Easy Strength Mass Building

 

5 Tips to Turn an Easy Strength Program into a Mass Building Regimen

     As regular readers know, I’m a fan of high-frequency training (HFT, for short).  In particular, I regularly promote easystrength and (what I call) easy muscle training programs.

     Easy strength regimens are, you guessed it, strength programs, but ones built around frequent training, low reps, and fairly low volume in general.  I would argue that easy strength methods are hands down the most underutilized form of strength-building in the entire training world.

     Easy muscle programs are similar to their easy strength cousins in that they utilize HFT but couple it with relatively low intensity (“intensity” here referring to how it’s utilized in strength training—as a % of one-rep max) and high reps.  Neither method of training is “hard”—in fact, you should always leave the gym feeling decidedly better than when you started the workout.  Both methods are highly effective because of the sheer frequency of the training and the cumulative volume that adds up over the course of running through a lifting cycle.  (It must be noted that I have sometimes used “easy muscle” for other, less frequent forms of hypertrophy training that involve all of the sets being “easy,” in that none are taken to failure.  Some of the biggest bodybuilders I have known often looked as if they were taking it easy in the gym, compared to their smaller, weaker counterparts who always took things “balls to the wall” on almost all of their sets.)

     In this article, I want to look at some ways that you can make your easy strength training not just a strength-building regimen but also a way to generate more hypertrophy.  In some ways, what follows is kind of an “in between” approach, largely easy strength but with some training methods added in that can also induce mass gains in addition to strength.  One of the “problems,” for instance, with easy muscle approaches is that the hypertrophy gains are far greater than the strength gains; at least, strength gains in the 1-5 rep range.  This, of course, isn’t really a “problem” if you’re solely interested in bodybuilding, mass, and aesthetics.  And it will build a lot of strength in the higher rep ranges for a lift/muscle.  (We must keep in mind that strength is relative.)  But if you want to move really heavy weights and you want some muscle gain to boot, applying the tips that follow is probably your best bet.  Consider what follows, then, to be your guide to “easy strength powerbuilding.”

     One word of note: the remainder of this article assumes at least SOME knowledge of easy strength methodology.  If you are at all confused by how to program what follows, please click on some of the links above.  With that out of the way…

 

 

5 Keys to Mass Building Using Easy Strength

 

Tip #1: Train at least 4 days a week

     The more frequently that you can train on an easy strength program, the greater your potential for muscle growth.  Notice that I didn’t simply write the more frequently you do train.  Doing more work without preparing yourself for it or not doing low enough volume that your body can handle the frequency, is not a road to success.  However, since easy strength methods are, well, easy, you should be able to jump right into 4 days of training without any problem.

     You should reach the point where you are training 5 days a week without any trouble.  6 days may be better for some lifters, though I think 5 days is kind of the “sweet spot” where you don’t have to worry about running the risk of doing too much or too little.

     The conventional “rule” for easy strength training—as it was originally made popular by the writings of both Dan John and Pavel Tstatsouline—is to simply take a day off whenever “life gets in the way.”  If your old lady insists on a date night or if you have your kid’s ball game to attend, then simply take the day off from lifting on those kind of days.  But don’t come up with excuses not to go to the gym.  For some “lifters”—I use that word very loosely here—life seems to get in the way 4 or 5 nights per week!

     I have trained as much as two weeks straight without taking a day off, and did this while I was in my 40s, so it’s definitely feasible, but I’m not sure if that garnered any better results than if I would have taken a day or two off in that two weeks’ span.

     Bottom line: train at least 4 days per week, never less.  5 days weekly, I find, is the perfect “sweet spot” between too much and too little.  If you want to train more than that, take off at least once every 7 to 10 days.

 

Tip #2: Utilize the Big 4

     If you want to pack on mass, then you need to utilize exercises that work a large amount of muscles at one time.  The more “compound” the movement, the better.  Ideally, you also want to use exercises where the majority of your body moves through space.

     Enter the Big 4.

     If this isn’t your first time reading my work, then you know exactly what I’m writing about.  In order to pack on muscle as fast as possible, I maintain that all lifters need to do the following 4 things: 1. Squat heavy stuff.  2. Press heavy stuff over your head.  3. Pick heavy s**t off the ground.  4. And, last but by no means least, drag or carry heavy crap for time or distance.

     Anytime a lifter comes to me for advice about gaining mass, the very first thing I find out is if they are doing the Big 4.  If I’m lucky, the lifter is doing at least a couple of them.  (I’m sad to say that I have spoken with a lot of trainees who weren’t doing any of them.)  Occasionally, I find that the lifter is doing 3 of them.  But I have yet to find any lifters who come to me for advice and were already doing all 4.  If they had been, then they probably wouldn’t have had to reach out to me in the first place!

