Is there a reason every routine has A, B, C days?

[femooh]

Hi there,

I have been doing a machines only full body workout of about 12 machines 3x a week that takes about 2 hours to do. This is becoming a bit unmanageable so I have been loooking at some routines that incorporate more compound movements using barebells and dumbbells to try to get to around an hour. I am still trying to do full body if possible 3x a week.

Most routines though seem to have a lot of confusing steps tbh where like there are a b and c days. From what I can see most seem to be doing working the same things but just slightly different exercises each day.

I was just wondering is there a reason we can’t do something like below?

1. Some kind of Squat
2. Deadlift
3. Row
4. Tricep Extension and Bicep Curl Super Set
5. Bench Press
6. Lat Pulldown or Lateral Raise
7. Maybe throw in a bonus every other session (ie calf raises, crunch, chest fly, rear deltoid machine etc etc)

It just seems a lot simpler and I am not finding an answer using the key words I am searching eeks

Editing to add that I am a 23 Yr Old tall Morbidely Obese guy so while I am lucky I don’t have too many medical limitations with knee pain etc etc there are a lot of things in these routines I just can’t do. Some examples are push ups, pull ups, dips, etc etc

 

[leoriofarel]

@femooh It’s mostly to cut down on time. A normal training session lasting 1-1.5hr might have 10-20 working sets depending on what you’re doing (17-20 sets is a very long session and not too common).

Based on this, it’s just not feasible to only ever do 2 sets of an exercise. You can see good results like that, but there are good reasons to do more.

Because of this I might do 5 sets of bench press on Monday, with some pulling and lower body accessories to get some heavy chest work in. 5 sets of squats on Wednesday with some upper body and hamstring accessories to do some heavy quad work. And 5 sets of pull ups or deadlifts on Friday, depending on what my priorities are.

You want to hit individual muscles with a decent frequency (2x a week, or up to every other day), but every session you do for a muscle doesn’t have to have that muscle as the main focus. So with the chest as an example, a chest focus day will start with bench press, but a legs focus day with some chest might only do some push ups, or machine chest flyes.

 

[femooh]

@leoriofarel Thanks for replying! I haven’t ever done compound movements so that is very interesting. TBH I have been going right into it and doing about 4 sets of 8-12 for everything and so I have been doing about 24 sets in an hour (my current “routine” is all machines so 12 exercises that take about 2 hours)

I thought cutting it in half exercise wise would mean that the time would cut down accordingly but it looks like that might not be the case haha

I saw a YouTube video after this that just said to do 6 exercises picking one from each main “group” and do them every time. I think I am going to try it today (hopefully with not too bad of form but I am in planet fitness so who cares lol ) and see how long it takes before I split into A and B

Thanks again!

 

[leoriofarel]

@femooh If you want some proven routines with reviews have a look at Boostcamp and lift vault. It’s better in your position to learn how to train and let someone else sort the programming.

If you have basic questions about training then the fitness wiki is a brilliant resource.