:) Well, and this should surprise no one on the forum…….. I don’t know how to conduct a ‘search’ for specific topics. Try as I might I just don’t get anywhere; my computer skills are embarrassingly limited. :o

:confused:I’ve had this question in my mind for some time now and would appreciate some guidance regarding full body work outs and so with my apology in advance for ‘dragging up this topic.......as I am most certain it has been ‘done to death’…..here goes. When one does a full body workout, three days a week how many individual exercises should one perform for each body part per work out session, and should these same individual exercises be done on each day of the workout week or should a completely different group of exercises be done on each of the three workout days for whatever number of weeks in a row? Whew…. and is their a ‘rule of thumb’ regarding the optimum length of time before completely changing up a routine of this sort? Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge and expertise and for your patience with the elderly.:D

:) Well, and this should surprise no one on the forum…….. I don’t know how to conduct a ‘search’ for specific topics. Try as I might I just don’t get anywhere; my computer skills are embarrassingly limited. :o

:confused:I’ve had this question in my mind for some time now and would appreciate some guidance regarding full body work outs and so with my apology in advance for ‘dragging up this topic.......as I am most certain it has been ‘done to death’…..here goes. When one does a full body workout, three days a week how many individual exercises should one perform for each body part per work out session, and should these same individual exercises be done on each day of the workout week or should a completely different group of exercises be done on each of the three workout days for whatever number of weeks in a row? Whew…. and is their a ‘rule of thumb’ regarding the optimum length of time before completely changing up a routine of this sort? Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge and expertise and for your patience with the elderly.:D

I change my exercises and/or set/rep schemes after 6 workouts of a specific workout.

I approach full body workouts with either 3 different workouts per week for 4-6 weeks or an alternating A-B split for 4 weeks, 2 different workouts that you alternate so each week you will do one of the workouts twice.

6-8 exercises would be my recommendation using a set/rep volume of 24-50 per exercise. 4 main ones would be chest, back, hip dominant and quad dominant lower body exercises.

Most of these principles are based on Waterbury's work. :)

He basically summed it up :tucool: those are the guidelines Waterbury gives if you were to make your own routine. Otherwise you can go with one of his routines based on your level. He has routines for beginners, intermediates, to advanced lifters. Find his articles on
www.t-nation.com/ (http://www.t-nation.com/)

If your interested I have a spreadsheet or PDF of almost all his routines that will keep you busy for years. Otherwise you can try some new ones he recently posted on T-Nation.

I think you're going to want to listen to your body a lot. You're not a beginner, you're female, and you're not a teenager. All these things tend to mean that you will want to stick with a program longer than most people. But you have to balance that against your joint health. I would take the large outline of a program as more of a point of departure in your case, and adjust it over some weeks of experimentation to see what is most comfortable for you and allows you to do the most work. Since you're not new to lifting, you probably have points of strength and weakness already identified, and so you can play off those.

I'm pretty big on throwing together workouts based on what I haven't done the past few times. This helps spread the load out over different angles and joint loads. Sticking with the exact same variant of a small number of exercises doesn't really sound that good to me unless you are feeling pretty confident about your joint health.

Full body workout?

One word. Swimming.

Good for the joints...good for elderly people...builds great muscle tissue.

He basically summed it up :tucool: those are the guidelines Waterbury gives if you were to make your own routine. Otherwise you can go with one of his routines based on your level. He has routines for beginners, intermediates, to advanced lifters. Find his articles on
www.t-nation.com/ (http://www.t-nation.com/)

If your interested I have a spreadsheet or PDF of almost all his routines that will keep you busy for years. Otherwise you can try some new ones he recently posted on T-Nation.

I'm interested! Do you have a link to the spreadsheet/PDF? Thanks!

(I probably sound like a broken record)

Pick up a copy of Ellington Darden's "The New High Intensity Training".

He lays out a number of full body workouts for beginner, intermediate and advanced trainees.

The one's I've looked at start with 5 or 6 exercises and build up to no more than 12, and alternates in an ABABAB pattern over two weeks.

Furthermore he lays out a full 48 week program so all the guess work is taken out for you. He tells you when to change your routine, and the kinds of gains you should expect after the 48 week period.

Wow, thanks for the responses………lots to consider. What really brought this all about was something I read somewhere on the internet about the benefits of doing the same exercises each day of the work out week for 4 to 6 weeks in order to achieve max. benefit in muscle growth and measuring advances in strength gains. I have been doing full body workouts since I started 12 years ago but for all the reasons regarding repeated motion and tendons that you mentioned zenpharaohs I made a practice of changing every workout session in order to hit muscles in different ways while not taxing tendons in the same way over and over. Having read what I did I began to wonder if I had been doing it wrong all these years and that was the reason I have always found making strength gains so very difficult. I found the chart in your journal Droopy about weight lifting standards for assorted lifts for men and women of various weights and levels of expertise most interesting and dismaying at the same time. I can't help but think that most of what is in print out there is targeted for more youthful lifters either that or I'm just waaaay behind. (Just this once I’d prefer to think it's my......age.;)) I suppose that’s why I don’t read all the many wonderful books, like the one you mentioned banderbe. I get the sense that they really don’t apply to the likes of me; and zenpharaohs, even though I didn’t pose the question properly, you somehow hit the mark and helped me solve the dilemma I had in my mind…………You are absolutely right I must listen to my body; doing so has served me well so far even thought I would so adore being ‘bulky’ but I’m not:nope: but at least I’ve not injured myself:nod:. It is a shame though that there are so few (as far as I can determine) practical references for more mature women who choose to lift as heavy as possible. I suppose it will be addressed one day………heaven knows there are more women on their way and they aren’t that far behind me!!
Over long post…….thank you all for chiming in though. You have been most thought provoking and helpful. (And patient:cool:)