The Art of Creative Workout Routines

Some Thoughts on Different Methods of Training, Intuitive Workouts, and How to Break the “Rules” of Lifting

     I’m not really sure where I’m going with this.  About half, maybe slightly more and perhaps a little less, of my articles I plan rather meticulously.  I make notes.  I craft an outline.  I have, in short, a plan.  The other half are nothing but the random musings of what is, at the time, circulating throughout the recesses of my mind.  As I’ve pointed out in other essays, I often write just to see what happens.  For me, it is these latter writings that bring a sense of joy to writing.  I’m a writer, sure, but I’m also a creative.  I think it’s also one of the reasons that I love training so much, as well.  Although there undoubtedly is some science to lifting, it is also an art form.  If I’m correct in this assumption of lifting as art, and I have absolutely no doubt that I am, then working out and program design, too, has just as much to do with creativity as it does anything else.  Art and creativity, after all, go hand-in-hand.  No matter the art form, one can’t be great, truly great, unless she is also quite creative.

     There are many bodybuilders, powerlifters, strongmen, and other strength athletes who stop training at some point in their lives.  This is even true among the professionals in whatever endeavor.  Perhaps they decide that they have won their trophies or their awards, or that they set out to accomplish whatever it is that they planned on succeeding at in the first place.  Other times it could be that the injuries pile up or life just “gets in the way,” and they no longer have the passion to continue in their training.  But others never stop.  In fact, they couldn’t even fathom the notion of such a thing.  They may have to take layoffs on occasion due to those aforementioned injuries or whatever else it may be, but they always return.  It is, to put it boldly, something that lives in their soul.  They can’t not train.  Although it may not usually be seen in such a light, I think the reason for this is because they are artists.  Training is their canvas, their blank page, and the gym—maybe even just the outdoors and their own body—is their studio where the art is created.  When you’re an artist, no matter the particular stripe, you can’t stop making art.

     Lifters who approach their training in this manner might also train in a manner that goes against the grain.  It defies the “science” of training at times, the “defined” parameters in which muscle growth or strength are supposed to occur.  They paint outside of the lines.  But it works for them because they know their bodies and they understand their art.  If I think back on the golden era of training—a subject I’ve been writing about in my recent series on golden era methods and workouts—Serge Nubret was one such bodybuilder of that time.  Others said that you must limit your training to an hour, maybe two at the most, and that you shouldn’t train with too many sets; you had to limit your repetitions to a certain range.  But he didn’t care what others did, much less what the science “said” was true.  He would do 20 sets of bench presses for 20 reps, then follow it up with 10 sets of pullovers and 10 sets of dumbbell flyes.  Oh, and he would repeat such a program another couple days in the week.  Because he knew his body so well, he knew that it would work for him.

     Scott Abel, in his book The Hardgainer Solution, wrote that the two greatest bodybuilding artists that he ever watched train were Bill Pearl and Lee Haney.  He wrote that, for one, you had to actually witness their training to understand, but for another, when they trained, you couldn’t tell where their body “ended” and the weight—barbell, dumbbell, machine, or whatever—began.  It was as if their bodies and the weights they hoisted were one.  Perhaps this is a sign of being a true bodybuilding artist.  Abel was adamant that it is the key to the “mind-muscle connection” and the ability to create a physique that is a true work of art.

     Even though I believe wholeheartedly that training is art, this isn’t to write that there aren’t some rules that need to be followed.  You need to train with “big,” compound movements, preferably with free weights, especially when starting out.  You need to squat.  A lot.  Squats build muscle and strength better than anything else.  Period.  You need to do some heavy pulls, some heavy overhead presses, some sort of heavy bench pressing exercise, some heavy curls, and some kind of heavy loaded carry.  What “heavy” is depends upon you and your goals.  Are you after strength?  Are you seeking muscle alone?  Is your search for a combination of both?  Even two lifters with the exact same goal may not train the same way.  It can be entirely individualistic.

     Outside of using the “correct” lifts, just about everything else is up for grabs.  Sure, I like full-body workouts (though not always).  I just think the more of your muscles that you can work at one time, all the better for achieving your goals.  But that isn’t always the case.  And, sure, I think high-frequency training (HFT), assuming it's programmed correctly, is better for the majority of lifters, especially those of us who aren’t genetically predispositioned to gain muscle and/or strength easily.  But, again, that’s not always the case.  And just training more because some guy with a blog on integral training methods suggests that you do so isn’t the answer, either.  HFT can get you into all sorts of muscle-building trouble if you simply do more of the already bad workouts that you’re currently doing.

     Part of the “problem” is the fact that we like to pick sides, choose one form of training over others and decide it—whatever the heck it is—is better than all other methods.  It’s the “either/or” mentality that so pervades our culture in almost all domains that we fail to even see it as an issue.  We need to be “both/and” lifters, capable of understanding that there is more than just one way to train.  Sometimes, there’s more than one way to train at the same time.  We think if we’re doing a 5x5 program for our squats, well, we have to do it for all of our other muscle groups.  Says who?  Maybe you should do 5x5 for your squats and heavy pulls and 10x10 for your chest, shoulders, and arms.

     I write a lot of different programs and routines.  Overall, that’s good.  You need to get on a program and follow it.  But when I or any other strength coach or trainer writes a program or discusses one on YouTube, or wherever it is that you’re getting your information, we can sometimes “box in” the creativity of the lifter, when what he needs is the freedom to do other methods and use other techniques.

