By Strength Oldschool
This Workout "Training Tip" is for newbie lifters but really could be applied to everyone, including myself!
Lot's of lifters when beginning a new "Workout Training Program" automatically hit each bodypart with multiple exercises (3-5 different lifts) without even knowing how each individual exercise feels and affects their muscles.
Before setting up or beginning a "Workout Training Program", spend a period of time (8-12 weeks) finding out which exercises you like and how a particular exercise affects your body. The exercises you like will be the ones you keep for your Training Program.
To do this successfully...Just train "One Bodypart" only, for example, Triceps, and select "One Exercise" only! Doesn't need to be Triceps by the way, it can be any bodypart you wish but you will want to target all muscle groups over the course of several months before beginning a real Training Program.
I'm just using Triceps as an example. Do multiple sets with high and low reps then stop. No more additional exercises. You don't need to train for hours, 20 - 40 mins would be more than enough, depending on your rest times of course. Rest as long as you need by the way. Simply warm-up then do several work sets. How many work sets you do, depends on you and how you feel (energy levels etc).
This is not a "Shock" method of training, so your one exercise workout should definitely take no more than one hour, preferably around 30 mins or so. During the workout and the next day or two, analyse how your Tricep muscle (or whichever muscle you trained) feels and whether that exercise affected the muscle in a good or bad way.
If you are performing an 'isolation' exercise for your triceps then you should be feeling tenderness only within the tricep area. However, if you feel tenderness more in other areas but your triceps, then something is wrong and you may want to ditch that exercise.
If you like the exercise keep it. If not, ask yourself why? Sometimes a bad exercise can become great simply by changing the type of bar you use or body position while performing the exercise. For example, the exercise I'm performing in the video is slightly different from my usual style. Today I'm more "Dorian Yates" - My elbows are flared out to the sides and my upper body is hunched over the bar pressing down using a short "Straight Bar".
One thing I noticed after just one light set was how the straight bar affected my wrists. I experienced wrist pain during the movement which worsened if I brought the bar too far up close to my chest. But by being aware of this and therefore adapting and keeping the range of motion shorter (not bringing the bar too far up), my wrists weren't affected as much. However, even just experiencing the pain for a brief amount of time, it made me realise that perhaps using a different bar, maybe even a rope (allowing the wrists to move more freely), may be a better and more suitable choice to try next time.
If you truly want to know how a particular exercise feels on your target muscle group, be careful not to add additional exercises which affect the same muscle. For example, if you take the notion to train chest as well, don't choose a pressing exercise like Barbell Bench Press or Dumbbell Presses as these exercises will also target the triceps, which therefore defeats the purpose of this "Training Tip"!
If you wish to combine muscle groups, think carefully before you do. Remember, the idea is to find out how "one" particular exercise affects the muscle / bodypart. You won't get accurate feedback if you include more exercises / muscle groups. This is why I suggest spending "months" and not "weeks" on this part of training as you need to allow your body to fully heal before training again.
Performing a triceps exercise with a Biceps exercise may be okay, but at the end of the day, my suggestion is to keep it simple and focus only on one muscle group and one exercise for that muscle.
Spending time to get to know specific exercises and how they affect the target muscle is very important, instead of just simply throwing multiple exercises at a bodypart because well, so and so on Youtube performs a billion exercises on triceps and they have great triceps, so I'll do the same!! No. Don't copy others. You may personally find one exercise feels amazing on a specific bodypart and is enough for you to grow that particular muscle, instead of having to use multiple exercises! Don't be afraid to deviate from the norm. Experiment!
Hopefully this training tip helps in some way.
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Keep training hard folks! All the best!
Strength Oldschool