Train Heavy. Train Often.

 

     If you’re a natural lifter who wants to gain plenty of muscle mass but also the strength to go with it, I think there are three things that are paramount.  First, you need to train heavy.  Second, you need to train often.  And third, you need to remain fresh while doing the first two.

     If you’re a student of the lifting game, and if something about my above statement seems vaguely familiar, there’s an explanation for that.  I basically paraphrased the great Russian strength coach Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky, who, rather famously, said that the key to strength training was “to train as heavy as possible as often as possible while being as fresh as possible.”  That quote is well-known for a reason.  Following it judiciously will unlock a lot of strength and hypertrophy gains.

     Of course, there are a couple caveats to that statement.  You need to be training with barbells, dumbbells, or kettlebells.  In other words, free weights as opposed to machines, cables, bands, or the like.  And those free weight movements need to be big, bang-for-your-buck exercises.  All sorts of (dumbbell or barbell versions of) squats, cleans, snatches, presses, pulls, and curls are the name of the game.  Zatsiorsky was writing to other lifters when he made that statement, so the compound movements were a given.   But I need to clarify that since there are a great many American “lifters” who do little other than machines and never go near a squat rack or do heavy cleans or press heavy barbells above their heads.

     In any given week, if a fellow lifter asks me what exercises I think are best for building both mass and strength, depending on my mood or the training program I’m thinking about—I really wish, some weeks, I could just stop thinking about various workout regimens—I might give a host of different answers.  But, in general, each week you should do some sort of squat, an overhead pressing movement, a horizontal pressing movement (yes, this absolutely means you can bench press), a quick lift such as a power clean or snatch, a rowing (or chinning) movement, a curl, and last, but most certainly not least, one or two “odd” lifts.  Use a mix of both barbell and dumbbell movements, and you’re well on your way to muscledom.

     How “advanced” you are should probably determine just how many exercises you select.  If you’re starting off on your strength-and-power journey, 5 or 6 exercises should probably suffice.  A lifter who’s quite advanced, conversely, might utilize as many as 20 exercises, rotating between “same but different” movements.  Though, I find that, for most people, 10 to 12 exercises is ideal.  You can’t go wrong, for example, if this is your list: squats, front squats, power cleans, power snatches, one-arm dumbbell overhead presses, barbell overhead presses, barbell bench presses, incline dumbbell bench presses, weighted chins, one-arm dumbbell rows, and barbell curls.  Add in an odd lift (farmer walks, sandbag carries, tire flips, etc.) and a heavy abdominal movement (the ab wheel or weighted sit-ups both work well) and you have the potential for a damn-near perfect training regimen if your programming is “on point.”  Which brings us back around to my initial paragraph.

     Once you’ve decided to lift heavy on your list of movements, you then need to decide how often to train those lifts and how “fresh” you plan on being at each session.  A lot of lifters, once they decide to train heavy, then make the mistake of not regulating “fresh and often.”  They either train heavy and often but not fresh, which leads to the dreaded “O” word (it’s “overtraining,” if you’re wondering).  Or they train heavy and make sure they’re “fresh” at each session, but this means that they never (or, at least, hardly ever) train often.  And, sure, either of those approaches can work for some lifters, it’s simply not ideal.  So, once again, this means you must ask yourself the following two questions: How often?  How fresh?

     How often will depend on the amount of volume in your sessions.  If you simply enjoy training with quite a bit of volume, then 2 days per week will suffice.  I prefer on average to train each lift (or similar lifts that work the same muscles) 3 days per week, sometimes even more than that—4 to 6 can be highly effective if you know how to run a program correctly using such frequency.

     For “being fresh,” I have a rule of thumb that I think most lifters should utilize.  We’ll call it the “15 to 30 rep rule.”  If your goal is a combination of strength and muscle mass gains, you should, on average, get around 15 to 30 reps for a lift (or a muscle group) if you train that lift 3 times per week.  This is one reason for the popularity, and the effectiveness, I would argue, of 5x5 workouts when training on a full-body routine 3x weekly.  If you’re newer to training, or if you’re just one of those lifters that responds better to less work, then 3x5 or 5x3 might be better options.  Conversely, if you know that you respond better to more not less, then 6 sets of 5, 10 sets of 3, or 7 sets of 4 reps might be the better alternatives for you.  So, basically, 15 would be the low end for total number of reps for a lift, and 30 would be the high end.[1]

     Here is an example 3 days a week, full-body program using these parameters:

Monday

·         Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps

·         Power cleans: 5 sets of 3 reps

·         Barbell bench presses: 5 sets of 5 reps

·         Barbell curls: 3 sets of 5 reps

·         Weighted sit-ups: 3 sets of 5 reps (do these heavy the same as the other movements)

