Lone Star, My personal program changes often, but I have been pretty set for the past six months. Once a week, on Saturdays, I do a High Intensity weight workout to failure on about 10 different exercizes. Right now, they are bench press, Reverse grip Lat Pulldown, Tricep pushdown, one armed dumbell row, leg presses, dead lift, incline leg raises with ankle weights, narrow grip barbell curl and reverse grip tricep cable pull down. I find that one set of 6-10 reps once a week is a program where I can make progress in most lifts every week. If I increase my workouts, the gains in strength tend to go stale, and, without gains in strength, you aren't doing anything. However, some folks who don't use drugs can make gains doing strenth training much more often.
Of course, one reason that I need more recovery time is that strength is only one part, the most important, but still just one, of my workout. I also either take a one hour walk or a one hour recumbent bike ride at sub to very low aerobic speeds six days a week, including strength day.
On one of those sub-aerobic workouts, I put in interval training for 90 seconds four times each during the hour. On the walks, I break into a minute and a half sprint. Well, it's a sprint for me and probably a half-jog for my cousin Steve, who was a state champion sprinter in high school. <g> On the recumbent bike, I just peddle like a son of a gun for 90 seconds. I monitor my heartbeat and it gets up there pretty high. The Clarence Bass book explains why interval training combined with sub-aerobics is better than the old-fashioned 65-85% of your heartrate crapola the aerobics mafia have pushed for 30 years. However, I was doing it that way before I read the research because I looked at the bodies of sprinters and looked at the bodies of 10K runners and decided that I didn't want to look like a 10K runner. For somebody who loves that, more power to them. It is also a healthy way to train.
Two days a week I do flexibility exercizes for about 10 minutes and have just ordered the Mad Russian's flexibility book. I will let everyone know what I think of his style after I've tried it. This is an area where I have a lot of room for improvement.
I also try to work my grip with The Captains of Crush grippers during one of the recumbent bike rides. I used to do them at the end of my weight workout, but I wasn't making any progress. Since I've moved them to the bike ride, I have moved from trainer to #1 and have closed, but haven't used for a workout yet, the #2. There are also a number 3 and 4, but I can't even imagine them right now. I could barely close the trainer one time when I first tried, and I've always considered myself to have a pretty strong grip from heavy lifting.
The Mike Mentzer web site is great for describing the type of weight workout I follow. |
