I'm probably going to give you more info than you care about.
Short answer:
Historically I've preferred one, big, full body workout with primarily machine weights per week when I can, plus whatever I'm doing for martial arts or other activities on top of that.
Long answer:
When I was living in Seattle, where I owned a tiny commercial gym, I did one, big, full body, HIT weight lifting workout every week, plus whatever I was doing as part of my martial arts class. Since I've moved to the southwestern desert and my gym is in my garage, things are a little harder to schedule. When it's 115F/46C or hotter outside, it's probably not completely safe to do a full HIT routine in the garage and it's definitely miserable to do one, so I've had to modify things a bit and I definitely have a different pattern, summer vs winter (spring and fall are a mix).
Winter: I've got two routines and I try to do each once a week, but if I feel like I'm not recovering or I haven't been getting enough sleep or something, I'll drop to one workout/week and alternate. Sometime I'll sub in something like leg curl or spinal extension for a bigger movement or two if I'm feeling like I want to get a workout in but can't handle that many big, compound exercises. These are all done on machines, with a 10/10 protocol, never unloading, 1 set to complete failure, no rest, move between exercises as quickly as possible, with a target time of about 1 minute, but that varies a bit by exercise. For example, I've found that I get much better results if I increase weight on the chest press when I hit 46 seconds or longer before failure forces a stop, but my form suffers if I increase weight on the pulldown before I can hit 1 minute 10 seconds.
Routine A (Monday)
- chest press
- pulldown
- hip extension
- weighted calf raise
Routine B (Thursday)
- 4-way neck
- shoulder press
- seated row
- leg press
Summer: A lot more body weight exercises and isometrics that I can do in the airconditioned house. When we have a cooler day, I'll try to fit in 1-3 big exercises out in the garage and mix them up. So I might manage chest press and pulldown one week and then 2-3 weeks later just get in a leg press or hip extension.
Regardless of season, I do a lot of stuff that I don't really count as exercise. My wife and I do at least 1 hour of brisk walking together almost every day. I work at home, in front of a computer all day so whenever I get up I often drop and do 10-20 slow pushups to keep my shoulders from binding up, etc. The startup I work for just got to a place where I think I'll have a job for a year or two without interruptions so I feel I can safely spend money on a MA class again and that will add to the drills, etc. that I do at home.
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