Workout Example:
Primary muscle groups only

If you only want to incorporate the primary muscle groups, then your workout will look like this:

Workout 1: Back (20 minutes)

Workout 2: Chest (20 minutes)

Workout 3: Legs (20 minutes)

E.g. Tuesday you trained your back. Wednesday you trained your chest. Thursday you trained your legs. It’s now Friday, but your whole body is sore. What do you do? Simply rest and allow your muscles to recover and grow. Enjoy the day(s) off.

There’s no need to stick to the workout order either. For example, if your back and legs recover quicker than your chest, simply skip your chest workout and workout your back and legs until your chest has recovered. Don’t postpone your other workouts while you’re waiting for a particular muscle group to recover.

As your body gets used to training regularly, you’ll find you won’t need so much time to recover, especially if you’re incorporating a good amount of protein in your daily diet.

Workout Example: Jennen 19/05/15

Primary muscle groups:
• Back
• Chest
• Legs

Secondary muscle groups:
• Abs*
• Calves*
• Shoulders*
• Biceps
• Triceps

Workout 1:
• Back (15 minutes)
• Abs (5 minutes)

Workout 2:
• Chest (10 minutes)
• Shoulders (5 minutes)
• Abs (5 minutes)

Workout 3:
• Legs (10 minutes)
• Calves (5 minutes)
• Skipping (5 minutes)

With the routine above, I’m training the primary muscle groups regularly as well as the three secondary muscle groups that are most important to me. If I happen to wake up one day and all the above muscle groups are sore, then I’ll use my workout to train my biceps and triceps. If my entire body is sore, then I’ll enjoy the day off.

It’s important to change the exercises regularly. Not only does this help stimulate muscle growth, but also keeps the workouts fun.

Here are examples of how I might train the following muscle groups with minimal rest.

Back
• Muscle-ups on the chin-up bar till failure.
• Chin-ups till failure.
• Cable lat pull-down till failure.
• Seated cable-row till failure.
• Standing side-straight-arms, lat-pull down till failure.
• Other variations of cable rows till failure.

Chest
• One set of dumbbell bench press till failure.
• One set of dips till failure.
• One set of seated cable bench press till failure.
• Planche push-up hold position till failure.
• One-arm push-ups till failure.
• Move swiftly from one machine to the next and repeat until 10 minutes has passed.

Shoulders
• Standing dumbbell side raises starting with heavier weights and decreasing the weights each set.
• Each set till failure with no rest between sets.
• Experimenting with different grips and holding positions until 5 minutes has passed.
• Dumbbell side raises are ideal for broadening shoulders.

Abs
• I always train abs using a timer. I don’t enjoy having to count reps.
• I most commonly utilise lying leg raises with added weights on each leg.
• It’s important to vary leg positions.
• No resting until the 5 minutes has passed.

Legs & Calves
• One set of squats till failure
• One set of calf raises till failure
• Repeat until 15 minutes has passed
• Skipping for 5 minutes. I enjoy skipping, so it’s important for me to incorporate this into my routine.

The above routines are possible when I have access to a gym and if it’s not too crowded. If certain equipment is not available, don’t let this effect the productivity and intensity of your workouts. Instead, incorporate just one or two exercises and go hard without resting.
Push-ups, chin-ups and squats are compound exercises for the primary muscle groups that can be performed anywhere. I would recommend owning a portable doorway chin-up bar.

Enjoy your workouts!