Ditillo’s Big Three for Bulk and Power

More Anthony Ditillo Training Wisdom for Developing Size and Strength

     My recent essay on the training methods of the great bodybuilding writer Anthony Ditillo has proven quite popular, more so than I thought it would be when I posted it.  When I wrote it, I knowingly left out a few of his training routines due to length constraints.  I was afraid it was a bit too long as is when I finished it, since my shorter articles tend to get the most views.  Besides, I figured I could always write more down the road, though “down the road,” in this case didn’t prove to be very long.

     Ditillo was a huge proponent of using the “big,” basic barbell movements—squats, overhead presses, bench presses, bent-over rows, deadlifts, barbell curls, and the like.  But in one of his many articles for Ironman, he wrote that there were three movements in particular that were all you needed to, in his words, “build great massiveness and size simply, easily and quickly.  Forget those curls, forget the lateral raises and all the rest FOR THREE MONTHS and, more than likely, make the best gains of your life.”

     Those are pretty strong words so what were his “big three"?  Drumroll, please…  The full squat, the weighted chin, and the weighted dip.  You know what?  I think he may very well have been correct in his assessment.  The squat, quite obviously, is an easy choice.  Any list of “greatest” lifts—whether it’s 3, 4, 5, or just 2 or even 1—should include the full squat.  There simply isn’t a better exercise for building size, strength, and power.  With the exception of my one article No Squats, No Problem, I don’t think I’ve ever written a training program for building size and strength that didn’t include the good ol’ barbell back squat.  But why weighted chins and dips instead of bench presses and barbell rows?  Ditillo wrote that, too many times, lifters end up, in his words, “straining instead of training” their benches and rows.  With more advanced lifters, or lifters that have perfected their form and always use perfect form while training, this isn’t an issue, but he’s correct for many lifters at the “intermediate” level.  When lifters do weighted dips and weighted chins, they’re forced to use good form on the movements.  How many times have you seen a lifter at the gym doing bench presses where their butts come off of the bench—often along with their feet and one of their shoulders—while they use the most god-awful form that you could witness?  As often as not, I bet.  Barbell rows have the same problem.  The gym-goer loads the barbell with too much weight and then “heaves and hoes” it, almost turning it into a pseudo-deadlift or a herky, jerky “row” of some sort.  Of course, both of those lifts are great—along with plenty of other bench and row movements using either barbells or dumbbells—assuming that the form is good, but chins and dips are best for ensuring proper form.

     To quote Ditillo again: “It’s not what you do, but how you do it that counts.”

     Here, I’ll outline the workout that Ditillo recommended along with some other options that I think would work just as well.

     A workout of squats, weighted dips, and weighted chins may not seem like much, and it’s not, but that’s part of its beauty and genius.  A good minimalistic program often proves much more effective than an also “good” routine that involves multiple lifts.  When you train with limited movements, you perfect those lifts, and you end up getting a lot of equally “good” volume.  You stay hyper-focused on the few lifts that you’re doing—not worried about a lift later in the session or later in the week during another workout altogether—and make much better gains.

     Ditillo recommended training the 3 lifts together in one workout for 10 sets of 4-6 reps each, doing each workout twice per week.  So, the routine might look like this:

Monday and Thursday:

Full squats: 10x4-6

Weighted dips: 10x4-6

Weighted chins: 10x4-6

     Ditillo wanted you to use the heaviest weight you could on each set.  So, you might start with a weight (after warmups) where you can only get 6 reps on the 1st set.  If you reach the point where you only get 4 reps on a subsequent set, drop down in weight and continue until you get all 10 sets of 4 to 6 reps.  Stick with your starting weight at each subsequent workout until you are capable of getting all 10 sets with that weight, then add weight at the next session and repeat the process.

     If you want to train 3 days a week, Ditillo recommended that you drop your sets per lift down to 7.  This keeps the total volume per week roughly the same, at 21 total sets per week instead of 20.  I actually think this is the better route, as the more frequently you can train then all the better.  Here is how I would do the workout, using a slightly different approach from Ditillo:

Three Days per Week Program:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Full squats: 7x4-6

Weighted dips: 7x4-6

Weighted chins: 7x4-6

     Start the program with a weight that is 90% of your 5-rep max.  So, on squats, if you have a 5-rep max of 250 pounds, you would do your 7 sets with 225 pounds.  At the first session do 7 sets of 4 reps.  At the 2nd workout, do 7 sets of 5 reps.  And at the final workout of the week, do 7 sets of 6 reps with that weight.  In the 2nd week, add weight—10 pounds to squats and 5 pounds (possibly just 2.5 pounds) to the dips and chins—and attempt 7 sets of 4 reps again.  If, on any lift, you miss 4 reps on all 7 sets, stick with 4 reps at the next session.  If you get 4 reps on all sets, stick with that weight at the next session and attempt 5 reps on all sets.  Continue in this manner until you manage 6 reps on all 7 sets with that weight.  Once you get 7x6, add weight at the next session and repeat the process all over again.

