Workout routine

You can actually set it up yourself. You train on Monday, Wednesday and Friday or Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and you add a cardio workout after the last day. You are doing supersets back to back. I’m only gonna give you Monday but you can set up the rest yourself with back to back supersets. So here goes:

Monday:

Full Squat (barbell)

Straight Back - Stiff Leg Deadlift

Cable Seated Row

Incline DB chest press

Close Grip Cable Pulldown

Standing Military Press

Dumbbell Incline Curl

Bench Dip

Single Leg DB Calf Raise

Shrug (barbell)

If a the end of a workout you don't feel every muscle groups that you worket then guess what? You haven't trained it hard enough.

Train hard or stay home! Lucky out

Bodybuilder watch out

…cos if I ever see you preaching your gospel around me I'm gonna kick your ass so bad you'll turn into a screaming meat loaf. 5 day split will inevitably result in over training and injury, I speak from personal experience and lets just say known facts and common sense. Your muscles are not the only thing that needs to recover. Your central nervous system, immune system and hormonal system need rest too. Just because your muscles are telling you "it's ok" that doesn't mean you are ready to go. There is no doubt in my mind that you will not be able to train at sufficient intensity at the third day already. Now intensity doesn't mean spending two freakin’ hours in the gym, it means keeping short rest periods between sets, by that I mean 30-60 seconds. Now with that said ask yourself will your muscles be bigger at the end of a moth if you work them 1 time a week or if you work them 3 times a week with right intensity and still get enough rest? Doing shabillion sets or exercises for a muscle group in one workout, which is preached by bodybuilders is pure suicide. Why would you listen to them anyway? You think they play by the same rules as you? You think when they tell you workout like this, eat like that and drink this shake that that's what they do to look like Hulk? Guess again, they stick a needle where the son don't shine and preach the holy gospel of the bodybuilding magazines. Hah I mean come on people just think with your head a little bit before you take another advice from a bodybuilding mag. I used to do that 5 day split myself but I had so much pain going through my body it was ridiculous. You want big muscles? I know it sounds controversial but if you want to build your body then don't listen to bodybuilders or bodybuilding magazines. You might even pack a few pounds of muscle but guess what? After a couple of months you'll hit a plateau and you'll be stuck there for months, years...is that what you want? To be frustrated? I don't think so. With that said here’s my workout routine which will hit your muscle groups three times a week and you will still recover for your next workout session. It works great for me and is very intense.

Time under tension

Here’s what I see for the most part when I enter he gym…”Wham-zoom, wham-zoom, wham-zoom” The “wham” being lifting the weight and the “zoom” being lowering it. This way you are only using maybe half of your muscle fibers in the muscle you are targeting and the worst part is, the type of muscle fiber (fast twitch) u are using to perform this will go away faster when you don’t workout, than the one you are not even using hah. It’s not only important to lift the weight, you have to control it on the way down. Here’s something you can use next time you hit the gym that will help you build more muscle. Let’s say you’re doing barbell curls for example: Lift the bar as fast as you can, this should last for about 1 or 2 seconds and lower the bar for 3-5 seconds. You can start with 3 on the lowering. Now don’t worry if you are not lifting it fast enough, your fast twitch muscles are still activated if you are just trying to lift it as fast as you can. Here’s a little video by Vince DelMonte to put you through this:

Intensity=muscle growth

Now this is something that can instantly tell you when you walk in the gym, who works out for real and who doesn’t. I got a guy in the local gym who always asks me what is that exercise for, how do you work out, why do you do it like that, why in that order why this why that. Now I don’t mind answering any of these questions at all…AFTER my workout. Why? Because I got no damn time. I got 30 seconds to get from one exercise to another ok? He is always complaining about his physique but when I watched him this is what I saw: talk talk talk talk then do one set then slowly walking to get something to drink then some more talk, then he freakin sits down and watches some TV oh look another set yaaay clap clap clap heh. This is something what most guys do actually; where’s the intensity??? You won’t build muscle this way! Why did you come here? You want to look good? Feel good? Pick it up bub or stay home. Like I already wrote you’re either hot or cold, you either train or your time and money go down the drain. So what is intensity? You can hear people say; “Oh boy I worked out for two hours today, wow that was intense” No it wasn’t it was stupid and not effective, you just took one step forward and two steps back. Keep your workout under an hour. “But I can’t make it in that time I got…” yadda yadda… yes you can, if you can’t your workout routine needs changing. Keep your rest periods short, 30 seconds, use a stopwatch. Intensity means progressively and constantly putting your muscles to unaccustomed stress. It does not however mean that you lift a certain weight then next time take a bigger pause between sets and the lift a bigger weight. Did you really lift bigger? No you didn’t, you cheated yourself and just took a bigger pause and lost the intensity. You need to give your muscles a REASON TO GROW. If you do low weight and high reps, they are NOT going to get bigger. Keep your intensity up at all times, progressively increase weights by little and build new muscles.

Build muscle with progressive overload

This could probably be called your backbone to build muscle mass. Progressive overload basically means to put constant unaccustomed stress to your muscles. You might have heard someone talk about mixing it up with high and low intensity phases. Well…How will your muscles grow with low intensity phases? How will your muscles grow if you don’t give them a reason to grow? They won’t. To build muscle you need to hurt your muscles to the point of avoiding injury, which will make small tares in their microfibers and force the muscles to use the most amount of fibers in it. Your muscles will then be actually “worried” and say “Holy c*ap what was that?!”. This is what gives true potential to your muscles to become bigger and stronger for the next session. Since you put them through something they haven’t experienced yet they will repair and come back bigger and stronger, which means= muscle grow. You should give yourself realistic goals and increase the weights by some 2lb per week. Think about it, it ain’t much for one time but if you are consistent the weight accumulates and so does your muscle mass. When you do this you should keep track of your progress. How do you know if you’ve improved from the last session? You lifted more? That doesn’t necessarily mean you improved or lifted more. This is why you should keep track of your #reps in the set, weight used and your rest periods and overall time spent in the gym. You see if you lifted more weight but took a longer break between two sets then you didn’t do jack s*it. You just rested more, which means you cheated. Use a stopwatch and measure your rest period.

How to build muscle mass

I gotta do this one because of this just idiotic thing I heard in the gym the other day. Here’s the quote: “Don’t do so much weight with your legs, your legs don’t require you to work them with a lot of weight” Hah I mean WTF? Now I don’t know about you guys but when I hear something like this I just smack my head J It’s like this freakin guy just fell from another dimension or something. My point here is don’t just do something blindly that someone tells you even if he has shabbadillion certifications and PHD’s or whatever ok? Think! How exactly do you think your muscles will grow if you train them with low weight heh? So…How do you get big muscles? Now, this question doesn’t have one simple answer I can put in here. Rather a series of factors you should keep in mind if this is your goal. Progressive overload, intensity, time under tension, stretching, rest and nutrition is what I would put emphasis on for now. So here we go.

Know your muscle fibers, build your muscles.

Yes your muscles are build from different types of muscles, which is very important before you even begin lifting if you ever want to build muscle mass. There are total of 7 muscle types but they can be simply divided into 2 groups. Fast twitch and slow twitch. Fast twitch types are utilized with explosive motions. There are also 2 types of these. First type is utilizes with the most forceful contractions. Like when you go all out on the last set if you are doing 3 sets from higher reps with lighter weight and then increase the weight to the last set. When you do like 3 or 4 reps for that last set, this is where this first type of fast twitch muscles are utilized. They will also fatigue the fastest. The second type of fast twitch type is utilized when you use around 80% of your capability for some 30 seconds and are more resistant to fatigue.

The slow twitch muscle group is what you use when you run for an extended period of time. They are very resistant to fatigue but you cannot expect a great deal of force from them as they are slow contracting.

Here is an article by Vince DelMonte which describes this in greater detail.