·         Farmer walks: 1 hard set

Wednesday

·         Front squats: 3 sets of 5 reps

·         One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: 5 sets of 3 reps (each arm)

·         Power snatches: 5 sets of 3 reps

·         Weighted chins: 3 sets of 5 reps

·         Ab wheel: 3 to 5 sets of 5 reps

·         Sandbag carries: 1 hard set

Friday

·         Bottom-position squats: 5 sets of 5 reps

·         High pulls: 3 sets of 5 reps

·         Incline dumbbell bench presses: 5 sets of 5 reps

·         One-arm dumbbell rows: 5 sets of 3 reps (each arm)

·         Standing alternate dumbbell curls: 3 sets of 5 reps (each arm)

·         Weighted sit-ups: 3 sets of 5 reps

·         Tire flips: 1 hard set

      Now, you can take the “15 to 30 rep rule” and apply it to frequencies other than just your standard 3 times a week.  If you’re the aforementioned lifter who prefers more volume and you want to train a lift or muscle group twice weekly, then this means that your parameters would be around 22 to 45 reps per workout.  On the low end, a 5x5 workout is still efficacious.  For the higher end of the twice weekly spectrum, 10 sets of 3-5 reps is great, as is 8 sets of 5, 6 sets of 6, or anything similar.  When training twice a week, you could also do one exercise (for a muscle group) for higher sets of lower reps and a 2^nd exercise for lower sets and higher reps.  To build your squat, for instance, you might start off with barbell squats for 10 sets of 3 reps then finish off with front squats for 3 sets of 6 reps.

     Here are a couple of programs that work well when training a lift or muscle group twice weekly.  The first one is a full-body, 2x per week regimen.  This is a good program if you can only make it to the gym a couple times per week, but you have plenty of time to train when you do get there.  The 2^nd program is a 2-way split, training 4 days per week.  Both will be effective.

Program 1

Monday

·         Barbell squats: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Incline barbell bench presses: 7 sets of 5 reps

·         Power cleans: 10 sets of 3 reps

·         Weighted chins: 8 sets of 3-5 reps

·         Barbell curls: 7 sets of 5 reps

·         Weighted sit-ups: 3 sets of 5 reps

·         Farmer walks: 1 hard set

Thursday

·         Front squats: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Flat dumbbell bench presses: 7 sets of 5 reps

·         Power snatches: 10 sets of 3 reps

·         One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: 7 sets of 5 reps (each arm)

·         Romanian deadlifts: 5 sets of 5 reps

·         Standing alternate dumbbell curls: 7 sets of 5 reps (each arm)

·         Ab wheel: 3 to 5 sets of 5 reps

·         Sandbag carries: 1 hard set

Program 2

Monday (squat and pull)

·         Barbell squats: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Power snatches: 8 sets of 2 reps

·         Hang cleans: 8 sets of 2 reps

·         Weighted chins: 10 sets of 3-5 reps

·         Barbell curls: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Farmer walks: 2 hard sets

Tuesday (press)

·         Barbell bench presses: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Behind-the-neck presses: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Weighted dips: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Weighted sit-ups: 5 sets of 5 reps

Thursday (squat and pull)

·         Front squats: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Sumo deficit deadlifts: 5 sets of 5 reps

·         One-arm dumbbell rows: 5 sets of 5 reps (each arm)

·         Standing alternate dumbbell curls: 7 sets of 5 reps (each arm)

·         Sled drag: 2 hard sets

Saturday (press)

·         One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: 5 sets of 5 reps (each arm)

·         Barbell overhead presses: 3 sets of 5 reps

·         Incline barbell bench presses: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Skull crushers: 8 sets of 5 reps

·         Ab wheel: 5 sets of 3-5 reps

     Those programs are just suggestions, albeit pretty good ones.  If you decide to replace one of the movements for an alternative, just make sure that it’s a “same but different” exercise.

     You can also train more frequently than 3 days a week for each lift.  Most of the “easy strength” essays and programs that I’ve written here on the blog would slot into this program framework, so I’m not going to give an example program.  However, if you’re interested in high-frequency training, I recommend my essay “Easy Strength Mass Building” that I wrote a couple months ago.  It should give you some additional training ideas.

 

 

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[1] Although this isn’t really the scope of the present essay, you can have different rep “rules” if your goals are either strength only, without concomitant muscle mass gains, or hypertrophy gains without coinciding strength gains.  In the case of the former, if it’s strength, and only strength, that you’re after, you could do between 5-15 reps 3x weekly.  If hypertrophy only is your goal, then 30 to 50 reps would be ideal.  This is the reason that the standard 3 sets of 10 reps is effective.  Boring, yes, but still effective for muscle gains.  Strength, not so much.