Three Days a Week Full Body Training - By Carlton H. Shedrick, Jr.

Many of you are probably thinking that training the entire body three times a week is too much work. And I might agree if you pushed very hard on all exercises every workout. The following is based on the old heavy, medium and light training programs, but it has a couple spins.

The old way would have you set a side days, say Monday-heavy, Wednesday-light and Friday-medium. Were you would training all exercises on that particular day ether heavy, medium or light. This is not that bad of an approach, however, the one big problem is sustained effort. That is, on a heavy day, how can you push hard on the squats and truly push hard on the deadlifts or any other exercise for that matter?

A better way or a way to improve the old program is to break exercises up were they are trained differently on particular days. First here is a list of exercises in the usual order I perform them. The order of the exercises can be changed. They are in this order because of personal preference explained later.

1.. Clean and presses 2.. Back squats 3.. Floor presses 4.. Deadlifts 5.. Pull-ups 6.. Weighted abdominal 7.. Standing calf raises 8.. Biceps curls 9.. Wrist work

Now after you have your list of basic exercises simply decide what exercise you want to train heavy to start your week. You could train the back squats, pull-ups and abbs-heavy, and the clean and press, floor press, biceps curls- medium, and every thing ells light on the first day. On the second day train the floor press, deadlift, calfs-heavy, and train the clean and press, back squat, pull-ups-light, and everything ells medium. On the third day train the clean and press, bicep curls and wrist work-heavy.

Now I don't actually do all the same exercises in each workout. What I do is use exercises that work on my week points. The week looks like this:

Tuesday

1.. Barbell Clean and presses M-H 2.. Barbell Back squats M-H 3.. Wide grip Floor presses M 4.. Stifflegged Deadlifts M 5.. Pull-ups M-H 6.. Weighted abdominal M 7.. One leg Standing calf raises M-H 8.. Ez bar Biceps curls L-M 9.. Wrist work-wrist roller L-M-H Thursday

1.. Barbell Clean and presses L 2.. Barbell Back squats L 3.. Mid grip Floor presses H 4.. Conventional Deadlifts H 5.. Chin-ups- reverse grip L-M 6.. Stability ball crunches L-M 7.. Standing calf raises L 8.. No curls, only chin pull-ups 9.. Wrist work-wrist flexing, no weight L Saturday

1.. One arm dumbbell Clean and presses M-H 2.. One legged squats L-M 3.. Close grip Floor presses L 4.. Overhead plate goodmornings L 5.. One arm dumbbell rows M-H 6.. Weighted abdominal-side bends and crunch L-M 7.. One leg Standing calf raises L-M 8.. Barbell Biceps curls H 9.. Wrist work-pinch grip and grippers M-H

This still might be a lot of work for some, so doing two workouts a week may be best. You truly must train a lift light when you are scheduled to. My workout might be a bit overworked for some but it has been slowly developed from the basic lifts. Over time I tinker with one particular exercise until I find what works best.

Now I don't think you need to get your recovery just right. In fact having a light workout when you are still recovering gets blood moving through your muscles. Helping with muscle soreness and flushing muscles with all kinds of nourishment. Essentially active rest, kind of an oxy moron, but the point of light workouts is to get muscles warm and lose- not worked. Also it is easy to see that training one or two exercises hard and the rest relatively easy will allow you to be more effective with each heavy exercise in training. Some programs simply change the order of exercises so you can push harder on the beginning exercise. This to is not a bad idea and might be easier then keeping the same order of exercises and verifying efforts. Just remember it is about progress. If you switch too often then progress could be shortchanged.

I hope this article has given you confidence to try a different training approach. Have fun experimenting. Slowly experiment until you get to a point you like.


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