Chilled Out Bearded Man

After three months of working out on a three day routine, we were confronted by a trainer who was watching us. He was very impressed at how consistent we were with our workouts and how we tracked our routines. He suggested a major change.

As I mentioned last time, we were working out on a 3 day routine, working 1-2 muscle groups per day. The trainer recommended that as beginners, we should not be doing so many muscle specific excerises. Rather, he said, we should switch to a fully body workout or at most a two day workout. The reason he gave was that we should build up the major muscles as a base, before we start working on the smaller muscles. He also pointed out that we must be in pain on a regular basis. He was correct. He said that a fully body workout will get our muscles accustomed to the workouts and they won’t hurt as much.
We looked into it more and discovered that a two day split would give us a great compromise. On the one hand, we get to work out all of the major muscles on a regular basis. On the other hand, our muscles get a few days to rest and recover between workouts.

The two day split is comprised of two one day routines. On the first day, we work out chest, abs, triceps and shoulders. On day two, we work biceps, calves, legs, lower back, and upper back. We are working out the full body within two workouts. We do a 3 day schedule, but one could do a 4 day schedule as well. Any more than that does not seem to be recommended as you will over stress your body. If you feel the need to workout every day, then switch off days between cardio and weight training.

The Workout Chart

Someone requested that I post the sheet that I use to track my routine. Great idea!
Chilled Out Bearded Man Workout Chart

I carry this sheet with me to the gym every week along with a list of exercises. Read more about using the sheet:

http://www.chilledoutbeardedman.com/2007/05/15/tracking-your-reps/

I made some minor changes to the sheet. There is only room for three sets per person now. This is mainly because I wanted to have space for notes. I write notes for the future workouts, so that I don’t forget to implement the valuable lessons that I learn in each workout.

In the last posting I said that I had 4 columns per person so as not to restrict myself. On second thought, I decided that regimenting myself would be very helpful. It makes sure that I don’t over do it, and it insures that I have enough time to finish my full workout. (But, if you do get that undying urge to do an extra set, you can always fit it in the notes column.)

I would love to hear suggestions and comments about the sheet and its implementation.

I want to talk about our method for tracking our weight and repetitions from one work out to the next.

When we first started working out, being the organizational freak that I am, I sat down with MS Excel (a very popular MS spreadsheet program) and created a list for tracking our weight training routine. This is generally seen as way of monitoring your improvement. You really get to see if you are improving and where you need to make changes.

The first sheet I came up with was a long list of all the muscles as headings followed by lists of exercises for that muscle. There was quite of a lot of overlap, as many exercises work multiple muscles groups. As you can imagine, it was a long list. It was two pages long. The first column was for the day. The second column was the date. The third column had the list as mentioned with one exercise per row. The next column was Dave’s Repetitions column and the last column was my Repetition column. Let’s use Dave’s column as the example, but mine was obviously identical.

Dave’s column was split up into 8 sub columns. The first column was R1(Repetitions in Set 1) and the second column was Q1 (the weight lifted on Set 1). So the headings went like this: R1, Q1, R2, Q2, R3, Q3, R4, Q4. Although we usually do only 3 sets, I like to leave room for those moments of inspiration when you just have to do a fourth set. I wouldn’t want the sheet constricting my motivation.

This system was good and we used it for almost two months. This involved carrying around two sheets per week. We always brought at least the last one, as well, so that we could see what we did the prior week and how we could beat it. It was usually nice to have at least the previous two weeks, as some weeks we would miss a specific exercise, so we would look two weeks back to find out what weight to lift and how many repetitions to do.

There were a few major faults with that system. First, there were two sheets laid out in portrait. This meant that we were carrying around 6 sheets on most weeks. (I highly recommend a clipboard or staples.) This leads to fault number two, that it takes a long time to look through two long sheets to find the exercise you are looking for. And fault number three is that we did not need this many exercises. We were only able to do about 6 exercises per week. This meant that we had almost 3 times as many exercises on the two sheets, as we could do in a week.

So, the forward thinking guy that I am, I made some major modifications.

I left the exercises column blank. This allows us to write in the exercises ourselves, so that only the exercises on the list are the ones we actually do. If want an actual list of exercises we carry it separately. Making this column handwritten meant that we needed more space for the names of the exercises. My handwriting is about 100% more legible when it is bigger. Not to mention that when you are tired after maxing out, you can barely hold a pencil, let alone aim it to write legibly.

To resolve the space problem, I simply turned the sheet sideways to landscape view.

This has been working wonderfully and I highly recommend it. I am interested in hearing suggestions of how you track your exercises. Please write.

I have been attending the gym now for about three months. I never talk about a subject until I am into it, because as soon as I start telling people about something, I tend to stop doing it. Not sure if its psychological, or what.

My friend, lets call him Dave for anonymity’s sake, and I try to attend the gym 3 times per week. We were doing really well for the first month and half, but then things started coming up and we started to slip a bit. This basically meant that we were working out twice a week instead of three times. Since we had set ourselves up on a 3 day rotation, we were now only getting through all the major muscle groups once every week and half.

The idea behind the three day rotation is simple. When you exercise, your muscles need time to recuperate. Its that period of rest after the workout that allows the torn muscle fibers to grow back in. Its these muscle fibers that make you stronger with bigger muscles. Weight trainers recommend that you allow three to four days for a muscle to recover before you work it again. Lifting weights daily is not generally recommended by weightlifters, not to mention the amount of time that would take up – some of us have other things to do. Working out is important, but whats the point of getting in shape if you never have time to live with that healthy body of yours.

So, since we should only lift every other day, and we need to allow 4 days for a muscle to recover, it made sense to set up a 3 day per week rotation. We go through all the major muscle groups once per week. By the next week, the muscle has recovered (and grown stronger) and is ready for a heavier weight.

I highly recommend working out with a buddy, especially when you are starting out. We keep each other in order. If one of us is feeling lazy, the other is generally there to give him a pep talk. Choosing a good friend as your workout buddy is also highly recommended, as it gives another incentive for getting to the gym.

Next time, I’ll discuss how we keep track of our weights from week to week.