Muscle-Building Tailored for YOU

Some Thoughts and Ideas on Designing a Workout Plan Made for You

     I’ve mentioned in other essays that what makes training so unique and ultimately rewarding—though also downright frustrating for many, though I ain’t one of ‘em and proud of it, despite “pride goeth before the fall” and all that—is that training itself is unique to you.  What builds muscle—sometimes a whole heapin’, heckuva lot of muscle—for one person in spades doesn’t do jack-squat for another lifter.  If that guy you know who grows huge arms with 2 heavy, super-intense sets and a workout that lasts a grand total of 15 minutes done twice per week attempted a high-volume, 15-20 sets per muscle regimen, he’d make near-zero gains.  But if my buddy Mac, who thrives off 25 sets per bodypart workouts, tried the Heavy Duty dude’s system, he’d shrivel up worse than Charles Atlas’s scrawny beach geek who got sand kicked in his face and his gal taken away from him by the muscle-bound jerk.  And between those two hypertrophic extremes lays the training system that will most likely work for you.  Though, if you’re unaware, you might very well be one of those at the extreme ends, as well.  The only way you will know is to train, experiment, train again with something else, experiment more, then train with yet another program, and keep that up until you finally settle on the one-regimen-to-rule-them-all—or, at least, the one that does that for you.

     In this essay, however, I hope to offer some guidance, guidelines, tips, and other suggestions on how you can discover what will work best for you a bit quicker than just through the trial-by-mass-building-fire approach.  You’ll have to, of course, still experiment, but perhaps these recommendations can get you there a wee bit quicker.

     No matter the system, there are some non-negotiables.  Do these and even with a not-quite-ideal program, you’ll still make gains.  Do these and get on the program that works for you and then you better watch out—gains will start coming big time!

     The first thing you need to do is the correct lifts.  And by “correct” I am referring to the big, compound lifts that work a lot of your muscles.  If you’ve read even a smattering of my writings, then you already know about the “big 4.”  In order to make near-record gains, you must squat heavy stuff, press heavy stuff over your head, pick heavy stuff off the ground, and drag or carry heavy implements around the gym (or your yard if you’re me, or the cattle pasture in East Texas if you’re my Uncle Kirk).  In addition to those 4 musts, you should also do some heavy bench pressing of some sort, some heavy curls (the barbell curl is the “right” answer here), and some heavy rows, chins, or both of them.

     Just starting out on the lifting journey?  Do all that stuff in one workout using a full-body system of training.  If not all of those things, you should do a few of them at one session and a few of them at another.  Some guys are “low-volume lifters” and they respond best to less, not more.  Some are the opposite and absolutely thrive off of a lot of work at every workout.  Most are probably in between.  Once again, and you might grow tired of reading this but I’m going to hammer it into your bodybuilding-addled brain, nonetheless, you have to experiment to find out what amount of volume is best for YOU.  Start off, however, on the lower end of the volume spectrum.  As you train over the coming weeks, if you’re responding well, then don’t add anything.  If you find the gains aren’t coming quickly, then slowly add more (and more) work until you reach the point that the gains are coming steady and strong.

     Now, if you’ve never picked up a weight a single day in your life, understand this: everything works.  At first.  Until it doesn’t.  So, don’t go by what works the first month of your training.  During that first month of training, you can do low-volume, high-volume, and everything in between and under the sun, and you’d probably still grow.  Once the “newbie gains” wear off, however, you need to settle in on a relatively low volume program and go from there.

     A good program to start with, might look something like this:

1. Barbell squats: 5x5.  Do 5 progressively heavier sets, working up to one all-out set.

2. Power cleans: 5x3.  Again, do 5 progressively heavier sets, working up to an all-out triple.  When it comes to cleans, or any of the quick lifts, form degradation occurs around the 3rd rep, so it’s good to limit your repetitions on these.

3. Bench presses: 5x5.  Follow the same method as the squats.

4. Military presses: 5x5.  Yep, same as the squats and benches.

5. Chins: 3x5.  Here, do 3 straight sets of 5 reps with the same weight.  This might be your bodyweight to begin with.  At first, you might not even get 5 reps.  Once you can get 5 reps on all 3 sets, add weight at that point and start the process over again.

6. Barbell curls: 3x5.  Use the same method on these as the chins.

7. Farmer walks: 2 or 3 sets, hard but not all-out.  Pick up a heavy pair of dumbbells and go for a stroll.  Once the set gets hard—don’t go until you can’t walk another step and the ‘bells slip from your hands—set the dumbbells down and repeat for 1 or 2 more sets.

8. Steep incline sit-ups: 3x10-12

     Train, take a couple days off, and then repeat again.  This means, to begin with, you might train Monday, then Thursday, then Sunday, and then again on Wednesday.  Once you’ve adapted to the program, and by “adapted” I mean that you’re no longer sore after the workouts, go to a 3-days-per-week routine, training, say, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or whatever 3 days you want.  After about 8 weeks or so—sometime around the 8th week, you’ll probably need to start making some changes—swap over to some same but different lifts.  Do this for several months in a row, changing movements every 8 weeks, and at that point you can then go to a different program, and you can begin to use some sort of split routine.  During those months, pay attention to how you respond to 5 sets per movement.  If you find that you never really adapt to the training, then you will probably need a little less.  You might only need 2 or 3 sets per lift.  But, conversely, you also might need more.  Some lifters need 6 to 7 sets on each lift in order to continue to make progress.

