OK, yesterday I didn't feel like doing my deadlifts. And really didn't feel like doing deadlifts, overhead presses, and pulldowns all together. I don't know if it was the morning's run, or accumulating sleep deprivation, but I ended up just doing the pulldowns. This indicated a few things to me:
1.) The three big lifts per workout idea is not always going to work out. It's a great full-body pump, but many days I won't have the time or energy for it.
2.) I need an alternative routine with flexibility built-in, so that I can account for schedule interruptions as well as varying levels of time and energy.
In an effort to eliminate the need to constantly come up with different plans, I first need to strip things down to the basics. First, after reading some of the meathead sites, I found out that most lifts can be reduced to one of two forces, Push or Pull, in one of three directions, Up, Down, and Out/In, resulting in six basic lifting movements:
Push Up = Overhead Press;
Push Down = Squat;
Push Out = Bench Press;
Pull Up = Deadlift;
Pull Down = Pullups or Pulldowns; and
Pull In = Rows.
For a complete weekly workout routine then, I need to get in each of these six movements at least once per week. This can be done in various combinations.
The first organizing logic to consider is the fact that the two lower body lifts, squats and deadlifts, use the most total muscle mass, thus requiring the most energy, and so should be scheduled on separate days. I'm also trying to run everyday, so I don't want to overtax the legs with two big lower body lifts on the same day.
The four remaining lifts, all upper body, aren't so easy to organize, as there are several logics to consider.
If I'm doing three big lifts in a single workout, I like to combine one of the lower body lifts with a pairing of Up/Down or In/Out upper body lifts, as agonistic/antagonistic couplets. But you could also pair the two upper body Pushes and the two Pulls together, or do an upper body Push and Pull in the same workout with different directions Up/Out and Down/In or Up/In and Down/Out.
With three of the big lifts in a single workout, all six of the main lifts will be completed in two workouts. If I'm working out three times a week, I can repeat the first workout on the third day, which leads to a two-week cycle--1/2/1 | 2/1/2--or fill in the third day with some big assistance lifts. The first option, I found out, can lead to scheduling problems if you miss a workout. So I like the second option.
For the lower body, I think the Power Clean is a good, more explosive complement to the Deadlift and Squat. For upper body pushes, I like the Dips as my third lift, and for upper body pulls I'm leaning towards the high pull, although the landmine arc, which isn't really a push or a pull, is also one of my favorite upper body exercises, since it works the obliques in a way none of the main lifts do.
With all this mind, a good three-lifts-per-workout/three-times-per-week routine would look like this:
I really like the simplicity and conceptual elegance of this routine. It's also pretty comprehensive, as it includes upper body Pushes and Pulls in all three directions. However, it completely ignores many useful assistance exercises, and is relatively inflexible.
So, in order to design a more complex and flexible routine, with the option of including assistance exercises, I think I need to have a routine with three-day, four-day, five-day, and six-day versions. This would be based on a three-day routine in which each workout included two instead of three of the big lifts.
The first logic, once again, would be to separate Deadlifts and Squats. Next, it would make sense to put the bench press and rows together, since they use the most muscle mass, and thus energy, after the deadlifts and squats. If, say, deadlifts or squats use 70-80% of the body's muscle mass, then the bench press and bentover row probably use 30-40%, so bench + row = deadlift or squat, in terms of energy output.
An alternative way of viewing the same three-day routine would be to put each of the big three powerlifts--Deadlift, Bench Press, Squat--in its own workout, and then add one more of the six big lifts to each workout.
In either case, after establishing the bench press and row as a single workout pairing, one of the other two upper body workouts needs to be paired with the Deadlift or Squat. It doesn't really matter, but I like to put the Overhead Press with the Deadlift & Power Clean, since together they describe the "Clean Press" lift. The Pulldowns then go with the Squats, giving me three workout days per week with two main lifts in each workout.
For a four-day routine, it makes sense to first decouple the Bench Press and the Row, since they consume more energy than the other two upper body lifts, the Pulldowns and Overhead presses. Of these, the next lift to put into its own workout would be the Pulldowns, since they take longer than the Overhead presses. This results in a five-day routine. At this point I would probably also shift the Overhead Presses out of the Deadlifts workout, since both have a lot of assistance exercises I'd want to hit, and put them together with either the Pulldowns, as an antagonistic complement, or with the Squats, since I use the rack for both lifts. Then finally, I put the overhead presses into their own workout, which results in a six-day workout, each workout containing just one of the main lifts and its assistance exercises.
Conceivably, I could alternate one week of doing just the basic, big lifts at full intensity, with a week of doing lesser sets/reps/maxes of the big lifts and more of the assistance exercises. This can all be compressed into a kind of flow chart, with expanding options for 4-, 5-, and 6-day weekly routines listed on the second page:
Finally, as one more alternative, I could give each of the big lifts their own day, and then organize two more upper body days with respect to force type, push or pull:
So perhaps the best method is no method, but by having outlined these three different approaches, which are simply my favorite exercises organized by tried-and-true training protocols, I should be able to alternate enough to keep things fresh, and also be able to improvise a bit better now that I can visualize the various logics and options available.