Please let me know your thoughts on my routine. I just started. Never considered weights until now. Doing these at home with free weights or resistance bands hung from the door. Let me know your thoughts or if I should change anything. Doing these every other day, the whole weight routine, and cardio on opposite days. Six days weights, six cardio, one yoga.

Upper Body

• Chest Press…..3 x 10
• Overhead Press…..3 x 10
• Bicep Curl…..3 x 10 each side
• Tricep Curl…..3 x 10 each side
• Wrist Curl…..3 x 10
• Cable Row…..3 x 10
• Lat Pull down…..3 x 10

Lower Body

• Dead lift…..3 x 2
• Squats…..3 x 10
• Lunges…..3 x 10 each side
• Hamstring Curls…..3 x 10 each side
• Leg Lifts…..3 x 10
• Abductor…..3 x 10
• Adductor…..3 x 10

Abs

• Standard Crunch…..3 x 10
• Reverse Crunch…..3x10
• Oblique Crunch…..1 x 10 each side


I'm looking for fat loss, increase BMR. I just want to burn more calaories rest, increase muscle mass, and be strong and fit.

Overall your program doesn't look too bad but it definitely suffers from some Overkill

If done with the appropriate intensity, it is way too much volume.

What are your goals? This would allow us to give you more specific advice.

But for most beginners, I'd cut out most of the upper body isolation like the bicep curl and wrist curl. I don't know what you mean by tricep curl since a curl is a flexion movement and the triceps do not perform flexion. I assume you are doing some type of tricep kickback which I would throw out as well. If you want to train your triceps with the equipment you have available, I'd go with close-grip pushups.

A lot of arm isolation work for most people those looking for general fitness or fat loss is really not giving you a lot of bang for your buck toward your goals. If you are going heavy with the rows and lat pulldowns, chest presses, etc, you are working these muscles sufficiently and with much greater weight then you could be using for your isolation movements. If you are not using much greater weight for these then the curls and kickbacks, you need to go heavier.

If you want to target the bicep "show" muscles more, then use a supinated grip for you rows and pulldowns. Better yet, get a pullup bar and work those chinups instead of pulldowns. And, if you really feel a desire to do some curls, go ahead and throw in one set to failure at the end of the workout.

On lower body, I love the deadlifts, squats, and lunges. The curls depends on how they are performed. Most leg curls are isolation movements and only focus one of the hamstrings functions. If you are doing swiss ball leg curls, however, which heavily recruit the glutes into the movement, and work the hamstrings as both a knee flexor and as a synergist in hip extension, then I love them.

The adductor/abductor work is probably a bit much. One or two sets as of band resisted work before the workout is sufficient for someone with proper muscle balance. The leg lifts are overkill. Now, if you have imbalances such as internally rotated hips/knees, overly pronated or supinated feet, etc, then more work on these areas might be called for.

As far as ab work. You are doing all flexion exercises. An extremely important function of the abdominal muscles in resistance training and in real life is stabilizing the spine. You are neglecting stabilization. Working the core for stabilization is going to help you maintain proper posture and form throughout all functional movements. This will allow you to lift to your full strength abilities by giving you a proper base to produce force from. Without it, you are "firing a cannon from a canoe." In other words, add some planks and/or band pallof presses (at proper resistance they are much harder then they look).

Stabilization and overall strength is also a good reason to alternate in some pushups into your program. Alternate between the chest press and pushups for your horizontal pushing movement.

I would also second the thought that maybe it's better to stick to a few basic exercises in the beginning until you develop a certain amount of base. I would start with:

Bench press/push ups
Shoulder press
Lat pulldown/Bent over row
Squats
Deadlifts

There is nothing wrong with doing the iso exercises (i.e., bicep curls, tricep extensions, etc.) but you don't get a lot of bag for the buck with those exercises and you actually get a good workout of those muscles doing the big compound exercises described above.

Stick to doing all the exercises with couple of days of rest between for the first 6-12 weeks until you develop a base level of muscle mass. Push yourself and make sure each rep and each set counts. After that, I would start considering split routines and start incorporating some of the iso exercises to round things out.

Thank you both. I will look at adjusting my plan. I am doing wrist curls because I have very weak wrists. I cannot do pushups at all; they really hurt my left wrist. Maybe I will look into doing them off the wall for a bit and see if i can get them stronger that way. Thanks for your advice!

That is a great idea. Starting on the wall, benches, stairs and progressing your way down to the floor is a great method for developing the pushup.

If your wrists hurt doing pushups, sometimes using dumbells as hand rails helps (sort of like the "perfect pushup" thingy). Also, I find that turning my hands out at 45 degrees puts less strain on my wrists. Also, you can work your way up to the regular pushup by doing bent knee pushups too (fits in somewhere between wall pushups and regular pushups in terms of strain).

Yes, what they said! Also, I would do more than 3 sets of 2 deadlifts. A set of 2 would have to be very close to your max to have any effect, and you're not ready to be lifting that heavy yet. Pick a lighter weight you can keep perfect form on, and do something like your 3 sets of 10. Something like 45 lbs or 65 lbs might be a good place to start with those. Just practice the form at first with a lighter weight or even a stick, because even going through the motion with your body weight will be beneficial at first. When you feel like you've got it down, then try the 45 lb bar or whatever bar you have, and do that. If it seems too light, then you can up the weight next time you do them. Keep a notebook with what weights you use in each exercise, and take notes for yourself, like "good weight", "add weight next time", etc. You always think you'll remember, but as you add weight and exercises later, it gets hard to remember all the details, plus you can see your progress as time goes on.

Another reason to spread these workouts out a bit more is that it takes time for your tendons/ligaments to get stronger, and you don't want to overwork them and end up with an injury right at the beginning.

I'm confused. Are you doing full body weights every other day, say M/W/F and cardio the other 3 say T/TH/F? Then that's only 3 of each every week, which is good.

Thanks everyone.

Pat I can see why you are confused, because I should have typed 3 weights, 3 cardio, one yoga. oops