I would like to lift more, but I'm not sure how to fit it in..

[MrEgo]

First off, a little bit about myself:

-27 Years Old
-5'8"
-190lbs (muscular)
-Attemping to bulk up
-Above average diet - I cook almost every night and I very rarely go out to eat. Chicken mostly. I eat a lot of potatoes and Quaker weight control oatmeal. I drink about a gallon of milk every other day. I eat a lot of eggs. 90/10 ground beef wrapped in whole grain tortilla shells. Lots of tuna and albacore. Planters honey roasted peanuts and natural peanut butter. Honey bunches of oats cereal.

I'm currently taking Creakic, Cryotest, Nitro Tech, and Nano Vapor supplements. Yeah, expensive, I know..

Anyway, ever since I split up with my girlfriend, I've had plenty of free time. I've been going to the gym consistently for the last 6 months, but now I'd like to go even more now that I have all this free time.

Problem is.. is that I don't know how much more I can cram into my routine simply because I (think) I work just about every muscle group in my routine. Here's what it looks like:

Tuesdays:
Bench press (8-10 sets of heavy weight - 225, 250)
Lat pull downs (5 sets of 5 using my body weight minus 20lbs)
Reverse flys using dumbbells (until I can't hold them up anymore)
Bicep curls (5 sets of 5 using 105)
Tricep pulldowns (5 sets of 5 using 100)
Standing rows (5 sets of 5, weight varies.. I just started this one)
Sitting rows (5 sets of 10 using 120)

Saturdays:
Same as Tuesday

Sundays:
Squat (5-8 sets of 5)
Leg press or Leg extension (5 sets of 5)
Hamstring curls (5 sets of 5)
Calf raises (5 sets of 5)
Reverse situps (5 sets of 8)
Ab coaster machine (I just go until failure)


I guess my questions are these:

1. For those of you that put in more than 6 hours per week at the gym, how do you manage it?
2. Can I start to increase my sets on certain muscle groups or do different exercises that target the same muscle group multiple times? For example, bench press + tricep pull down + military press?
3. Does anyone see any glaring flaw in my routine - i.e... am I missing an exercise that I really should be doing? I've been building my back muscles up for dead lift, but I'm not quite ready yet, but other than that, I don't think I'm missing any of the key lifts.
4. Is there a way to better manage my routine so that I can start going to the gym 4 or 5 times per week, and still spend 2+ hours in the gym each time?

Thanks for the help.

 

[MotF Bane]

You go Tues, Sat, and Sun? What about Thursday?

In short, do more squats, add deadlift and OH press.

 

[MrEgo]

If I went Thursday, what would I have room to do? That isn't enough time in between workouts is it?

And when you say do more squats, do you mean do more sets on Sunday or do them more throughout the week?

 

[Unmoosical]

If I went Thursday, what would I have room to do? That isn't enough time in between workouts is it?

And when you say do more squats, do you mean do more sets on Sunday or do them more throughout the week?

In an effort to save you some time I'd like to ask what your goals are. Someone would have asked it eventually so I just figured I'd beat them to the punch. It will allow everyone to better understand what you want to get out of working out thus able to assist you better.

 

[brikis98]

As Unmoosical mentioned, we need to know your goals. Strength? Adding muscle mass? Improving performance in some sport?

Also, it is very important to mention the following: your body gets stronger/bigger while you rest, not while you exercise. It is when you are not exercising that your body recovers and develops the adaptations we want (increased strength, muscle mass, bone density, etc). Therefore, the goal in your training should be to produce enough stimulus to get your body to adapt and no more. In fact, doing too much is very counterproductive as your body will not be able to recover and you'll actually make slower progress, stall quickly and possibly see overtraining symptoms.

 

[MrEgo]

As Unmoosical mentioned, we need to know your goals. Strength? Adding muscle mass? Improving performance in some sport?

Also, it is very important to mention the following: your body gets stronger/bigger while you rest, not while you exercise. It is when you are not exercising that your body recovers and develops the adaptations we want (increased strength, muscle mass, bone density, etc). Therefore, the goal in your training should be to produce enough stimulus to get your body to adapt and no more. In fact, doing too much is very counterproductive as your body will not be able to recover and you'll actually make slower progress, stall quickly and possibly see overtraining symptoms.

