Power/Pump Alternates

 

A Unique Heavy/Light Training Approach for Bodybuilders Seeking Size and Power

     I first discovered alternates a little over 30 years ago.  At the time, my primary interest (training wise) was bodybuilding.  I had just started writing for some of the popular bodybuilding magazines and it would be a few years before I discovered my real love—which, by the way, would be powerlifting and other strength sports.  However, even then, I loved being strong.  I couldn’t understand—and, I suppose, I still don’t, though I’m perhaps a little more sympathetic—bodybuilders who only trained for looks without the strength to go with it.  Even though I considered myself a bodybuilder at the time, I was definitely a power bodybuilder.  I wanted to be at least as strong as I looked.  I was actually stronger than I looked.  If I had known then what I know now, I would have known that I was “made” for powerlifting and strength as opposed to hypertrophy.  This is probably the reason that, even for strictly muscle growth, I responded best to lower reps.  My training partner Dusty and I—may his memory be eternal—trained primarily with sets in the 6-8 rep range, though we occasionally trained even heavier.  We were influenced by old-school bodybuilders like Marvin Eder, John Grimek, and Franco Columbu and also by the “modern” bodybuilders (at the time) such as Bertil Fox, Victor Richards, “Big” Jim Quinn, and Quinn’s occasional training partner Jimmy “the Iron Bull” Pellechia (and his “Powerblast” training principles).  It would only make sense, then, that we would fall in love with “alternates,” as they are ready-made for powerbuilding.

     What are alternates?  The term “alternates” was coined, I believe, by Greg Zulak.  “It’s sort of an off-shoot of antagonistic supersets, but instead of rushing back and forth between sets you take a full rest after each set for maximum recuperation,” wrote Zulak.  Though Zulak may have coined the term, he didn’t invent the method, as it was used by old-school bodybuilders before his writings.  Sergio Oliva, for example, liked to alternate between sets of wide-grip bench presses and wide-grip chins.

     You can see how old-school bodybuilders would have discovered this way of training.  In the so-called “Golden Era” of bodybuilding, lifters like Arnold and Columbu were fond of antagonistic supersets, where they would do a set for, say, chest and then immediately follow it up with a set for lats.  With alternates, you simply take a rest between each set instead of going back and forth as fast as possible.  You can use them for pecs and lats, quads and hamstrings, shoulders and traps, and biceps and triceps.

     What are the benefits of this form of training?  There are several.  First off, you can use heavier poundages than normal and do so throughout the course of a training session.  You stay strong during the entire workout because whenever you do an exercise for one muscle group, it helps that muscle’s antagonistic group to recover faster.  Zulak compared it to taking a short walk after a long run.  “You recuperate faster by walking around than if you just flop on the grass and lie there until your wind comes back.  Walking speeds the recovery process.  In the same way, believe it or not, doing chins after bench presses helps your pecs and triceps to recover faster and better for the next set of bench presses.  Doing bench presses helps your lats and biceps recover fast for your next set of chins.  The same holds true for quads and hams, delts and traps, and biceps and triceps.”

     Along with alternates, another way that I enjoyed training in the ‘90s (and still do) was through “heavy/light” training, or “power/pump” training as the great Gene Mozee liked to call it.  With this method, you, simply enough, train a muscle group with an exercise for low reps and then follow it up with an exercise or two for higher reps.  So, if you’re training your chest, you might start with some heavy bench presses for 4 to 5 sets of 5-6 reps, then you might do a set of incline bench presses for 3 to 4 sets of 10-12 reps and then some flat bench flyes for a few sets of 16-20 reps.  Conversely—and I generally favor this approach—you might train a muscle group twice in the same week, once with heavy weight and low reps and then in the 2nd session with lighter weights and much higher repetitions.  (My program “The Mass-Building, Split-Training Ultimate” takes this latter approach.)

     What if you could combine the two methods?  What would a program look like that combined alternates with power/pump training?  And would there be an ideal way to use this method?  What follows are my answers.

     With the method here, you alternate between an exercise (or exercises) for multiple sets of lower reps and then, for the antagonistic muscle group, you do multiple sets of higher reps.  At the next workout for the same two muscle groups, you inverse the muscle that receives the low-rep treatment and vice versa.

     You can train just one exercise per muscle group or you can train with multiple exercises.

     Let’s look at some different example workouts.

     For our first example, we’ll use chest and lats.  If you were to train with multiple exercises for both muscle groups, two workouts might look something such as this:

Workout #1:

     All sets listed below (and in following examples) are straight sets performed after warmups.  Make sure you warm up with 2 or 3 light sets for each muscle group before beginning your session outright.

