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Old 09-06-2007, 07:22 PM
Blarg Blarg is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
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Default Re: The four lift workout plan

If you are doing deadlifts heavy enough, you won't really need abdominal work and in fact I would be very careful with it. You probably won't hurt your abs, obliques, or serratus, but as all exercises that work those involve the lower back too, it's very easy to overtrain your lower back when doing heavy deads and trying to add on something else besides. That doing deadlifts alone is enough to give you a sixpack should make you feel fine about cutting way, way back on ab work.

You've gone from four exercises to working on seven by your count. I don't think this is an improvement. The only one that sounds like a good addition is the calf work. Personally, I would choose only one upper body push, and get good at that -- bench press or overhead press. And you would do quite well if you did primarily squats or deadlifts too, or at least majored in one and minored in the other. They're both quite a strain on your CNS, stress the very vulnerable lower back, and need some recovery time from if you want to maximize the gain.

To me, an ideal routine is full-body exercises in the form of one upper body push, one upper body pull, and then either squats or deadlifts. Because of leverage reasons, shorter guys tend to favor the squat, and taller guys the deadlift, so that part is fairly easy to choose. Then supplement with grip work(especially helpful for doing deadlifts without straps) for everybody. And then you're pretty much done. For people who don't grow strong necks naturally, some more neck work would be good, and calf work for people who don't get much calf growth from squats or deadlifts. (My calves are a big problem area and I'm an incredibly hard gainer, but deadlifts helped my calves a lot.)

After that, I think your body gets more bang for the buck by giving yourself time to recover, and working on things like flexibility or aerobic capacity. Stretch and hop on a bike, kind of thing. You can leave the weights alone. Learn to eat right.
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