     The more often you can do the Big 4, the better.  This is one of the great things about using it along with easy strength methods.  You can get in a lot of work on heavy squats, pulls, overhead work, and loaded carries throughout a training cycle.

 

Tip #3: Limit reps per lift to around 10 but rotate set/reps from workout to workout

     The key to making easy strength programs work—it’s also the reason why you are able to train a lift/muscle so frequently—is to limit your total reps per lift to around 10 at each session.  The most common set/rep combo is 2 sets of 5 reps but other set/rep sequences that are good include: 3 sets of 3; 3 sets of 5, 3, 2; 5 sets of 2; 2 sets of 3 followed by 4 singles; or just 1 set of 10 reps.

     I think that the majority of the workouts should utilize 2 sets of 5 reps, 3 sets of 3 reps, or 3 sets of 5, 3, and 2 reps.  These are all moderate, and more or less the “Goldilocks” of easy strength workouts—not too heavy or not too light.  Every 4th workout or so, however, you should do 5 sets of 2 reps or the 2 sets of 3 followed by the 4 singles.  Those are your “heavy” sessions.  Then, also about every 4^th workout, do a workout comprised of just 1 set of 10 reps for each lift.

     A good rule of thumb is to do—over the course of 4 workout sessions—2 moderate workouts, 1 heavy workout, and 1 light workout.

     A couple week of workouts might look like this:

Monday – 2x5

Tuesday – 3x3

Wednesday – 1x10

Thursday – off

Friday – 5x2

Saturday – off

Sunday – 2x5

Monday – 3x5,3,2

Tuesday – off

Wednesday – 1x10

Thursday – 6x3,3,1,1,1,1

Friday – off

Saturday – 3x3

Sunday – 3x5,3,2

 

Tip #4: Slowly add more exercises to the workouts

     So far, our first 3 tips are more or less “standard” easy strength advice.  Some folks can just apply the first 3 tips and build muscle, but other lifters are going to need to ramp up the volume a bit more.  But how do you do that without doing more than 10 reps on each lift?  Pretty easy, actually.  Add more exercises to the program, but ones that don’t mimic the other lifts in a session or don’t work the exact same muscles.

     You might start an easy strength program with doing 3 lifts per workout—this is my “standard” advice for strength training only and is the foundation of my 30 Rep Program.  And then slowly, over the course of multiple workouts, start to add movements.  Let’s say you start a program doing a squatting movement, an overhead pressing movement, and a pulling movement.  (We will get around to loaded carries—the 4^th of our Big 4—shortly.)  Perhaps you spend a week or two doing squats, front squats, and bottom-position squats—not all in one session, but from workout to workout.  And then for your overhead pressing, you rotate between military presses, behind-the-neck presses, and one-arm dumbbell overhead presses.  Then for your pulls, you rotate between power cleans, power snatches, and deadlifts.  After a week or two, start to add in some horizontal presses such as bench presses, dumbbell benches, or incline bench presses.  After another week, add in some chins or rows of different sorts.  Then, after another week or so, add in some different curling movements, such as barbell curls or dumbbell curls.  Then, after another week, you might throw in some direct triceps movements, such as skull crushers.  After 6 to 8 weeks, you go from 3 movements to 7.  Stick with 7 movements at each session for another week or two, then back off and repeat the cycle, using the same or different movements.

 

Tip #5: Add one or two high-rep finishers and loaded carries at the end of your sessions

     At the end of each session, you should add a couple of “finishers” but don’t overdo it.  The finishers with weights can be either barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell movements.  The loaded carries can be things such as farmer walks, stone carries, sled drags, sandbag carries, or anything similar.

     I think kettlebells work really well here for the weighted movement.  Kettlebell swings, kettlebell clean and presses, or something such as Dan John’s “armor building complex” are all great choices.  (For the armor building complex, you do double kettlebell cleans, followed by double kettlebell overhead presses, followed by double kettlebell front squats, all without setting the weight down.)

     Whatever you choose for your weighted lift, limit the exercise to no more than 2 sets.  The reps should be fairly high, in the 20 to 30 rep range for each set.

     For the loaded carries, once again limit it to 1 or 2 sets, but no more.  And make sure your loaded carries aren’t too hard.  You want to make sure that you can come back in the next day and repeat a similar workout.  As you progress and your body adjusts to the frequent training, you may be able to start pushing your loaded carry movement into the realm of “hard,” but don’t overdo it at first.

 

     There you go.  Five tips for turning your easy strength program into a mass-building machine!  And if not outright machine, then, at the very least, a hypertrophy spark plug.

 

 

 

     As always, if there are any questions, leave them in the comments section below or shoot me an email.  I get around to replying to all of my emails… eventually.