Kolumne 18 | Trainingsplanbeurteilung - Demo-Frey-Nutrition

Column 18 | Training plan assessment

AS AN ADVANCED EXERCISER, MAKE SURE YOU DO YOUR TRAINING AS OPTIMAL AS POSSIBLE.

Column 18 - Training plan assessment
?
I am 27 years old, have been training for three years and weigh 85 kilos and am 1.81 meters tall. I train according to a 4-split, which looks like this:

MONDAY ? SHOULDERS AND BELLY

Lateral raises 4 sets of 12 reps
Bent over lateral raises 4 sets of 12 reps
Dumbbell press 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Neck press 3 sets of 12,10,8 reps
upright rowing 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Dumbbell shoulder raises 4 sets of max. 12 reps
rev. Crunches with weight 4 sets of 15 reps
Crunches 4 sets of 20 to 30 reps
lateral crunches 3 sets of 15 reps
Cardio ? 30 minutes of running

TUESDAY ? BACK AND TRICEPS

Deadlift 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Rope rowing (close grip) 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Lat pulldown (wide grip) 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Dumbbell rows 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Pull-ups with underhand grip 3 sets max. reps
Bench press (close grip) 5 sets of 12,10,8,8,8 reps
Bench press 5 sets of 12,10,8,8,8 reps
Lying triceps extensions 4 sets of 12 reps

THURSDAY ? LEGS AND BELLY

Leg extensions 4 sets of 15,12,10,10 reps
Squats 4 sets of 15,12,10,10 reps
Leg presses 4 sets of 6 to 8 reps
Leg extensions 4 sets of 15,12,10,10 reps
Leg curls 3 sets of 15,10,10 reps
reverse crunches with additional weight 4 sets of 15 reps
Crunches 4 sets of 20 to 30 reps
Crunches with additional weight 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps
Cardio ? 30 minutes of running

FRIDAY ? CHEST AND BICEPS

Incline bench press with dumbbells (angle 30 degrees) 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Incline bench press with barbell (angle 45 degrees) 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Bench press 4 sets of 12,10,8,8 reps
Butterfly or flying 4 sets of 15 reps
Barbell curls 4 sets of 12 reps
Dumbbell curls or Scott curls 4 sets of 6 reps
Pull-ups 4 sets of max. 12 reps
Hammer curls 4 sets of 12 reps

As a professional, how do you rate this training plan and what can I optimise in terms of the exercise composition and number of repetitions? For example, if I do squats on Thursdays, I still have a little sore muscles in my lower back from the deadlifts on Tuesday. An answer would be very helpful to me, as I train in a German army weight room and there are no specialists available to answer questions.

ANSWER

!
Andreas Frey answers
First of all, you have a good starting point to build on, but with a few improvements you can achieve even greater success.

Since you are no longer a beginner but an advanced athlete, this also means that you should train like an advanced athlete. According to the motto "less is more", you should only train your entire body once a week at this stage.

Training basics ensure an effective workout
As an advanced lifter, you will also be able to handle more weight, which will allow for more intense training and therefore require a longer recovery period. Therefore, training your body once a week, however you practice it, is the right approach.

What I think you could optimise, however, is the composition of muscle groups, the order of exercises and the number of sets. You train your back with triceps and your chest with biceps. This will not produce maximum results. To explain to you why it is wrong, I will first explain the basics of effective training. A lot will then become clear. When training, stick to the following rules in particular:

Rules for effective training
  • short training time of maximum 60 minutes
  • high intensity - every set until muscle failure
  • for large muscle groups maximum 10 sets
  • for small muscle groups maximum 6 sets
  • Approx. 1.5 min break between sets
  • explosive upward and slow downward movement
  • clean and controlled repetitions
You will hardly be able to achieve point one with your training workload because of the high number of sets. However, it is extremely important so that you do not overtrain, but rather quickly enter the recovery phase. You do over 30 sets on a training day, which is far too much. Regular recovery is no longer an option, and further progress is even more unlikely. In my opinion, the maximum number of sets on a training day with two muscle groups is 16.
Only those who recover sufficiently will make good progress.
Too many sets lead to overtraining
Reduce the number accordingly to a maximum of three sets per exercise. At high intensity, four sets of one exercise are almost impossible. I now come back to the problem of training chest and biceps together, as well as back and triceps. In this case, the training takes even longer. If you train your chest together with your triceps, for example, you will already tire out your triceps through the chest training. This means that only a few triceps sets are needed to fully exhaust them. The same applies to back training. Here too, the interaction between back and biceps makes much more sense, as this can further reduce the training time.

You also choose the individual exercises incorrectly, especially the order of the exercises. For example, on Monday during shoulder training, the first exercise you do is lateral raises and then the fourth exercise is neck presses. Neck presses are clearly the exercise that demands the most from you, which is why they should be done right at the beginning of the training. Stick to the basic rule:

First the basic exercises, then the isolation exercises!
Lateral raises are an isolation exercise that only trains the lateral shoulder and slightly the neck. And when training your legs, you do leg extensions before squats, which isn't ideal either - unless you want to specifically pre-fatigue your thighs. You've chosen the number of repetitions well: all of them are in the range defined for muscle hypertrophy.

You can find further useful information in the article about THE TRAINING BASICS . If you optimize your training plan according to my advice and the information on this site, you will continue to make progress. I wish you the best of luck!

Back to blog