Heh, which is why I was wondering if there was any more I could pack in there. Professional body builders work out a ridiculous amount of hours per week, so apparently it can be done somehow.

My goal is to reach 200lbs of fairly lean mass. Like I mentioned above, I'm 190, but I probably have 10-15lbs of fat that I could safely cut. So, I'm going to try to eat my way (healthy foods) up to 210lbs, and cut back down to 200.

 

[MotF Bane]

If I went Thursday, what would I have room to do? That isn't enough time in between workouts is it?

And when you say do more squats, do you mean do more sets on Sunday or do them more throughout the week?

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday would be fine. Saturday and Sunday back to back is cutting into your rest time.

More of them throughout the week.

 

[NGC_604]

Heh, which is why I was wondering if there was any more I could pack in there. Professional body builders work out a ridiculous amount of hours per week, so apparently it can be done somehow.

And many of their bodies are science experiments. Unless you're on the Barry Bonds Diet, you're not going to be able to do that much work and have your body be able to keep up.

 

[MrEgo]

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday would be fine. Saturday and Sunday back to back is cutting into your rest time.

More of them throughout the week.

Even though Saturday and Sunday are working 2 completely different regions of my body?

 

[Deeko]

Yes.

 

[brikis98]

Professional body builders work out a ridiculous amount of hours per week, so apparently it can be done somehow.

Most professional bodybuilders that you've heard of are on massive amounts of steroids and one of the primary effect of such steroids is to significantly decrease recovery time. Their bodies can repair & adapt much faster than a normal person, so they can work out much more often than a normal person. Unless you're juicing like a bodybuilder, forget about training like one.

My goal is to reach 200lbs of fairly lean mass. Like I mentioned above, I'm 190, but I probably have 10-15lbs of fat that I could safely cut. So, I'm going to try to eat my way (healthy foods) up to 210lbs, and cut back down to 200.

If reaching a certain bodyweight & body fat percentage are your goals, then your primary focus should be diet. You need to eat a caloric surplus to bulk and a caloric deficit to cut. You need plenty of protein in both cases, especially during the cut to prevent loss of LBM. You can have the perfect workout routine, but without the proper diet backing it up, you won't come close to the results you want.

As for the routine, you probably won't see much benefit from lifting more than 3-4 times per week when it comes to mass gain. Again, your muscles grow when you rest, not when you train, so you should strive to do just enough weight training to create a hypertrophy stimulus and no more. The good news is that in the beginner & intermediate stages, you can usually recover fast enough to be able to train the same muscles 2-3 times per week. To do this efficiently, however, you use a full body training routine rather than a split routine. That is, you train everything in the body each workout, rest a couple days, and then do it again. In Starting Strength, for example, you alternate A/B workouts every other day, where A = squat, bench, deadlift, pull-ups and B = squat, OH press, power clean, dips. You still train 3 times per week, so there is plenty of time for recovery, but you hit everything in the body each session.

The routine you posted has a number of issues that reflect a lack of understanding of weight training. For example, you train your lower body just once a week, but your upper body twice. The biggest/strongest muscles are in the lower body and if you want to get big, you shouldn't neglect them. You don't do deadlifts or OH press, but do lots of isolation and machine exercises. If you learn proper technique for the deadlift and work your way up gradually, it'll strengthen your back for you, so you don't need to "pre-strengthen" for it (just sounds like an excuse to avoid a hard exercise). I see no mention/explanation of why you pick different set/rep scheme for certain exercises or how/when/if you plan to increase weight.

It's easy to overlook such issues, which is why it is typically a good idea to use a routine designed by professionals rather than throwing one together yourself. I'm not sure what level of training you're at - beginner, intermediate? This is determined by how often you can increase weight on the major compound lifts - if you can add at least a little weight almost every time you workout, you are a beginner. If you can only add weight once every week or so, you are intermediate. You should want to be a beginner for as long as possible as that is when you make the fastest gains. Anyways, here are some decent routines to look at:

Starting Strength: gold standard for beginners. Get the book, worth every penny.
Stronglifts 5x5: very similar to Starting Strength.
Bill Starr 5x5: excellent intermediate strength training routine.
HST: intermediate routine built for hypertrophy.