"Go to" Workouts

This was originally posted on my tumblr, but I decided to put it here.

I was chatting to a guy at the gym the other day about what our “go to" workouts are for those days where you walk in with no plan other than “I’m benching today", or when you don’t have enough time to do what you had originally planned, but still want to get something done that could be considered good training.

These are a few of mine.

Max Out, Back Off

This is my usual “go to" for benching and overhead pressing and is something I took from the Iron Sport Strength Method; max out, and then drop the weight to 80% and do three AMRAP sets.

The only “twist" I put on this is that on the last AMRAP set, I must hit more reps than on the second AMRAP set. I’m usually a bit lazy on the second set, so this is my punishment.

Maxing out can be for a 1RM, 3RM or 5RM.

Assistance work is always pretty standard; lots of DB rows and maybe some direct triceps and biceps work if there’s time.

5x5

I started lifting on a 5x5 program, and probably stopped using it sooner than I should have. None the less, occasionally I’ll look at what I’ve done around the 6-8RM mark and have at it.

Leaves me good and sore for a couple of days.

Front Squats and Deadlifts

I like this combo a lot. The front squats aren’t hard to recover from, and doing them first seems to prime me for deadlifts.

There isn’t much to it; I usually do the front squats for triples, and the deadlifts for sets of 3-5.

If I do anything else after this, it’s usually kettlebell swings until I’m nearly dead.

And that’s all I can think of off the top of my head at the moment!