A workout schedule focusing on improving muscular strength while losing or maintaining fat mass, should consist of at least three days a week of strength training and some aerobic exercise. The strength-training workout is designed to train each muscle group once a week for beginners or twice a week for advanced exercisers, allowing for at least one day of rest from exercise each week. Following each weight-training session, perform 20 to 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise such as brisk walking on the treadmill, cycling or elliptical work.
Workout Schedule
The workout schedule uses the push-pull-leg training split with abdominals trained on leg day and shoulders trained on pull day. Warm up for 5 to 10 minutes prior to weight training. Each workout begins with a heavy exercise that includes one warm-up set and three working sets in which fatigue is reached between six to eight repetitions. Use a light weight with reps between 12 and 15 for the warm-up set. Exercises preceding the heavy exercise will include three sets of eight to 12 reps, unless otherwise noted. The workout can be repeated for a six-day training split for advanced exercisers.
Day 1: Chest and Triceps
Chest and triceps are the pushing muscles. Perform chest exercises at the beginning of your workout because the chest is a larger muscle group. Begin with the most challenging exercise such as bench press or flat dumbbell press. Perform two additional chest exercises such as chest dips, dumbbell flies or cable crossovers. Then complete triceps exercises -- overhead triceps extensions and triceps kickbacks. Finish with one drop set of cable rope pressdown. A drop set is a high-intensity training method geared toward increasing muscle size. Begin by selecting a weight in which you can perform eight to 12 reps. As soon as failure is reached, decrease the weight slightly and immediately perform another set until failure is reached. Repeat this process four or five times.
Day 2: Legs and Abs
Begin leg day with heavy, full barbell squats. Full barbell squats work the entire lower body, and because you are squatting below parallel, more emphasis is placed on the glutes. After squats, perform leg press, straight-leg deadlifts and one drop set of leg extension followed by one set of walking lunges. Finish legs with 100 reps of seated calf raises in as few sets as possible. Train the abs for three sets of 15 reps doing leg lifts, reverse crunches and oblique twists.
Day 3: Back, Shoulders and Biceps
Back, shoulders and biceps muscles are the pulling muscles. Begin with back exercises, starting with heavy bent-over barbell rows followed by lat pulldown or pullups and one-arm dumbbell extension. Train shoulders with dumbbell shoulder press and lateral raises. Finish your workout with biceps curl -- barbell or dumbbell -- and dumbbell concentration curls.
References
- Bodybuilding.com: Creative Drop Setting; Tom Venuto
- "Strength Training Anatomy;" Frederic Delavier; 2001
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