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I live by the numbers: Compound Exercises

In my previous post I wrote about my body weight, muscle weight and fat % goals. Today I will write about my weight training goals, in particular about my compound exercise goals. If I have to choose the 5 best exercises I would choose the following exercises and in that order

  • Squats
  • Deadlifts
  • Bench Press
  • Pull ups
  • Overhead Press
It is very easy to understand why I like them. These are the exercises where I can lift heavy. Heavy like lifting close to or more than your body weight. Lifting so much weight simply means one thing, those exercise require more number of muscles and also mostly bigger muscles. One cannot bicep curl one's body weight. The muscle is way too small and no other big muscles are involved. Also the distance these weights are moved is big. Work done is weight times the displacement. So you do more work moving the weights to a longer distance. Engaging more muscles means more hormone response, more repair and more muscles!

Now back to my goals. On October 1, 2009 this is what I could lift in my first work set
  • Squats: 150 lbs, 10 reps
  • Deadlifts: 170 lbs, 10 reps
  • Bench Press: 90 lbs, 10 reps
  • Pull ups: Body Weight + 15 lb, 10 reps
  • Overhead Press: 60 lb, 10 reps
And this is my goal by the end of December 2009
  • Squats: 185 lbs, 8 reps
  • Deadlifts: 200 lbs, 8 reps
  • Bench Press: 120 lbs, 8 reps
  • Pull ups: Body Weight + 25 lbs, 8 reps
  • Overhead Press: 85 lbs, 8 reps
Let us see if I can reach my goals. I am confident that I can.
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