“Observe the masses and do the opposite”
One of my favourite quotes from former ‘Dragon’ & multi millionaire James Cann.
I think it’s a great quote and very relevant for gym trainers.
After all, take a look around the gym and if you’re doing the same thing as the rest of the guys/girls in there you’re going to get similar results?
Now the $64,000 question is ‘is that what you want…!?’
If the answers no then why the hell are you training like them!?
Also is there any need to train like a professional bodybuilder if that’s not what you want to look like?
This leads me on to Part 3 of the AthletePhysique training foundations and thats programming. (This article was originally written & posted to my old website & was part of a 3 part series. It still applies & I doubt anyone even saw it on there so… Here it is again)
I’m going to put an example weekly layout below.
Now it may look odd to people but I very often program clients and athletes to work each muscle group twice every 6-10 days.
My thoughts around this are…
“If evidence shows a muscles recovered after 3-4 days why wait any longer to train it!?”
and…
“Would you only work legs once a week if you were told you were going to die unless you added an inch to the size of your thighs and 50kgs on your max squat?”
Think about those for a second……
Now here’s an example weekly plan….
Monday – Pressing movements (Squats, Bench press, Overhead press + 1 accessory lowerbody exercise & 1 upperbody)
Tuesday – Pulling movements (Deadlift, Pullups, Rows+ 1 accessory hamstring exercise & 1 upperbody)
Wednesday – Recovery
Thursday – Chest & Back hypertrophy (3 exercises for each)
Friday – Lowerbody & Shoulders hypertrophy (3 exercise each)
Saturday – Recovery
Sunday – Recovery
& because as guys we gotta have big ass arms I give you open license to add in 10 mins of arm work at the end of at least 2 sessions!
Sets and reps for the Monday and Tuesday sessions would be 3-5 x 3-6 for the first 3 exercises focusing on lifting heavy loads and 3-4 x 12-15 for the accessory lifts.
Sets and reps for the Thursday and Friday sessions would be 4 x 10-20 with the focus on getting quality time under tension of 40s+ for each set.
So that’s 4 sessions, 3 recovery days and all major movement patterns and muscles hit twice!
Now I’m not saying I’d always program like this and I’ve had good results with other styles but this is a great option that I’ve had some really positive results with.
At the end of the day as long as there’s adequate recovery methods in place is a muscle likely to grow more if you train it 4 times a month or 8…!?