Bodybuilding Forums

Hi there,

I've been using a simple 4 day a week weights routine for a few months, increasing either weights or reps, and varying a few of the exercises from time to time, with good results:

mon: cardio
tues: Chest/Abs
wed: Back/Triceps
thurs: cardio
fri: Biceps/Abs
sat: Shoulders/Legs
sun: rest

My cardio consists of 1.5 hour classes of MMA training (in muay thai kickboxing, sparring, wrestling, etc), with strong cardio emphasis (absolutely killer I tell you!) however, due to work/university I have just changed my classes to mon, tuesday, and wednesday...meaning three days of cardio in a row. What should I do about my weights routine?

Is
thurs: biceps/triceps
fri: chest/legs
sat: back/shoulders

a good choice given the inflexibility of my cardio sessions?

I'm doing weights to complement my MMA - my primary goal isn't pure mass, but explosive power, though, any mass I can gain in addition to my emphasis on cardio and explosive power is extremely welcome. Can anyone please help me with suggestions on what I should do? Are 3 days in a row of cardio and then 3 days in a row of weights a really bad idea? =/

I don't like how you put 5 giant muscle groups together on a single day (chest, glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves) and then devote another whole day to 2 tiny muscles in comparison. It devotes too much time to things that won't increase your overall strength much at all and too little time to the compound exercises that are actually important. If you are training for MMA you should be focusing on building strength through the big powerful compound movements.

If you are doing intense MMA training 3 days a week then I would drop down to 2 days of weightlifting. One day for compound upper body, another day for compound lower body. I wouldn't do any isolation exercises, as you progress very little in strength on those kind of exercises and they just aren't very functional in terms of training for actual sport.

Ah, I see...thank-you, that is a very good point. I'll definitely change my plan in light of this.

I'm not entirely sure how I could get back/shoulders/chest/arms into the one compound workout - are there any exercises you can recommend to me? Is there anywhere on the net providing a good list of exercises?

Don't even worry about arm workouts. Let your back exercises hit your biceps, like a close grip pull up, and let your chest exercises get your triceps, like dips.

Compound exercises I like would be squats, deadlifts, lunges, bench press, shoulder press, dips, pull ups, rows, and cleans.

SurferX wrote:Don't even worry about arm workouts. Let your back exercises hit your biceps, like a close grip pull up, and let your chest exercises get your triceps, like dips.

Compound exercises I like would be squats, deadlifts, lunges, bench press, shoulder press, dips, pull ups, rows, and cleans.

Thank-you very much for your help. Do you, or anyone else perhaps reading, know roughly what sort of diet I should be using? Given my amount of cardio it wouldn't be a low carbs diet like those I have read elsewhere on this site, right?

To anyone reading, if you can be bothered just a rough sketch would be very helpful, don't worry about too much detail or anything annoying like that

Again, much appreciated, thank-you.


EDIT: Just in case it's relevant, I'm 189cms (a bit over 6'2 I think) and 80kgs (176pounds), so in other words quite thin. My current bodyfat is between 12.4% and 13%

Well, you only did MMA cardio twice a week before. Why'd you raise to 3x a week? If you'd go back and do it twice a week on Mon and Wed, then on Tues you can lift.

XeroReality wrote:Well, you only did MMA cardio twice a week before. Why'd you raise to 3x a week? If you'd go back and do it twice a week on Mon and Wed, then on Tues you can lift.

Basically because it's my passion, and fits my schedule of work and university. I should note, that my cardio classes on tuesday and now thursday are during the day (12 noon), for one hour: would I be able to lift at night-time, say later than 7pm?

Basically it goes like this:

mon: cardio (night - 6pm)
tues: cadio (day - 12noon)
wed: cardio (night - 6pm)
thurs: cardio (day - 1pm)
fri:
sat:
sun:


suggestions of where the weights should be? given I am training during the day tuesday and thursday can I lift then? or better to do it another day?