Modifying routine what do you think

J

Joe.Muscle

Active Member
Well guys I am in the middle of SD right now. If everyone remembers I have been cutting for a while and I want to start back with a slow bulk. That being said I am going to SD for about 12 days and then I want to start a new HST Routine, something different. I have been doing the standard routine for a year with grea results, but I would love for just 1 cycle to concentrate on only upper body, and lately everyone seems to be having great results with just compounds. So I figured I would give it a try. My concerns are I need to use all compounds but I want to make sure I have balance for my muscle group in my routine. My standard hst looks like this:

2 sets hammerstrength wide grip chest machine
2 sets of flys
3 sets of rows
1 set of lat pull down
1 set of dumbell press
2 set of side lateral raises
2 curls
2 triceps
4 abs....total of 19 sets total if I am doing Upper body only!

So now I want to try this with just compounds upper body only. So how should I set it up with doing to much volume???

Here is what I was thinking?

3 sets of 10 degree incline bench
2 sets of dips if my shoulder permit (old shoulder injury) if shoulder dont permit I will do just all presses for my total 5 sets
3 sets of rows
2 sets of lat pull down
3 sets of dumbell press
2 sets of upright row?
abs

this is only 15 sets 18 counting abs. But with this workout is my front delts getting hit to much?

is 5 sets a day per muscle to much volume per week?

Any thoughts are appreciated!

Also once a week I might throw in 1 set of curls for bi/ tricpes?

thanks guys!
 
How can you have balance in your muscle groups if you are not training legs at all?

Unless you already have legs like Tom Platz and they are simply too large for your upper body I dont understand why you would choose to neglect them.

To me it does appear you're lacking balance. 8 sets of chest, 5 sets of back, and 2 sets of shoulders with 0 sets of legs, biceps, and triceps doesn't seem balanced.

I am aware that many of the guys on the forum are in the opinion that compound exercises take care of the biceps and triceps if you do enough of them. I disagree I think your old routine looks better, epecially because you've been making such great results with it.


Joe G
 
I am currently doing an all compound cycle and am seeing gains like I have not seen since I started HST. I have upped the volume a little bit but I think 5 sets right through may be asking for trouble and injury. I did 2 sets of 15's for one week and am currently doing 15 rep totals in the 10's and will continue to do 15 rep totals in the 5's for most movements. (ie. I am aiming for 15 reps total for each movement. This could be 3 sets of 5 or 5 sets of 3 depending on the weight and where I am in the cycle). Post 5's I start with negatives and will throw in some metabolic work as well. I am finding that leaving the isolations out of my routine has increased the weight that I can use on all the other movements and is helping me grow in strength and size like never before. I have two full body routines that I alternate during the week and currently I am doing 4-5 days per week as time allows. I was doing 6 days per week but I just found that it was a little too much for my joints. I only have 6 movements max per workout and am still working legs with deads and squats on alternate days.


Good luck and let us know what happens.
 
Just b/c you're doing compounds doesn't mean you need to hit those muscle groups with 5 sets a session. 3 sets as a maximum I think, and only if that's doing a 2 and 1 with alternating exercises or something...

2 Dips/Press
1 Fly
2 Rows
1 Lat
2 DB Press
+ legs/abs

That's enough. Compound routines are about hitting the muscle with heavy weight exercises. You will fatigue like crazy if you do higher volume compound routines...compounds are more draining on the CNS.
 
Joe G I think I may have not made myself clear on the sets.

I was thinking of doing 5 sets for chest 5 for back and maybe just 3 for shoulders.

That being said I agree that no training program is correct in balance without legs....however it is perfectly ok for a cycle or two to not do legs. There is not scientific evidence to my knowledge that says if you dont train legs your upper body will not grow, but needless to say everyone should train legs. Again I think with proper training time and expierence for me that means 10 years now, you learn of different ways and techiniques to try for short periods, it could be something as simple as a new bench press routine that will help your max go up in 6 weeks, now this is an example and of course any routine like that one you would not want to use over the course of time, however there are many techiniques used short duration for plateaus,improvements or more importantly just for fun and expierementation.

That is were this next cycle for me was going to begin, I have been cutting for a while and thought hey after 1 year now of standart HST lets have some fun and try something different and see if it does work or doesnot?

However Jester made a good point about CNS recovery and I was not looking at the routine as clearly as maybe I should of.

I was think CNS recover in the # of sets compared to my old routine, were the old routine and compound routine are similar with # of sets, they are not similar with effects on CNS b/c I am in fact using just compounds...so good point Jester.

Anyway I think I am going to try the compoud routine in a newer fashion looking something like 3 sets for Chest 3 sets for back 3 for shoulder and maybe 1 set for arms with abs thrown in the mix and then the last 3 weeks I am going to add 1 burn set immediatly following my 3rd set on every exercise and just see what happens.

Anyway I will report my gains or losses....who knows we once thought the world was flat...lol.

Thanks for the input guys! :D
 
Hey Joe.Muscle :)

It's ok to drop isolations for biceps and triceps as long as your routine has good overlap due to many compound exercises. If you re-read Pimp My HST e-book, Vicious (Jules) says this clearly. In fact, all other HST Experts say the same thing. And not just HST experts. I just got to read a not very new article from T-Mag, written by Chad Waterbury, a strenght-training coach who outlined in that article a program that gains muscle fast, following a lot of HST prinicples (like frequency of training, CNS fatigue vs. muscle fatuigue, etc.), but not quite HST yet. In there, he also clearly says that the "need" for biceps and triceps isolation is a myth as long as your routine has good compounds.

I hate sounding like this, but if any trainer tells you you should never drop isolations because they are the arm growers or are really critical to your training, that trainer is still greatly dwelling in outdated bodybuilding lore. This is not to say biceps and triceps isolations are useless. With good selection of compound exercises, they are pretty much unneeded, but if you follow a "regular" routine (ie, mixture of a few compounds and a few isolations overall), then dropping those isolations might be equal to insufficiently training the arms. But that would rarely happen, except perhaps for real BB newbies.

Regards,
-JV
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top