     What makes this program work is the full-body workouts, the frequent training, the lifts selected, and the high-volume.  So, keeping this in mind, there are some other ways that you can make a routine of squats, dips, and chins work using other set/rep sequences and other frequencies of training.  What follows are some alternative routines that you might want to implement.

Three Days a Week Program #2:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Full squats: 5x5

Weighted dips: 5x5

Weighted chins: 5x5

     For this one, use a weight that is 90% of your 5-rep max and do 5 sets of 5 reps at the 1st session.  At the 2nd one, add weight again and attempt 5x5.  If you get 5 reps on all 5 sets, add weight once more at the next session.  If you miss 5 reps on any set, stick with that weight at the next workout until you do get 5 reps.  Do 5 sets no matter how many reps you get on each set.  So, after adding weight, you might get 2 sets of 5, 2 sets of 4, and 1 set of 3 reps, for instance.  That’s perfectly fine.  Just stick with the weight until you get 5x5.  Then add weight and repeat

Three Days a Week Program #3 - The 2/3/5 Cluster Set Routine:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Full squats: 5x5/3/2

Weighted dips: 5x5/3/2

Weighted chins: 5x5/3/2

     Again, start the program using 90% of your 5-rep max on each lift.  This one is more “intense” since you will end up doing a total of 50 reps for each movement.  For each lift, do 5 “cluster” sets.  Do a set of 5 reps, rest briefly and do a set of 3 reps.  Rest briefly again and do a set of 2 reps.  Rest several minutes—5 minutes is probably best—and repeat the cluster set again.  If, at any point, you miss a rep—it will probably be your first set of 5 reps on the 4th or 5th cluster—stop the workout at that point.  Stick with the weight at the next workout until you manage all 5 cluster sets of 5, 3, and 2 reps.  At that point, add weight and repeat the process.  Also, if you know you respond well to less total work, you can reduce the training frequency to just 2 days for this program or you can stick with 3 days of training but reduce your number of cluster sets down to 3 or 4.

Split Programs

     If you have time to make it to the gym 5 to 6 days per week, you can try doing a split routine.  In each of these programs, you squat on one day and do the weighted dips and chins at the next.

Split Program #1:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Full squats: 7x4-6

Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday

Weighted dips: 7x4-6

Weighted chins: 7x4-6

     Use the same method as the first 3-day program above.

Split Program #2:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Full squats: 10x3

Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday

Weighted dips: 10x3

Weighted chins: 10x3

     On each lift, use a weight that is approximately your 6-rep max.  In other words, use a weight you would use if you were doing one all-out set of 6 reps to complete muscular failure.  If you manage 3 reps on all 10 sets, add weight at the next workout.  If you miss any of the triples, stick with that weight until you do get all 10 sets for 3 reps each.

Split Program #3:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Full squats: ramps of 5s, triples, and singles

Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday

Weighted dips: ramps of 5s, triples, and singles

Weighted chins: ramps of 5s, triples, and singles

     This might look like the simplest of the programs here but, honestly, I think it’s the best.  Sure, it requires that a lifter “knows” himself more than the others, but this workout can transform a lifter from “just strong” to a downright massive (and massively strong) beast.

     On each day, for each lift, start by doing progressively heavier sets of 5 reps.  Stop once a set gets hard, not once you reach failure for 5 reps.  After your really hard set of 5 reps, start doing progressively heavier triples.  Once triples get hard, switch over to progressively heavier singles, working up to a near max single.

     Your weights here will wax and wane from workout to workout and even from week to week.  Some days, you’ll be sore and not even sure that you can do a couple sets of 5 reps, only to find that you work up to some really heavy triples and singles.  Other days, you’ll feel “great” but end up doing less weight on each rep stage than you thought beforehand.  But that’s why it is so good.  It teaches you that “how you feel is a lie” and the most important thing is to just show up and do the work.  Oh, and at the end of a 12-week cycle, you might be stronger on squats, dips, and chins than you have ever been—and you might have to buy some new clothes.

     Anthony Ditillo was (and is) a legend.  For good reason.  He was one of the best bodybuilding writers to ever grace the pages of one of the major bodybuilding magazines—virtually all of his articles appeared in Ironman.  He might not still be here to tell me if he liked my views on how to train with the “big three” but I bet he’d approve.  Now it’s time for you to get to the gym and discover for yourself the minimalistic magic of training with “just” full squats, weighted dips, and chins.

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