5x5 Deadlifts!

Honestly don't know if 11 days is too long or not. Very hard to saw without knowing how well you recover etc. For me doing only 3 sessions 6 day was perfect. I have known body builders work on 8 and 9 day rotas really effectively.

If you find that it isn't working I would suggest removing some of the days off, which the order should allow for, example below. Rota timing is very much a case of try it and see, so many variables most of them down to the individual that no-one can tell you for sure. My recovery within session is slow, but between is good. Long rests during session or I die, but day or so later ready to go again.
Day 1 - Back/Cardio
Day 2 - Chest/Cardio
Day 3 - Rest
Day 4 - Legs/Cardio
Day 5 - Shoulders/Cardio
Day 6 - Rest
Day 7 - Arms/Cardio
Day 8 and 9 - Rest
Not a lot of change there. Should still be recovered for each body part, but takes 2 days less.
As I say this is very much try it and see. It takes nothing to drop a couple of rest days without changing the sessions.
 
Found you the ideal image for a t-shirt
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I do like Musclehedz cartoons
 

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CrazyOldMan said:
Honestly don't know if 11 days is too long or not. Very hard to saw without knowing how well you recover etc. For me doing only 3 sessions 6 day was perfect. I have known body builders work on 8 and 9 day rotas really effectively.

If you find that it isn't working I would suggest removing some of the days off, which the order should allow for, example below. Rota timing is very much a case of try it and see, so many variables most of them down to the individual that no-one can tell you for sure. My recovery within session is slow, but between is good. Long rests during session or I die, but day or so later ready to go again.
Day 1 - Back/Cardio
Day 2 - Chest/Cardio
Day 3 - Rest
Day 4 - Legs/Cardio
Day 5 - Shoulders/Cardio
Day 6 - Rest
Day 7 - Arms/Cardio
Day 8 and 9 - Rest
Not a lot of change there. Should still be recovered for each body part, but takes 2 days less.
As I say this is very much try it and see. It takes nothing to drop a couple of rest days without changing the sessions.
Click to expand...

I recover pretty well. I'll try the "Every other day for 11 days" split for a month and see how it turns out. I think the every other day will work out with my family responsibilities as well. Going almost every day tends to interfere with stuff I need to get done.
 
Well, I took a week and a half off from any kind of exercise and my back feels much better than it did a week ago. Barely any pain or pressure. Still not ready to dead lift, but close. I was going to go start my new routine today, but I used was for a reason. My oldest girl got me sick. Woke up this morning with coughing, sore throat, runny nose, you know, awesome cold symptoms. The same ones she's had for the last week. So, looks like I'll be continuing my break a little bit longer. I'm not going to make this cold last any longer than it has to by running my body down.
 
Trained with illness so many times. All it did was prolong it.
Not sure about the deadlift abstinance though. Will you be able to consider yourself a real man?
Take care and get well soon.
 
If I miss another week of lifting because of this mutant cold that has gotten worse since yesterday, then I should be able to dead next week. Not 100%, but dead lift nonetheless. My back is almost there. Then I'll just be able to say I wasn't doing it because I was sick, and no manlyness will be lost.
 
I'm going to start my new routine today, finally. I'm cutting, so I'm not looking for much gain-wiise with this routine. I have been out of the gym for three weeks because of my back and a nasty cold, but I'm ready to go now. I'm not dead lifting yet either, so when I do, back day will come first. Not ready to do that to my back yet. Most likely seated rows, weighted Australian rows and dumb bell rows for now. I'm trying to figure out where I would put cleans into this routine as well.

