3-Day a Week Workout: Monday
Day 1 of this workout regimen concentrates on the chest, arms, and abs. Begin with a thorough warm-up that will elevate your heart rate and wake your muscles up. You may want to do a little stretching before you start lifting. After each set, take 50-60 seconds rest and then start the next set. After each specific exercise, take the same 50-60 seconds; it may take a little longer to get the weights or machine set for the next exercise so don’t worry if you can’t keep to under a minute for rest. If you don’t have access to the machines then most of these exercises can easily be replaced with dumbbell or barbell exercises. The specific exercises are:
- Chest
- Flat dumbbell press (or bench press): 4@6-10
- Incline dumbbell press (or incline bench press): 4@6-10
- Pec Dec Machine (or butterflies): 3@10-15
- Biceps
- Standing Barbell Curls: 4@8-10
- Preacher Curls: 3@8-15
- Triceps
- Dips: 3@10-15
- Push Downs: 4@10-15
- Abs
- Hanging Leg Raises: 4@15-20
- Rotary Torso Machine: 3@15-20
The number of sets is followed by the number of repetitions to do for each set. So, 4@6-10 would be 6 to 10 reps for each of 4 sets.
This is a part of one of my 3-Day a Week Workout Regimens.
Think you got a good start there. One thing you might want to consider that I think gives the best benefit for the Biceps and also works the back is Chin-ups. So work your back and biceps on one exercise!
I’m curious to see how you’ve split the ab work across the three days. I’d guess you’d be using your obliques more than anything else (for running).
I like doing chin-ups, but hadn’t worked them into this particular months exercises. Maybe I will try swapping it out for the standing barbell curls next week and see how that treats me.
I did not put a whole lot of effort into splitting the ab work up. I knew how much I wanted to do, and I wanted to try using the rotary torso machine and the crunch machine as I’d never used either of those. So it is fairly random. On Friday, I may add another ab exercise than what is going to be listed; maybe swiss ball crunch or the situp bench or some such. I’ll figure out when I get there Friday morning.
hi blaine,
obviously your a runner
-- but im just wondering what your specific aima are with weight training?
nice blog!
John, thanks for stopping in. Right now I am in my off season, and the last month plus I have taken off from running completely after my second marathon of the year and a busy racing schedule. During that time the goal was to get back into lifting mode and to put on some weight, but since I can’t take the protein weight gainer any more I only managed about 4 pounds. Which isn’t a bad thing. At this point I am trying to build a good base for next Spring, where I will start to tailor my training more for the running rather than just lifting for overall health.
I don’t think it is healthy to only do one thing year in year out all year.
good answer.
how long did it take to put on 4lbs? just curious…
2nd marathon of the year eh, that cant be easy -- i take it you compete at some level? nevermind i just found the “about” section of your blog. heh.
It took me about a month to put the 4 pounds on. I am a big fan of weighing yourself daily, with the end goal being to not gain or lose more than a pound or so per week. Especially not to lose more than a pound per week. A year or two ago I put on 10 pounds by doing no running and a lot of lifting for a month, but I was taking weight gainer and I started with a good lifting base which I did not have this time.
I have been running about 2 marathons a year, but hopefully I will bump that up to 3 next year or the year after. I try to be competitive in 5k and 10k races between the marathons, so it makes for interesting training.
wow, thats loads of running, interesting stuff.
i do the opposite (rarely weigh myself), i tend to go more by how i look in the mirror, but our goals are very different.
Well, the idea of weighing myself daily is not really to meet some magic number, but to just track trends and fend off illnesses. When I had a dial scale, I did not keep it zeroed because I did not really care. Now I have a digital one that zeros itself every time you use it.
[...] I detailed my 3 day per week regimen: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I think that it is fair to note that while that workout regimen worked for me at the time, I do not plan on ever revisiting it since I have seen much better results from avoiding machines and sticking entirely to free weights and pulleys. [...]