I Know Y'all Love Critiquing Programs, So Here's Mine

Hopefully, you noted the tongue in cheek humor in the title… Heads up, I’m LOOOONG winded and often needlessly complicated. If that bothers you, I’d highly recommend not going forward. But, if you can stomach another idiot like me, let’s dive in!

Background and goals (important to evaluate program effectiveness, no?)…
I’m 39, 5’8", 170 lbs, around 18% bf, I would consider myself between novice and intermediate based on “strength standards” depending on the exercise (bench = intermediate, squat/dead = novice+). I’ve always had large thighs and have no desire to grow them (GASP) as I already have trouble finding shorts/pants. So, I’ve never done squats/deadlifts in my workouts until about a month ago. Even still, I’m aiming for moderate reps with the purpose being fitness/durability and not growth.
Upper body wise, that’s where I really want to make changes. Here’s a recent picture of me (my wife hates tidy whities and I just had a vasectomy so I had to wear them and sent her this picture just to mess with her)


Goals:

  • Grow biceps/triceps (current arm circumference flexed is 15.5")
  • Grow/define chest
  • Grow/define shoulders
  • Grow/define and make up for a lack of attention in the past to entire back, traps, and rear delts
  • Carve out and strengthen my core (I know, fat loss)
  • Strengthen lower half with no desire to increase size - except my calves, those can grow

I realize definition will come with fat loss but I mentioned it because I’m really looking for development of each of the individual muscles. For instance, the program I made includes exercises geared more towards the upper chest, inner pecs, and lower pecs in addition to exercises like flat bench pressing.

Additionally, I do want to work on my glutes and hams for strength and calves in terms of size/definition. Quads… Strength is fine, size is not.

For a program to work, it has to be something the individual will stick to. There’s NO CHANCE IN HELL I’d ever stick to something like strong lifts, etc… I’d lose my mind from boredom and a lack of variety (thanks, ADHD!). HUGE respect to those who can, though.

So, the program I created takes tips from 3 different articles from this site and also alternates between complementary and opposing workouts. The structure is: lift, lift, abs/recovery, lift, lift, abs/recovery, off or yoga for a 7-day program.

There are 4 weeks worth of lifting routines grouped by pairs. The first pair has the same exercises but reverses the order. For instance, in the opposing biceps/triceps routine, all the exercises are the same from week to week, but in one week I do biceps first and the next time I do triceps first. So, you don’t have to look through all 16 workouts, looking at 8 unique workouts will tell you what I’m doing.

Each tab has 3 months worth of this plan because that’s what I can fit on a single page so this ends up being a 12 week “program”. I print these out and have them in my home gym and fill in the weights/reps/notations as I go.

Here are the articles I used to formulate the plan:

I’ve chosen “zig zag” for complementary workouts and drop sets and myo-sets for opposing workouts. All workouts end with a high volume burn out super set repeated three times.

Limitations (I’m including these to put a little context around exercise choices):

  • lifelong knee issues including a pivot/rotation sprain that atrophied my left leg 2.5" in 30 days and 3 years later, it’s still 1" smaller whereas before, they were basically dead even. Also, I did read that weak glutes and hams can wreak havoc on your knees, hence the desire to bring those up a notch (or 12).
  • injured both shoulders as a teen and never rehabbed them at the time. I’ve put some focus on getting the popping/clicking to stop and have been successful with it (thanks, Jeff Cavalier), but I’m still very cautious about overhead presses with barbells and I tend to prefer (usually) doing bench pushing exercises with DB’s and my elbows closer to 65-75 degrees.

So, if you’re still with me (doubtful, let’s be honest), here’s a link to the program I made. Hopefully, all of the preceding info gave some context to it and makes it easier to understand and also to see if there are any glaring holes in it that are inconsistent with my goals.

Oh, and in case it’s relevant, I went to my doctor with some symptoms of low T (energy, mood, can’t build muscle, fat retention) and my T levels are “meh” to a little low for my age, but my free T levels were abysmally low (bottom end of the reference range). My SHBG is way too high (60% higher than the high end of the reference range). Also, my cortisol levels were off the chart as well (50% higher than the reference range). We’re working on getting restful sleep, and more hours sleeping to see if that can cure it all but he’s thinking T replacement.

Thanks for any insight y’all can provide!

I’d say this is a slight overestimation based on your pic, which is why bodyfat percentages don’t actually matter.

Cropped from pic so… if you say so.

That’s a giant read to get through so, sorry, I’m gonna be fairly lazy and just say to do whatever your plan is for a month, track progress in strength and tape measurements, and make adjustments as needed.

If you really, truly stuck to the principles explained in those articles, you probably can’t go too far wrong. If you have knee issues, posterior chain work and single-leg work should be mainstays. Everything else seems pretty balanced - chest, back, arms - so building them equally makes a whole lot of sense. Maybe throw a bit more emphasis on chest since I’d say that’s “lagging” the most.

Make sure you’re eating enough animal fat and getting plenty of vitamin D. Those are also underappreciated for their role in Test levels.

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Thanks for the insight Chris! Your thoughts on the program, as far as me not being able to go too wrong, were pretty much in line with mine but I was just worried that I didn’t know what I didn’t know and that I might be missing something.

And thanks for the pointer regarding single leg work, I don’t have any of that in there. Also, regarding animal fat in my diet, I do usually get a fair amount (pork ribs Sunday, NY Strip tonight, salmon tomorrow, etc). I also supplement with vitamin D daily, 5000 IU.

I’d like to apologize again for the length of my post. As I mentioned, I get very wordy and I know it’s an imposition to ask people to read posts that long and look through a program that complex, so I really appreciate what you did.

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What a nice story here on the forums! Man asks for help, man receives help, man listens and thanks who helped him. A refreshing departure from the other 15 threads I’ve read today :slight_smile:

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