Routine help please

[honeyytoast]

Hi, I’ve been working out with bodyweight/light weights for a while at home and have seen some small gains and toning in my lower body.

However I’ve now decided to join the gym and fully commit to a strength/resistance program, with the main goals of increasing mass in my glutes and legs, plus strengthening and toning my back. Mainly for aesthetic reasons to be honest (I want to build bigger curves).

I’ve done quite a lot of research and tried out of a lot of exercises at home. I’ve identified that:

• I want to aim for hip thrusts, rdls, deadlifts and glute bridges as my main compound heavy lifts (I don’t like weighted squats and would want to avoid, at least until I get stronger - I do use banded bodyweight squats for warmup though)
• I want to use the leg press and hip abduction machines
• I want to use weighted single leg glute bridges, step ups and Bulgarian split squats for isolation/unilateral exercises
• I want to do cable pull downs, seated or standing cable rows and bench dumbbell rows for my back.

I don’t really want to go to the gym more than 3 days per week - ideally I’ll do mon/weds/fri or tue/thur/sat for optimal recovery in between workouts.

So where I’m a little bit confused is whether I should split the aforementioned exercises across the 3 days, in a similar style to the Bret Contreras strong curves program (Workout A, B and C), or try to cut the list down and stick to the same exercises for every workout. Opinions on this seem to vary slightly.

Here is my rough plan following the former option (the structure will broadly be 3 sets of 8-12 reps for each, and before each workout I’ll do a dynamic warmup plus activation exercises (donkey kicks, banded walk etc etc)

Workout/day A:
Barbell hip thrust
Barbell deadlift
Leg press
Single leg glute bridge (dumbbell/kettlebell)
Incline row (dumbbells)

B:
Barbell glute bridge
Barbell RDL
Leg press
Step-ups (dumbbell/kettlebell)
Cable pull-down

C:
Barbell hip thrust
Barbell RDL
Abduction machine
Bulgarian split squats (dumbbell/kettlebell)
Seated or standing cable row

Does this sound ok? Too ambitious, too little?
Because of my limited knowledge and experience I can’t determine whether it’s best to closely track my progress on each individual exercise by repeating 3x per week, or have variation. For example if I just do the abduction machine or split squats once a week, even if I’m targeting those muscles in other exercises, is there any point adding progressive overload week to week?

Or should I cut down and only do 1 or 2 of the “big lifts”, 1 or 2 unilateral exercises plus the leg presses etc across the week?

Thank you so much for any help or insight!

I’d say that’s too much in each session but I like getting stronger overall and I’m not obsessed with glutes!

So I’d be doing maybe 3 main lifts/ moves each session plus conditioning and mobility. I’d start with the major compound lift - so deadlifts or squats basically then arrange other stuff around that.

But it depends - you won’t be lifting very heavy at first so you could do more. And how much time you have. Lifting a decent weight in deadlifts, for example (my favourite favourite lift) will take me about 30 minutes, doing day 5 sets of ascending weight, descending reps.

But I’m focused on overall strength and fitness not just growing my butt.

I'd personally try to aim for two leg days and 1 upper body;

1. Quad and glute focused
2. Hamstring and glute focused
3. Upper body (back, shoulders, triceps/biceps)

I aim for 3 compound exercises per session followed by 1 or 2 isolated movements depending on my focus.

If you're lifting heavy enough to grow muscle I think you may struggle with recovery between sessions to fit in 3 leg day per week.

@Toupee you’ve nailed it, I think.

@honeyytoast if you want to lift heavy enough to grow the complex glute muscles you’ll need to lift quite heavy and also do a bit of conditioning work rather than faff about with loads of exercises and not enough rest between sets and recovery between workouts. For example, step ups are excellent for glute strength if you do them really slowly, with your body weight into the leg stepping up first not pushing from the leg on the ground. Then sloooooowly lowering down works the other leg.

But body shape is genetic at base. I have really strong glutes - I rarely do hip thrusts (I can’t be arsed with the set up, frankly) but when I do, I can move 100kg quite smoothly and the muscle is hard to the touch! But I still have a pretty flat bum.

Looks good to me. I'd just crack on and get started and modify it if you need to.

I'm not sure what you mean here though:

"is there any point adding progressive overload week to week?"

Progressive overload is the bread and butter of how you get strong and/or build muscle so there's always a point. When you get to the top of your rep range, put the weight up, start at the bottom of your rep range and work up to the top, rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. It may be you put weights up every week, or it may be it takes weeks/months but that's always the goal.

I think it's too much volume on legs tbh for recovery as remember that muscles grow outside of the gym. Also, is your diet on point for muscle growth?
Also, have you got the techniques right for all of those? Esp the deadlifting and hip thrusts? I'd be wary of back problems if not.
Man who owns gym I go to was a European Body building champion back in the day. He did not do a single deadlift to build those muscles and did legs once a week. He did however say that he went outside and vomitted after his leg session!

Progressive overload is the bread and butter of how you get strong and/or build muscle so there's always a point.

Yes, yes!