I’ve got a good one for you Doobieous.
Hold a dumbell (sp?) with both hands, place your hands straight up over your head and then bend at the elbows so that the dumbell is now behind your head. Lift the dumbell until your arm forms a 90 degree angle, then lower the weight again.
This seems to work really well for me.
I have a wonderful ab workout. It tones and builds endurance, since it concentrates on extended periods of exercise, rather than a couple hundred crunches at one time.
The idea is simple: You exercise your abs for a given time period, switching exercises every 30 seconds, but you are not allowed to take breaks. I personally do 9 minutes, which gives me 18 different exercises for abs in one session.
Do the exercises as quickly as possible, but not so quickly that you burn out. Remember, endurance is the key.
[list]
[li] Begin with straight sit-ups, knees bent and arms across the chest.[/li][li] Lay your legs over to the side, knees bent, so you twist at the waist. Your back should be flat on the ground. Hands behind head. Raise straight up. This works your obliques.[/li][li] Repeat, but with your legs on the other side.[/li][li] Lying on the ground, cross one ankle over the opposite knee, put your hands behind your head, and crunch so that one elbow touches the opposite knee.[/li][li] Repeat, but crunch to the other side.[/li][li] Lie as if you’re doing regular crunches, but extend your arms above your head, parallel with the ground. Do regular crunches. This tears the heck out of your upper abs. Until you get used to it, you should feel it rather intensely just under your sternum. This is a Good Thing. :)[/li][li] Lie as if you are doing crunches a la the second step, above, only extend your arms above your head, parallel to the ground. Crunch straight up. Excellent for upper obliques.[/li][li] Repeat on the other side.[/li][li] Lie as if you’re doing straight sit-ups. Crunch and raise one leg so that your elbow on the same side touches it.[/li][li] Repeat on the other side.[/li][li] Plant your hands under your butt, and raise both feet from the ground to perpendicular. Lower and repeat.[/li][li] With your hands still under your butt, Raise your legs so that your knees touch your chest. Lower and repeat.[/li][li] Plant your hand on the ground beside you, and lie with your waist twisted but your back flat on the ground. Raise your knees to your chest. Tears up your lower obliques.[/li][li] Repeat on the other side.[/li][li] This requires a partner. Lie on your back, and have your partner stand with your head between his or her ankles. Brace yourself by holding his or her ankles. Raise your legs quickly to perpendicular. Your partner then catches your ankles and “throws” them, hard, toward the floor. Your job is to keep your heels from hitting the ground. Repeat.[/li][li] Six inches. Lie on your back and raise your feet so that your heels are 6 inches from the ground. Hold them there for 30 seconds.[/li][li] Split-legged six inches. Lie on your back as above, and raise your feet, but hold your feet about 2 feet apart. Hold for thirty seconds.[/li][li] Roll over, groaning and gasping, and reflect on how hard your abs are gonna be after a few weeks of this.[/li]
Repeat the process at least 3 times per week.
When you first start out, begin with 4 or 5 minutes, and work your way into longer sessions.
Sorry for the lengthy description. I’d rather have had pictures.
Maybe I can help. To get the V-shape, you have (obviously) to work on your back and shoulders, while trying to keep your waist from becoming too wide.
I have looked at your schedule. If you could tell me more about the exercises you do for you back and shoulders, I could give you my .02$.
I have found that for a wide and thick back, you must do exercises like Reverse-Grip Bent-Over Barbell Rows, Close and Wide-Grip T-Bar Rows and Pull-ups (some people call them chin-ups). Pull-ups are harder than Pull-Downs, but they will give you better results.
For the shoulders, I can suggest: Bent-Over Reverse Flyes, to get the Rear-Delt tired first. Then, with a barbell, either Front Presses or Clean & Presses. The clean and presses are more of an explosive movement, where you let the bar hang at arm’s lenght, with your hands shoulder-width. You snap the bar up to chest-level, and then press it up. Resist on the negative and repeat. This will target the front deltoid, and to a lesser degress the side delt and traps. And finally, for the side delt, you can do either medium-grip upright barbell rows or heavy side laterals.
The most important word in Body Building: Failure. Do every set to muscle failure, and then try to do partials or negatives if you have a good spotter.
I hope this can be useful.
Thanks for the advice, k. os. I usually do four exercises of 4 sets each, 12/10/8/8, and I don’t do the same exercises each time so that my muscles don’t get complacent. For example, I’ll do seated T-bar one session and then do wide grip free weight T-bar the next. I always go to failure on each set.
With shoulders I’ll do about 9-10 sets spread over three exercises. I usually include slanted reverse flyes, upright rows and military press, but I’ll incorporate front presses and clean and press in my next workout.
You’re welcome! BTW, you mention that you do 12-10-8-8. On compound movements, ie:Presses, Rows, etc… I would suggest trying to go to 8-8-6-4. After 2-3 weeks on that kind of weight, you will see drastic gains. I know, a lot of people say that 4 reps is too heavy for bodybuilding, but it does help tremendously with strenght and muscle thickness. And more strenght means you can use heavier weights for these long 8 rep sets. And when lifting really heavy (4 reps) you will see that it’s a completely different feeling. Almost like it has more to do with willpower than with muscle strenght, if you follow me…
I certainly do not mean to disparage your remarks because God knows I’m no expert. But I seem to remember when I last worked out regularly (late 80’s) this oft repeated maxim was in some doubt, and that there was no general consensus on how to best set up your workout, that it might vary from person to person. Any thoughts from others about this?
