What sort of regimen?

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Hey there,

I'm 20 years old, male, 6'2 tall and weigh 284 pounds. I have been working on weight loss through life style change for about 3 months now, and have lost about 36 pounds so far.

I have a gym membership and have been using it for the past two months. I've been doing a basic workout that includes:

leg curls
leg extensions
leg press
lat pulldowns
tricep pulldowns and overs
standing and seated bicep curls
calve raises
lateral raises
chest fly
chest press
seated row
shoulder press

I usually do two sets of 15 reps, or until "failure" I say failure with quotes because its not quite failure as in I could do one or two more if my life depended on it.

Now here is my question/ problem. I want to do something more structured. The routine I'm on now is a basic introductory thing and I haven't been doing it on any sort of schedule. I am also not sure what to aim for. Do I want to do more full body exercises or more isolations, do I want to do high weight low rep, and how many sets? Or maybe I should be doing circuit training.

I will add that I haven't see many gains in strength which I understand is normal for being in a caloric deficit, and I also haven't seen any decreases which is what I am aiming for. I just feel like I am ready to kick it up a notch but am not sure where to go from my current regimen.
 
depends on your goals. if your goal is to up the intensity and do some serious muscle building, the best starting place is the starting strength routine.


If your goal is just in general fitness without really caring about seeing an increase in muscle mass or strength then quite honestly what you're doing looks alright. You do have an imbalance of push patterns to pull, might want to correct that. Add deadlifts and pullups/chinups to balance things out a bit.. Maybe slowly drop the machines and incorporate their free weight equivalents as well.

Again, it depends moreso on what your goals are. If you're training for something specifically then that might compound things as well. And what intensity your body is capable of working at matters too. Starting strength though is imo by far the best intro to lifting for building muscle mass and strength routine you'll find however, so if thats your goal and you're ready to drive home some serious intensity at the gym with it, it's the routine for you.
 
Hey Jynus, thanks for the reply. I saw you link Rippetoe's starting strength before, and it is something I am considering. The issue with that though is that I am not near enough my goal to start building muscle.

I can't say for sure, but based on the amount of fat I still have, I would say I would need to get down to at least 220 or maybe even 210 before I would want to go to a surplus and build muscle.

Starting Strength is certainly something I am going to look into, but its a question of when. Now, or when I am ready to bulk?

What I am wondering is would circuit training allow me to maintain muscle, or is it too based towards more of a cardio workout for that? Ideally I would love to do circuits, keep my HR in the fat burn zone for 45 min, all while maintaining muscle, but does such a magical workout really exist?
 
The two books I always recommend are:

The New Rules of Lifting (1st choice)
Body for Life (2nd choice)

They both have defined routines that are good solid workouts. I like NROL because there are several different kinds of workouts - beginning, fat burning, strength building, and hypertrophy (I think are the different variations - don't have the book in front of me right now).

I don't like the "circuit training" route because it involves a lot of isolation work instead of working muscle groups or full body. IME and from everything I've read, isolation work is less effective and is more likely to cause injury or repetitive stress injury than doing complex lifts that involve groups of muscles and/or stabilizing muscles.

I have both NROL books and the Body for Life books and swear by all of them as my "go to" books when I need to change up my routine or figure out where I need to go from here.
 
who says you have to gain muscle and eat a surplus. you can lose too, and in terms of what exercises to do, the routine i listed above will burn way more calories done properly than an measly lil isolation circut will.




stack the weight on and start doing the compounds my friend. and when you do decide to up the calories and build some serious muscle, you'll have all the proper movement patterns down and be able to start at a proper intensity.
 
For weight loss, you're best to be training at a high intensity, even when doing weights.

I'd suggest you do 3 x full body workouts a week, focusing on compound lifts.

Something like this:

Bench Press
Deadlifts
Shoulder Press
Bent over Barbell Row
Squat

In terms of rep range, it's really important to mix it up every 4 weeks.

I've been doing this lately, and found it really enjoyable:

Set 1: 10 reps
increase the weight by 2.5kg each side if legs, 1.25kg if upper body.
Set 2 and 3: 8 reps
increase the weight as above.
Set 4 (fail set): aim for 8 reps

if you make the 8th rep on set 4, then in your next workout you start at the weight you lifted in sets 2 and 3 in the previous workout.

Hope this helps.

N
 
There are tons of videos on Youtube as well which give live demonstrations of numerous exercises. Just go to Youtube and write in something like "incline chest press".
 
nikki09 said:
For weight loss, you're best to be training at a high intensity, even when doing weights.

I'd suggest you do 3 x full body workouts a week, focusing on compound lifts.

Something like this:

Bench Press
Deadlifts
Shoulder Press
Bent over Barbell Row
Squat

In terms of rep range, it's really important to mix it up every 4 weeks.

I've been doing this lately, and found it really enjoyable:

Set 1: 10 reps
increase the weight by 2.5kg each side if legs, 1.25kg if upper body.
Set 2 and 3: 8 reps
increase the weight as above.
Set 4 (fail set): aim for 8 reps

if you make the 8th rep on set 4, then in your next workout you start at the weight you lifted in sets 2 and 3 in the previous workout.

Hope this helps.

N
Click to expand...

This is great advice IMHO...I am doing similar exercises and seeing great results.

I am no expert but I find time spent on the fancy muscle isolation machines a waste of time compared to performing a similar exercise with body weight/dumbell/barbell/kettlebell.

If you're like me (eg. not in perfect shape) you'll get a good cardio boost while lifting the weights...its a blast.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I will try the compound lifts out. The gym I go to trains NHL hockey players so I'm going to assume they know what they are doing, and can help me out with learning these free weight lifts.

And as Jynus said, learning these lifts and getting good form will be useful down the road, as I am def interested in gaining some muscle mass when I am closer to my goal. I plan to join a baseball league with my highschool buddies next summer and I want to be in great shape for it.
 
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