My Old Workout Routine

**I'm retiring my old workout routine, and switching it up starting March 1. For posterity, here's my old routine:**

Here are the basics. No Machines. Rest period of 1 minute between sets, light weight for 12 reps +/- 2. Warm-up exercise should be 4sets, 3 sets per exercise after that. You should be done with the workout in a half hour, tops. I generally do one muscle group a day, but I'll sometimes combine a day with shoulders or legs. I do 20 minutes of cardio on the days I don't lift, generally twice a week. I don't care about distance, I just try to run for 20 minutes. I'm in better shape now than when I used to lift heavy and I haven't injured myself lifting since I started doing this program over six years ago.

The basic goals of this program are to:
1. Be quick and efficient
2. Reduce the risk of injury
3. Not make you look like a cross-fitter in the gym

This workout can be abridged to a 3 day workout per week by doing one exercise from each muscle group on the same day. 

Chest:
4 sets of pushups, whatever you can do for #s
1. Incline bench, barbell or dumbbell
2. Flat bench, barbell or dumbbell
3. Decline bench, barbell or dumbbell.
Feel free to throw in some unassisted dips or cable crossovers if you want to round it out.

Back:
1. Widegrip chin-ups
2. Barbell shoulder shrugs, probably need to use squat rack to hold weight.
3. Back extensions using good form, may end up doing more than 12 to 14 reps on this.
4. Close grip pull-ups, palms should almost be facing each other.
5. Standing bent-over barbell rows with palms facing ground/body (pronated)

Biceps:
1. supinated pull-ups (palms facing you, relatively close grip)
2. standing EZ bar curls
3. standing dumbbell hammer curls (across body)
4. standing dumbbell curls
5. standing cable rope hammer curls or standing dumbell hammer curls (not across body, straight up and down)

Triceps:
1. unassisted dips
2. EZ bar nosebreakers aka skullcrushers
3. V-handle cable push downs
4. reverse-grip bench press, or close grip bench press (hands about 4" apart on bar)
5. Underhand EZ bar cable pull downs, palms facing you.

Shoulders:
1. Side lateral raises
2. Standing dumbbell shoulder presses
3. Front lateral raises

Legs:
5 sets of squats, 1st set is warm-up.
4 sets leg curls
4 sets deadlifts