As a poor student I hardly have the money to visit the gym and as such do 90% of my exercising at home. My routine goes thusly:
3 reps of 70 bench presses (35lbs)
3 reps of 20 barbel above the head lift type things (35 lbs)
5 reps of 20 arm curls with 2 dumbells (about 15 lbs)
3 reps of 20 dumbell above the head lift type things (about 15 lbs)
about 50 more bench presses with the dumbells (15 lbs)
60 stomach crunches.
I do all of the above in the morning before work, sometimes I repeat it after work if I’m in the mood but I usually don’t because I know this is counterproductive but I enjoy it a lot and it helps me unwind so I do it anyway 
I do virtually no typically cardiovascular exercise (ie. running, basketball etc…) because I have quite bad asthma and consequently no stamina (I can job for about 5 minutes before collapsing into a sobbing heap )so I make up for it with lots of weight training.
I don’t stick to a diet and eat a fair amount of crap (mainly because my willpower is on par with my stamina ) but I’m cutting down on that and slowly integrating more fresh vegetables into my diet.
I’d quite like your opinions of my workout schedule (am I doing anything wrong etc…) because I’m pretty new to this and son’t really know of any specific exercises that are particularly effective.
Any and all comments gratefully appreciated.
P.S. - What’s the effective way to get a good 6-pack stomach? I’m just doing crunches and crossing my fingers but I’m sure there must be a better, less painful way
I’m a poor college student as well, Gomez. I’m just lucky that my college fees include the use of the gym. I also live on campus which helps.
Day one: 6 excercises chest and 6 biceps
(3 sets of 12 reps)
Day two: 6 excercises back and 6 triceps
Day three: 6 excercises shoulder 6 legs
Abs every other day. I don’t really have a set number of excercises-I just do sit ups and twists until I hurt.
Every day I do cardio until I burn 1000 calories total. I don’t really have a favorite machine. I take saturdays off.
I had my resting metabolic rate tested and it’s 3500 which means I consume about 5500 - 6000 calories/day to balance. I generally have about .8 grams of protein per pound of body weight (dad figured that’s about right, he’s a doctor so I trust him). As far as the rest of my diet I generally follow that four foodgroups chart and supliment the rest.
I kinda made this up bouncing ideas off of a series of people who know far more than I do about it.
Hey Gomez.
First thing, a rep is one repetition of whatever exercise you are doing. A set consists of multiple reps.
Instead of doing so many reps of such a light weight, you should a lot fewer reps at a much higher weight. The first step would be finding out what your One Rep Max weight for a given exercise would be. That would be the maximum amount of weight you could possibly lift once while still maintaining proper form. Then you want to start calculating the amount of weight you should be lifting per set. A good workout for a given exercise would consist of 4 sets: 12 reps at roughly 60% of your max for the first, 10 reps with more weight for the second, 8 for the third with even more weight, and finally 6 reps at roughly 85-90% of your max for the last set.
For example: Say your max is 120lbs bench press. You’d want to do 12 reps @ 70lbs, 10 @ 85lbs, 8 @ 95lbs, 6 @ 105lbs.
Then, every week or two, assess your how easy it is for you to finish each set. Ideally you will to be struggling on the last few reps of the last set. If you finish them without help, you need to increase the weight you’re lifting on the last set by 5 or 10lbs and adjust the other sets accordingly.
My bench press routine (yes, I’m bragging :)) consists of 12@200lbs, 10@240lbs, 8@275lbs, 6@305lbs. I don’t actually know what my max is right now, I’ve just been upping my last set by 10lbs every two weeks for the last 2 months. I can do about 4 reps of the last set without needing help from a spotter, so the weight is about ideal.
I’ve got high blood pressure, but I understand weight lifting is OK as long as I don’t strain too much.
I once read that firefighters (in Oregon?) had to be able to curl something over 100 lbs. While I certainly don’t plan at my age to become a firefighter, is there any way to increase my upper arm strength? I’ve hit a plateau doing 2 sets of 8 reps at 45 lbs. Should I do less reps? Or am I just built wrong?
Thanks, Ogre, I am going to give your suggestions a try. Though I will feel sheepish until I can actually remember your exercises. There is nothing quite so dorky as having to consult a printout when trying to work up a sweat. 
Howdy phartizan.
Unfortunately, you’ve got to strain if you want to build muscle. Think of each muscle as a bundle of rubber bands, all running the same direction. In a normal state, these bands are very close together. When you strain, you’re actually tearing the bands, making space between them. The reason you develope more muscle is that new tissue grows in these rips, making the muscle larger and stronger.
If you’ve hit a plateau, try using the method I outlined in my post above. It works for curls just fine. I’m not sure what kind of equipment you’re using, but if you’re working out with a straight barbell for curls, you may want to use a specialized curl bar. They have angled grips that isolate the bicepts much better than a straight bar would.
You also don’t want to work one muscle of an opposing set far more than the other. I.e., don’t focus on your bicept without also working your tricept. You risk joint problems as one muscle overpowers the other and puts more stress on the joint when there should be a balance.
BTW, if any of you other experienced weight lifters see a problem with the advice I’m giving, please point it out.