Happy Friday loves! I am officially back on a lifting program and I am loving it so far. I have been doing lighter weight higher intense workouts for too long and it is time to start focusing on building strength again. My body is great at adapting to higher intensity workouts which has lead me to losing more strength than I wanted to. Back to heavy weights I go! With being almost 17 weeks pregnant, however, I am not going as heavy as I normally would. I am going as heavy as I can without needing to hold my breath on any lifts and to not cause discomfort on my ligaments and joints. If you are not pregnant and focusing on building strength I recommend sticking right at the 6 rep range for the main lifts and going as heavy as you can while still holding perfect form. The last 2-3 reps should be very difficult.
On this new program I have decided to have a push, pull and accessory lifting days with 1 day of sprints and stretching, 1 day of active rest and 1 full rest day. Right now, this is a training load my body is comfortable with where I feel I am not over doing it. On push days, the lifts are all a pushing motion and pull days are all lifts that require some sort of pull. Because I have already had to scale some exercises because of my hips being more mobile (which has caused some lower back pain) I didn’t want to focus on just a lower body day and upper body day. So far this split is working really well and I am attempting to stretch daily and my body feels great. I have muscle soreness in all the right places and my lower back issues are slowly getting better.
This is what my push day looks like and I plan to follow this for at least 4 weeks if not 6-8 weeks. After 4 weeks I will reevaluate my progress and make the call if I need to switch things up or keep going with this specific program. Over the next few weeks I will share my pull and accessory days as well for anyone looking for examples of a strength program.
Push Day
60-90 sec rest between sets
– Dumbbell bench press 4×6-8
– Barbell back squat 4×6-8
– Hanging tricep dips 3xmax
– Leg press 3×8-10
Triset – slow and controlled 3×10-12
30 second rest between exercises
– Landmine shoulder press
– overhead walking lunges
– push-ups
I was wondering when you were going to post your first pull day? I did this weight workout and loved it!
Tomorrow!