PROGRAMS

There is no single, perfect program. No magical number of sets and reps or sequence of muscle groups. And if there were, it would be a set of programs combined and it would span several months at least.

There are two problems with seeking out the perfect program for yourself. First of all, everyone is different, and responds differently to exercise. Some recover faster and can workout harder or more often. Some can't gain weight, some can't lose it. Some people have more fast-twitch fiber and others more slow-twitch.

Secondly, if you were on a perfect program, eventually you would begin to experience diminishing returns. You would hit a plateau, and your gains would grind to a halt, and suddenly, your program would no longer be perfect.

Variation (periodization) is one of the keys to bodybuilding success. Vary your weight, reps, sets, volume, intensity, temp, rest, diet, exercises, cardio, gym, workout partner, time of day, number of workouts, you name it! With all these variables at your disposal, you should have no problems avoiding plateaus.

In this section I offer some common and not-so-common training programs that you could try out for a while. They all have their good points, and followed with some dedication, all will bring some gains. Some people will respond better to some than others.

If you are getting bored with your routine, give one of these a try! Let me know which you like best, which brought the best results, and which you thought sucked! I'll give my opinion with each, but will cover each as objectively as I can.

The first two programs are one's I have devised myself, based on all the information contained in this web page. I have used variations of both with success, and hope you can as well. Feel free to write me and let me know how they work for you!

Mass Building Program

I get a lot of requests for this kind of program, so here it is! I compiled information from many magazines, dozens of tips for training and nutrition, and several web sources, into the following program.

First, I'd like to point out the most common mistakes people make in an effort to quickly gain muscle:

workout to long (anything over one hour is too long)
workout to often (4 times a week max, I'd recommend 3, each muscle once a week)
do too many sets (1 to 3 really intense, all out effort sets will do the trick, don't do more than 6)
don't eat properly (6 meals a day with a portion of protein in each meal)
neglect legs, working legs has countless benefits, including more release of hormones that help your upper body grow as well.
waste time on isolation exercises. If you want to build mass, your better off doing close grip bench and french press than triceps kickback, and squats instead of leg extensions.

Training for mass

Limit your training to only 3 days a week, and still keep each workout to less than one hour. One workout should include squats, another deadlifts (or pullups), and lastly bench press. Do these first in your workout, and plan the rest of your exercises around them.

I'd like to say a quick word on # of sets to perform. People and magazines recommend anywhere from 1 to 20 sets per body part. 20 sets, with say 2-3 minutes for set+rest = 40-60 minutes per body part. There are about 8-10 bodyparts that get trained, totalling 5.3-10 hours per week. That's a huge amount of time to be spending in the gym, and almost guarantees overtraining.

1 set per bodypart programs rely on all out effort providing enough stimulation for growth. And I believe this is also a great way to train. But some studies have shown more testosterone release with multiple sets, so I would recommend experimenting with number of sets and determining what works for you.

Before any heavy sets, be sure to do ample warmup, using 2-4 sets, increasing the weight so that your last warmup set is close to what you will do your heavy set with (but only do 2 or 3 reps). Then rest 2-3 minutes before diving into your heavy set(s).

The following sample routine only specifies heavy sets, using all out, 100% effort, no holding back. 2 sets could be converted into supersets, rest/pause sets or drop sets for added intensity.

For supersets do one pre-exhaustion exercise for one set, then compound exercise for your heavy set (6-10 reps) (leg extensions/squats). Pre-exhaustion exercise is suggested in brackets.

For rest/pause sets do as many reps as you can (6-8 reps), rest 10 seconds, do one or two more reps, and repeat.

For drop sets, do a heavy weight until failure (around 6-8 reps), then halve the weight, and immediately do another set until failure.

Squats(leg extensions) (2 sets), leg curls (2 sets), calf raises (2 sets)
Bench Press(flies) (2 sets), shoulder press(lateral raises (2 sets), French press(Close grip bench) (2 sets)
Deadlifts (2 sets), pullups(if you can)/pulldowns(if you can't) (2 sets), barbell curl (2 sets)

Abs I'll do once a week when I find the time, 2 heavy sets of 6-10 reps, on a Swiss ball with weight.

If you want, you could try adding another set for a total of 3 per bodypart, and see if that works any better for you, though you probably won't be able to incorporate the higher intensity techniques of pre-exhaustion, drop sets, or rest/pause sets.

