After a four-month cut (calling it a "cut" sounds fancier than calling it a "diet") and reaching my target weight and body fat percentage, I've been reworking my training routine.
For the past year or so, I've focused only on hypertrophy (growing muscles). Not once did I prioritize cardio or strength. Naturally, going to the gym five times a week to lift heavy weights makes you stronger and improves your endurance, but more as a side effect than as a clear goal.
My new training plan focuses much more on the latter. So far, I've trained for aesthetics ("looking good naked" and all that), but now I will focus on my longevity goal: being able to get out of a swimming pool without using the ladder or the stairs when I'm 80 years old.
So far, my routine followed a Push, Pull, Leg, Upper, Lower system. Now, I'm removing two hypertrophy-focused sessions (Upper, Lower) and instead adding one purely strength-based one, one for Zone 2 cardio, and one for Zone 3 cardio.
The final result will look like this:
- Day 1: Push + Zone 5 Cardio
- Day 2: Pull + Zone 5 Cardio
- Day 3: Leg + Zone 2 Cardio
- Day 4: Full-Body HIT
- Day 5: EMOM Zone 5 Cardio
- Day 6: Low-Impact Zone 2 Cardio
Side note: This program doesn't follow a typical 7-day week. To me, trying to fit a training program into 7 days never made much sense, since my biceps couldn't care less if today is Tuesday or not. Rather, this follows a monthly cycle where I try to have at least four sessions of each day per month with sufficient rest in between.
Some explanations:
HIT is something I've stolen from Robin Sloan. He writes:
You lift weights, using big machines that isolate particular muscles. You work at your maximum capacity — from the very first moment, you are thinking, uh oh, this is VERY heavy. You do this with a trainer; that’s crucial because you simply would not suffer this much without supervision.
Your “reps” blend into one continuous motion, transitioning smoothly from pushing to pulling, pulling to pushing. There’s no jerking or heaving, no clanging or banging. You go slow.
I sat down with my coach to go through the motions and learn what exactly it looked like. And let me tell you, it is incredibly hard. Your whole body wants to thrash the weights around, but you need to force yourself to go slow. It's painful how slow you are supposed to move. I can do about two to three reps before my muscles fail.
EMOM stands for “Every Minute on the Minute.” You perform a set of exercises at the start of each minute and then rest for the remainder of the minute. Once the next minute starts, you begin the exercise again.
For example, for rowing (my cardio of choice), you row 200 meters as fast as possible, then rest until the next minute starts. You do that for 5 minutes, or until you're too close to exhaustion, take a longer rest (until your heart rate calms down), and then go again. Repeat 2-4x.
I'll adapt my training based on my energy levels and recovery. Aka, if I am tired too much, I need to slow down.