     By the way, you can use various full-body programs for your entire lifting life if you really wanted to.  Most lifters want to make some changes if for no other reason, however, than it does their minds some good, if not their bodies.

     Most lifters will make great gains with full-body workouts and fairly high-volume sessions.  Once you’re ready to move on from the full-body training, I think there are a few other methods of training that are most ideal.

     If you’ve reached the point that you understand your body well enough and you’ve built a good degree of muscle mass, strength, and you’ve developed a work capacity capable of handling a high workload, you can go to a 2-way split system of training.  Split your body any two ways that you like.  A lot of lifters naturally gravitate towards an “upper/lower” split but you don’t have to do that.  You might do thighs, chest, and back at one session and shoulders, arms, calves, and abdominals at the 2nd.  I was always fond of a split where you do legs, back, and abs at one workout and chest, shoulders, biceps, and triceps at the next.  I liked it, and still do, because at the legs/back session, I could do plenty of “power” work with multiple sets of lower reps.  At the 2nd session, however, I would do more “pump” work.  I might still use lower reps, especially on bench pressing and overhead movements, maybe barbell curls, as well, but then I’d do more reps on other exercises.

     With a 2-way split, you can train 6 days in a row or, my personal favorite, train on a 3-on, 1-off, 2-on, 1-off schedule.  With the latter, you’d train half of your body on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, and the other half on Tuesday and Friday the first week.  The 2nd week, you reverse those days.  It’s high-frequency but not too high.  You can also just train however many days in a row you want before taking a day off, or even a couple days if you feel you need it.  So, the first week, you might train Monday through Thursday, then take off on Friday before training Saturday, Sunday, and Monday again, and then, at that point, you feel as if you need two days off, so you take off on Tuesday and Wednesday before starting up your training again on Thursday.  Yes, this requires that you know your body well, but you shouldn’t even think of training this way to begin with unless that’s already the case.

     On this “system,” what should you do each day from a set/rep standpoint?  Whatever the heck you feel like doing!  The only thing you should know going into each workout are the movements.  Your first session might be squats, power cleans, wide-grip chins, and steep incline weighted situps.  Your 2nd one might be bench presses, military presses, barbell curls, and skull crushers.  Those are just examples, albeit good ones—select whatever movements that you know produce results for you.  Some days you might do 5 sets of 5 reps, or 3x5, or 3x8, or 4 sets of 10, 8, 6, and 4 reps.  Some days you might go “all-out” and other days you might just do a “light” session with weights at 80% of your typical poundages.  Enjoy the training.  Be creative.  Make some gains.

(For more of my favorite 2-way split training routines, check out THIS article.)

     Another system I like for a great majority of lifters is a “full-body split” program.  One day might be squats, overhead presses, and barbell curls.  The next day might be deadlifts, weighted dips, and weighted chins.  It’s still a “split” but your whole body is basically being taxed at every workout.  Full-body splits are great for multiple sets of low reps.  Do 8 sets of 5 reps or 10 sets of 3 or anything similar.  A program might look like this:

Workout One:

Barbell squats: 10x3

One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: 8x5 (each arm)

Barbell curls: 8x5

Workout Two:

Deadlifts: 12x2

Weighted dips: 8x5

Weighted chins: 10x3

     Throw in some abdominal work at the end of workout one and some sort of loaded carry at the end of the 2nd session and you’re “good to go.”  Train 3 days a week or every other day or follow a 2-on, 1-off routine.

     Once you’ve trained on a split program for a while, return to full-body training.  At that point, you can basically just do whatever you want in your full-body training.  Select a handful of lifts—squats, bench presses, overhead presses, power cleans, and barbell curls are always good choices—and, again, just do what you want each day that you hit the gym.  Or you can always try an “easy strength” regimen such as my 30 Rep Program.

     Keep in mind that what I’ve written here, brief as it is, includes just a few examples.  As I wrote in my last essay, training is an art form.  Once you know your body, you can do, pretty much, whatever you want as long as you’re following a program that uses big, compound lifts.  But if you need more ideas, search through the blog—I have a multitude of various workouts and program suggestions—or purchase one of my books.  Each one of them is PACKED with programs for getting big and strong.  No one could ever go wrong with the workouts in my Bill Starr-inspired book The Strongest Shall Always Survive: Lifting Lessons from an Iron Legend.

     What will work for you?  Well, you are the only one who can discover that.  But if you put some of these ideas to work and stick with it—consistency trumps everything else—before long you’ll be one of the biggest and strongest guys strolling through the gym.  Just do it.  Strength and size are there for the taking.  The problem with most lifters is that they simply don’t take it.  Don’t be one of them.  Be one of the ones who do it.  It’s easy to read about programs here on the blog, watch videos of guys training on the internet, or any other such thing.  Those can be valuable.  But they won’t bring you results.  You must actually do the training.  It’s in the doing—not the reading, studying, or talking about it—where one achieves his goals.

     

     Got questions or comments?  Leave them in the “comments” section below.  If you want a private correspondence, then please feel free to send me an email, especially if you have any in-depth or quite personal questions that you need answered.  I typically get around to answering my emails every couple days or so.

     My next post will probably be the 6th part of my on-going series on the training methods and workouts of the golden era bodybuilding legends.  Part 6 is on “thigh training.”  Look for it, or whatever my next post may be, in a couple days.