When I'm designing a "program" I take into account the individual. His or her goals, her current level of body fat and muscle, her experience, equipment availability, nutritional status, etc.
So when other people read something like this, it's probably a good idea to stop and ask yourself, "Does the person for whom this workout was attended share similar 'qualities' as me?"
If not, it's probably smart to take what you can from the program but also fit it into a model that better fits you.
With a woman who isn't carrying a lot of fat, is interested in losing a bit more, and likes the idea of muscle... some basic ideas come to mind:
* The template will almost always be based on 2-4 sessions a week
* The strength sessions are always oriented around limited volume and economy of training.
* Emphasis on basic exercises, with some accessory isolation-type work thrown in as individual needs dictate. This means your squats, deadlifts, rows, benches, etc, are the mainstays.
* Focus on using heavy loads, which means typically the use of reps in the 5-10 range. Sometimes heavier, sometimes lighter, but again as a generic baseline that's where to put your foundation.
* Metabolic type training is thrown in as assistance work after the muscle-preserving workouts are handled. (most get this backwards)
* Assistance exercises can be thrown in as follow-ups in a single session or on a different day; this is also where I'd throw in your metabolic work.
* The key factor to me in a dieting individual is stress management. Recovery is at a premium on lowered calories, and this only becomes more pronounced as you become leaner and have to further reduce calories.
Metabolic work is simply your basic conditioning/cardio type work. This can include, steady state cardio, tempo running, interval training, low intensity circuit training, complexes, etc. If you aren't familiar with some of them, don't worry about it now. This type of work includes aerobic and anaerobic (HIIT for example) types of cardio.
Where relatively lean people trying to get leaner (especially women) go wrong is, metabolic work is, at best, an accessory to dieting. It works as a calorie sink... meaning it allows you to eat a bit more food. Granted, there are other benefits associated with it such as improved work capacity and possibly some positive influences on body composition which are always good things, but they're not the make or break it factors in terms of getting lean.
"Dosage" of metabolic work really depends on the individual. Someone who has problems with dietary compliance more often then not needs more metabolic work (or a swift kick in the arse
). Someone who doesn't handle a lot of volume well b/c their recovery ability just sucks will typically do better with less metabolic work, especially the higher intensity stuff like HIIT.
As always, this is a touch & feel process.
Accessory stuff, as mentioned above, is simply the smaller, non-economical movements people often times have problems giving up. This would include the likes of bicep curls, tricep extensions, crunches, calf raises and you could even lump shrugs in there if you'd like since I know you are doing those. Is accessory stuff stupid and pointless? No, not at all. If it's going to be part of a "program" though, it should be limited and certainly be a focus.
Diet will rule above all else for losing fat. Weight training applied as I laid out will preserve muscle mass. Limited cardio will help skew where calories are coming from and going to (in terms of fat and muscle) in a somewhat positive way. The rest is all up to diet and your genetic tendencies towards fat and muscle losses.
So with all the above in mind (from my previous post and this one) let's look at ONE WAY of setting up a weight lifting routine to match your goals. Keep in mind, which should be obvious by now, that this is merely one slice of a much larger pie... the pie being the total, optimal approach to losing fat and keeping/adding muscle.
In essence, you could get away with doing something as simple as:
Squat - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Bench - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Row - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
You could do that 2-3 times per week and be golden. It's plain. It's simple. And when applied using the above... it'll work in terms of increasing strength and preserving muscle.
Granted, many would get bored with it pretty fast. That's why I'll typically add some variety. This could be accomplished by merely changing up the exercises each day you train. You could do something like an A program and a B program and alternate the two. You could extend that to an A, B, and C program if you'd like.
For instance, using the A/B template you could do:
Template A
Squat - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Bench - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Row - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Template B
Deadlift - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Overhead Press - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
Chinup - 3-5 sets x 5-10 reps
And that could work well for a long while.
Personally, I like to vary the intensity and volume over the course of a week though, which the above is not doing. I find my clients like this better too, and to be honest, it's probably a good idea to avoid stagnation and work a the muscle using a variety of loading parameters.
With that in mind, I might do something like:
Template A
Squat - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Bench - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Row - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Template B
Deadlift - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Overhead Press - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Chinup - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
So that would be the core of the "program" for the time being. I'm going through this to *sort of* show you the steps that go through my mind when I'm thinking of this, assuming you're interested in that, lol.
Once the core is established you can add in accessory stuff which might make it look something like:
Template A
5-min jog on treadmill
Foam rolling and dynamic mobility stuff
Squat - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Bench - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Row - 3-5 sets of 4-6 reps
Single Leg DB Romanian Deadlifts - 2 sets of 8-12 reps
Bicep Curls - 2 sets of 10-12
Planks - 2-3 sets of 30-60 seconds
Template B
5-min jog on treadmill
Foam rolling and dynamic mobility stuff
Deadlift - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Overhead Press - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Chinup - 2-4 sets of 8-12 reps
Single Leg Squats - 2 sets of 8-12 reps
Tricep Extensions - 2 sets of 10-12 reps
Pallof Presses - 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps
Are you starting to see the rational here?
To fit this into a weekly format, you could do something like:
Monday: Template A
Tuesday: Metabolic Work
Wednesday: Template B
Thursday: Metabolic Work
Friday: Template A
Saturday: Metabolic Work
Sunday: Off
The following week everything would be the same, however the resistance training would be BAB instead of ABA.
And this is only a suggestion - again not written in stone at all! You might need more or less metabolic work. You may do more high intensity metabolic work in which case you'd likely want to group sessions of high intensity stuff on the same day to allow for more recovery. You may want to make an ABC template rather than an ABA-BAB template. The list goes on and on.
You could ride this out until you stop making gains, are burned out, mentally bored, etc. At that point, you could back off the weight lifted in each exercise which would let some fatigue dissipate, than start back at it focusing on progressing from that point. Or you could change your exercise selection, rep/set selection a bit, etc, etc. The possibilities are endless.
Hopefully you're starting to see the point here.
