Gym fitness training plan

For the 90% of ordinary gym enthusiasts who can only spare 3-4 days a week and have no need to prepare for competitions, the most cost-effective training plan is divided into four weeks: pushing day, pulling day, leg day, whole body compound + active recovery combination. If you insist on it for 3 months, you will see obvious strength increases and body changes. It is at least 30% more efficient than blindly following the Internet celebrity's 5-divided and 7-day cycle plan.

This conclusion is not made up by me. I have been practicing for 6 years, and I have stepped through countless pitfalls in the plan. I have studied with a coach who retired from the provincial team for a year, and I have also helped a dozen friends with zero foundation to adjust the training plan. This 4-part division is the most friendly version for ordinary people that I have tried. Of course, I also know that there is a lot of controversy over training differentiation in the fitness circle. Many people in the powerlifting circle recommend full compound training three times a week, and more people in the bodybuilding circle recommend 5 or even 6 divisions. Both of these are correct, but they are applicable to different groups of people. If you just want to increase your strength and don’t have high requirements for muscle lines and dimensions, squatting, pushing and pulling compound training three times a week is enough. ； If you can ensure that you train for more than 1.5 hours 5 days a week, sleep for 8 hours, and control your diet accurately down to the gram, the 5-point brushing speed will indeed be faster, but most ordinary people who have to go to work and take care of their children, and occasionally work overtime, really do not have the conditions to impose the plans of professional players.

Take my current rhythm as an example. On Monday pressing day, after warming up, I will do 4 sets of flat bench presses. The weight should be 8RM - to put it bluntly, when I lift it for the 8th time, my arms are shaking so much that I can't lift the weight for the 9th time. I rest for 2 minutes in each set. Then there are 3 sets of incline dumbbell bench presses, followed by 3 sets of seated shoulder presses, and finally 3 sets of three-head presses to finish. The whole set including warm-up only takes 1 hour and 10 minutes. After the exercise, the chest and shoulder pumps are obvious, and the next day I will not be so sore that I can’t lift my arms to type on the keyboard. On pulling day on Wednesday, start with 4 sets of pull-ups (if you can't pull, use a power belt, don't hold your back to use force), then 4 sets of deadlifts, the weight should be 5RM, don't push too hard, then 3 sets of high pull-downs, 3 sets of seated rows, and finally 3 sets of bicep curls. Friday is leg day. Needless to say, just squat. 4 sets of squats, 3 sets of lunges, 2 sets of leg press, and finally a few sets of calf raise. Don’t be lazy on leg day. The testicle-stimulating effect is better than any supplement worth hundreds of dollars. On Sunday, I do full-body compound exercises. If any part is weak, I do two more sets. When my back was weak before, I would do two more sets of lat pulldowns on Sunday. If I worked overtime last week and my body was very tired, I could just swim for 40 minutes or foam roll for half an hour on Sunday. It is still considered the training is completed, and I don’t have to stick to the plan and push myself.

The biggest pitfall I encountered when I first started practicing was that I followed the 5-point plan of an Internet celebrity, which consisted of chest, back, legs, shoulders, and arms, one part per day. In order to make up for 5 days, I would sometimes rush to the gym at 8 o'clock after get off work. Later, the coach changed me to this 4-part training and increased the training frequency of each part. I can stimulate it once every 48-72 hours. My muscles naturally grow faster. I can bench press 60kg in two months. My arm circumference has increased by 1.5cm, and I am not so tired.

If you don’t have that much time and can only do 3 days a week, just skip the full body complex on Sunday and just do one day each of pushing and pulling the legs. The effect will not be much different.； If you have a lot of time and want to quickly repair weak areas, you can just add 40 minutes of small muscle group training in the middle of the week. For example, if your arms are weak, you can take time to practice biceps and triceps on Thursday. It’s totally fine. You don’t have to worry about whether the plan is “standard” enough.

There are also many people who are confused about whether to go to exhaustion in every group. This also depends on demand. Most powerlifting schools advocate leaving 1-2 reps at the end of each set to avoid joint injuries that will affect subsequent training. ； The bodybuilding school recommends pushing to failure in the last set to maximize the muscle tearing effect. My own experience is that when a novice's movements are not finalized in the early stage, they must not rush to exhaustion blindly. After the movement is deformed, the compensation will be in vulnerable parts such as shoulders and waist. I had a friend who dared to hit the 1RM deadlift just two months after practicing. After three months of training, his waist failed to do anything and he lost money. When your movements are stable, if you want to increase your dimensions, just push to exhaustion in the last set. When I do chest training, I push 2 more times in the last set. The pumping feeling can be maintained until the next day, and the effect is indeed obvious.

Oh, by the way, don’t just focus on the training plan. If you eat a lot of stuff after training, or only sleep for 6 hours a day, any plan will be useless. Eating enough protein at 1.6-2g per kilogram of body weight and sleeping for 7 hours is much more effective than training for half an hour more. The programmer friend I brought with me before used to go to barbecue after training. After two months of training, there was no change. Later, he changed to eating two eggs and a cup of protein powder after training. He usually eats more skinless chicken legs. His arm circumference increased by 2cm in two months, which made him very happy.

In fact, to be honest, there is really no standard answer to a fitness plan. Those amazing "build Eddie Peng's figure in 3 months" plans that are advertised on the Internet are all in vain if you can't stick to them. Instead of reading "the most scientific training plan" in Xiaohongshu every day, it is better to go to the gym tomorrow and practice these 4 points for two months and feel the changes yourself, which is worse than anything else. By the way, don’t forget to warm up. Really, don’t hit a heavy weight right away, as you may injure yourself and lose more than the gain.