A new 3 Day Push, pull and leg routine for 63 year old man

jsinclair6

I am 63 in a months time and I have probably trained and done sport 50 years of my life(some elite) in my younger days. My interests are more focused on enjoyable cardio such as hiking and swimming(outdoors only), cycling, but I do punish myself with the odd triathlon.
I suffer these days with fibromyalgia and some arthritis, but I can maintain it with good diet and being sensible how I train and pain killers.
This year has been a special year in that I am now just short of 1 year totally alcohol free and altered certain aspects of my training which I won't bore you with now.
But after a few years of really bad joint aches I decided after 5 years to go back to the dreaded weights with the intention of being sensible and using low weights and more reps, though I would like to gain about several Kg of muscle and loose only a few Kg of weight/fat.
I started around late August with the weights(not a fan of gyms, but weights/strength at my age is good) and it was no surprise to me that it was hard to get over certain pain in certain areas to start with. But to my amazement a lot of those certain niggling pains in certain areas of my body have vastly improved and I have managed to lift more weight pain free and sensibly than I ever dreamed of. Also the weights have massively helped with my cycling and a few other activities.
I gave my body as much rest as it needed, I have been doing this wonderful new thing called "Push, pull and legs" routine 3 day a week(will make it 2 days if rest needed) and as an old man of 63 and 76 Kg body weight I am dead lifting 135 Kg(3 reps) and bench pressing a few reps at 80 Kg, no Arnold but I am over the moon with that personally.
So my next step is to now work out a new push, pull and leg routine that is intermediate.
and takes me to the next level, and by that I mean a 150 Kg dead lift and 90 Kg bench press and as far as I am concerned I will be happy to hold that from then onwards.

Can some point me in the right direction to where I might get a good routine that revolves around good core exercises, dead lift, squats, bench military press etc and where I can be out of the gym in an hour.
Thanks

nossmf

This thread contains a large variety of pre-programmed routines, customized to whatever equipment you have available, plus experience level:

which-lifting-program-is-the-best-for-you

This thread contains instructions to help setup your own routine if none of the ones in the thread above feel like they apply to you:

how-to-set-up-a-weightlifting-routine

This thread contains suggestions of how to increase intensity of your workout without necessarily increasing the weight being used:

30-tips-to-increase-strength-training-intensity

nossmf

I did PPL (push-pull-legs) for years before swapping to an upper-lower split which allows for hitting every body part twice per week, which is recommended for intermediates who want to advance beyond the beginner stage. This is usually a 4x per week split, but if you want to limit lifting sessions to three days per week max, you can do an upper day, a lower day, and a full-body day using a single exercise per muscle.

Retroguy2000

jsinclair6 wrote: »

But to my amazement a lot of those certain niggling pains in certain areas of my body have vastly improved and I have managed to lift more weight pain free and sensibly than I ever dreamed of. Also the weights have massively helped with my cycling and a few other activities.

So my next step is to now work out a new push, pull and leg routine that is intermediate. and takes me to the next level, and by that I mean a 150 Kg dead lift and 90 Kg bench press and as far as I am concerned I will be happy to hold that from then onwards.

I'm not surprised you are having those benefits.

1-5 reps is considering strength training territory. 5-30 is considered hypertrophy, if going close to failure. It's not an either/or though, ofc you can gain some muscle at low reps, and gain some strength at higher reps. I mention it because you have slightly conflicting goals of gaining strength, and gaining muscle.

At your age, I would advise against low reps training. That's close to your 1RM, and fatigue or form breakdown at anything close to your 1RM could result in injury, which at your age could be very detrimental. I'd suggest you target 8-15 reps. That's potentially easier for you to progress too, by adding reps to one or more of your sets each week, then adding weight to one or more sets.

PPL is best done as 6x per week. You would be better off with more frequency, and ofc lower volume per body part per workout accordingly. At 3x per week you should consider full body 3x, or one full plus upper/lower, or ULU then LUL. Note that full body doesn't mean the same exercise each time, e.g. your main legs exercise might be deadlift on Monday, leg extension/leg press and leg curl on Wednesday, and squats and higher rep RDL's on Friday. Or something along those lines, with volume adding up to about 15 working sets per week per body part.

I'm not many years younger than yourself, and for reference I do U/L every other day, so an asynchronous split. Also on the legs days I add shoulder press and finish with arms supersets, while the upper days are focused on back and chest.

As an older person, you'd benefit from more protein, so 0.8g/lb is a good min target.