My Current Training Plan
This training plan is based on Beyond
Brawn
,
a book that is very highly recommended. That link takes you to an Amazon.com
page with lots of reviews. This is a book written by and for very serious
long term drug free weight trainers, and comes from the 'Hard Gainer' magazine
publishing house and web group (see www.hardgainer.com,
the "Hardgainer"
FAQ and the newsgroups mentioned in the FAQ)
I am currently following training plan "Framework 4" in Beyond Brawn, which is a training plan for twice a week. It's a plan of three routines, so a cycle takes a week and half. The book also includes more intensive training plans, and lots and lots of advice of when to move into intensive training cycles, how to recover from them, and so on and so on. It's a great book. The only disappointment is that it currently takes a few weeks to ship.
You can read in "reflections" why I am following a twice a week program.
Routine A Routine B Routine C (Three Excel spreadsheets)
The reps mentioned is a guide to how many reps per set you should be aiming for, but you should train to "failure" if it says, or "failure - 1". "Failure - 1" means stop when you think you can do one more rep. You then adjust the weight next time so that you reach this point within the target range of reps. It is of course hard to work out when you have only one more rep, but this approach is still a lot simpler than the BFL program. Take three minutes between sets; you'll be able to do harder sets, and that's what going to the gym is about. Forget about rushing through your workouts like there's no tomorrow (BFL style).
All questions about progression of weights, time between sets, time between reps etc are throughly answered in the book. Facing the choice of summarising the book or recommending that you buy it, I've decided to recommend that you buy it.
Beyond Brawn also has a companion text Insider's Tell-All Handbook on Weight Training Technique (dumb name, good book) which goes into great detail about techniques for the exercises I am using. Typically, each exercise has several pages dedicated to it, with safety tips, lots of information about good form, what type of rep cadence you should look for, and alternative exercises for people with injuries or other difficulties. The "Beyond Brawn" approach emphasises long term training much, much more than any other weight training approach that I've seen, and this includes how to avoid injuries through common form problems, injuries that slowly accumulate. These exercises are nearly all common, so you will find adequate guidance on them from other sources.
For example, here is a site with photos demonstrating many of the exercises: http://www.gymonthehill.freeserve.co.uk/exercise_armoury.htm