Never Say Never - Weight Lifting and Body Part Splits

For the last three weeks I've been lifting weights and doing body-part splits.  Man Oh Man Oh Man you should never say never.  I just all of the sudden felt like I needed a change.  This has coincided with a largely weather-induced break in bike riding to and from work.  So without the constant physical exhaustion I have felt that I could really increase the load in the other exercise arena.   Interest moves around as you constantly search for something to keep you in the game and making progress.

So to bring this all together and to not feel guilty for getting back into things I said I was done with, I realized that changing things around is ultimately a good thing, not a bad thing, and can add to what you're doing.  So I decided to play it fairly instinctively and to take a roughly two week block to work on strength training a certain way and then to move on to something else for the next roughly week or two.

I decided to use weights and body-weight calisthenics, and to do heavy weights and low reps and also light weights and high reps.  I also decided to try different kinds of body-weight splits and days between workouts.

I also decided that on some workouts I would do multiple exercises per muscle group and in other workouts I would only do one, and I would vary sets and reps.

I started with an old school 70s bodybuilding routine.  Day 1:  chest and back, day 2:  arms and shoulders, day 3:  legs.  Repeat.  I did a mix of weights and calisthenics, barbells and dumbbells and machines, isolation movements and compound movements.  Mostly I did low weight and high reps.  Sets for a given exercise were usually in the rep range of 30, 25, 20, 18, 15, 12. Never fewer than 10.  Very light weights, like 20 lb dumbbells for curls, 15s for lateral raise.  You have to set your mind on the fact that the weight does not matter.  It's almost irrelevant.  What matters is proper form and to exhaust the muscle.

For the next cycle I did a push/pull/legs split.  Chest and triceps on day 1, back and biceps on day 2, legs and shoulders on day 3.  For this cycle I did higher weight and lower reps.  So I may have done incline bench with 50s for 16 - 18 reps (the heaviest dumbbell my work gym has), dumbbell curls with 45s for 6 reps, etc.  For one of these workouts I did weighted ring dips (30 lbs) for sets of 5 and weighted chin ups with 30 lbs for sets of 5.  I also did barbell squats and dead lifts.

Now I've decided to go to an older old school body-building routine, which they used to do back in the 50s and 60s.  That's full body every other day.  I'm really excited about this because I really do prefer to do the whole body in a workout.  But of course you must do fewer sets overall.  Today I did weighted ring dips 20 lbs x 6, 10 lbs x 9, body-weight x 9; weighted ring chins 20 lbs x 6, 10 lbs x 7, body-weight x 9.  I did one set of barbell squats with 75 lbs for 10 reps but only because I'm too tired from dead lift yesterday.  I am most excited about this cycle because each body day I want to pick one exercise per muscle group and do three sets with weight in a reverse pyramid, and only compound movements.

So for this cycle I intend to pick and choose variations on deadlift, squat, bench press, dip, push up, pull up, row, and military.

I'm already thinking about the next split, which I think will be upper body one day, lower body the other.

Really the fun here is to be to a point where I have a lot of tools in my arsenal and on any given day I can pretty much start with an open mind and then come up with a plan that incorporates weights, body, different rep schemes, varying amounts of rest, and a whole lot of interest value.