Long time weightlifter here and frequenter of this forum. After years of lifting, I took a break from the gym back in May to travel for ~6 months. When I returned home from travelling, I picked up running with a group of pals and am now training for a half-marathon.
I am enjoying the running but missing the gym. I started adding in a simple strength routine twice a week (A Day - OHP, Deadlift, Incline Bench, pullups; B Day - Squat, Bench, BB Rows), but am unsatisfied with the upper body work. I want to add more to get a bigger, more toned upper body.
I was hoping this community could give me some advice on upper body work I could throw into my routine to address my upper body physique. I can add upper body days outside of my A Day and B Day as they will not affect my running performance much.
Thank you in advance for whatever advice you provide
Thanks for the post. Sounds like a pretty epic trip, dude!
I think the lifting elements of our Beginner Prescription would be reasonable after your hiatus. We are currently doing some maintenance on this page, which should be wrapped up in a few hours. After that, I’d run powerbuilding I or hypertrophy I. I think it’s fine to do it 2x/wk vs 3x/wk, pending running volume and training time available.
Thank you for the timely reply. I’m running for days a week and averaging about 25 miles per week with some short easy days and a long run on the weekends.
If you had to pick between powerbuilding and hypertrophy, what would it be? Any advice for pairing one of these down to 2x/week? I’d like to stay heavy-ish and simple for compound lifts (more for running injury prevention) and get some size in the upper body.
I like PB myself, but I think the fatigue and total training load would be easier to manage on hypertrophy alongside your running. For some tweaks to the program, I’d do:
I’d do days 1 and 2, swapping exercise 3 on day 1 for exercise 1 on day 3 (and it’s rep prescription)
Of the GPP listed, I would only do the additional arm and ab work
I would not shy away from isolation work, as things like nordic hamstring curls, copenhagen adductor planks, hamstring curls, etc. can be useful for injury risk reduction and, furthermore, upper body isolation stuff can be very useful for hypertrophy. I don’t think compound lifts generate more muscle growth than isolation exercises do necessarily -Jordan
This is excellent advice. Thank you. Final question and then I’ll slip back into lurk mode. I’m looking at Hypertrophy I, taking your adjustments into consideration. What do you think about keeping deadlift and squat heavy-ish? I fell this could be a Hypertrophy / Powerbuilding hybrid for runners (maybe even a new Runner’s Template ;)). So Week 1 might look like…
Day 1
HB Squat (3x5)
OHP (Hyp I prescription)
DL (3x5)
Leg extensions GPP
Day 2
Bench (Hyp I prescription)
Squat (3x5)
DB Bench (Hyp I prescription)
DB Flys
GPP
Maybe this would allow for more strength focused big compound lifts(which might bode well for running injury prevention and running improvement) and still offer solid core / upper body work without as much fatigue.
I would favor running the previous iteration mentioned abov and I don’t think strength improvements would be markedly different AND I don’t think that 3x5 is better for injury risk reduction than 8’s. I don’t think I would program 3x5 for anything really, tbh.
