For what is my final post on lifting I will go into some actual workout schemes. One the one hand there is nothing radical about what I am about to say, kinda obvious really. On the other there were obvious things I did not see for years and it may help someone to write things down, here and in the comments bellow. It may be a little rambling and disjointed.

There are many variables for a given workout as well. Sets, reps, rest intervals, proximity to failure, weights, tempo, exercise selection, exercise order, super sets, drop sets, myoreps, lengthened partials, blood restriction, overloading the eccentric the possibilities are endless. As I grow older, I am more and more in the don’t overthink it camp. Go the gym a few times a week, in a scheme that works for you, and train hard. More is not always better. Just like coitus, hard and fast. Also, I will not cover the bro splits, you can do it if you like and they work but meh.

I covered the various views on training to failure. I do not think most people do train to gun-to-the-head-cant-do-one-more-rep failure. But one or two reps in reserve is enough. So when I say failure, the last few reps need to be a grind and clearly slow down compared to the first. Off course you should rarely fail on squats, can fail on side delts or biceps all the time. Pull-ups to failure for a majority of people is 0 reps.

Broadly, more volume will probably help up to a point; rest between sets is usually better because you do more work, but it is less time efficient. Doing 3 sets with 4 minutes between sets is better than a drop set with 30 seconds rest. On the other hand, time efficiency is important unless you have plenty of time and like spending it in the gym. Although I always suggest a 20-30 second rest to catch breath and not be limited by that.

Lets get some terminology out of the way. A set is a given exercise done for a number of repetitions. A superset is a combination of exercises done with little rest – e.g. the classic you do biceps and go straight to triceps. A drop set is multiple sets with short break, lowering the weight for each set. A rest pause set is doing sets with the same weight, short break. So I can do 40 kg 30s break, 30kg 30s break, 25 kg 30s break, all for 7 reps, that is a drop set. Or I can do 40kg 7 reps, 30s break, 40 kg 4 reps, 30s break, 40 kg 2 reps, 30s break, 40 kg 1 rep – that is rest pause. Antagonistic super sets are super sets of muscle groups that work in opposite fashion – chest and back, quads and hams. A concentric movement is when a muscle shortens as it generates force to overcome resistance, an eccentric movement is when it lengthens. A push movement is when the concentric is away from the body e.g. chest, a pull movement is when the concentric is toward the body e.g. back. Upper is above the hips, lower is bellow.

If you train very seriously for strength, it takes time as you need serious rest up to 10 minutes between sets, and are too gassed to superset anyway. Though you can get pretty strong without training very seriously, strong enough for practical purposes. People should realize that every little bit helps in fitness. One set to failure is better than nothing.
Reps wise, 3 to 30 seem to help, but for me I rarely go above 12. The more strength focused, the lower the reps / heavier the weights. You need to train heavy to be strong.

Workouts are named after body parts e.g. legs; movement patterns e.g. push/pull; or body regions e.g. upper lower. Most schemes include either push/pull, upper/lower or full body. Push/pull standalone include the legs, push pull legs separate the legs and keeps push/pull movements for the upper body. I train full body myself for various reasons, mostly flexibility. If you manage to get one time a week to the gym, you train everything. Two times, even better, and so on. The downside is you need to warm up everything which takes some time. But doing some compound movements warms multiple things up, so it does not take that long. Warming back warms biceps rear delts; warming chest also hits triceps and front delts. Same with sets, a set of chests counts as say half a set of triceps/front delts as those are stimulated. I prefer upper lower to push pull as you warm up just half the body and i like antagonistic super sets like chest/back or quads/hams. But in my workout schemes, UL and PP are interchangeable, unless legs are mentioned when it is PPL. FB is full body, R is rest.

These schemes are used for both strength and bodybuilding programs. The difference is strength means fewer rept, more weight, fewer isolation exercises. This depends on personal preference, heavy compounds working multiple muscles or lighter isolation for each muscle. Starting strength and stronglifts 5×5 are FB. Powerlifter Johnny Candito had a ULUL power-lifting program. Various bodybuilders had ULUL bodybuilding programs. And so on. One difference between bodybuilding and strength is that often if you train a muscle multiple times a week, in bodybuilding you use different exercises, in strength you use different weights or variations of same lift. So for UL bodybuilding, one day you squat and do leg extensions, other day leg press and lunges. For strength, you can do the same thing e.g. 3 sets of 5 heavy squats, or you do one heavy day and one light e.g. 3xx and 3×9. Or one day you do heavy squats another lighter pause squats. Or deadlifts with deficit deadlifts and rack pulls. 3 times a week you can do 3×5 all 3 times or a heavy light medium program. Though with back-off sets I do heavy medium light every workout.