Learning The Muscle Fiber Types

By Vince DelMonte

Choosing the best type of workout program that will stimulate the muscle fiber type that will get you the results you’re looking for is extremely important. Unfortunately, all body building programs are not created equally when speaking in terms of muscle fiber types. While you can’t differentiate between muscle fibers from your outside appearance, on the inside of the muscle tissue body, there are three main different fibers present. Type A Fast-Twitch Muscle Fibers The first type of muscle fibers are known as Type A Fast Twitch and are responsible for the most forceful contractions generated, however, will fatigue the fastest. For example, if you were to perform an all out set of 3 reps for bench press, you would predominately be using these type A muscle fibers. They tend to have very large motor neurons and very low mitochondrial density. They also have a low oxidative capacity, meaning they will not be able to utilize oxygen very well. It is for this reason that they are not suited to endurance type of activities, because during these exercise variations, oxygen must be present in order to sustain the muscular contractions. The major type of fuel that these muscle fibers are going to rely on is creatine phosphate and stored muscle glycogen (glucose). They will not utilize stored body fat at all due to the fact that they are only able to continually contract for between one and about 20 seconds. Type B Fast-Twitch Muscle Fibers The next muscle fiber is also classified as a fast twitch muscle fiber but not to the extent that type A are. This muscle fiber type is mostly utilized in activities that are relatively short in duration, but are not at an all out pace. For example, if you were to sprint 100 meters, you’ll be using mostly type A. If on the other hand, you are to do a running interval at about 80-90% of your max capacity for 30 seconds, this would utilize the type 2A more. Some of the characteristics of the type B muscle fibers are that they still have a large motor neuron (not as large as Type A though), they are on the intermediate scale as far as being resistant to fatigue, and they have a high degree of mitochondrial density. These muscle fiber types are also able to use oxygen to a great extent, as demonstrated by their higher resistance to fatigue and longer duration of contraction abilities. Slow Twitch Finally, the third type of muscle fiber that you have in your body is classified as slow-twitch. This is the muscle fiber type you would use if you were to run a marathon or any other extended duration, medium-to-low intensity activity. These muscle fibers have a very high ability to resist fatigue and have a large oxidative capacity. They are also relatively slow to contract, therefore you cannot expect a great deal of force generation from these muscles, and thus, will not be intended for exercises requiring a high degree of power. They are very high in terms of mitochondrial density and have a large number of capillaries running throughout their bodies. This is to enable sufficient oxygen to get to the muscle tissues so that they can carry on the extended duration of muscular work they are intended to do. These are also the muscle fibers that will also rely more on fat as fuel, as opposed to strictly using carbohydrates or creatine phosphate. Training The Muscle Fiber Types So, now that you’re familiar with the three major classes of muscle fiber types, it’s time to recognize how you would train each effectively. Since type A are your primary force generators, if you wish to get a higher performance from them you’ll need to train using exercises that require you to max out your effort for a short period of time. Think sprinting at full speed, 1-5 rep sets for lifting, and any type of plyometric activities. Next, to train your type B muscles fibers you’ll want to slightly decrease the force with which you are to contract while simultaneously increasing the time over which you contract ever so slightly. For example, perform 30-45 intervals repeated ten times with about a minute or a minute and a half at a low to moderate pace. For your weight training activities, aim to target the 6-10 rep range to utilize the fact these muscle fibers have a higher oxidation ability. Finally, to improve your slow twitch muscle fibers, think endurance. This type of fiber will usually require the greatest amount of time to train for improvement because you’ll want to focus on simply going ‘longer’. If you’re a runner, try and run longer. If you’re a biker, bike longer. If you’re a swimmer, swim longer – you get the point. This type of muscle has the ability to go for extended periods of time so this is exactly what you want to train it to do. So, next time you are trying to sort out your training plan make sure to take the various muscle fiber types into consideration. Doing so will allow you to make the most out of your training program so you get the exact results you’re looking for.