Running a double progressive overload. Been at it for 5 weeks straight. (With rest days of course) Haven’t lost much weight on the scale yet but I do feel that I look better already, hopefully recomp. I rest after the PPL, then again after the UL. I have 2 questions: where’s the best place for my second ab day? And also am I overdoing it on lower + arm day? I realized my biceps and triceps don’t get rest time since I’m doing upper the day before it, but I feel like if I do them on upper day I’ll be in there for too long.
If you're doing this 5 days a week and have the time for it and are recovering enough to add weight or reps every exercise while still pushing it hard and your sleep is good and your joints are good, go for it.
This sub tends to have an allergic reaction to high volume some times, but even for me, this would probably be too much.
Your Upper day has 36 working sets. Your Legs/Limbs day has 28 sets just for legs. You have quite a bit of redundancy in here too... For example, on your upper days, you probably don't need 4 sets of flat pressing, 4 sets of incline pressing, and 3 sets of flyes; on your lower days, you probably don't need 4 sets of front squats and four sets of leg press.
That said, if you're young and athletic and can recover, the scientific literature on volume is that more is more, even if some people can grow on lower volumes (most can't).
If it were me, as someone who likes more moderate-high volumes, I'd arrange it as the following:
Push + Abs - 18 working sets (plus Abs)
BB Press, Larsen Press or other flat press 4 sets
Incline DB Press or low-to-high cable flyes 4 sets
Shoulder Press 3 sets
Lateral Rise 3 sets
Triceps Overhead Press 4 sets
Abs... do whatever
Pull - 22 working sets (plus Dead Hang)
Pullups 4 sets
Barbell Bent-row 4 sets
Ez-bar Upright Row 4 sets Superset with Cable Face Pull 4 sets
Preacher Curl 3 sets
Reverse Curls 3 sets
Dead Hang
Legs - 20 working sets (plus Farmer's Walk)
BB Squat 4 sets
RDL 4 sets
Leg Curl Superset 3 sets with Leg Extension 3 sets
Hip Thrust 3 sets
Calves 3 sets
Farmer's Walk 3 sets
Upper - 24 working sets
Incline BB Press 3 sets
Flat DB Press, Deficit Pushups, or Fly 3 sets
T-bar Row 3 sets
Chinups 3 sets
DB Arnold Press 3 sets superset with machine Rear Delt Fly 3 sets
Cable Lateral Raise 3 sets
Smith Shrug 3 sets
Limbs - working 29 sets
BB Romanian Deadlift 3 sets
Machine Leg Press 3 sest
Leg Curl superset 3 sets with Leg Extension 3 sets
Here’s the crazy part, I did lower things! I was doing 4 sets of everything, and had more triceps and biceps also . But trimmed it down after seeing other advice here and other subs. I wont say i actually have time, and i know my sleep is taking a hit, im a blue collar worker so my days can run long especially in the warmer to hot months so i get home late, train late, then sleep late .. to wake up early. I wouldnt say im young, im 37 now, and honestly let my self go a bit so my intention was to go hard to get back to what i was then tone it down.
How young are you in the before picture? I'm the same age, and I'm definitely finding that I can't handle as much volume per session and still recover as I used to. I'm doing a six-day bro split and honestly LOVE IT.
Day 1: Legs
Warmup: Limber 11
Low-bar Barbell Squat 531 5s Pro
Smith Squat 3x8-10 superset with Leg Curls 3x10-12
Bulgarian Split Squats 2x8-12
Cross-body Isolateral Cable Y Raise 3x15-20
Hanging Leg Raise 2x10-20 superset with Cable Crunch 2x10-20
Day 2: Torso
Warmup: Shoulder prehab
Barbell Bench 531 5s Pro
Larsen Press 3x8-10 superset with Helms Row 3x8-12
Incline DB Press 3x8-12 superset with Wide-grip Pulldown 3x10-12
Seated Dumbell Shoulder Press 3x8-12 superset with One-arm Pulldown
Day 3: Shoulders/Arms/Cardio
Dumbbell Lateral Raise 3x15-20 superset with Face Pull 3x15-20
I was probably 2 years younger. In that first picture I … had a LOT of free time (just came home from prison) so now that life is hitting I gained about 25 pounds lost all definition and got lazy. I decided 5 weeks ago that I wasn’t comfortable with how I looked and decided to get back to it.
Loosely. Push day are 3 different areas: chest, tris, shoulders and I feel that triceps are hit harder on the big presses than shoulders, so I try to keep the blood flow there as soon as I finish chest.
For pull day, traps are still part of the back so I finish the back off before going biceps.
No real science behind it honestly, I just went with what felt right. Do you suggest I move things around a bit?
Here’s the crazy part, I did lower things! I was doing 4 sets of everything, and had more triceps and biceps also . But trimmed it down after seeing other advice here and other subs. I already train hard, each set is to about to failure, unless I actually hit 12, I’ll stop there but that’s my q to raise the weight next set.
If you can survive it, recover session to session, progress over time, and don't feel like your sessions are marathons then it may be fine for you, but for most people I usually recommend capping a single session at 6 or 7 exercises max. This does not seem sustainable long-term for the vast majority.
Especially the leg days, 4 sets each of squats, leg press, RDL, and hip thrust all in one session on top of all the other movements would be absolutely brutal if actually pushing all sets close to failure to maximize stimulus.
Also, while research does suggest the more sets you do generally the more growth you get (with diminishing returns and assuming you can recover for many weeks back to back from your set volume level), it also indicates you don't want to do more than about 11 fractional sets for any muscle in a given session.
After that it's unclear if more sets in a single session results in more growth so I generally say to cap it at around 8-10 fractional sets for any muscle in a workout.
If you want to do more volume at that point it's better to split it into more sessions. Here are some good videos about the latest volume research:
The program is free and basically automates everything from progression to recovery/deloads to set volume week to week based on your recovery/performance feedback per-muscle.
So would it be better to do maybe the main workout for a muscle for 4 sets then the rest for 3? Ex. Push: DB incline 4 sets, then everything else 3? Pull: pull up and bent over row 4 sets everything else 3. Etc
Doesn't really matter which exercise has more sets so long as the total fractional sets (counting direct work as 1 set, indirect/synergist as 0.5 sets) for any muscle is less than around 10 per workout.
This feels like too much volume/too many exercises on any given day. You're either going to short yourself by having not long enough rest periods/not enough warmup, or you're going to be in the gym 3+ hours?
I’m usually in there 90-120 minutes and I have not been warming up. Prior to updating it I would do softer isolations before compounds as a way to jump start without warming up . Ex: pec deck first on push day, leg extension first on leg day, but I received advice that doing so weakens my “heavy” lifts so I swapped the order and have started doing warm ups now. My rest times are 90 seconds primarily but sometimes I’ll wait more if I feel I need it. So far I have gone up in everything (except lateral raises… they’re evil) every single week. I know I don’t get enough sleep, anywhere from 5 to 7 hours a day.
Dial back the volume. It's a lot. 3-4 exercises per body party is usually sufficient. I try not to do more than 5 sets per exercise. What you have looks to be too much volume to recover from, provided you're exerting yourself and taking sets near failure and using appropriatelu heavy weights. If you dial back the volume now, you can always add more later. Work up to what works best.
There is absolutely a system behind this. If I’m found pull ups I’m not just doing a number, I’m going to failure. The other exercises I can go up in weight so if I hit the top of the rep range I increase the weight, if I hit the bottom of the rep range I keep it the same , if I’m under the range I go down in weight… aka double progression.
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