Over the weekend I went in twice.
Saturday: Three circuits of low incline (as a change of pace) dumbbell bench, dumbbell inclined curls, and dumbbell skull crushers, with drop sets. I tried to include seated dumbbell lateral raises as well, but I tweaked my right shoulder somehow on Friday and the lateral raises were definitely aggravating it, so I only did one set of them.
Sunday: All machine work, five exercises. Three sets of machine shoulder press with drop sets on the last, three sets of narrow grip lat pulldown with drop set on the last, two sets hack squat (I knew I was going to need my legs later in the day), three sets machine rear delt flies (trying a new thing; I like 'em), and three sets machine biceps curls with drop set in the middle.
Oh man; I just realized that because I won't be going in tonight, yesterday was my last workout of my 40s.
Forgive me if you've talked about this before, but are you following a weekly schedule/routine? It sounds like you have circuits you enjoy doing (depending on availability of equipment and such)?
I ask because if If I didn't track and map my stuff out: buh-bye leg day.
I getcha. I do track (I don't post the numbers here, but I do in a chat with two of my brothers). I don't map/plan super well. I usually have a basic plan for each visit, and if a bench or machine I want isn't available I'll normally pivot to another apparatus for the same muscle group. If the dumbbell benches are all swarmed, for example, I'll often pivot to machines and hit the pec fly machine, biceps curl machine, and triceps extensions or pushdowns.
Historically, since I started in 2020, I do a mix of
mostly upper body two nights a week after work, and a longer weekend workout (usually on Sunday morning) that hits full body, usually including leg press +calf raises as well as deadlift or RDLs for my main lower body work. Sometimes belt squats or leg extensions. For a little while I had hamstring curls in there. This year I also started trying out hack squat. Most of that was circuit work, switching to straight sets as needed if the gym was too crowded and it would have been rude/obstructive to be doing circuits.
I'm not saying I
never bail on legs, but unless I have some outside factor exhausting me, I'm usually good about including at least one major leg exercise on the weekend and doing it until I'm wobbly/staggering. And still doing it even if I'm hiking or hiked a mountain on the other weekend day.
Also for the first few years I'd include a 90sec+ plank at the start of each circuit, but that was my only focused core exercise, which caught up to me eventually when I injured my lower back deadlifting in Nov 2022. I initially chalked that up to coming back from my first case of Covid too quickly (I lost ~15 lbs on it), but when I finally got PT in the Spring of 2023 they also suggested I had not strengthened my core enough to keep up with my other development, so my back got hurt overcompensating. I kept up my PT exercises at home for a while and they've done me some good- my lower back is just about completely better now, but I've stayed away from regular deadlifts. For a while I had RDLs in regular rotation, but I've never gotten completely comfortable doing them on a Smith machine, so they've been almost entirely neglected since I made PF my main gym ~March/April this year.
At times I've increased my schedule to 4-5 times a week when I've had the motivation and energy. For a long time my standard was Tues, Thurs, and Sunday, and for a while I added Wednesday nights specifically as a second leg day + do a little upper body accessory work while I was there, like face pulls and/or lateral raises. If other commitments interfere with a given "standard" day or night I almost always shift it by a day and get in that minimum of three workouts a week.
I do think it would probably serve me to plan hypertrophy cycles better, and schedule specific exercises to give my whole body more consistent coverage. I did more of that up until Fall of 2022, which was probably my OVERALL strength peak, but have had a lot of outside stressors the last couple of years which broke my focus on this, so I've mostly just been happy when I've been able to keep up three days a week, even if it's not very well planned for good coverage and progressive overload.
You all get headaches after you work your upper back/neck/traps?
Yikes.
I'm fortunate in that I almost never get headaches.
I DO have a bad tendency to reflexively tighten my right (almost never the left, for some reason) upper trap (lower 2/3 of my neck) on some lifts. I have to force myself to relax it on lateral raises and occasionally other exercises, and it will often get really tight and painful. I treat it with IcyHot and occasionally ibuprofen if it's interfering with my sleep. But that IS a regular recurring minor injury. Sometimes my trap around my shoulder blade too.