     As you age and injuries accrue, and you can’t train in the same manner that you were capable of doing once upon a time, creativity is even more important.  I’ve known plenty of older lifters who ended up with even more injuries, and then had to stop training entirely, because of their attempts to return to their “good ol’ days” when they were moving heavy iron, ponderous poundages, and a massive volume—on top of the fact that they were massively muscled men.  In order to return to their glory years, they resorted to anabolics and other drugs, along with a return to eating a large quantity of food.  But that isn’t good for the older lifter.  What they needed to do was to let their egos go and to find a different form of training that still challenged them without attempting to get massive again or be able to bench press 315 pounds once more.  Along with not eating so much damn food, I must add.  But in order to do that, they needed to be creative, they needed to see a different vision of what training could, and can, be.

     Once you have been training for a certain amount of time, you should experiment with varied ways of training.  For instance, maybe you should try combining high-frequency methods with lower frequency workouts.  Heck, perhaps you could train half of your body with so-called “high-intensity,” “Heavy Duty” methods and the other half with ultra-high volume.  Now, that would be some “both/and” training if there ever was one; utilizing the two different training methods that always seem to be juxtaposed in direct opposition to one another.

     Here’s an idea on how to specialize in certain muscle groups that are lagging behind others or, even better, just one muscle in particular.  I’m writing this just to show you one way that you can utilize disparate training philosophies.  For example, I always had trouble gaining size on my arms.  (My calves, too, for that matter.)  Gaining size in my chest, back, shoulders, and thighs was much easier for me.  Oh, I still had to work hard, put in the hours in the gym, pay attention to my diet and recovery—all those kinds of things.  But those muscle groups grew.  My arms—not so much.  Once I discovered the potential of HFT, I put this technique to use in finally adding size to my “guns.”  I trained my other muscle groups just once per week but trained my arms 3 days weekly.  I utilized high-volume workouts, as well.  The training looked something like this:

Monday - Wednesday - Friday:

Barbell curls: 8x8

Skull crushers: 8x10

Alternate dumbbell curls: 6x12-15 (each arm)

Bench dips: 6x15-20

Tuesday (Legs):

Barbell squats: 5x5

Front squats: 5x5

Calf raises: 5-7x20-30

Thursday (Chest and Shoulders):

Bench presses: 5x6-8

Incline dumbbell bench presses: 5x10-12

Saturday (Back):

Wide-grip chins: 5x6-8

One-arm dumbbell rows: 4x8-10 (each arm)

Deadlifts: 5x3

     If you’re trying to gain muscle, or just bodyweight in general, you could also try a high-frequency squat-specialization program.  Do ramps of 5s followed by 2 or 3 back-off sets of 8 to 10 reps on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  On Tuesday, train your chest and shoulders.  On Thursdays, train your back.  And on Saturdays, train your arms.

     Keep this in mind and please understand—those are just two examples.  Yes, they will work.  In fact, they will work particularly well for you if you’ve been doing low-volume and low-frequency training programs beforehand.  But they are still just examples.  Whether they will work for you is something that you must discover.

     That’s another component that you have to keep in mind.  What works for you now is often because of what you were doing.  A “HIT” program, such as what Arthur Jones and Mentzer always suggested, will work if for 6 months beforehand you were doing a high-volume, high-frequency training program.  But the inverse is also true.  A super high-volume and high-frequency program will work great if you were doing HIT training for 6 months prior.  If you’ve been training for months on a low-volume program, give something such as John McCallum’s High-Protein, High-Set Regimen.  It will work friggin’ wonders for you, in that case!

     Right now, for some reason as I type these words rather quickly, trying my best for my fingers to keep up with my ever-moving thoughts, I have the great ‘80s and early ‘90s bodybuilder, Victor Richards, in mind.  “Vic,” as he was often called, trained quite differently from other bodybuilders of his day.  He sometimes trained a muscle once a week.  Sometimes he trained a muscle group for several days in a row.  Although high-volume training was common among all of the top bodybuilders back then, he took it to an extreme.  When working a bodypart, he’d do 10 to 12 sets on one movement, 10 sets on another, 10 sets on yet another, and, yep, another 10 sets on one or two additional exercises.  Oh, and sometimes he ate 10 meals each day and other days he ate only 1.  Other than training heavy, all other components of a program were up for grabs.  He trained instinctively, much like the “freestyling” workouts of Dave Draper or what is now often termed “auto-regulation.”  That is working out as art form and that is creativity in training.

     I could probably go on and on with some other workout ideas and some additional old-school bodybuilders who trained with creativity and intuitiveness first and foremost in their lifting.  But I’ll save those ideas for some additional essays and articles for the remainder of July.  So, look for whatever other cool stuff I have in store—at least, I think they’re cool.  Maybe you will, too.  In the meantime, if you’re a fellow creative lifter, let your artistry guide you in the gym.  There’s no telling what it has in store for you.

     I hope you enjoyed this essay.  I enjoyed writing it.  If you did like it, then you might want to consider purchasing my book Ultimate Mass and Power Essays.  You can find more information about it and all of my books HERE.  Click on the link for additional info.

     As always, if you have any comments or questions, leave them in the “comments” section below or send me an email if you prefer a private correspondence.  I usually get around to answering my emails every couple days.