I recently mentioned that I only do 4 days workout whereas I used to do 5. Previously I trained tue-sat but then I also cycled on sat & sun. Invariably I ended up training after I had cycled hard on a Saturday. This left me feeling weak and tired, and so the Saturday workout was just becoming a waste of time… so I removed it. To do this I had to cram all those exercises into the other 4 days, some I did, many I just removed entirely. So here’s my current training routine:

Tuesday — Legs

• 4×8 parallel squat
• 2×8 45° leg press (sometimes)
• 3×8 Romanian deadlift
• 2×8 walking lunge
• 2×12 single-leg lying leg curl
• 3×12 seated calf raise
• 3×12 standing calf raise

This workout is pretty tough for me. I don’t always unfortunately get to the leg press as my quads are often finished after 4 sets of squats. The lunges though mainly for hams can also hit my quads pretty hard if done properly, which is why I’ll often leave the leg press out.

Wednesday — Back / Triceps

• 8×2 bodyweight pullups — iso-hold at the top of last rep with slow negative
• 2×2 bodyweight chinup — iso-hold at the top of last rep with slow negative
• 3×8 bentover BB row — iso-hold at the top of last rep
• 2×8 reverse pushup
• 2×8 hypers
• 3×8 triceps cable pushdown
• 3×8 close-grip benchpress
• 3×8 skull-crusher

No, that’s not a typo, I currently do 8 sets of 2 reps for bodyweight pullups. I do full ROM (range of movement), which is basically all the way up so chin is above the bar and all the way down so arms are fully stretched. Most people cheat this movement and only go halfway down… this is an ego thing really as you can get a lot more reps doing that. Currently I can only manage 4 reps in a single set on fresh muscles. I’ll be upping that eventually to 8 sets of 4 reps and eventually switch it around to 4 sets of 8; my pullup is something I really need to work on.

Thursday — Shoulders / Forearms

• 3×8 standing military press
• 2×8 lateral raise
• 2×8 db front raise
• 3×8 bentover rear raise
• 3×8 shrug (inside benchpress machine)
• 3×8 seated EZ curl
• 3×8 reverse wrist EZ curl
• 1×12 db wrist twist

Not much has changed here, the main change being the standing military press. They’re significantly more difficult than seated press and I’m finding them to be a great compound exercise.

Friday — Chest / Biceps

• 3×8 flat bb benchpress
• 3×8 incline db benchpress
• 3×8 chest dip
• 3×8 hammer curl
• 3×10 EZ curl
• 3×10 flat cable curl

This absolutely kills my biceps and I love it. I do the EZ bb curl with my back against a wall and use very strict form, once I can’t do any more reps I move away and loosen up my form a bit. This absolutely obliterates my biceps.

This is the classic back/triceps, chest/biceps split. At one stage I did the back/biceps, chest/triceps split but that absolutely sucked for me. As my arms would generally be finished before I even get to them due to the heavy requirement of biceps/triceps in back/chest exercises. So I combined the push/pull muscle groups and made this routine; it seems to be going pretty well for me. Also shoulders really deserve their own day, and I don’t really have time to add it to my chest or back day as many people do. I don’t like to be in the gym for longer than an hour; very rarely do I even go longer than 50 minutes.

One thing to note is that I don’t work my abs. I’ll eventually put them back in as I continue to change out exercises, but I’ve never been doing this to attain washboard abs. To do that I’d need to drop to around 10% bodyfat anyways, I’m still quite a ways off that target (though I am getting there). Besides my abs get plenty of work in the heavy compound exercises (squats, pullups, military press, rows, etc.). Also I’m definitely going to include conventional deadlifts, and Bulgarian split squats and maybe even hack squats at some point. I would have put conventional deadlifts on my back day now, but that’s just too much work after doing heavy squats on Tuesdays.

Before I forget I think I need to add that I rest approximately 60 seconds between sets. Usually 45 between warmup sets and only up to 90 on heavy sets such as benchpress. Even squats I try keep to 60, this helps me overload and get a good cardio workout too.