Far be it from me to advise anyone as to what's best for them, but I will certainly tell you what works for me, and has worked well for about forty years. I had a boxing coach back in the day with some interesting perspectives back when "muscle building" was frowned upon in that community ... his concepts, in my view, are particularly well suited to older gym rats.

Note that my "conventional wisdom back in the day" comments immediately following are just for whatever interest they may be, the fact that my coach was WAY progressive, and his thoughts follow that.

Back in the day, conventional wisdom was that boxers should avoid the weight room ... the thought being, that boxers needed specific muscles for a specific job, and extraneous muscle building just added muscles (weight) you didn't need which were a drain on cardio capability, much like carrying fat. Remember, adding ten pounds of anything carried you into a new weight class, and muscle sucks up energy worse than fat.

Therefore, the thought was, build the muscles you need by doing what you're trying to do ... run, hit the bags and jump rope coupled with endless ab work outs. There is sense to this ... as anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of physics knows, the power in a punch comes from velocity. Take the jab for example ... if you want a killer jab, forget weight training and jab a heavy bag a zillion times a day.

There was no MMA/Octagon back in my day but those who follow it these days can see a good example of what was preached back then ... MANY times, guys who look like body builders fall to much less muscular opponents in later rounds. Frankly, I cannot even imagine trying to go five, five minute rounds ... actually, I suppose I can imagine it - I just cannot imagine surviving it!

Anyway, I said all that just to set the stage for how progressive my coach was, and to make it clear that he wasn't trying to build Franco Columbo. Still, this routine was VERY progressive for the time and it made sense to me then, and makes even more sense to me now at soon-to-be 60.

He believed that three things were fundamental to build the machine ... HARD work, diet, and MOST importantly, adequate rest. I still want to work hard, but my body needs recovery time (rest) even more than it did forty years ago. This system works very well.

While we all know that ALL muscles pull (contract) ... a muscle cannot "push," but we can, nevertheless, differentiate between function ... a tri-cep extension is a push (extension) exercise just as a curl is a pull (flexion) movement, and that's the way he differentiated them.

Everything that follows was done at five exercises, three sets of ten reps, on a four minute cycle ... two minutes to get the set done with two minutes jumping rope. There is a timer made for boxing that can be set to beep at whatever intervals you set. This was fifteen, four minute iterations ... exactly one hour.

Days 1 and 2 were "push exercises," such as bench press routines, military press, etc.

Day 3 was legs and back without regard for pull/push. In other words, squats and leg curls on same day. Training was particularly hard on the lower back ... and I am very grateful that I can work hard cutting, splitting, and stacking heavy hardwoods these days that leave a lot of guys half my age bedridden.

Days 4 and 5 were "pull exercises," such as lat pulls, chin ups, curls, upright row, reverse curls, ... everything that pulls.

Day 6, if you were up to it, was a repeat of day 3.

Roadwork, ab crunches/sit ups and jumping rope ... that was a daily grind.

In the end, and for example, look at what you do to your triceps. All the tricep extensions, rope and bar, as well as the bench routines with hands close together ... everything focused on those muscles, is days 1-2 with 5 days rest between them. Consider the biceps ... same thing. Everything focused on them is days 4-5, with 5 days rest til you hit them again.

As for the legs, the rest period was was shorter (if you did day 6) but he believed that leg muscles were designed to work every day so they needed less rest.

I want to mention something else that he believed ... just because some of you might find this interesting. He always said muscles were "lazy and good at it." By that, he meant that they would find the easiest way to deal with whatever you threw at them. He recommended a little "confusion," a concept all you guys adopt as near as I can tell.

"Confusion," as he preached it, was to have a base routine, but change things up. One week you might throw in some "burn downs," using decreasing weights with reps to failure and another week you might hit it really heavy, increasing weights to near max with decreasing reps.

Having said all this, I doubt this is of any interest to most guys here ... the VAST majority. Most of you guys have different objectives. On the other hand, if you saw me on TV introduced to enter the Octagon, with a bag over my head to hide my age, you wouldn't laugh at the way I look... how many guys can say that at 60?

I've also never been "down" with any of the joint/tendon issues that trouble those of us who are older.

I just throw that out there in case anyone finds it interesting ... his thoughts were pretty much heresy back in the day. No matter what you do at this age, diet and recovery time are really important.

I'm 52 always have aches and pains but nothing too bad that I cant work out. I do a 2 days on 1 day off then 3 days on 1 day off. Monday Thursday chest and arms. Tuesday Friday Back and shoulders. Saturday Legs. Bad knees so legs are tough.