoulder/bi day for the reasons EAE noted
3) I would also consider slightly reducing volume for chest and shoulders, and adding in another back exercise such as rows

The only other thing I would note, and this is my main concern, is regarding training to failure. The benefits of training to failure are far outweighed by its negative neural effects, especially when done on a consistent basis. Training to positive failure on each working set, whilst training each boydpart twice a week, will almost definitely lead to neural fatigue in a short space of time and could have detrimental effects not only on results, but also on motivation, which is obviously critical when just starting to workout. Try to avoid failure on the majority of lifts IMO.

[TheOak86*]

how about writing him a diet. IMHO that is far more important than a training routine.

[N10CT]

Everyone is different re: 2x a week

When I bulk i train 2x full body 1 set per bodypart and gain 2lbs muscle a week for 5-6 weeks.

Others find this too much others not enough.

[PODNickerz]

I did 3 time a week full body and like 3 sets for most exercises and still got results

[capnseamonkey]

for a newb to me it looks a bit much...you don't want him to kill himself right off the bat(thats for a latter time)

and the grouping should be done a bit differently so you won't be hitting one muscle group and then go right around and hot it again in the next days exercises(i.e triceps and next day chest might benifit better being worked on the same day)

maybe something like chest/tris,back/bis,legs and shoulders

or www.exrx.net has some good info and splits to look into

[xpUmpx]

Make him max out on the last rep of the last set..so pick a good weight he can handle

it looks good..same idea as Hypertrophy training..if he goes to failure on each set he will overtrain though

[IronEagle86]

Originally posted by TheOak86*
how about writing him a diet. IMHO that is far more important than a training routine.

I disagree.. yes, diet is very important, but so is training.. without a diet, you wont gain anything, but without training, you wont gain anything either.. it goes hand in hand

[DoctorX2k2]

Yeah, adaptation is fast at the begining and so is muscle recovery but you seem to forget about CNS recovery. Your friend will train, gain for maybe 2-3 months and then he will be stuck... not because his recovery rate suddenly dropped down but adaptation slowed so his body can't follow (read overtraining). Most people tend to do this mistake. Even PH/AAS users tend to forget about overtraining even if their recovery rate is faster than natural. They don't get 100% of the benefits they could just because of that.

IMHO. You should design a 3 days a week program, training each body parts once a week. Then have him start at low volume and intensity and increase both each week or two. Cycling volume and intensity is very important. If he doesn't add weight or reps everytime he repeats an exercise, then he's on the wrong way. I've had friends starting who wouldnt listen to anything I'd say and they found themselves stuck at benching 145 for months even though they started with 90. So get your friend on the right path right at the begining so he can have 100% of the benifits of training. Oh... and a major key point here : motivation. Most trainees start by doing too much, get overtrained and then bail out of the gym so don't let this happen to him.

[BIGABOY]

the best newbie program is 5 days a week
mon-chest
tues-back
Wed-legs
thur-shoulders
fri-arms

tell them to shoot in abs 2 times a week and do cariod about 1-3 times a week

BIGABOY

[BOZZ]

I got to the split and stopped reading....





bOZz

[BIGnaturalBROCK]

Originally posted by Heisman
Does he want to train to be a bodybuilder, powerlifter, olympic lifter, sports, or what?

If it is powerlifting or olympic lifting, PM me.

yo stop telling people to pm you, he posted on a damb board he wants the answers in this thread so why the **** would u ask him to pm you if you can write it here