Evil’s Workout Plan – November 2013

Let’s start a new series: here is my current workout plan with explanations about why and when I do what.

So, How Do You Work Out?

Occasionally I get questions about what workout plan I follow at the moment, and so far always said “with some changes the intermediate plan posted on my site.”

It dawned on me that that is neither quite satisfactory nor much enlightening. So from now on I’ll keep you updated. Maybe it’ll give you some inspiration for your own workouts, maybe you even know something I could do better.

Here goes!

Evil’s Current Workout Plan (November 2013)

 
As you see, for some of the exercises I have to point you to ExRx as I haven’t yet done a video on those.

Let’s now look at why I do what I do.

Mondays Explained

Wut, no bench presses on Mondays? Yes, no bench presses, because I recently had some problems with my shoulder joints from doing them. Most likely this is due to the rotator cuff being under too much stress from doing them on the floor – possibly a topic for a future video.

Anyhow, doing weighted push-ups allows the shoulders more room to move and inclined presses shift the stress to a more favorable position while targeting the upper chest. The flyes I do because via an isolation I want to get the rest out of the main chest muscles before I shift over to the triceps with close-grip push-ups.

I’m still debating with myself if the close-grip bench presses for the triceps aren’t overkill, but my triceps was a bit behind and I didn’t want to use two isolations (which already the triceps extensions classify as, despite involving tons of stabilizers).

Wednesdays Explained

Because my lats stalled a bit, Wednesdays start with the plateau breaker technique I recently explained here and I follow them up with the reverse grip barbell row. This was a new one to me (I usually do regular barbell or dumbbell rows) and is supposed to give you more involvement from the lats. Before moving over to the biceps, I finish the lats off with another isolation involving loads of synergists, the barbell pullover (which, when I first did them after buying my barbell resulted in some, ahem, damage to the furniture).

For the biceps I currently do barbell curls, which I reintroduced to my schedule after doing dumbbell curls and them causing a bit of trouble with my wrists. My wrists apparently are a bit more sensitive, so regular dumbbell or hammer curls I can only use sparingly.

Because the upper arm doesn’t get that big without some love for the brachialis, I do the concentration curls and then finish off with chin-ups. At that point the lats had a bit of time to recuperate and them and the biceps sharing the work results in getting the absolute rest out of both.

Why do I do the hanging leg raises? Because on Mondays and Fridays I train the abs, and to stabilize my spine I want to have one exercise that targets the hip flexors.

Fridays Explained

The military presses of course are one of the greatest shoulder compounds out there and they are followed by two exercises targeting the side and rear delts. On the side delts I go easier here, because they were already involved as synergists in the military presses.

Hack squats then allow me to do squats with bigger weights while not having a cage. Of course I could also use quite a bit of weight with dumbbells, but I feel that with huge weights I tend to bad form with them on squats. Holding dumbbells that big also gets quite uncomfortable for my wrists and forearms.

The good mornings are a recent replacement for the regular deadlift, to have a bit variety, and my workout week ends with another visit to the abs.

And The Next Update Comes…

I roughly change my plans at the beginning of each month, so this one I actually have been doing for three weeks now. Which means the next one I’ll post early in December. That is, if I make changes. When a workout plan results in me making progress, I always go by the good old “never change a running system.”