Todd and I with our Power lifting Trophies

I’ve been asking my husband Todd to write a blog on his training regime for well over a month now.  He’s very excited to share his advise, experience and passion for weight training, but hasn’t found the time to sit down and write about it just yet (I guess I must have made his honey do list a bit too long last month )! So in order to compensate for his lack of commitment to my healthy living blog site (kidding…he’s so support of everything I do) I thought I would make an attempt to share what I think his training philosophy is.  Here goes…..

Todd at NASA Meet

Todd follows these basic approaches as many are based on scientific evidence…and they seem to work for him.  You may find some of them work for you too.  Just use an approach that (1) you’ll follow, (2) is based on science, not fad, and (3) you like.

• Todd uses a training log to track his progress.
• He uses periodization to cycle through stages of endurance, strength, and hypertrophy.  (I don’t train for power – my knees don’t take kindly to jumping.) This means he usually trains on a four-week cycle, and inside that cycle he changes variables on a session-by-session basis.  Variables include rest, sets, reps, exercises, etc.
• He uses a split routine as opposed to a full-body one.  This is because he’s experienced with lifting and enjoy the results – and the process of this method.  It’s time-consuming, but if you enjoy lifting give it a try.  He’s done legs/chest, back/biceps, shoulder/triceps for years, but also experiments with a push/pull routine too.  He generally does core work twice a week. 
• Each muscle group gets trained twice in a seven-day period.  He never trains any muscle group two days in a row and rests at least two days a week.
• He trains large muscles before small muscles; small muscles must be fresh to help larger ones. 
• He includes three to five exercises for large muscles and two to three exercises for small muscles.
• He integrates full-body and balance exercises at least once a week.
• If he isn’t seeing loads increase on a regular basis – and he doesn’t have a set time frame – he assumes he’s plateaued and needs to try different things. 
• He trains like a badass!!!
  

  Todd

  How do you train and how do you know when it’s time to change up your routine?