I realize that I never talked about my workout routine here on my weight loss blog. Since I recently decided to make a change, I figured now would be a good time to talk about what I am doing. I will show you the original program and then discuss the changes that I am making because of my and my weight loss goal.

I probably should also mention that I am not posting this so that I can get suggestions on changes or critiques (especially if they are based on silly, outdated myths), but just to let you guys know what I am doing and so that I can begin to chronicle my progress.

The foundation of my training is the Ice Cream Fitness 5×5 novice program.

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Here is the breakdown:

Ice Cream Fitness Novice 5x5 Workout A

Ice Cream Fitness Novice 5x5 Workout B

The program is set up to have you lifting 3 days per week. How this works is that you will alternate between workouts A and B, regardless of the day of the week. The most conventional schedules are Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday (T, TH, S). I am doing the latter.

What this means is that one week I will do workout A on Tuesday, workout B on Thursday, and then workout A on Saturday. The following week I will start with B on Tuesday and continue to alternate. This way, I will have done each workout 3 times in every 14-day period.

Without going into too many details, I’ll just briefly mention the progressive nature of the program. For the lifts that call for a 5×5 lifting pattern (squat, deadlift, bench press, BO rows, and OH press), you are to increase the weight by 5lbs each time you lift. Once you fail on any sets or reps for 2 consecutive workouts for that lift, you drop your weight by 10% and then continue running the program as normal.

The Ice Cream Fitness 5×5 novice program is a fine routine and I have definitely seen strength gains since running it. However, with the mental & physical problems that I have been experiencing this year, I have found it difficult to get through workout B (the heavy squats followed by heavy deadlifts are brutal) with enough in my “tank” to give a maximum effort on all of the lifts. Therefore, I have decided to separate out the deadlifts into their own day.

On the day(s) that I am scheduled to do workout B (the one with deadlifts), I will go to the gym the day before and to a full deadlift day – I will do my warm up and working sets as normal, but I will probably follow that up with some heavy singles as well. Then I will do some form of cardio for about 45 minutes to an hour.

If the week only calls for 1 deadlift session, I will go to the gym on a 2nd day and do a full cardio session and maybe work on some other things that I want to incorporate (full mobility drills and other things) in my overall fitness plan. So each week I plan to be in the gym for 5 days (when I worked out at home, I went between 5 and 6), which isn’t really a big deal, but I think it will definitely help me to reach my full potential with my strength training while helping me reach my other fitness goals as well.

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