some advice

I have been lifting for a few years. It seems like every time I start getting into a routine, I end up injuring myself. My latest injury which put me out for about 6 months was a small tear in my labrem.

So now I am doing lighter weights, more repetitions.

I use free weights at home with a cycling machine. I’ve also had 4 knee surgeries (sports related) so I have to be careful with my legs. I guess I am looking for some advice on a decent routine, using lighter weights that produces results.

How often do you stretch?

Do you use a spotter?

Do you think you push yourself to hard?

If you are into heavy weights, listen to your body carefully. You will know when you can’t continue a workout and should stop. Proper form and technique is key to staying injury free.

As far as lighter weights, you won’t gain as much muscle mass, but will develop greater muscle endurance. Just do your normal exercises with lighter weights and more repetitions. I recommend doing 20-30 repetitions for each set for lighter weights to get best results. Just find out what weight you can do those numbers the best at and improve from there.

I stretch before I lift for about 5 minutes. I usually do some light cardio to get my muscles loosened up.

I don’t have the luxury of having a spotter unfortunately.

I used to go for max weight, which is what led to my shoulder injury. So I’d say yeah, I did push myself to hard in the past.

I understand, are there routines mapped out on this site or am I at the wrong place?

thanks for the reply

I dont think this site has its own routines, which would be interesting. Usually people request for help on the forums like you are doing.

However, as I am not your trainer and do not know what weight you are used to doing or what your goals are I am just giving you some general advice.

Any workout is great for building muscle endurance. You don’t even have to use weights. Pushups, situps, pullups, leg raises etc. However, with weights just determine what weight you can do with correct form around 30 some times (depending on the workout between 20-30 is what I recommend). Do between 1-3 sets of each workout. I also recommend using some sort of interval training in this fashion as well, since you do not need to waste time resting from heavy lifting.

As far as pushing yourself to hard, I think this is something interesting: One important aspect to weight training is overcoming nervous inhibition to the muscles. Nervous inhibition is a combination of psychological and physiological constraints in which your body’s protective methods and your own self confidence constrain your body’s ability to lift heavy weights. From the psychological standpoint, the more you lift the more confident you become and the more weight you can push. From the physiological standpoint there is a sensor in your muscle’s tendons called the Golgi Tendon Organ. This tendon organ is part of the nervous system and protects your muscles from generating too much contractile force which could cause the muscle to damage itself. The more you lift, the more tolerant you become of the golgi tendon sensor and the more force is required to stimulate it. A weightlifter can cause himself injury when he pumps himself up too much in order to lift a weight his body cannot handle. This might be what has happened to you. I remember one time I got so pumped up I tore my biceps tendon. Talk about pain.

The best way to avoid this is to know and understand your body’s strength and limitations. Don’t try to over do it and know when your body is telling you to quit. Pushing yourself to much and pumping yourself up too much is not the smart way to lift. Be logical and aware.

Thanks for the reply.

I’m relatively healthy, 6’1 205lbs.

So I’ll give you a sample of what I’m doing and you can point me in the right direction if you choose.

For chest/triceps:
- Bench press – I start at my ‘max’ weight, which currently is 170 lbs. I do two sets of 10. I decline the weight by 10 lbs until I get to the bar doing two sets of 10 at each interval of weight. I then do incline bench press 100 lbs and decline bench press 100 lbs two sets of 10

- Dumbell bench press – 50 lbs total 2 sets of 10 (regular, incline, and decline)

- Dips – 2 sets of 20

- tricep extensions 10 lbs 2 sets of 20

- butterfiles with dumbells 25lbs 2 sets of 20

at this point my arms are abour ready to fall off

I personally have never felt comfortable going with my max weight on the very first set of my workout. A quick warm up set to get everything ready has worked best for me.

handsinpants:
This seems like a credible workout to me. However, I question why you focus on bench press considerably more than other workouts? IMO incline and decline are just as important if not more so than straight bench.

One thing to keep in mind for a muscle endurance workout is to have little or no rest in between sets. Also, depending on where you work out, how busy it is, etc, I would use some alternate weight training with workouts. For example:
>1st set of bench
>1st set of incline
>1st set of decline
>2nd set of bench
>2nd set of incline
>2nd set of decline
>(all the way to your last sets)

Take a minute or two rest
>1st set of butterflys
>1st set of dips
>1st set of dumbell bench press
>(repeat like above)

I would also recommend perhaps doing incline dumbell press one day, straight another day, and decline another day. This way you can mix it up a little. The important thing to note is that you should have VERY little rest inbetween all of the sets. No more than 30secs. You will of course have to decrease your weight significantly so your arms won’t fall off, but thats the purpose of muscle endurance training.

Be sure to incorporate lower body exercises in a similar fashion.

Thanks again for the reply NC, you’re helping me out a ton!

Let me clarify, that sample was one day of workout, typically that’s my Monday. I don’t rest too much, just enough time to adjust the plates on the bar and stretch my arms a little. I work out at home, free weights.

and to clarify the max weight. I can probably lift around 200+ lbs a few times but I don’t feel too comfortable doing that for a few reasons: 1) no spotter (my pregnant wife wouldn’t be too much help there :P ) and 2) my previous shoulder injury

so I tried your suggestion NC, and I have to say I feel like I got a much better workout. Thanks for the tips.

Glad to help. :-)