Al101 said:
Hey guys,
I wasn't exactly sure where to put this... I thought of making a thread on the "Recruits Only" but I figured making a thread somewhere else, where people with over 250 posts can reply to, would help me out better.
Anyways. I'll get to the point. I'd like to show my workout routine, as well as my studying stuff just to get some advice to see if I'm doing something wrong or if I could do something different, maybe better. I have recently changed it up, so some of these are relatively new to me, so I'm not exactly very good at them just yet. Allow me, then!
My personal feeling is you're trying to do to much without a specific goal in mind. You need to understand the difference between training and exercise.
Exercise is defined as: activity requiring physical effort, carried out especially to sustain or improve health and fitness.
Training is defined as: to get oneself into condition for an athletic performance through exercise, diet, practice, etc
Now the two meanings are very similar; however, they are different as one is general and the other is specific. You will get in better shape exercising, there is no question; however, is it necessarily the shape you want to be in? This is where training comes into play. A pushup is an exercise, doing a set number of pushups in a circuit for time is training. In essence, training is a prescription with the aim of achieving a certain affect. In your case, preparing you to enter the military as an infantry NCM.
So how would I rate your program? As an infantry officer I would say it needs some work. I stand by my statement that you are doing too much without enough prescription and at the end of the day you're turning the wheels really fast but not getting anywhere.
Let me elaborate:
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - Weights at the gym. Adding 5lbs per week until I can't no more. My routine below:
Squats - 5x5
Bench Press - 5x5
Overhead Press - 5x5
Barbell Row - 5x5
Deadlift 1x5
Ok your weightlifting, what are the numbers you're putting up. You could be doing 5x5 but I can't evaluate your program if I don't know what you are actually lifting? I also need to know how much strength you have gained from where you started to where you are now?
Also, those people who told you not to do all those exercises in one day are right and the reason you shouldn't is because you aren't optimizing your maximum lifting potential by doing so. 5x5 is a good program, I've used it before myself but you need to split up the workouts to achieve the maximum benefit.
You should be doing an A/B split
Workout A:
Squats
Bench Press
Rows (Really should be doing Powercleans but I know they are difficult to learn)
Workout B:
Squats
Overhead Press
Deadlift
You altnernate between A/B workout to give your muscles maximum time to recover, otherwise you are going in circles. if the purpose of your training is to get stronger, doing every single lift in one day is not a good idea and I highly doubt you are making big gains in terms of strength. If you are making gains it's because your a novice lifter which we like to call the novice effect in weightlifting, i.e. you'll get better no matter what you do but again this is training and not exercise so you need a prescription to achieve the best results.
Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday - Bodyweight exercises. It is quite simple but I've added some variety there. This is also a newly, improved routine. My routine below:
10 Reg Push Ups, 2nd Inverted, 3rd Diamond, 4th Inverted, 5th Explosive
10 Jumping Jacks
10 Burpees
10 Reg Squats, 2nd Lateral Lunges, 3rd Reg Squat, 4th Lateral Lunges, 5th Reg Squat
10 Crunches, 2nd Circles, 3rd Single Leg Lift, 4th Single Leg Circles, 5th Pulsators
30sec Reg Plank, 2nd Star Plank, 3rd Reg Plank, 4th Star Plank, 5th Reg Plank
That's one set. Complete 5 sets in total. Increasing by 1 rep each/5 sec every week until I see fit to stop.
So by doing this type of workout every Tuesday/Wednesday/Saturday you've basically nullified any potential gains in strength you would have made had you simply used the day to rest the muscle groups you are targeting because you already stressed them out to the maximum doing 5x5 the day before. Doing squats again after you've already done heavy squats the day before is a really dumb idea tbh. if your going to do that than there is really no point in even lifting weights as your weight workout is basically becoming an endurance workout and again is it the right kind of endurance?
A better idea would be to add pushups, chinups/pullups and core after your strength workout. In weightlifting we call these accessory exercises as they aide in your strength progression by targeting specific muscle regions in a different way to create a stimulus. It's this stimulus and confusion that allow your muscles to get stronger.
My suggestion would be to drop your Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday program and add some accessory exercises to your weightlifting program.
A common way to do this would be:
Workout A
Squats
Bench Press
Rows
Pushups 3x to Failure
3x12 Reverse crunches (you can look this up)
Workout B
Squats
Overhead Press
Deadlifts
Chinups/Pullups 3x to Failure alternating every workout
3xPlanks 60sec to start.... increase a little every workout
Now you are doing what you just did before only you are leaving time for proper recovery which is going to make you stronger. The stronger you are, the better you will be. If you can lift 2x your bodyweight 5 times, you'll be able to crank off pushups, squats, chinups like nobodies business.
Now you may notice I do not have any actual RUNNING. That's when advice would go well. I realize we'll be doing lots of running, but I can't help to notice I'm doing quite a hell of a lot of cardio which is not just stationary cardio, but rather moving the entire body, much like running. Also, I do not have any Pull Ups. That would be because I do not have a machine, nor is there a park around here with anything for me to hang on, and I'm just making up excuses. I hate pull ups. I will fix it. I will add them to my program.
Keep in mind, I've been doing these for some time now, and I am in no way exhausted by the end of the day. I mean, yes, I'm sore as should be expected, but I could keep going. I don't believe I am overtraining as there hasn't been any signs. Please let me know if this workout routine is good enough, and what should/could be changed, if necessary. I am also eating healthy every day, not to worry!
Here is the thing, as an infanteer, you need to become the jack of all trades. You need to be able to benchpress two plates with ease but you also need to be able to run and have a high level of cardiovascular endurance.
RUNNING is a necessary evil of the profession so you need to start doing it and learn to love it because you will be doing a lot of it. Now there are different ways to train for running. When people think of running, they think of going for a long, slow jog usually. This is one way to train but is it the most effective? In my experience not really.
There are two types of exercise when we talk cardiovascular fitness, anaerobic and aerobic.
Aerobic literally means "relating to, involving, or requiring free oxygen" while anaerobic literally means "living without air"
Now how does this relate to training? There is a saying I've often heard in the military that "if you can run 5km, you can run 20km" now this isn't necessarily true; however, what they mean to say is if you can muster up the energy to run 5km you can probably run 20km albeit at a far slower pace. Decreasing the time it takes for you to run 20km is where anaerobic fitness comes in.
Anaerobic fitness is basically short duration, high intensity exercise designed to force your muscles to push themselves for longer periods of time. In the military you need both anaerobic and aerobic fitness although we as an institution, much to our detriment, tend to only focus on the aerobic side of the house.
I noted that you're skipping, skipping is great exercise and also great for both aerobic and anaerobic fitness. You can also get creative with it by doing double-unders, crosses, different foot patterns, etc... so I would stick with it; however, I would shift your skipping to days you aren't lifting weights. Maybe skip for 5 minutes as a weight warm up to get blood flowing but no more on those days.
I also wouldn't do it every single cardio session you have. A great way to get in shape cardiovascularly is with High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). An example would be going for a 5km run and sprinting 200m, jogging 200m, and keep that up for the whole 5km. It doesn't take long and you will stimulate both the aerobic and anaerobic systems at the same time.
You could also do sprints on a track 200m sprint, jog 200m, repeat 10x... etc... I personally hate running, but am actually very good at it mostly because of all the HIIT I do.
You need to be doing this sort of exercise if you plan on being in the infantry. This is the type of stuff you will be doing. Doing a Section Attack is much like high intensity interval training. You also need to do a better job programming your training. Most people have a tendency to want to do everything but you need to realize that you can't and you need to program accordingly.
Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
