Weight Training Schedule

This page is about an ideal weight training schedule or weight training routines. Most people, whether they realize it or not, are truly interested in bodybuilding. They are interested in reshaping the body to look a certain way. It is not so much about big muscles of a number on a scale.

Following the rules in the Metabolism Makeover, when you get into high or higher levels of fitness you want to move to a routine that balances your activities to optimize your time and results.

Here is a routine that most of you should aspire to. Almost any weight training schedule you will see is a variation of this. The same is true for weight training routines.

When I say most of you, what I mean is that there are a few of you that are beyond this point. You are at a high level of athletic performance so you need to do something different than a bodybuilding routines. Professional sports athletes are an example. Here is that weight training schedule I am talking about.

Bodybuilding is about enhancing the lean muscle mass while reducing the body fat. So bodybuilding routines will be a combination of a weight training schedule, cardio routines and high intensity interval training (HIIT) routines.

The weight training schedule should follow the rules in Hormone Restoration

Likewise, HIIT should follow the rules in High Intensity Interval Training

I will not get into specifics of the exact exercises here on this page but I will give guides that will be helpful.

Weight Training Schedule for The Beginner

This is a person that generally knows they are a beginner. They have not been very active. They feel awkward doing exercise. They have not been in sports or it has been a very very long time.

For you, each weight training workout should be a full body workout.

You can do the same workout or a different workout on different days as long as it is a whole body workout. Best to focus on compound movements that use large parts of the body.

If you want to keep things simple and keep the same exercises, then change the reps. Day 1 is 25 - 30 reps per set. Day 2 is 12 - 15 reps Day 3 is 6 - 9 reps. You have to find a weight that causes muscle failure at those rep ranges.

As you progress and get stronger and see the changes in your body you will plateau and be ready for a change.

At this point a good place to go is to split the workout into two. A very common split is an upper body and lower body split like in "Body For Life."

Then a person can advance further but breaking into a three way split. There are many ways to do this. This is the way I like to workout. It works best for me.

Workout 1 is Chest and Triceps, Workout 2 is Back and Biceps and Workout 3 is Legs and Shoulders. Abdominals are done after or before each workout.

I have also seen chest and back for day 1, Legs and Shoulders for Day 2 and Arms for Day 3.

Weight Training Schedule- Advanced

Then there are routines where you do weight lifting more than three days. This is for more advanced workouts. It is pretty rare that people will need this for the goals visitors of this site are setting forth. For a person who is a professional bodybuilder who takes steroids this will make sense. But even then, many current steroid-using bodybuilders still workout maybe 4 days a week.

Bodybuilding Routines - Increasing Fat Loss

To increase fat loss, there is the choice of doubling the HIIT sessions. These sessions are short. Maybe 1/2 hour at most. Doing them every day is one choice. This means that on either the weight training days or the HIIT days, you will have two workouts. The weight training one and a HIIT workout.

or

Weight Training Schedule - Adding More Cardio

Then there is doing doubles every workout day. On the days you lift weights you do HIIT. On the days you do not lift weights, you do two sessions of HIIT.

Weight Training Routines - Doubles

Whenever you do "doubles" (what I will call days where you have two workouts) it is best to spread the workout into several hours in between. If you workout in the morning, do the second one in the afternoon.

No workout should take more than 40 min's. They should be intense and powerful. When you do weight lifting, each set should be done to muscular failure.

Weight Training Schedule - HIIT Tips

When you do HIIT, each burst should be done towards what I call "lung failure" not "muscle failure." No matter what exercise you do for the HIIT, it should be an exercise that does not push to muscle failure like pushups. It should be like jumping, sprinting, cleans, boxing, etc. Something that gets the heart rate high and gets your lungs.

Personally, I do boxing drills. One or two minutes of a boxing combinations against a bag or shadow boxing combinations, when well executed should wind anyone. I try to get the heart rate higher and higher as time goes on during the burst. Then when the interval is over, I lie down and try and get the heart rate below my aerobic threshold stably. Then I start over.

The exercise choice for me is based on covering these bases and doing something that is interesting and stimulating for me. A friend of mine wrestles. Also extremely intense. As they say about wrestlers, a good one has the ability to grab onto a flat marble floor and not allow himself to be pulled off.

Weight Training Schedule - Adding Low Intensity Endurance

To round things off, you can replace one of the HIIT workouts on the last day of the week and turn it into a long-low-intensity and low endurance workout. This can be a long bout of yoga, light jog, rowing on the ERG machine, etc.

I hope this has been helpful.

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