My workout routine
First workout routine - Biceps focus
When I started to work out at the Gold gym for the first time in April 2023, my workout routine was -
Saturday / Sunday (gym) - Complete upper body workout with machines only
Tuesday (home) - Biceps. 3 exercises with 15lb dumbbells, 3 sets x 12 reps each
Thursday (home) - Biceps. 3 exercises with 15lb dumbbells, 3 sets x 12 reps each
Second workout routine - Upper-body focus
After being regular for around two months, I expanded my focus to 3 muscle groups - biceps, triceps, and shoulders. I felt that these are the muscles that are the most noticeable in day-to-day life when you’re wearing clothes like a polo T-shirt.
So, on Saturday or Sunday, I’d work out at the gym for all 3 in a single session, and during the work week, I’d take one muscle group for one session with dumbbells at home.
This is how I changed my workout routine, which I continued with during June-July
Saturday / Sunday - Complete upper body workout with machines only
Tuesday - Biceps. 3 exercises with 15lb dumbbells, 3 sets x 12 reps each
Wednesday - Triceps. 2 exercises with 15lb dumbbells, 3 sets x 12 reps each
Thursday - Shoulders. 3 exercises with 15lb dumbbells, 3 sets x 12 reps each
Mike Mentzer’s High-Intensity Training
In July, I came across a video about Mike Mentzer and his method of “High-Intensity Training”. Everything I heard from him, in his recorded cassettes uploaded as videos on YouTube, made a lot of sense to me. The biggest takeaway for me was -
Most people over-train in volume (number of sets x number of reps), but don’t provide sufficient stimulus to the body in any of those sets.
His philosophy was that we’re in the gym only to provide the body with sufficient stimuli. We don’t build muscles in the gym. The building part happens later, during the recovery phase. He recommended providing sufficient recovery time to the body.
It resonated with me so well because, with early morning meetings and 2-3 days to the office, I knew I could only consistently manage 2-3 workout sessions per week. While I’d already accepted that I just wouldn’t be able to grow muscles as fast as I would if I could do more frequent workout sessions e.g. 4-5 per week, I felt that if Mike was right about it, for me his training style is the most optimum method. His teachings (and a few other fitness content creators on YouTube), also removed a few more misconceptions e.g. you need to do a variety of exercises to build muscles or you need to keep changing exercises.
Of course, Mike’s videos were taped decades ago and there is new knowledge in the field of exercise science. Here’s a video critiquing Mike’s recommendations if you’d like a more balanced view.
Now, I look at building muscles in a much simpler manner. It just needs 3 inputs -
Stimuli - Resistance training with weights, to let the muscles know that they need to grow in size to offer more strength
Recovery - Sleep is the most important, but if the quality of sleep is poor, then keeping more days within the workout sessions can give the same outcome, though it slows down progress
Fuel - At least 1g per 1kg body weight of protein in the diet
The idea of High-Intensity Training is that people misunderstand just what kind of stimulus a muscle needs to grow. By doing 3 sets of 12 reps each, they are most likely lifting weights that are easy for them to lift i.e. it’s insufficient strain on the muscle to signal it to grow. Of course, doing 3 sets rushes blood into those parts of the body, giving it a temporary bloating in size which is also known as a “pump”. The pump makes you feel good, temporarily but can be an illusion. According to Mike, enjoy the pump but don’t be fooled by it - it doesn’t indicate progress.
Another thing that doesn’t indicate progress is pain. While lifting heavy can cause some pain in the muscle, it’s not always the muscle that is in pain. Often, and especially beginners, tend to confuse the pain in tendon tissues with pain in muscles. Pain in tendons is risky and most likely an early signal of an injury in the future. If we don’t underestimate the warm-up, then ideally, tendons (joints e.g. armpits and knees) shouldn’t be in any pain after a workout. For people who are regular with workouts, the muscles are going to have very mild pain, if any, on the day after an intense workout, as long as they don’t ignore the warmup.
If not 3 sets of 12 reps each, then how should one structure their workout? Mike recommends doing only 1 set of each exercise. A warm-up set doesn’t count, of course. For example, if you’re on an overhead press machine for shoulders, you could do a warm-up set of 20 reps with a very lightweight, e.g. 7.5 to 15kg. This is to make sure the muscles and tendons in the shoulder are all warm and ready to make a rigorous effort. Then, after about 30-45 seconds of break to recover your breathing and heart rate, you could start with the main set. This is to ensure that the failure in the main set is due to the muscle being unable to push further, and not due to your breathing or cardio capacity. In the main set, you should aim to lift a weight that’s heavy enough to help you reach failure within the 6-12 reps range. Failure is when you cannot complete even one more rep without completely ruining your form e.g. bending your lower body, using the back support to somehow generate momentum to push the weight up.
In the last few months, I’ve also started to be more patient with my rest time between the exercises. I take at least 2 minutes of a break, and sometimes as much as 4-5 minutes, towards the end of the session. This has helped me ensure that my cardio capacity isn’t the point of failure. I stop a set only because the muscle I’m targeting can’t do anymore.
I also prefer to do most of my workouts with machines rather than dumbbells. They allow me to maintain proper form and provide more granular milestones to track progressive overload.
Third workout routine - 1 set per exercise
My current workout routine -
Saturday - Upper body workout
Sunday - Legs workout
Wed/Tue (if possible) - Upper body workout
Upper body workout
If I can go for the mid-week workout session on Wed/Thu, then I target Back on that day. Then I skip back on the weekend session and replace it with Chest.
If I skip the mid-week session, then I do the exercises for both my Back and Chest in the weekend session.
I try to start with the biggest muscle group and end with the smallest. This is one of Mike’s recommendations. I’ve tweaked it a bit because I want to prioritize the biceps over the triceps.
Back - 2 exercises
Row machine
Pulldown machine
Chest - 2 exercises
Chest press machine
Pec-dec machine
Shoulders - 3 exercises
Overhead press machine
Reverse pec-dec machine
Lateral raise with dumbbells
Biceps (higher priority than triceps) - 2 exercises
Incline bench curl with dumbbells
Concentration curls with dumbbells
Triceps - 2 exercises
Arm extension with cables
Arm extension with dumbbells
Legs workout
Legs have larger muscles and allow us (requires us, for the stimuli) to lift heavier than we can when targeting the relatively smaller upper body muscles.
Lifting heavier weights means a higher load on the CNS (central nervous system) and cardio system (heart and lungs). I track my heart rate with an Apple watch and try to maintain it in Zone 2 and Zone 3 (around 125-150 per minute).
I also keep the rest time longer than I would during an upper body workout. Around 5-7 minutes between each exercise.
Just like the upper body, I start with the largest muscle group to the smallest -
Quads and Glutes - Leg press machine with plates as weight
Quads - Leg extension machine
Hamstrings - Lying leg curls machine
Calf - Seated calf raises with plates as weight