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2007/09/30, 08:29 PM
So I have this imbalance and I need advice.
First let me say that my body loves to be pear shaped. While in the past I tried to argue with my body through diet, I quickly realized that my body would reward me by removing all my breast tissue, and revealing a rock-hard "man jaw", but still leave me with two delightful saddlebags alongside my copious butt.
So I got really fat during my pregnancy, and while i took 4 years to remove 70 pounds of it (still have about 15 to go) I also worked very hard to pump up my upper body.
It worked. I feel that I look much more balanced, it's easier to find dresses that fit my top AND bottom :)
BUT. Looks can be deceiving. My lower body is a little too jiggly and not NEARLY strong enough. I noticed that my squats are not improving at all, leg presses are pretty pathetic too and my deadlifts...I'm probably relying on my back to get me through. And I just started kickboxing last week which helped me realize how weak the legs are. This just sort of snuck up on me. Just started the 12 week mass builder program again this week (4 day split). So here is an example of what kind of weight I'm doing so that you can see:
Legs
Leg Press 200x10
Squats 80x8
Machine Ham Curls 15x8
Chest/Biceps
Dumbell incline 35x8
Bench 95x6
DB Curls 25x6
BB Curls 50x6
Shoulders/Tris
Military Press 65x6
Lateral Raise 15x10
Lying Tri Ext. 45x8
Cable Pushdowns 50x6
Back
Pulldowns Wide 85x8
Seated cable row 90x8
Big disparity, right? The question is, how do I fix it? Should I add another leg day and back off the upper body work outs? How do I back-off without losing too much? If you have any specific suggestions on how to alter my split, a game plan if you will, i would be very grateful.
PS: I used this strength standard chart that someone posted once before for comparison: http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1563264
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2007/10/01, 01:27 PM
Wow. I guess my post was really way too lengthy. Sometimes I get carried away trying to give all the information up front :(
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2007/10/01, 03:27 PM
Woman tend to carry weight in the lower part of their body. As many will attest, Losing body fat also mean smaller breasts. There is nothing you can do about the shrinking, but you can try to build your chest muscles up so that they appear to be bigger.
Yes, I think that you should do more leg work. You basically have 3 upper body days and 1 lower body day. I don't think that you need to cut back per say, just do a little rearranging.
Something like
Chest/back
Legs
Shoulders/Arms
Legs
or
Chest/Shoulder/Tris
Legs
Back/bis
Legs
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2007/10/01, 05:28 PM
Hey thanks a lot. I was just going over my old logs and reminded myself that I was doing a whole lot more legs about 6 months back. 2 days a week as well as more exercises per workout. Sometimes its easy to get away from what was working for you in the past with endless tweaking. Absolutely going to rearrange the schedule. Thanks for the advice on the 4 day split. I'm on it!
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