Snaeke

heh, I'm not sure where the term "hammer" came from, but my best guess would be that it refers to the "motion" that you're arms are executing in conjunction with the weights while doing the exercise. This would be true for hammer curls since you're bringing the weight up to your upper chest from just below the waist & back again(kind of like the motion a hammer follows).
For the machines, it probably refers to how the weights are situated(any engineers here that could help me out? I can't recall if the hammer machines for shoulders/incline/pulldowns/rows are 1st, 2nd, or 3rd class levers). When you're bringing the weights up & down, it follows the motion similar to that of someone swinging a hammer.

Hammer Shoulders is like sitting on a bench with a barbell in each hand while lifting them up from your shoulders to above your head, fully extending your arms without locking the elbow joints.
Hammer Inclines is almost the same as doing an incline bench press.
Hammer Pulls is similar to doing Lateral Pulls. You sit back a little further on the bench though & use reverse grip. Its like doing inclined bench presses except you're pulling.
Hammer Rows are practically the same as Rows.
I suck when it comes to decribing this kind of stuff, but hopefully I've given you enough of a clue to figure it out. If not, maybe someone else here can do a better job. heheh

I don't see any purpose in doing cool down sets. Personally, I think they're a waste of time, but then again, I could be missing something. Warm up sets on the other hand would be good since they help to get the blood flowing to the muscles. For the amount of weight I'm working with on my bench press, I usually just do a set of 15 reps at 45 lbs. Rest for about 45-60 seconds, then do my normal sets.

You have to remember a couple things. Your joints & tendons need time to adapt as well. When you're doing strength/mass, you're working with heavier weights and tearing more muscle in order to promote more growth as opposed to the high rep/less weight routine.

The routine I'm doing seems to be working pretty well. For example, last Friday, I was doing 140x10 150x8 160x6 170x4 on my leg presses. Today, I did 155x10 165x8 175x6 185x4. Basically, I've increased the weight on all of my exercises today except for my curls, hammer curls, and lat pulls.

The program you've stated previously won't give you the results you're looking for as quickly. Its similar to doing 3 sets of 11 reps. You want more weight & less reps. Try working out 4 days per week(Mon/Thurs upper body & Tues/Fri lower body). 48 hrs is the recommended minimum recovery time, and usually works for those who are trying to tone their body or maintain. For strength/mass training, its probably better to go with 72 hrs recovery. Otherwise you'll end up burning yourself out and/or making yourself more prone to injury.

To start out, do a set of 10 reps with the weight you're working with on your first set(or maybe throw on 5 lbs more). On the second set, increase the weight 5 lbs(or 10 lbs depending on the exercise), and so on for the other sets. If you feel the last set was too easy, wait until the next day you're going to be working that muscle group & increase the weight on all the sets by 5 lbs.

Remember, you "never" want to be decreasing the weight(i.e. benching 160x10, 165x8, struggling through 170x6 and then unable to do 175x4 and having to drop the weight down on all of the sets in order to complete them). If you find the amount of weight difficult but can still do the reps, stay with that weight until you feel you can do the 4 sets with an added 5-10 lbs. Its important that you work forward when "feeling" out a weight range for your sets instead of trying to start out heavy & working your way backwards.
It might take a week or two, but for me, that's what I've found works best compared to going by a 1-rep max calculator which isn't always accurate.

I hope this helps.

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-Snaeke
"I may be fat, but I most certainly carry more weight around than your narrow butt everyday." -phat food for thought