Varying Recovery Times for Body Parts

[SNPiccolo5]

So I've been lifting weights for several months now, my routine consists of something like this... I do it 3 times a week.

Leg Press
Pull- Ups (usually underhand)
Upright Rows
Chest Fly
Bent-over row
Chest Dips
Bicep Curls
Leg raises

(usually takes 45 minutes to an hour)

The thing is- my gains on the upper body excercises are pretty limited, while my leg press seems to be getting better consistently. Now, I know, it's a machine excercise, so I'd be better off doing squats and deadlifts, (and probably bench press instead of chest fly), so maybe the weight I add doesn't count for as much, but it's gone from 160 to 300. 300 is the highest the machine goes.

The wierd thing is, I run pretty much every day I don't lift (I'll have a rest day once a week usually), so I'd think that would inhibit the recovery of my lower body. The excercise I did before I started lifting was all running, though, so maybe my legs were conditioned better to start lifting? I don't know. What does everyone else think about this?

-Tim

[midgetcop]

Just my two cents, but I think you should replace the chest flys with bench press, and add some kind of shoulder press in there. Also, what about your triceps?

[SNPiccolo5]

Originally Posted by midgetcop

Just my two cents, but I think you should replace the chest flys with bench press, and add some kind of shoulder press in there. Also, what about your triceps?

I agree about the bench press. On some days, I'll do shoulder press, while on others it seems the upright rows hit them pretty good. The chest dips are mainly a chest/tricep excercise, I feel. Make sense? Thanks for the input!

-Tim

Leg Press - Quads
Pull- Ups - Back
Upright Rows - Shoulders, traps
Chest Fly - Chest
Bent-over row - Back
Chest Dips - Chest, Tri's, Shoulders
Bicep Curls - Biceps
Leg raises - Abs

That's a pretty good split, but you could balance it out a bit better. You have two exercises for chest and two for back. I'd drop one of each (probably fly's and bent over rows) and add something for your hams (like SLDL's), calves (calf raises on leg press), and forearms (change bicep curls to hammer curls).

When doing dips, do you lean forward (targets chest) or keep upright (targets tri's)? Depending on how you do them, you might want to add an exercise for the synergist muscle group.

Also, how many sets do you do per exercise?

[SNPiccolo5]

Originally Posted by IronMan

Leg Press - Quads
Pull- Ups - Back
Upright Rows - Shoulders, traps
Chest Fly - Chest
Bent-over row - Back
Chest Dips - Chest, Tri's, Shoulders
Bicep Curls - Biceps
Leg raises - Abs

That's a pretty good split, but you could balance it out a bit better. You have two exercises for chest and two for back. I'd drop one of each (probably fly's and bent over rows) and add something for your hams (like SLDL's), calves (calf raises on leg press), and forearms (change bicep curls to hammer curls).

When doing dips, do you lean forward (targets chest) or keep upright (targets tri's)? Depending on how you do them, you might want to add an exercise for the synergist muscle group.

Also, how many sets do you do per exercise?

Thanks for the reply, Ironman. For the dips, I lean forward towards the bottom of each rep, but come up straight... yeah. Most days I'll do 4 sets of each excercise, but there are exceptions. If I'm doing more of a high-volume day (once in a while just to mix it up), I might end up doing 5 sets with lower weight. For pull-ups, I do 3 sets (8-9 reps, 6-7 reps, 5 reps), because right now that's what I can do. The one thing I do try to do is keep the intensity up.

I find my forearms get pretty tired by the end of my routine.. In fact, I find bicep curls pretty difficult to do at the end because my forearms are gone- but I'll see what happens. I've been planning on adding deadlifts for a long time now, but am not very familiar with the equipment in the gym right now... I'll just have to be more assertive sometime and figure it out. That know that sounds like a really silly reason...

Any guesses yet on why my leg lifts go up so fast while my upper body doesn't much?

-Tim

[KaiserSose]

Originally Posted by SNPiccolo5

Any guesses yet on why my leg lifts go up so fast while my upper body doesn't much?

-Tim

I have a few guesses as to why this is the case.

1) It's possible that when you began lifting your upper body was stronger than your lower body thus making it relatively easier to see more dramatic gains with your legs.

2) You are measuring your leg strength solely on the leg press, which may not be a proper indicator. I'm not sure what machine you are using for the leg press, but if it's the one I use, than 160 would not be a challenging weight. If you started off to low and didn't challenge yourself than it may be that your weight has gone up so much because it was too low to start off with.

[LiftGirl]

Originally Posted by SNPiccolo5

Any guesses yet on why my leg lifts go up so fast while my upper body doesn't much?

I'm going to try to explain my idea in a way that makes sense.

Leg press is a very powerful exercise. You're engaging large muscles (quads mostly, but a little bit of hams and glutes) to do a powerful movement. Chest fly, for example, is not a very powerful movement, like bench would be.

So your strength is likely to increase faster when doing more powerful movements like leg press, DL, or bench.

I hope this makes sense......

[SNPiccolo5]

Originally Posted by LiftGirl

I'm going to try to explain my idea in a way that makes sense.

Leg press is a very powerful exercise. You're engaging large muscles (quads mostly, but a little bit of hams and glutes) to do a powerful movement. Chest fly, for example, is not a very powerful movement, like bench would be.

So your strength is likely to increase faster when doing more powerful movements like leg press, DL, or bench.

I hope this makes sense......

Thanks for the reply... it does make sense. I'm going to drop the fly and instead do bench... it's about time I started doing bench press.

Ironman- I switched to hammer curls, and I at least feel it a lot more in my forearms. I always had trouble doing wrist curls; I think these work a lot better. Thanks for the advice. I'm really excited to add bench press to my routine, too.

-Tim

Coolio. Let us know how they work for you.