Workout: What did you do today?

[grindy]

If I'm only working out 4 times a week based off of the schedule I set earlier yes technically chest will end up being twice a week sort of. If I did it every Monday, idk my math feels a bit off still seems like once a week.  Once in a 7 day period.

Also shorter cardio yes there is no way in hell I'm doing 20 mins worth of cardio after a tough workout session. Especially if I was working with my trainer that way. He pushes me til my body is exhausted. I just want to leave the gym and go home to shower. When I work out without him, I usually do 10 mins cardio post work out even if I'm tired. It's not the same level of tiredness that my trainer gets me too but it's still painful.  Today I did the 10 mins on the elliptical at the end and my arms were bothering me so much. It was a good pain like the whole no gain no pain feeling but woof it was rough. I barely made it through the 10 mins, I got to the 6 minute mark and wanted to go home.  I pushed through the pain though.

One of the unfortunately many usual mistakes PTs make, is rushing clients through a ton of exercises with little regard for training structure and proper rest periods. Clients feel exhausted and sweaty afterwards and think that this was a very productive workout, when in reality very little to no muscle and strength gains have been achieved. Could this be the case?
I can kinda understand being too fucked for cardio after a very intense leg day but after upper body this is unusual. And if your arms bother you too much on the elliptical, you can always switch to some legs-only cardio.

[grindy]

Push day today. On this push day my main lifts used to be heavy barbell overhead press and incline dumbbell chest press. But last week I noticed that the limiting factor on the chest press were my delts and not my pecs, which were the actual target muscle. My delts were still too tired from the overhead pressing. So today I switched to flat bench and immediately noticed a huge change in my pec activation. Gonna keep it that way for the foreseeable future.

[DJChameleon]

One of the unfortunately many usual mistakes PTs make, is rushing clients through a ton of exercises with little regard for training structure and proper rest periods. Clients feel exhausted and sweaty afterwards and think that this was a very productive workout, when in reality very little to no muscle and strength gains have been achieved. Could this be the case?
I can kinda understand being too fucked for cardio after a very intense leg day but after upper body this is unusual. And if your arms bother you too much on the elliptical, you can always switch to some legs-only cardio.

I can always do the elliptical without using the arm things and just do my legs but I've never done it that way. I also had that conversation today about the rest periods between sets and how short or long they should be. I was working out with some new buddies today and they say they rest for a full minute but my PT is against that for the type of program he has. The maximum I should be resting is 30 seconds and the workout is built for efficiency. No one or at least I don't want to be spending all day in the gym doing hour plus workouts. Maybe that's why your workout days are so long when they don't need to be.

[Guybrush]

I read up on optimal rest between sets and in my case, it seems to be 2-3 minutes so that's what I'm doing. I might be adding some time due to age as I'm reading 40+ guidelines 😅

Hurt my right arm somewhat during today's exercise. I was doing dumbbell pullover with 25 kgs wights on a dumbbell, 10 x 3 reps, and I think that's what messed it up. Probably shouldn't have done the bench presses after. Wanted to get some pullups in, but didn't feel good.

How do you guys feel about dumbbell pullovers?

If anyone's confused, it's this one:



Seems not great for shoulder health? Plus think I'm kinda already getting them, and maybe in a better way, doing ab-wheel workouts.

[jimmy jazz]

I don't do them and I have a decently wide back. Skip them if you don't get on with them imo.

[grindy]

I read up on optimal rest between sets and in my case, it seems to be 2-3 minutes so that's what I'm doing. I might be adding some time due to age as I'm reading 40+ guidelines 😅

Hurt my right arm somewhat during today's exercise. I was doing dumbbell pullover with 25 kgs wights on a dumbbell, 10 x 3 reps, and I think that's what messed it up. Probably shouldn't have done the bench presses after. Wanted to get some pullups in, but didn't feel good.

How do you guys feel about dumbbell pullovers?

If anyone's confused, it's this one:



Seems not great for shoulder health? Plus think I'm kinda already getting them, and maybe in a better way, doing ab-wheel workouts.

Haven't done them in ages. Some people get great results, to me they always felt weird.

[grindy]

I can always do the elliptical without using the arm things and just do my legs but I've never done it that way. I also had that conversation today about the rest periods between sets and how short or long they should be. I was working out with some new buddies today and they say they rest for a full minute but my PT is against that for the type of program he has. The maximum I should be resting is 30 seconds and the workout is built for efficiency. No one or at least I don't want to be spending all day in the gym doing hour plus workouts. Maybe that's why your workout days are so long when they don't need to be.

