What muscle groups to do together & when?

Limey

A lot of people say train different groups on 3 seperate days a week, what I'd like to know is which ones exactly - I have a habit of just doing a bit of this and a bit of that but I believe I can be wasting my time doing this.

There seems to be so many different exercises that it can be a struggle to even know which ones to do, never mind getting into a routine.

I'm 5'10", and weight 12.25 stone, any help mucho appreciated.

jester77

Have a look here, it's a good starting point.
http://www.exrx.net/Lists/WorkoutMenu.html

g'em

you can (very simplistically) break the body into four major muscle groups- legs, back, chest and shoulders- and two smaller ones- biceps and triceps.

Ideally at each workout you do a set of compound exercises which hits one of these groups, followed by isolation exercises hitting subsections of that group and then one of the smaller groups.

When you work out the chest you work out the triceps as well and similalry for the back and biceps. The shoulders also get worked when doing both chest and back. The legs are usually worked on their own. This means that to get maximum performance out of your shoulder, bicep and tricep work, do them on a day when they're not being used as part of the larger group workout.

So.. to split up your training fo a three day split you could work off something like..

Day 1) chest + biceps
Day 2) back + triceps
Day 3) shoulders + legs

..although shoulders and legs all in one day would probably be a killer... so maybe..

Day 1) chest + back (again fairly intense)
Day 2) legs
Day 3) shoulders + biceps + triceps.

.. or

Day 1) chest + biceps + triceps
Day 2) back + shoulders
Day 3) legs

Personally I work off a four day split [1) ch + bi 2) bck + tri 3) legs 4) shldrs] as I'm working off higher reps and sets and so just get too fatigued to do any more than that on any given day.

marsdelight

how important is the diet with training.
and i always wanted to know,about this creatine stuff.
i dont seem to be getting much results with chest but shoulders and biceps are great,
i train at home but i need more motivation .gym etc.

g'em

marsdelight wrote:

how important is the diet with training.

:eek:

supremely important. there's no point in training at all if your body doesn't have the right nutrients being supplied to it. Educate yourself...
here on a post about the science of eating
here to help you find out what your diet should consist of
and here for an all-rounder synopsis of the most important aspects of training.

When you're done come back and ask about creatine- all the supplements in the world will do nothing if you don't eat right in the first place. Athletes, powerlifters and BB's don't get where they are by eating crap, so why should you? :rolleyes:

Cravez

marsdelight wrote:

how important is the diet with training.
and i always wanted to know,about this creatine stuff.
i dont seem to be getting much results with chest but shoulders and biceps are great,
i train at home but i need more motivation .gym etc.

Diet is extremely important, if not the most important on the what i call "triangle" of mass gain, other two are Rest and Training itself. If your serious about gaining muscle then you must follow all 3, one cannot work without each other if your serious about muscle gain. Training is what damages your muscle, diet is the building blocks to rebuild muscle and rest is the process of rebuilding it back again.

Creatine is a natural substance, it IS in our bodies, we make about at least 1 gram of it daily and we can get it from eating meat and fish but if we cook this food it denatures alot of it. Creatine is used for the resynthesis of ATP. ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, is the "power" that drives muscular energetics.Supplementation with creatine increases Cr and CP within the muscle, allowing further capacity to regenerate ATP. In other words, the creatine enhances the ability of the muscle to maintain power output during brief periods of high-intensity exercise.

A linky to an article on it. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/likness2.htm

Cravez

marsdelight

cheers lad great link,

babypink

g'em wrote:

Day 1) chest + back (again fairly intense)
Day 2) legs
Day 3) shoulders + biceps + triceps.

This is what i'm on at the moment....normally i train 5 days a week but for the next couple weeks have to cut it back to the above.... Its really important to do legs on their own and do them well.

Limey

Thanks for the help so far. How many exercises per muscle group would be considered enough?

babypink

Limey wrote:

How many exercises per muscle group would be considered enough?

It varies on what your goal is.

I'm looking to put on good mass so I tend to aim for around 20 sets per main group, broken down into 4/5 sets per exercise. Though i aim for about 25 sets for legs.

I'm not counting a warm up set or two into these numbers...they should be done regardless of how many sets you are doing.

Limey

To be HUUUGE Nah, I really want to loose the belly while beefing up a bit, at the moment I'm eating well & getting lots of protein it's just knowing which to do, I found a great site which shows 100's of different exercises and how to do them but it can be a bit over-whelming for someone starting out.

[HTML]http://www.shapefit.com/chest-exercises-decline-barbell-bench-press.html [/HTML]

babypink

Well you’re gonna have to bring some cardio into the equation to be honest. It all depends on the time you have to play with too. I’d do 2/3 cardio sessions a week to work off the gut and 3 weights sessions if you can.

A bit of a search of the forum will find you a load of stuff on what exercises are good and not, but the basics would be:

Chest: bench press, incline bench press, decline bench press, flat fly, inlcine fly etc. You can do the press either with a barbell or dumbells. Dumbells will tend bring in far more stability, as will fly.

Back: Lat Pull downs, Pull ups, Chin ups, flat row, bent over row, you could also use a seated row machine for this. deadlift

Shoulders: military press, seated dumbell press, front raises, lat raises, shrugs

Legs: squats….squats…squats (front and/or back), lunges, calf raises, leg press (squat substitute) leg extension(quad) , leg curl (hamstring)

Bicep: preacher curls, hammer curls, barbell curls (use ez-curl bar)

Tricep: tricep pulldowns, french press (flat & seated), tricep extension on the cables

---

Were I starting out with a 3 day split for weights i'd do the following:

Day 1: Incline Bench, Flat Bench, Flat Fly, Lat pulldowns, Chin ups, seated row machine

Day 2: Squats, Lunges, Leg extensions+curls

Day3: Military press / Shoulder press machine etc., dumbell press, cable raises - front and side, preacher curls, hammer curls, french press, tricep extension

This should hit all the main areas, again i'd take it light at the start to concenetrate on good form. Get someone in your gym to show you the correct form with these exercises.


There's nothing to say that you cant do it in 2 days, but its important to hit all the main groups at some stage during the week if you can!

Dragan

babypink wrote:

Legs: squats….squats…squats

I like it

Limey

babypink wrote:

There's nothing to say that you cant do it in 2 days, but its important to hit all the main groups at some stage during the week if you can!

Thanks, that's exactly the kind of breakdown i was looking for, should really help a lot, thanks for the time:)