Hi. Can anyone comment on my program?

N

Newbiegymgirl

0
Hello all. I've recently joined one of these "budget gyms" as can't afford the price of more premium gyms with Personal trainers etc included. This means unless I pay for a PT session no one is going to write me a program.

My main aim if assisting with weight loss but I want to tone and generally increase fitness and health with it. I've been searching the net thinking it'd be easy to find a program to follow but apparently not as easy as I thought! So I've kinda written my own.

Can any one comment on what I'm doing and tell me if you think it's any good?

I have two kids under school age so everyday trips to alternate cardio and weights isn't a goer for me. I can manage three maybe four sessions a week but four is pushing it. So here's what I plan on doing


45-60mins cardio (sometimes a bit less if I'm tight on time but try to incorporate a bit of HIIT training in) I vary what I do to stop me getting bored. I tend to do 10-15mins on a bike as a warm up, 15-20 mins cross trainer then 5 mins on stepper (it kills me but I'm aiming I up the time I can do) or rowing (ditto). I tend to avoid the treadmill as I have rather large boobs and even with a good bra I don't like the running motion. I do often use it for a cool down walk though.

I've split my strength training into three as follows

Day 1

Ab crunches 15 reps 3 sets

Shoulder press 10 reps 3 sets

Lateral rise 10 reps 3 sets

Seated row 10 reps 3 sets

Shrugs 10 reps 3 sets


Day 2

Leg press 10 reps 3 sets

Leg extension 10 reps 3 sets

Calf rises 10 reps 3 sets

Bicep curl 10 reps 3 sets

Triceps dip 10 reps 3 sets

Day 3

Seated row machine 10 reps 3 sets

Lat pull 10 reps 3 sets

Inclined leg press 10 reps 3 sets

Chest press 10 reps 3 sets

Pek fly 10 reps 3 sets



So the first question is how does that look? Am I close to the mark or am I just waiting my time and energy?

Secondly, should I do weights before or after cardio?

Finally, is three sets of 10 reps better or should I consider 12 reps for two sets?

Thanks in advance
 
First thing I'll say is that 3 days per week is fine. I like to train more often than that because when God created me he knew that making me insane would ultimately be a good thing. But for people with actual responsibilities or a life, 3 days per week is good.

So, onto your program. Cardio is generally good for health and it expels energy; it can also have stress-reducing affects and other mental benefits. Not at all needed for fat loss, though. Everyone's different, and there are far too many variables in each exercise and how you perform it, but on average, exercises that use large amounts of your body for movement use about the same amount of energy for the same intensity and duration of effort. In fact, an average minute of cardio burns about 10kcal, while there are resistance training exercises that can burn more than that in a single heavy rep. Adding to that, strength training tells your body that your muscles are kind of important, so when your body's breaking down body tissues to convert to energy to survive not having enough dietary energy consumption (this is how weight loss happens), your body won't be keen to cull muscle mass, which conservatively means you'll have an easier time getting toned as a higher amount of the weight lost will be fat.

All that amounts to this: If you enjoy cardio, do it; if you're focused on cardiovascular health, then at least a little bit of cardio will help (but so will resistance training in various ways); if you don't want to do cardio and your health isn't depending on it, then you don't need to do it for your goals. The cardio exercises you're doing are good, so if you want to keep cardio in your program, that line-up's fine.

I'd generally put strength training before cardio, but that's not an absolute. Basically, be aware that as you get further into your workout, your ability to focus and push yourself will generally decrease, so you want to do the stuff that's mentally and technically hardest early in your workout, and the stuff that doesn't require as much focus can take a backseat to that.

On your resistance training setup, I can more or less see a rationale to what's going on there, with day 1 being focused on each part of the shoulder, day 2 legs and arms, and day 3 back, legs and chest. It's not necessarily how I would structure it, but for the most part it's not bad, either. A couple adjustments I would make:

1) I'm not a big fan of crunches, but regardless of that, I'd save any ab exercises until the end of the workout.*

*Caveat: There are some core exercises that are good for teaching you how to line up your torso and brace your abs and pelvic floor, without fatiguing your abs. These might be worth doing at the start of a workout in order to prepare you to use the same technique to set your posture and abs for every exercise throughout the workout (you should be using your core in every exercise).

2) Leg press, incline leg press, leg extension...all are more or less quad-dominant exercises (with leg extensions isolating the quadriceps). That's promoting an imbalance between your quadriceps and your glutes and hamstrings. I'd like to see you replace one of the leg presses with some form of hinge exercise (hyperextensions are a good one to begin learning with) and superset leg extensions with leg curls.

3) Instead of pec flies (isolation movement; doesn't burn much energy), consider something like incline bench press or a push up variation (compound movements; burn a fair amount more energy).
 
had great workout but try also these because changing in your makes your body free

Monday Legs, abs Steady-state cardio
Tuesday Chest, triceps Intensity sets
Wednesday
Thursday Back, biceps, abs Intensity sets
Friday Shoulders, calves, forearms Steady-state cardio


wed & sat, sun take rest ...have great physique
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top