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Working Out
I do cardio 5-6 days a week, but I'm interested in starting weight training/strength training. I have a few questions about this:
1) I am doing abs/arms tuesdays, thursdays, and saturdays, and lower body mondays, wednesdays, and fridays. Can I do these all on one days (ex. monday, wednesday, friday?)
2) Can I do abs every day? I have heard mixed opinions. Some people say it's ok to do abs everyday and others say that because abs are a muscle, I should only work them 3 days a week.
3) Do I need to be doing alot of different sorts of weights to see work (ex. Lots of different machines for arms and free weights, etc) or will just a few different exercises show results?
THANKS!!!
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Where's the back, shoulder and chest workouts? You're going to be severely imbalanced in posture and muscle mass if you don't train everything.
You're doing way too much cardio to support muscle growth- 3 or 4 days a week maximum when you're trying to gain.
Way too much volume on the arms/legs workouts- this can be remedied if you just train your whole body like you're really supposed to so that everything doesn't come every other day.
You don't train abs every day of the week because you wouldn't train anything else everyday of the week- 3 days a week is the maximum I recommend.
Yes you will need a lot of different exercises done over a long period of time. Don't fall into the lazy "I don't do shoulders, back, chest, etc." hogwash- train your body not just some of it.
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Im not sure I understand the split you have chosen. There are a number of ways to divide your body up, and these include full body routines, two day splits (usually done twice a week for 4 days of training), or 3 day splits (done once a week).
I will try to answer question 1 and 3 together. What you need to do is to focus on compound free weight exercises. Compound exercises (which work multiple muscle groups) are superior to isolation, particularly for a beginner. In this way, you wont need to do so many of them either, since the effects will overlap.
In your body division I see arms, abs and lower body. Unless I misunderstood something, I dont see chest, shoulders and upper back. May I suggest a three day split that looks something like this:
Day 1: Push
Chest
Shoulders
Triceps
Day 2: Pull
Back
Biceps
Day 3:
Legs (quads, hamstrings, calves)
This is best done with a day or so inbetween, e.g. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. This split gives you plenty of recovery time. Otherwise you could do something like:
Day 1 (upper body)
Day 2 (lower body)
And then train each twice a week e.g. Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri for example.
I am not an expert on designing a routine for a total beginner. However, I would suggest that you go relatively light the first month or two, taking one or two exercises per muscle group. I would keep reps between 8 and 12, not to failure, to allow your body to adapt to the stress. After a couple of months I would switch to a more intensive routine.
As for exercises, I have a link below. However, remember to focus on multiple joint free weight exercises (e.g. squat, deadlift, bench press, military press, etc). There really is no substitute for the squat and deadlift. Avoid machines and that sort of thing. Start with one or two exercises per muscle group.
Here is a link to a site that has a ton of exercises including the ones I mentioned:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
Now... onto the abs. The reason people's opinion is divided here i think is due to 1. people have different intensity routines (that hit the abs indirectly to greater or lesser degrees), and 2. people respond differently to different schedules. I have read about bodybuilders (good ones) who virtually never train abs directly. Others do it often. I do it once a week on my leg day and thats plenty for me. I find that the compound exercises do more than enough (using the abs as stabilizers). Just as a suggestion, why not start by training them twice a week and see how they feel? Get into your new routine and give your body a chance to give you some feedback.
Hope this was not too confusing. Good luck in your training.
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Its better to do them on different days, not all on one because there are certain crossover muscles. For example, bench pressing is mostly for triceps and pectorals but if you're biceps are sore, you won't get the most out of the exercise.
Personal trainers I have talked to say that abs should be done everyday.
You should do many kinds of exercises. Different exercises will get different parts of the muscles. For example, standing curls get more of the lower and the middle part of the biceps while preacher curls get more of the top part of the biceps. Also, different exercises will keep working from getting old.
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