deciding what to work out

So, I had lunch with Anoop (who writes here) recently and as usual, I was eating a lunch which many people don't find too interesting. On that day I was eating a low carb lunch. There was no bread or pasta. A chicken breast roasted with herbs and a roast beef tenderloin along with a salad (no pasta or dressing). Each of us is healthy but he is "handsomer" than I am. I am also older and I work out every day with weights while he bikes. However, the cool thing is that he gets the diet crap and he also was looking for Weight Lifting exercise tips. What better topic to get my conversation juices flowing than weight lifting? So, I shared my article with him. Its here:

Afterward, he emailed me asking a really good question which can come only from a person who is seriously considering and planning to start working out with weights. So, I decided to write the answer here on the blog instead of responding to his email.

Q: How to break your workout over a week? What day to do what exercise such as "curls, 8 sets, 30 lbs"?
A: So, again, very valid and also very important question. I'd say there are two to three phases your body goes through when working with weights. In each phase, your workout schedule and how you break your work out over days will differ. Here, I have tried to write about my experience and have tried to write what should happen in each phase so the reader can determine whats her/his best schedule.

Initially, when you are new to weights, your muscular system, joints and your cardio system is not fully ready. Even your brain is not fully ready to understand what is going on with all those weights. Lets look at that situation in a little more detail. Your body is as ready as it can ever be for any sort of reasonable exigencies. So, if a large refrigerator suddenly toppled on you while you were unawares, your body and brain might be able to summon enough energy and strength to push it back in place or at least avoid injury to your body. Reasonable exigency and positive response! If a truck were to skip the light and run over you, you'd die - Unreasonable exigency and total lack of bodily response! How this relates to body building is that, when you go do weight lifting for the first time, your brain and body will think this is some type of exigency and release many resources (including adrenalin) to respond to the challenge. This is not really an exigency, you are working out, but your brain does not know the difference when you do if for the first time. So, you are likely to push harder than what you are actually capable of. The least impact it will have is that you will have severe DOMS on the following two days and the worst is that you will pull or tear a muscle and injure yourself. (Severe DOMS is OK). Now imagine that you have already broken out your exercises by body parts by day. So, on the first day, you do arms for 27 sets and second day you do chest 27 sets. It is likely that you will have a constant bout of DOMS which will break your motivation to go back and leave a bad scar on your memory. (Really, it might). I would say that for new beginners, its best to spread out exercies all over the body for at least a month. Additionally, don't just do weights every day, spend a lot of time adding flexibility to the body. If you have not worked out for long and suddenly try to flex your muscles, you could hurt yourself pretty early in your game. Lastly, try to stay with dumbbells and machines for the first month. Barbells are good too, however, most barbell exercises need good balancing abilities. That ability is not readily available if you have not worked out for long. In terms of specifics, here is my set by set recommendation. You can pick any of these as long as you do around 27 sets (or as many as you can).

Do all of these with low or no weights and up to 20/24 repetitions.
1. 3 sets of push ups
2. 3 sets of sit ups
3. 3 sets of arm curls with dumbbells
4. 3 sets of tricep dumbbell raise
5. 3 sets of leg/thigh extensions/raise
6. 3 sets of hamstring
7. 3 sets of abdomen or back.
8. 3 sets of pull ups
9. 6 sets of shoulder front and back dumbbell raise
10. 3 sets of flies
11. 3 sets of peck deck

This itself is a pretty hard workout. Make sure you provide ample rest to your body, maybe work out only 4 days a week to begin with. Rest will make things easy to deal with and give the body enough time to recover.

Next, after you have been working out regularly for a month or more, you switch to the second phase. During this phase, your body has started accepting the muscle tear as a part of your daily regimen. Its no longer working on the emergency/exigency response system. Adrenalin is no longer driving your strength. Now is the time you should switch to doing maybe two or three small body parts or just one large part and also add barbells to your workout. Note that depending on your strength level you might want to just stay with machines for certain workouts instead of free weights because machines will take off some stress of balancing weights and smoothen out some of the motions on your workout. During this phase, the goal is to totally tear your muscles, but still keep the tear to a manageable level by spreading your workout over two or three body parts instead of just one. The only thing you may want to ensure is that when you choose your exercises, choose opposing muscles and not complementary muscles. What I mean is that on the day you do you do your chest, don't work out your shoulder or arms too. In most cases, when you use your chest muscles, your arms and shoulders chip in too. Pair your chest muscles with your back muscles. Its very unlikely that in any day to day use of your body, you will ever use the chest and the back at the same time. This pairing of opposing muscles might also help a little with your posture as you will have opposing stress after the workout and one muscle will not unduely hinder your posture. If you are doing one large body part, such as legs, you might want to potentially skip the rest of your body. Leg exercise can be tiring, just because it is used so often everyday and is also one of the largest muscle on your body. Further, during this phase, try to discover your body limits. Add weights to all your workouts until you find your repetition maximum weight. Repetition Maximum weight (RM) is the weight your muscle can push without you being able to do more than 8 to 10 repetitions. Lastly, for those of you who are not flexible enough, please get into a flexibility routine during this phase. Without flexibility, you are heading towards injury.My recommendation would be:

Day 1. Chest & Back
Day 2. Arms & Shoulder
Day 3. Legs
Day 4. Rest
Day 5. Abdomen & Flexibility
Day 6. Repeat Day 1 and onwards

Finally, after having been working out for 2 to 3 months, you are on your way to be whatever you want to be. During this stage, the focus is to grow specific parts your body. The aim is to work out one muscle a day as per your requirements. Avoid repeating the same muscle on consecutive days. There are no rules or concerns here provided you are sure that you are ready to enter this phase. How do you decide whether you are ready? If you feel like you have increased muscle mass, flexibility and weight lifting capability over the past 2 to 3 months, you are ready! In this phase, you should see good results from each day of your workout. Remember that if you are not seeing results, the only problem could be that you are not working out enough. Its very important to find your repetition maximum every day. Add weights until you fail to lift it on the 8th, 9th or 10th repetition. If you go beyond 10 repetitions, you are under working your muscles. (Take this with a pinch of salt, its not really that you are under working, but, you are definitely not micro tearing as many muscles as you would like to. The other thing you should be concerned about is flexibility. Flexibility is your friend who will prevent injury. You don't want to be injured. Injury can set you back, really back. During this phase, if you like to or need to, you may also start a diet rich in proteins. If you don't need to loose weight, you should load up on carbs before your workout and follow up with proteins after. Carbs provide immediate supply glucose (energy) that will allow you to push your workout limits. Protein after work out will help your muscles rebuild and recover. Really, this phase can be very creative. You should try different exercises to see what you like and what keeps you motivated. Just set your aim high and fire with a smile on your face!

Hope Anoop and other readers like this post.