In the end it all depends on goals, how many days a week you get to the gym and how much you stay there. Every time you need to include a bit of warmup – but not too much, warmup is important but overrated. After that have at it. I will mostly focus on 4 days or less, one hour or less.

6 days PPLPPLR or Arnold split which is torso and limbs: legs ; chest and back; arms and shoulders, 2x a week then rest.

5 days PPLUL is the main one used.

4 days this is where time effectiveness comes in and it also starts to depend when you can get to the gym. Some people find it easier to get to the gym both weekend days, and in that case UL is a good split for Saturday and Sunday. So some options are either UL UL or UL FB FB. If you like a heavy push/pull day for upper body and solid leg day, there is PPL FB.

3 Days a week I would say either 3xFB or UL FB. You can do ULU / LUL over two weeks hitting every muscle 1.5 times a week.

2 days a week, 2x FB.

1 day a week come on man you can do at least 2. But FB obviously.

What happens in these workouts depends on time and goals. Machines tend to be faster and more time effective for isolation. Compounds can work more parts of the body in an exercise and develop strength. Either way, if you are time pressed you can do FB workouts with either one drop set (more volume) or one rest-pause set (more intensity) per lift / muscle group. You can also do a circuit workout: do a body part, rest 30s go to the next. Here is where failure can help, whenever you get to a lift say something for chest, you do one set of whatever machine is open to failure, pick a weight and just pump it out. You do 3 circuits, you get 3 sets per body part. A FB workout like the ones above should not take more than 40-45 minutes. A FB workout in which you pair two lifts and do 3 antagonistic super sets (3x chest and back, 3x biceps and triceps, 3x quads and hams etc) should take you about an hour or a little more. An UL session should not take more than an hour and you can get some solid compound lifts in.

I would say a 3x FB workout even a short 40-45 minute one should include a compound lift day, potentially with some back off sets. You can occupy a rack, warm up both your squat and press at the same time, squat 3 sets with 2-3 min rest lowering the weight from the top set, press 3 sets with 2 min rest, do a set of a deadlift variation and maybe pump some chin-ups/pull-ups/dips time permitting. If one of you FB days can be longer e.g on the weekend, use that for heavier compounds and do one set isolation for the other 2 days, one day drop sets, one day rest-pause.

The point I am trying to make is 40 minutes 3x a week can get you a long way. Gym need not take that long. There are many potential variations to chose from. These are just some examples.

For fun lets take starting strength, a good program though it may not be perfect for all. I will not describe it here. But what I want to mention is that it can be used as simply a template, abstractized (I don’t think that is a word but it should be, made more abstract). Basically starting strength is a 3 day FB program and in each day you do a lower body push movement, a lower body pull movement, an upper body push movement, an upper body pull movement and something explosive.

Some more advice from me: side delts are usually less stimulated by proxy than front and back, so just get in some lateral raises. They do not take much time, or much warmup and do not create fatigue to distract from other lifts. Cardio if done on the same day should be done after lifting, but preferably on different days. I do not much stretch or do “core” work at the gym. The only thing that comes close to this is I like at the end of each workout to dead hang a while, and since I am hanging there I also do some variation of leg raises.

I mostly train 3x FB these days, with some variation, which I got to before learning it is basically the OG training, for fitness before the steroid era. Arthur Jones the inventor of Nautilus machines recommended 3x FB a week, 3 sets to failure, which is a solid training for people who are not gym rats and want just to be fit. Gym rats have a whole world of internet to research so I did not cover them in these posts.

This was just a quick overview, though the post runs kind of long anyway. And many things can be detailed more, but as a summary of fitness I hope it gives some ideas. Anyhoo comments where they usually are. I will end with this quote i recently copy pasted from the twitters as food for thought “A new study suggests masturbation half an hour before exercise could actually improve athletic performance, by means of neuromuscular priming and transient increases in hormones, especially testosterone.”