Program advice.

[SpeedRacer]

Hey everyone.

I'm about to meet a personal trainer this week so that I can have some form advice on deadlifting, and while making the appointment the head PT guy gave me a spiel about how important it was for me to have a program designed by a PT. He seemed a little upset with my nonchalant response of smiling politely and saying "I understand" when he was talking about the terrible injuries I'll get if I'm not on their program. He was MORE upset when I said I'd designed the program myself from a previous PT session I'd had (i.e. I took their program and defenestrated it because it had too much treadmill cardio).

So here's my program for you guys. Not necessarily because I trust random internet people MORE than a PT, but because I want advice or knowledge on "Am I doing the right thing?"

My goal in short is strength, my diet consists basically of meat, eggs, fruit and vegetables.

Monday: Pushing work;

Push-up

DB bench press

incline DB bench press

Lateral Pulldown or assisted pullup

Tuesday: Light/bodyweight day;

Squat jump

high rep squat sets

lunges

box jumps

core work

Wednesday: Pulling work;

Pull-up

Dip

Lat Pulldown

Seated row

DB/BB row

Military press

Thursday: Cardio day;

Suicides

Burpees

Jumping jacks

Skip rope

Friday: Legs;

Deadlift

Squat (either front, back or zercher depending on mood)

Saturday: yoga;

Balance.

Sunday: Rest;

Video games

I arrived at this program in a sort of meandering way over the last couple of weeks, this is what I enjoy doing and what I'm able to stick with. I guess what I'm trying to say is, when I go into gym I do whatever I want and work out whatever isn't sore, but if I HAD a structured program, this would be it. I only really want to know if it can be immediately improved or something glaringly obvious is lacking. I do one or two planks almost every day until failure.

I do put in variety, every now and then I do something for fun... usually involving medicine balls.

[Timmy M]

the best gym plan you can do is one that you'll stick to so if you'll stick to it (it look pretty good as well tbh, few too many machines for my liking but i guess once you're better at pull ups you'll dispose of lat pull-downs etc)overall i think you're ok it's very well rounded and focuses on variation and compound movements i'd say stick with it, i have very little faith in PT workouts, my mate got one from his gym... i laughed when i saw it and wrote a few for him, now whenever he trains i get a fb message saying how much he hates me

[SpeedRacer]

Sticking to it's the plan, I only let myself off the hook with gym when I'm ill. I've actually already seen minor improvement (though sometimes I think it's my eyes playing tricks and I have to look at the mirror closer) through my unstructured workout. Honestly I'm really comfortable with what I posted.

And yeah, the machines are going the way of the dinosaur as soon as I can knock out 5/5/5 dead hang pull-ups.

[Centurion]

If you're separating your workouts into "Pushing" and "Pulling" would it not make sense to move the assisted pullups from Monday to Wednesday and the dips and military presses from Wednesday to Monday? Just my 2 cents

[SpeedRacer]

That kind of thing comes from the very first piece of advice I ever got about working out. The idea is, that on different days you'll work out differently. You'll have a different amount of gusto, or your muscles will feel stronger, or you're at a low point of testosterone and you'll feel lethargic. If it turns out that all of your gusto days are on pushing and all of your lethargy days are on pulling you'll do yourself a disservice.

So the idea is, by doing a tiny bit of pulling work on your push days and vice versa, you're not only using all of the testosterone you built up from the pushing you just did, but those muscles haven't been worked yet so you'll be able to do them hardcore, end on a high note sort of thing.

Of course, all my P.E. teacher said to me when I was 14 and told me the above was, "It's a balance thing, trust me" but I've come to understand what he meant by it.