Old Mans's Work Out

yea i am interested

you betcha'

OK, i'll post it up tonight.

jb

Old man stuff?

What are we talking about here ......

6 oz Geritol curls?
(Deep) seated Prep H presses?
Reclined naps?
Dr. Scholls arch inserts?
Metamucil pwo shake?

; )

j/k !

sorry about the delay here but i had a kid invasion yesterday afternoon and we all watched the celtics kick indiana butt. later today.

jb

ok, first a little background. I am about 60 years old and have been working out consistently for over 20 years and off and on forever. Been thru the joe weider "revolution" and have the injuries and lack of growth to prove it. At some point about 12 years ago i read an article, can not remember by whom, that suggested cutting back on total load
and frequency of working out. Once i made that change, my gains were significant and lasting. Injuries became a thing of the past (mostly) and i am still going strong.

Now, i am not saying this will work for everyone but it works for me and also for the two 20 something year olds that i am currently training. I have come to grips with the reality that i will never be a mass monster and am quite content to turn heads just like i am. It is a great feeling when total strangers walk up to you and ask what gym you work out at. I digress...

This workout plan is simplicity itself but do not let that fool you. Basically you work out each body part once a week. There are several ways this can be accomplished but we work out five days a week, short and sweet. So for example, tomorrow is biceps day. After warming up with leg ups and a light set, we are going to do standing hammer curls, 3 sets, 6-12 reps pyramiding up to failure. The key here is we use good form to failure every set. 2nd exercise will be seated concentration curls and last, standing wide grip barbell curls. Every workout is ended by stretching the muscle we worked out. These stretchs are serious stretching iso-tonic exercise. Usually, in the case of biceps, arms outstretched at shoulder height, palms up, flexing elbows up to really stretch the biceps followed by a 12 second hard flex front biceps pose. We do four of those followed by 12 fast reps of stretch/flexes and finished by another final 12 second biceps flex. It is a rare day when one or more of us does not almost keel over from orthostatic hypotension following this last squeeze.

From week to week i change up the exercises for variety, every once in a while tossing in some negatives and also changing up the rep count to high rep (21+) to failure. If we know that we are going to have to miss a day during the week we will superset two different muscle groups.

Our focus is to grow but not get injured. It was pretty difficult to restrain the younger guys from really blasting themselves and doing more that they should when we first started but now that everyone is in reasonable shape, it is balls to the wall. We still are working up the scale, at some point we will start mixing in additional sets and some other techniques. Noe, every once in a while we go for the gold and just get the weight up even with bad form mindful of not inuring ourselves.

For some exercises that we want to focus, on alternating weeks we do a warmup followed immediatly by the heaviest weight we can push and pyramid down but we never do the same muscle two weeks in a row.

Now while this might not be a solution for most younger bbrs who want to push the limit, it has been very successfull for me to build a body that i am very comfortable with without totally ruining all my joints. If you are just starting out, i would encourage you to start with fewer sets and push a less hard to find the right starting point and then work up from there.

there it is, enjoy.

jb

That essentially is one of my favorite workout programs. I'm doing something different right now just for the sake of variety, but what you've described has worked very well for me.

Once I got away from the older "M&F;" type of routines, my gains also shot right up.

more and ore i see variations of this being used even by younger bbrs. If done right, it really takes a week to recover fully.

jb

how does this fit with your cardio? how often do you take a week off? do you work with longer lifting cycles--like hypertrophy, power, speed, etc. ?

My cardio consists of walking about five miles a day, there is really no interatcion between the workout and the cardio. The way this workout is structered, it is oriented towards hypertrophy. I take at least four weeks off a years and misc. long weekends. I really try to use the kiss principle, the workouts are changed up for higher reps and lower power reps periodically at my discretion.

jb

so if I understand this, you do not have cycles of adding mass and then leaning out?

no. mass and cutting are more a function of diet and cardio for me. If i am cutting i tend to go lighter since i am not as strong. I used to do mass and cutting but what i found was that any mass i gained was usually lost in the cutting so i stick to a more level type workout.

jb

And on a side note, after being sidelined for almost two months due to what i believe was pneumonia, i have now come back and matched my personal best in dumbell presses, 100's for reps. Now for most younger bbrs, this is no big deal but i can tell you that i worked very hard to achieve this with shoulder injuries et al.

jb

very impressive indeed! Do you perform the pressing movements at a full range or do you stop at 90 degrees at the elbow?