• Barbell bench presses: 4 sets of 3 reps

• Wide-grip lat pulldowns: 4 sets of 16-20 reps

• Incline dumbbell bench presses: 4 sets of 5 reps

• Seated low cable rows: 4 sets of 16-20 reps

• Weighted wide-grip dips: 4 sets of 5 reps

• Close-grip (triangle bar) lat pulldowns: 4 sets of 16-20 reps

Workout #2:

• Barbell rows: 4 sets of 5 reps

• Incline barbell bench presses: 4 sets of 10-12 reps

• One-arm dumbbell rows: 4 sets of 5 reps (each arm)

• Incline dumbbell flyes: 4 sets of 12-15 reps

• Wide-grip weighted chins: 4 sets of 5 reps

• Flat dumbbell flyes: 4 sets of 12-15 reps

     A 2nd option is to simply do one exercise per bodypart.  At the 1st session, you do one of the muscle groups for low reps and the other for high reps, inverting this at the 2nd workout.  Using biceps and triceps, two workouts might look like this:

Workout #1:

• Barbell curls: 10 sets of 3-5 reps

• Rope pushdowns: 10 sets of 10-12 reps

Workout #2:

• Weighted close-grip dips: 10 sets of 3-5 reps

• Cable curls: 10 sets of 10-12 reps

     A 3rd option—this is my personal preference—is to do one exercise per bodypart for the heavy weight and low reps, and then do multiple exercises for the 2nd bodypart for higher reps.  Using quads and hamstrings as our example here, your workouts might look like this:

Workout #1:

• Barbell squats: 10 sets of 3-5 reps

• Lying hamstring curls: 4 sets of 10-12 reps

• Standing single-leg machine hamstring curls: 4 sets of 10-12 reps (each leg)

• Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts: 2 sets of 16-20 reps

Workout #2:

• Stiff-legged deadlifts: 10 sets of 3-5 reps

• Sissy squats: 4 sets of 10-12 reps

• Leg extensions: 4 sets of 10-12 reps

• Walking dumbbell lunges: 2 sets of 16-20 reps (each leg)

     Some lifters prefer to alternate between exercises instead of between each set.  This was sometimes referred to in the ‘90s as “jump sets.”  If you went this route, in the first workout above as an example, you would do the 4 sets of bench presses and then do the 4 sets of lat pulldowns.  When you’re finished with the pulldowns, you would then do the 4 sets of incline dumbbell presses, and so on and so forth.  If you’re training just one exercise for each muscle group—as in our 2nd example workout—then you might do 5 sets of barbell curls followed by 5 sets of pushdowns, then return to the barbell curls for 5 sets before finishing it up with 5 more sets of pushdowns.  My son Garrett often trains in this manner, and he says that it’s his favorite way to train antagonistic bodyparts.

     Be sure to do some calves and ab work, as well.  You obviously don’t have an antagonistic muscle to train with your calves, so simply do them after you’ve finished a quad/hamstring session or do them after one of your other antagonistic sessions.  You can train your abs/lower back using alternates.  You may want to try alternating, for instance, between a set of incline situps and a set of hyperextensions.

     Now, let’s look at some workout splits.  Since these are fairly high-volume workouts, you want to make sure you’re resting enough between sessions.  Some lifters will do better with less workouts and some with more.  It really is individualistic.  If you’re an experienced bodybuilder—these workouts really aren’t for beginners, anyway—then you probably know the kind of split you would use.  But here are some suggestions:

2-on, 1-off, 1-on, 1-off Split

Day One: Chest and Lats

Day Two: Quads and Hamstrings

Day Three: off

Day Four: Shoulders and Traps, Biceps and Triceps

Day Five: Off

Day Six: Repeat

2-on, 1-off Split

Day One: Chest and Lats

Day Two: Shoulders and Traps

Day Three: off

Day Four: Quads and Hamstrings

Day Five: Biceps and Triceps

Day Six: off

Day Seven: Repeat

     If you respond well to high-volume workouts done with less frequency, you could simply train every other day.  This is the kind of program that Zulak, for example, was fond of.  You need to make sure you’re doing enough volume at each session, however, so instead of doing 10-12 sets per muscle group as shown in the workout examples above, you may need to increase your volume to 15 to 20 sets per bodypart.  In this case, a split might look like this:

Every-Other-Day Split

Day One: Chest and Lats

Day Two: off

Day Three: Quads and Hams

Day Four: off

Day Five: Shoulders and Traps

Day Six: off

Day Seven: Biceps and Triceps

Day Eight: off

Day Nine: Repeat

     Even if most of your bodyparts respond well to that low of a frequency, you probably would need to train your abs and calves more often.  Train them at every other workout if you use that split.

     I, of course, prefer more frequent workout sessions.  One option you could utilize is to train on a 3-on, 1-off split, with the first 3 days being “all-out” workouts and the next 3 days being “moderate” sessions, where you did the same workout but cut down on the weights used to around 80%.  On the 3 “hard” days, constantly try to push up your weights to heavier and heavier poundages.

     Since these workouts are meant to be used for increasing mass and power, make sure that you’re consuming enough calories and enough protein each and every day.  For protein, make sure you’re getting at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight on a daily basis.  As far as calories, get at least 4,000 per day.  Hardgainers may need even more—possibly as many as 6,000 calories daily!  If you find it hard to eat that much—most folks do—then be sure to have a couple of weight-gain drinks between meals.

     If you enjoy high-volume bodybuilding-style workouts, try power/pump alternates.  These workouts, along with plenty of mass-building nutrients each week, can really put on the size.  With winter fast approaching, it’s almost bulk-building season, after all.  This year, perhaps it’s time to give power/pump alternates a place among your size-building routines.

All quotes from Greg Zulak come from his article "Alternates: A Fantastic Way to Build Size and Strength" as it appeared in the July, 1994 issue of MuscleMag International.