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Comment on My Routine

Beginners
#1

I’m 185cm (6.06) 78.5 kg (173.06 pounds). 32 years old. I train 3 days a week. I train for 2 months now. I want to gain muscle mass to improve my physique and strength. I can not train legs because of my knee injury. I want my program to be relatively easy cause I’m beginner (not to many fancy exercises). My program is as follows:

I start every training session with 15m of bicycle. I alternate two routines (day 1: routine1, day 2: routine 2, day 3 routine 1, …)

routine 1 (back and bicep):
pullups (7, 5, 4, 4)
seated row 4x10
straight-bar biceps curls 4x10
dumbbell curs with suplination 4x10
back extension machine (picture) 4x10

routine 2 (chest, tricep):
high cable crossovers 4x10
incline bench (30 degrees) dumbell press 4x10
machine flies (hands ben 90 degrees and pointing up) 4x10
dips 4x10

Is this routine ok?

Stronglifts 5x5 Replacing Squat in One Workout?
#2

do you have legs?

4 Likes
#3

Yeah, unless you’re an amputee or paralyzed you need to suck it up and do legs.

Look up starting strength or stronglifts 5X5. Those two programs are most frequently recommended for beginners.

#4

That’s not even close to what was recommended in February.

#5

Go with greyskull lp if your focus is more upper body. Starting strength is built around the squat

#6

I can’t train legs due to my injury. I have edited my post accordingly.

#7

I won’t presume the nature of your knee injury, but there is a guy on here who came back from a blown out knee, rehabbed it and can pull/squat some pretty crazy numbers.

Since biking doesn’t bother you too much, perhaps you could turn those 15 minutes into 30 (if time permits), and into a challenging “hill” workout to still get a training effect on your legs. I know some pretty serious bikers who don’t train with weights but you wouldn’t know it by looking at their legs.

With the addition above, I’d say go for it. Though, how do you plan to progress?

#8

Biking was recommended as mandatory exercise from my surgeon. He did not want me to set bike on to high power thought. He forbade me to do squats because it put pressure on meniscus (cushioning in the knee) and I had severe torn in both meniscus of one knee. My other knee is probably broken as well but right now I have to rehab first one before I do something with the other.

As to how do I plan to progress I want to find some routines that will develop my upper body. Currently I lost weight due to to low calories intake. Currently I do what I described but I’m open to suggestions.

#9

Do hip dominant quad work like hip thrusts if you want to train quads.I would advice strengthening your glutes,lower back and abs if you cannot train legs at all which will help your knee recovery.This article can help.
https://www.t-nation.com/training/9-training-strategies-for-knee-pain
And for your routine,it has no shoulder exercise.
A sample routine maybe like this:
Workout A
Incline Bench Press
Pullups
Back Extension
Barbell Curls
Step Ups/Sled Drags-Optional

Workout B
Dumbell Overhead Press
Rows(elbow out variations)
Hanging leg raises/Pallof press (superset)
Tricep Extensions
Prowler Pushes/Glute ham raises-Optional

The optional exercises should be done if you have available equipment and are comfortable with them.I had a knee injury 2 years back and used such a template.Strengthening my glutes and core helped my knee a lot.

#10

Why each routine contains exercise for every body part? Isn’t it better to group them together like bicep day, chest day etc?

#11

Beginners are better with full body routines than body part splits. This
kind of routine builds strength and mass easily as long as you keep adding
weight to the bar (or increase reps if you cannot add weight).

1 Like
#12

Why no shoulder work? + You need to find some way of training around your knee injury…this can be tricky & will usually need a certain degree of trial and error but usually their are options (when I had bad knees I found I couldn’t do squats but shallowish rom leg presses for really high reps were fine).

#13

Greyskull lp looks interesting. Does this program give good effects?