Hey there, I’ve been interested in getting back into lifting for awhile now, it won’t happen for a few months due to work and home priorities but I’d like to crystalize my plan ahead of time.
I’m 5’4, female, and I’ll be 35 tomorrow.
I’m still pretty novice at lifting - I did Rippetoe back in 2012 with some guys from work, but I didn’t make an adequate diet plan and that meant I didn’t see the progress I wanted, which was discouraging. I still stayed active though: I commute everywhere by bicycle and I muck around with the pull-up bar at home.
In 2017 I let an unemployed friend live with me, and the experience of having a morbidly obese, unmotivated, irredeemable slob in my living room for four months kicked me back into a real fitness mindset.
I cut from 131 to under 110 for funsies and to start learning how to plan and track a diet. (Back to 116 now after having a few months being more relaxed before starting to pay attention again.) I spent a lot of time on the Erg at my gym, and I did a little of one of Nia Shanks’ “Lift Like A Girl” dumbbell programs, but had some family members’ medical issues cut back drastically on my leisure time and I was unable to prioritize the gym. Lately I’ve just been doing yoga and bodyweight training at home along with Couch to 5K before work.
I liked doing the Rippetoe program, and I’ve found enough resources to keep me on track with diet, so I came back here to poke around a bit, and stumbled across Coach Thibaudeau’s neurotyping articles. I’m very impressed, everything he describes about Type 3 fits me to a ‘T’, and while reading his articles I became interested in German Volume Training.
Cutting weight for fun after living with the nasty roommate got me all sorts of comments from people at work (but for some reason just the fat people at work…) going, “You’ve lost sooooo much weight, are you sick?!” I always deflected it with a joke, going, “Sure, yeah, see first I’ll cut, then I’ll BULK,” and they would chuckle with me and leave me alone after that. Thing is, I’d love to really bulk. I look mostly lean now, but I’m a massive nerd and I’ve always wanted to go to a comic convention as She-Hulk, lol.
Looking through several articles on GVT I’ve made some modifications based on my skill level, gym limitations, and my available leisure time, and with the recommendations Coach Thibaudeau has for training as a Type 3.
I’m planning a 3-day split, with 1-2 rest days between them depending on work/family schedule (my life outside of work can be accurately summarized as “single mom with a farm”, and sadly my gym has a Smith machine but no free barbell rack, and is closed on Sundays), and I’m not planning to do supersets, as the Nia Shanks program taught me I really don’t handle those well. I need to focus totally on executing one movement at a time.
Chest & Back day:
Wide Row 4x12
Dumbbell Flys 4x12
Lat Pulldown 10x10
Incline Dumbbell Press 10x10
Leg day:
Dumbbell Standing Calf Raise 4x12
Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift 4x12
(Smith Machine) Barbell Squat 10x10
Arm and Shoulder day:
Tricep Dips 4x12
Dumbbell Hammer Curls 10x10
Dumbbell Shoulder Press 10x10
What suggestions would yo make for this plan? Do you see any glaring oversights in muscle groups? I tried to stick to movements I am familiar enough with as a beginner to be confident in doing them properly, so I pulled a combination from both Charles Poliquin’s article and Lee Boyce’s article here, and I’m hoping I can say these will result in short yet still effective workouts. Please let me know any insights you would like to share.
I still need to look into the right way of finding my 1RM so I can calculate the appropriate weights for these lifts, too. I know I’m still a novice - I may be the only woman at work who can do five chinups, but I know that’s still feeble for this site.
I also need to look into diet a little more. I won’t have any problem hitting a high protein total with pea protein, powdered peanut butter, and vital wheat gluten, but I’m honestly worried about hitting the right window of enough calories to build muscle without storing an ass full of fat. Ugh.
Anyway thanks for reading. Looking forward to trying this out probably after I finish C25K in 4 weeks.