Weight Training | Effective Training Programs for Home Gyms

Tonight was just the boys and I at home, so after I had finished dad duties I got myself ready for a session of Chest, Shoulders and Triceps.

I was pretty keen for tonight’s session as it has been over a week since I had done any weight training, due to my little family camping holiday.

So at about 8:30pm I headed into The Pit for my session. As I have outlined on previous posts, I have set myself several strength goals, which I am aiming to achieve by the end of the 12 week program. I am placing these goals in brackets after the exercise that I am performing.

My Program for Gaining Muscle and Losing Fat

Pre-Workout Nutrition:
• About an half an hour before training I downed a Pre-workout shake.

Warm-up:
• 5 minutes of skipping
• Dynamic Stretching
• Push-ups x 20

Workout:

• Incline Barbell Bench Press (Goal Weight: 90kg)
– Set 1: 6 reps x 70kg
– Set 2: 6 reps x 80kg
– Set 3: 4 reps x 80kg

• Military Press (Goal Weight: 60kg)
– Set 1: 8 reps x 40kg
– Set 2: 5 reps x 50kg
– Set 3: 5 reps x 50kg
– Set 4: 4 reps x 50kg

• Lateral Dumbbell Raises (Goal Weight: 15kg Dumbbell)
– Set 1: 6 reps x 10kg
– Set 2: 4 reps x 15kg
– Set 3: 4 reps x 15kg

• Tricep Pushdowns (N/A Due to the fact that I am in so many different places and the machines all vary so much)
– Set 1: 8 reps x 40kg
– Set 2: 6 reps x 45kg
– Set 3: 5 reps x 45kg

Finishers – My High Intensity Fat Burning Circuit

I am still incorporating finishers at the end of my weight training session. Today I alternated between Jump Squats and Explosive Push-ups. I started by doing 10 of each back to back, then 9 of each back to back and so on until I reach zero. The whole circuit is done without rest and took me only about 4mins to complete.

Warm Down:
• Static Stretching

The whole session including warm-up, the workout, finishers and warm down took me 45mins to complete burning about 370kcals with an average heart rate of 118BPM.

Post-Workout Nutrition:
• Straight after the session I downed a Post-workout shake.

Notes:
• All reps and sets are done with good form (no cheating or swinging the weight)
• Rest for exactly a minute between all sets except for the last 2 working sets where you rest for 2mins.
• During the workout sip on water.

Tonight’s sessions was not a great one. Every now and then I will have a training session, where everything feels heavy, I can’t squeeze out as many reps as I should be able to and my motivation level stinks. I don’t know if it is a physical or a mental thing, but now matter what I try during these sessions, I cannot get myself out of the rut.

I’m sure it happens to everyone, but it still stinks when it happens to you. The worst part is that I am posting my sessions online. Since starting this process I haven’t had a training session where I did not have an improvement. Now I have a crap day for the world to see. I was actually trying to use this as a motivation during my session to get me going, but not even it worked.

When thinking about posting my crap session, I came to the realisation that everyone has a crap training session now and then and that is what my site is all about, I’m a real person, with real life pressues that occassionally has a bad training day. The key is don’t let a bad session drag your motivation levels down. My next session is going to be a cracker I can feel it!

Tell me about how you get yourself out of a training rut!