Weight Training Split Routines
Wedding dresses typically reveal the neck, shoulders, and décolletage. Sometimes, dresses also highlight the back. If your dress falls into any of these categories, you may want to spend more time toning your upper body. Once you've established a conditioning base, you can start doing more exercises without undue muscle soreness. This is the time to consider split routines that involve focusing on specific muscle groups or certain parts of the body during each workout, rather than always training the entire body.
Split routines offer several benefits:
You can do your weight training several days a week for fewer minutes at a time, rather than skipping a day in between workouts.
You can achieve better muscular development because you can do a wider selection of exercises for each targeted muscle group.
You can add variety to your routines, instead of doing the same total body conditioning program, two to three days a week.
Here's a sample training schedule: on Monday, train your upper body, Tuesday your lower body, and on Wednesday, rest; on Thursday, train your upper body, Friday your lower body, and on the weekend, rest. Alternatively, you can rest every other day.
The most important rule to keep in mind when doing split routines is that you should not train the same muscle group two days in a row. The challenge to observing this rule is that many exercises use more than one muscle group. This is generally avoided if you focus on upper and lower body split routines.
Table 15-4 and Table 15-5 show sample upper and lower body split routines that you can do according to the alternating day schedules described above. You don't want to train your abdominals daily, so you can choose to train them together with either your lower or upper body. In contrast, you can do core exercises that focus on stabilization on a daily basis.
Muscle Group |
Exercise |
Chest |
Pushup, Incline Chest Press, and Chest Fly |
Back |
Lat Pull Down, One Arm Row, and Rhomboid Squeeze |
Shoulders |
Overhead Press, Side Raise, and Rear Shoulder Fly |
Arms |
Biceps Curl, Triceps Pushup, Reverse Biceps Curl, and Triceps Dip |
Core |
Plank, Side Plank, All Fours Spinal Stabilization, and Reverse Plank |
Muscle Group |
Exercise |
Buttocks, Hips, Thighs |
Squat, Lunge, Leg Press Bridge, and Bent Knee Rear Leg Lift |
Thighs |
Leg Curl, Outer Thigh Leg Lift, and Inner Thigh Leg Lift |
Legs |
Legs, Calf Raise, and Toe Tap |
Abdominals |
Crunch, Reverse Crunch, Oblique Crunch, Bicycle |
Core |
Plank, Heel Dip, Pelvic Tilt, Bridging, and Back Extension |
If improving your muscle tone is a top priority, it's a good idea to follow a split program. At the same time, if you've already decided that you want to focus on weight loss and you're going to step up your aerobic training, it's not a good idea to do too much weight training. This is where you need to make choices based on what is your main training objective.
Refer back to the discussion in Chapter 8 on body types and identifying your training goal. If you tend to build muscle easily, you may not want or need to increase the amount of your resistance training beyond the basic conditioning program. In contrast, if you're more of an ectomorph and you have a hard time getting results from your resistance training, following a split program is ideal for you. Consider who you are, how your body responds to exercise, and what results you want to see by your wedding day.
Another reason to modify your program is to keep both your mind and your body interested. If you start feeling bored with your routine, it's time to alter exercises or style to stay actively engaged. Even switching from dumbbells to resistance bands adds elements of change. It's not only your mind that loses interest. As your muscles become conditioned, unless you stimulate them in new ways, you'll reach a plateau where you're no longer seeing improvements.
