I was wondering if I could get a little advice on the weight training program I've devised for myself. I am working with dumbbells only at this point, but I have a good variety of them. Any critique on the individual exercises would be nice (what's good, what's not). I tried to narrow it down so my workout doesn't take me all evening.

I do three sets of 8-10 reps each, each set only about 1 minute apart, using enough weight so I can barely finish the last rep of the last set, but not so much that I go to failure. I focus heavily on form and control, and holding my torso very solid to work on my core. When figuring out how much weight to use on each exercise, if I had so much weight that I had trouble keeping form, I dropped back a little. Here is the list:

Flat Dumbell Press
Dead Lifts
Flat Flies
Shrugs
Overhead Triceps Ext
Lunges
Lateral Raises
Crunch (calves on bench)
Single Arm Row
Superman
Hammer curls
Side bends
Squats (sitting pretty much all the way down)
Seated Shoulder Press
Reverse Flies
Calf Raises

So far, I have done all 16 exercises, in the order listed, in a single workout, every other day. On the off day's I go for a long brisk walk with my wife. Do you think this is a good plan, or should I systematically cut it in half and do a shorter workout every day with a slightly shorter walk?

Also, a lot of these exercises work my core pretty good, what are your thoughts on the two non-weight exercises - the crunches (with the calves up on the bench) and the superman? Am I wasting my time with these?

Why are you mixing all the bodyparts up? Generally we go from biggest muscles to smallest.

Squats (sitting pretty much all the way down)
Dead Lifts
Lunges
Calf Raises

Flat Dumbell Press
Flat Flies

Single Arm Row
Superman

Shrugs
Seated Shoulder Press
Lateral Raises
Reverse Flies

Hammer curls
Overhead Triceps Ext

Crunch (calves on bench)
Side bends

I would suggest you do upper body one day lower body the next work-out. If you want to work-out 3 or 4 days a week.

I would add cross bench dumbbell pullovers to back day.

Thanks for the tips! It's been a while since I've really worked out, and I completely forgot about ordering them from the bigger muscle groups to the smaller ones.

Being that there are only 4 leg exercises, if you were to break it into two days, would you just have the lower body day be a much shorter workout than the upper body day? Or would you move some things like the crunches and side bends over to the lower body day? Or are there some lower body exercises I should add?

Can you do?:

Monday: legs and abs
Tuesday: upper body
Wednesday: walking
Thursday: legs and abs
Friday: upper body
Saturday: walking
Sunday: off day

I'm nodding my head with Galatia. If you want to flesh out your leg day a bit more, maybe add in RDL's (Romanian Deadlifts....like a stiff legged dead, except you bend your knees a bit) after your regular deads, and add a set of seated calf work. (Rest your DB's on your thighs, just above your knees).

So leg day would be, in this order:
Squats (Ass to Floor)
Deadlifts
RDL's
Lunges
Seated Calf Raise (to hit the soleus)
Standing Calf Raise (to hit the gastroc.)
Abwork

On your upper body day, the most important exercises are some sort of bench, a row, and a shoulder press. Maybe instead of a flat DB press, you could do an incline DB press (if you have a bench; otherwise you could prop yourself up w/pillows, maybe). Incl DB press puts a bit more stress on the top portion of your pecs as well as the middle, so it helps sculpt a nice shape. Flyes are isolation work....good to do, but not nec. if you're pressed for time.

For your triceps, the overhead extension is fine, or you could look into skullcrushers, or my favorite--between bench dips. You can do this one with 2 chairs. Holding yourself up with your hands behind you on a chair, put your feet up on another chair in front of you, and slowly (carefully) lower your upper body down. The further away the chairs are, the harder the move.

Just some ideas for you. The important thing is to get a bunch of compound exercises in there and do them consistently, adding weight as you mentioned above.

Shoot, Deb, you had it covered!

Thanks for the help! Great advice.

I'm also going to get a chinning bar today to incorporate into the upper body routine. Where would you put that in upper body workout order?

Also, would you put the skullcrushers before the overhead tricep ext, or just remove the overhead tricep ext in favor of the skullcrushers?

And, are RDL's that much different from regular deadlifts? If they are better, should I drop the regular deadlfits in favor the of the RDL's, or is there a good benefit to doing both?

Thanks again!
-Dan

You're welcome, Dan,

I suck at chin ups, so I do them first. However, I split up my upper body work, and I'm doing chest work on a different day. My priority is chest over lats, so if I were doing it all in one day, I'd do my chest work first, so as to put my best effort there.

General rule of thumb is to do the large, compound exercises first--the ones that use alot of major muscle groups, so they can help each other--and then move towards the isolation exercises. If you did, say, biceps work first, you'd be prioritizing biceps, but you'd fatigue them too quickly by the time you got to your bench press. So chins first might tire you out too much to do bench presses. You can experiment with order.

If you're doing one upper body day, and trying to hit as much as you can in one session, then just pick one tricep and one bicep exercise per session. You could do skullcrushers one day, and then the next upper body day do tricep extensions. That variety keeps things interesting.

RDL's are a completely different move than regular deadlifts. Deads are the king....they hit your whole back side, from the upper back down to your heels. If I had to pick only 4 exercises to do, they'd be squat, bench, row, dead.

Now, RDL's have big value, too, IMO. They hit the hammies in a more specific way (my butt is always sore after deads, not my hammies). Go to www.exrx.net and look at the specific exercises. They have a video for the stiff-legged deadlift (aka straight-legged deadlift). The RDL is done just like it, EXCEPT you have more of a bend in the knees. Lean down as far as you can go, while still keeping your back tight.

If you go over to bodyrecomposition dot com, in the exercise technique forum, there's a thread about RDL's, and a great little video and description. That site (bodyrecomp), BTW, is awesome.