Day 1 - Chest/Cardio
Day 2 - Off
Day 3 - Back/Cardio
Day 4 - Off
Day 5 - Legs/Shoulders
Day 6 - Off
Day 7 - Arms/Cardio
Day 8 & 9 - Off
 
Ok, so while I was out for three weeks, my new gym decided to redo the entire weight room. All new Precor stuff. Weight loaded rowing machine, t-bar row, weight loaded lat pull down machine, decline bench, incline bench, 2 flat benches, 2 weight loaded chest press machines, 2 smith machines, squat rack, 2 leg presses, 2 weight loaded squat machines, 2 preacher curls and misc other benches for dumb bells. It's a really nice setup. The only gripe I have with it is that there's so much new stuff that there's not really any room to dead lift, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I can see myself using a lot of the machines though. I used to work out at a gym that had a lot of the weight loaded machines that you can load up with 45's and go to town on. I actually used the chest press today as my last set. There's a lot of shifting in weight due to the fact that I was out for three weeks and I'm shifting to a 5x5 so I need to find good weight to work with.


Decline Bench Warmup - 135x5 - 135x5
Decline Bench - 185x5 - 185x5 - 185x5 - 205x5 - 205x5
Incline Bench Warmup - 135x5
Incline Bench - 155x5 - 155x5 - 155x5 - Adjusted weight - 125x5 - 125x5
Precor Chest Press - 90x5 - 100x5 - 110x5 - 110x5 - 110x5
Stair Machine - 20 Minutes

I'm not necessarily as happy as I would be with this workout. It wouldn't have been as frustrating if I didn't have to shift around in weight so much, but now I know what I'm working with. I'm probably going to be shifting around weight a lot during the first go around of this split, especially with arms, since when I have my arm day, they won't already be burned out from doing something prior. I'm also wondering if the 20 minutes of cardio is really making a difference or if I should just stick with weights for the full hour. I guess I'll make changes as needed.
 
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I have to figure out the weights every change over. I usaully mess with rep ranges and exercises so there is a lot of guesswork and error first couple of weeks.
The fun part is when you do a workout on week 1 where the weights were mostly too low but you still ache like hell because your body has been shocked by the change.

Like the avatar.
 
I figure if I don't have the shirt, I should use it for something.

I'm really feeling it in my tri's today. I think if I'm going to be doing this "One body part a day" thing, I need to hit heavy bench, then move to heavy peck deck or dumb bell flies after that. I'm going to burn my triceps out before I get in a good chest workout. I was feeling that a bit yesterday. That's why I had to go down in weight when I was doing my inclines.

I'm actually kind of excited to get in for back tomorrow. I love the Hammer Strength/Precor back stuff. I'll be on the t-bar row machine for like a half hour.
 
Day 2 of my new split went very well. I didn't really guess on weights too much today. I jumped right into back on the new Precor machines. I forgot how much I like using them. They will do until my back is 100% ready to transition back to a barbell, which it may be, but mentally, I'm not there yet.

I used 45's and 25's on all of the Precor machines. I only count how much weight I put on, not the weight of the bars with it.

Precor Lat Pull Down - Warm up 90x15
Precor Lat Pull Down - 270 lbs - 5x5
Precor Rower Warmup - 90x15 -
Precor Rower - Slight weight Adjustment 180x5 - Continued Up to 230 lbs 5x5
Precor T-Bar Warmup - 45x10 - 90x5
Precor T-Bar - 115 lbs 5x5
Sitting Cable Row - 150 lbs 3x8
Stairs - 20 minutes. 53 flights. Average bpm - 169.

I expect my average heart rate to drop to about 155 by the time I get used to doing cardio again. It's been a while.

All of the pulling I did tonight had no negative effect on my back, which I was very pleased with. I think most of the problem I'm having now is in my brain. I've got the worry that when I get back to dead lifting, I'm going to screw up again. I haven't taken this much of a break from dead lifting since I started lifting weights. What I looked forward to before is getting inside my head now. I need to move past that, and more importantly, I need to keep it light for a while when I get back to it. I have a tendency to try to jump right back in, which will not help in this case.
 
Got in a decent leg/shoulder/bicep day yesterday. First time I've gone anywhere near heavy on legs since I hurt my back, and besides the worst DOMS of my life today, my back is still doing very well.