30 seconds is ridiculous if you are trying to build muscle and strength. There is no fixed rest time but your muscle should be good to go and your breathing relatively calm before the next set. I rest around 3-5 minutes between big, heavy compounds and around 1-2 between isolations. If you want to be time efficient I'd go with supersets, rest pause training on isolations and maybe generally doing fewer exercises and sets but with more intensity. My workouts take around 60 to 70 minutes.

[jimmy jazz]

Tbf some of the golden era guys would train with 30 secs rest between sets but yeah I wouldn't do it myself regularly and none of us are training like that. I'm pretty much doing what you just described.

I try to keep it to 60 mins. Sometimes it goes over but it's no big deal.

[grindy]

I can see someone with exceptional willpower, a great cardiovascular system and genetics being able to benefit from it. And even they would probably grow better with more rest. But for us mere mortals this is no way to train. You end up finishing sets because you're out of breath and generally fatigued and not because you're any way close to failure. Plus form can really suffer from rushing so much. I guess one can have some noobie gains from training like this for the first few months, this is certainly better than nothing, but there will be no long term progress.

[jimmy jazz]

As you train at home, if you can be bothered try one of these and tell me what you think Grindy.

There's supersetting then there's this.

[grindy]

I skipped through the videos a bit and I think I have a basic idea about the workouts. (I'll rewatch them more thoroughly though.) I have my doubts whether I'm hardcore enough, I've done arm days in that vein and boy is it tough. I don't want to skip my program at the moment but I'll definitely try this at some point.

[DJChameleon]

30 seconds is ridiculous if you are trying to build muscle and strength. There is no fixed rest time but your muscle should be good to go and your breathing relatively calm before the next set. I rest around 3-5 minutes between big, heavy compounds and around 1-2 between isolations. If you want to be time efficient I'd go with supersets, rest pause training on isolations and maybe generally doing fewer exercises and sets but with more intensity. My workouts take around 60 to 70 minutes.

The thing is I'm lifting way less weight than you guys are so you might think 30 seconds is ridiculous but for the amount of weight that I do in my sets it's not that bad.

[grindy]

The thing is I'm lifting way less weight than you guys are so you might think 30 seconds is ridiculous but for the amount of weight that I do in my sets it's not that bad.

It doesn't matter that much. Big weight or small, high or low reps, you need to rest and then get the muscle relatively close to failure.

[DJChameleon]

It doesn't matter that much. Big weight or small, high or low reps, you need to rest and then get the muscle relatively close to failure.

Okay I'll try it out. I just realized I'm being mad combative with your new suggestions for no reason lol 

Actually I know the reason, I'm super defensive about my PT. He's a cool dude and it always seems like you are slandering him and his method majority of the time but I'm open to suggestions even though it doesn't seem that way.

It's just when you are used to doing things one way and then being told it's wrong and to try something different you are a little resistant I would say.

I would try it out and see how it works for me. So try one minute between sets?

[grindy]

Okay I'll try it out. I just realized I'm being mad combative with your new suggestions for no reason lol 

Actually I know the reason, I'm super defensive about my PT. He's a cool dude and it always seems like you are slandering him and his method majority of the time but I'm open to suggestions even though it doesn't seem that way.

It's just when you are used to doing things one way and then being told it's wrong and to try something different you are a little resistant I would say.

I would try it out and see how it works for me. So try one minute between sets?

I can actually understand you being a bit combative. Even apart from the PT being a nice guy, it's probably unpleasant to train your ass off only for some guys on the internet to criticize what you're doing.
But there isn't even any controversy about rest times, the scientific literature and experience-based lifters agree that it is better to rest a bit longer and I also used to train with very small rest periods myself and got stuck pretty quickly.

I'd say that 1 minute should be the minimum for isolation exercises using smaller muscle groups that can recover quickly like biceps and side delts. For things like chest press, squats etc. I'd rest longer. As written previously, you shouldn't be out of breath and your muscle should feel ready to go again, although I understand that the latter is a bit vague. It would really be interesting to see your program, so it could be restructured due to the longer rest but to still not be too long. But I think you already said that the program is changed a lot, which in itself is not a good thing.