It was time to add some difficulty to the weight training: added 10 pounds to all lifts. Arms and shoulders are feeling it. This is good. Will be doing this all week. Lunges tomorrow might be spicy 😬
Discussion
Dumbbell lunges? What weight do you usually do them at?
Depends. There’s 6-8 reps at 50lbs x2 and also 10-12 reps at 35lbsx2
Nice, they are my favorite exercise.
I need to practice them more. I’m way better at squatting and deadlifts.
Sometimes I would do lunges and feel it in the side of the knee. I think I wasn’t doing proper form. I’m getting better though. It’s been months since I felt some pain while doing lunges.
I have the exact opposite where squats hurt a damaged area of my back. Can’t really do them with any real weight. So I load up on dumbbell lunges and other leg work. The best I’ve gotten is 5 reps (each side) with 65lb dumbbells (I’m 175lbs)
When I do dumbbell lunges I concentrate on keeping my chest, back and core engaged and when I step forward I also step toward the outside of the leg going forward by about a foot. Helps with stability.
That makes sense. I would sometimes step forward without leaving any space between the two feet (if you were to put them next to eachother). Leaving room between the two works. I’ll try and focus on keeping the chest and back engaged too, with the core.
Interesting about the squats. My range of motion has increased a lot in the past 8 weeks. One thing that really helped was one particular exercise: squats with pulses. When you go down, instead of coming back up right away, you do a pulse and then come back up. I do this one on Thursdays. At first it feels weird but helps a lot.
Do you typically do progressive overload and/or the"strength" training side, or mostly stick to a hypertrophy targeted?
Usually I’m more in the strength rep ranges. Heavier weights and 6-10 reps.
Do you train a lot too?
~3 hours 5 days a week fren.
- Mon leg strength,
- Tue upper push,
- wed rest,
- thur leg hyp,
-friday pull
- sat full body hyp focus
Strength days are 5-10lbs per week, whatever I think I can handle. Sometimes I start at 5 then bump to 10 if I can. Some days I'm low on energy or I screw up my log and stay the same weight for a week.
That’s great man! When the kids are older I definitely want to ramp up the amount of time I train each session. Currently I do ~1h15mins (1h weights 5min stretch 10 mins spinning bike) per weekday.
Monday chest & back (some shoulders)
Tuesday legs
Wednesday shoulders & arms
Thursday legs
Friday upper body again
Yeah man! It took me a few years to get into it this heavily. Yeah that's really good. I started weaving in some iso between the compounds so I can do like 2-3 minutes rest per set instead of 5 per set. So I'm down to a little over 2 hours without warmup/cooldown stuff.