Squat Warm up - 135x8 - 135s8
Squats - 225x5x5
Precor Squat Machine Warmup - 90x8 - 180x8
Precor Squat - 270x5x5
Overhead Press - 95x5 - 105x5x4
Precor Bicep Curl Warm up - 45x15
Precor Bicep Curl - 95x8 - 135x5x4
Overhead Press - 115x8 - 135x5x5
Barbell Curl - 80x5x5

I probably could have done without the squats on the Precor Machine, but I wanted to see what it was all about and I didn't feel like a 5x5 set of regular squats was enough. I'm really itching to get back to dead lifting, but I have to keep reminding myself to not rush it. My next back day is Sunday. Maybe I'll try some very light deads just to start to get back in the swing of it. Get my mechanics back on track.
 
Well, I was not happy, in the least, with today's session. Today is a perfect example as to why you make a routine and stick to it. Today was the beginning of cycle, and my last cycle ended Wednesday. The problem is that it should have ended Tuesday, but I couldn't lift Tuesday. The first problem I had is that the DOMS in my legs from the Wednesday session are possibly the second worst I've ever had, behind the first time I ever did a real leg workout because Wednesday was the first real leg session I have had since I hurt my back. The second problem was that when I got under the bar today, I knew my shoulders weren't fully recovered from Wednesday's session and my chest routine pretty much went to hell. I cut back my sets of 5x5 to 3x5 to try to maximize what I could get done before my shoulders shut my chest down completely. It went like this..

Bench Press Warm up - 105x8 - 105x8 - 135x5
Bench Press - 185x3x5
Dumb Bell Flies - 80x5 - 100x3x5
Decline Bench - 185x5 - 165x5 - 165x5
Over Handed Dumb Bell Flies - 50x8 - 60x8 - 60x8
Bent Over Dumb Bell Tricep Extensions - 35x3x8
Over Head Seated Dumb Bell Tricep Extensions - 50x3x8

Despite the DOMS in my legs, I managed to get a 10 minute walk in on the treadmill @ 3.5mph on a #5 incline. I also went ahead and got in some tricep exercises due to the fact that there was no way I was spending my full 20 minutes on the treadmill or stairs without my legs giving out and being carried out of the gym.

In retrospect, I should have just waited until tomorrow to start my new cycle, but it is what it is. I was impatient, as I sometimes tend to be, and I paid the price. We're going to have bad sessions every once in a while. Sometimes I need to be reminded that I'm not 22 anymore, and I'm not going to have the recovery time I once did.
 
Finally, a good day. No weight guessing, just warming up and lifting. I saved so much time not guessing on weight that I squeezed in a whole extra set of high pulls in the same amount of time. Good back day.

Precor Lat Pull Down Warmup - 180x12
Precor Lat Pull Down - 270x5x5
Precor Rower Warmup- 140x8
Precor Rower - 230x5x5
T-Bar Warmup - 45x8
T-Bar - 115x5x5
Barbell Back Dumb Bell Flies(Weight of both dumb bells) - 90x5x5
High Pull Warmups - 70x8
High Pulls - 80x3x8
Stair Machine - 20 minutes. 870 stairs.

Everything flowed perfectly in today's session. It somewhat made up for the lackluster performance and bad timing of Fridays chest session. I also think that I'm ready to get back to dead lifting. Next back day, I start working my way back up.
 
Yeah, it was great to go to my next exercise knowing exactly what I was going to do. I actually enjoy the Precor machines. Easy to pack a lot of weight on to without wearing yourself out just setting it up. When I get back to primarily using a straight bar, I'm going to try to keep the Precor stuff incorporated into my routine. At least the rowing machine. It's the same as a Hammer Strength rower.
 
No machines at my gym. There is a high-low pulley system attached to the rack but it is rarely used. I keep tring to figure a way to do leg press with it, I do miss leg press.

It will be a while until I am knowing exactly what comes next but that can be good too at times.
 
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