My Favorite Workout Routine for a Slightly Less Fat Ass

This is a picture of my home gym... notice that it sucks. I mean, there are somethings in there I absolutley love. But I am very limited on what I can do. Pro-tip: Bowflex is a whole lotta meh shrugs. I like my kettle bells for various exercises, I would die if I didn't have the convenience of my PowerBlock dumbbells and the EZ curl bar gives my arms the feelz.

So, here are the three keys to an effective workout routine:

1. You fucking do it... in other words, keep it simple. If it is too complicated or too long, you aren't going to stick with it. Keep it short and simple.

2. Train to failure. Don't be a little bitch, you push until your muscles stop. Your fast-twitch fibers are largely glycolytic and store a lot of glucose. When these muscles are recruited, it creates the stimulus needed to grow muscle. At the same time, it enlarges the glucose storage reservoir in the muscle, which enhances your insulin sensitivity which means your body processes fuel better. Long periods of low/medium intensity exercise can actually cause your intermediate and fast-twitch fibers to begin to atrophy. Aside from losing muscle mass, this also promotes onset of loss of insulin sensitivity. Don't get me wrong. I like to switch it up amd do some medium intesity stuff on occassion. That's my $.02.

3. Recover. You absolutely must recover after each workout. If you lift less than you did the session before, then you most likely did not recover. Plenty of sleep, lots of water and healthy diet is very important here.

Now, on to my basic routine. This is a great set of exercises to use as a starter. They are multiple-joint, simple and easily replaced with body weight exercises.

I typically train three sets to failure on each exercise and advance the weight when my first set surpasses 12 repetitions. Starting out, just do one set to failure until you feel like changing it. I have found better overall strength increases from three sets. I have reviewed the science and both argument for single and multiple sets to failure. Multiple sets is better but I personally need more recovery time after that. Most people won't notice a difference. Damn, that was a lot of babble just to get to what my worthless opinion about tye best starter workout.

Bench Press
Goblet Squat
Shoulder Press
Bent Row
Reverse Grip Pull Down

I strongly encourage people to visit bodybuilding.com for articles and information on the specific exercises and possible replacements for those particular movements. If you want to get a very sciency point of view on training, Doug McGuff's Body By Science is a great read. I don't agree with everything he writes, but he has a ton of great information.

Cheers, and if you found this article of no value and would like to see more articles of no value then please... by all means go and visit my blog.

Sean @seanengman