Nutrition/Supplements for mass

As for nutrition and supplements, get yourself a meal replacement powder, flax seed oil, creatine, and multi-vitamin/mineral. Replacement powders often contain lots of whey protein, so you shouldn't have to buy a pure whey protein separately (though it's better for dieting).

Eat a hardy breakfast as soon as you wake up to prevent muscle breakdown
Eat a snack/meal every 2.5-3 hours.
Make sure each meal has a serving of protein in it.
Serving of protein: 2-3 whole eggs, 5-6 egg whites, a chicken breast, can of tuna, 2-3 cups of milk, cup of cottage cheese, cup of nuts, cup of beans, small slab of meat.
Immediately after your workout, slam a Powerade/Gatorade type drink (or Welches grape juice) with 5-10 grams of creatine (don't forget to load up on creatine for the first week).
10-15 minutes later slam one full meal replacement shake.
In the evening go for meals with less carbs, more protein, unless you workout late.

Give this a try for one solid month with pure dedication, and I can think of no reason you wouldn't put on some serious muscle mass!

Fat Loss Program

Fat loss has never been a top priority of mine, but I witnessed first hand how my brother shed over 20 pounds of fat in about 3 months. Here is a collection of tips and tricks my brother used to achieve such great gains, or rather, losses!

Also, as above a quick list of common mistakes when trying to lose fat:

cutting carbs excessively lowers metabolism, more muscle wasting and fat sparing in your bodies attempt to survive.
skipping meals, same as above. Multiple meals actually increase metabolism.
slash fat intake, can have dire consequences, essential fats needed for survival, and proper metabolism.
buy low fat products that replace fat with carbs. Excessive carbs can be converted to fat.
give in to cravings.
crash diets which cause more muscle loss than fat loss.
counting on exercise to make up for poor nutritional habits.

Training for fat loss

Though the focus should be on cardio exercise, weight training should definitely be part of any fat burning program! It's easiest to fit together all the elements of fat loss training if cardio is done in the morning (which may also be most effective). That way it leaves the afternoon for weight training.

3-4 cardio sessions a week of 30-40 minutes each should suffice, leaving weekends for recuperation. There is a lot of support for doing cardio before you eat anything (see discussion on cardio page) so let's stick with that. Wake up, take the optional CAE stack (see below), head off to the gym, do your 30 minutes, shower, dress, drive home or to work, then have breakfast.

Holding off on eating may help burn fat even after exercise, though I haven't seen any research supporting this claim. Though here is a tidbit of info I found that leads me to believe it to be true: cardio exercise causes body fat to be mobilized, and some gets burned up. Some doesn't. The fatty acids that are still in the blood will be converted back into bodyfat. BUT, they require glucose to be stored, so by not eating, you prevent re-storage, and they might in fact get burned up some more in regular survival processes like breathing.

Weight training should consist of pretty much the same exercises as the above program, though you could change the rep range to be in the 15 and up range. This stimulates more slow-twitch fiber which is more involved in fat burning because they get their energy more from fatty acid oxidization. Training these muscle fibers also leads to development of more mitochondria which means a greater ability to oxidize fat, and better results from your cardio.

I just read an interesting article that compared untrained individuals with trained individuals. Both mobilized roughly the same amount of body fat for utilization, but the trained individuals were able to clear the fatty acids out of the blood faster. Untrained individuals burned less, and after excercising, the excess that didn't get used up would be stored away again (which like I said earlier, may be stalled/prevented by not eating for while afterwards). So train with high reps!

Knock off 2-3 sets of primary exercises as I said, with higher reps to increase your fat burning capacity. Keeping rest between sets short can keep your heart rate elevated, essentially turning your weight training session into another cardio session. Avoid doing more than 40 minutes cardio as this may lead into greater muscle protein utilization for energy.

Here is a sample workout routine for developing slow-twitch fibers and increase fat burning capacity, keep rest between sets to less than 2 minutes, work till near failure:

Squats (3 sets of 20-40 reps), leg curls (2 sets of 20-30 reps), calf raises (2 sets of 20,15)
Bench Press (3 sets of 20-30), shoulder press (2 sets of 20-30), French press (2 setsof 20-30)
Deadlifts (2 sets of 20), pulldowns (2 sets of 20-30), barbell curl (2 sets of 15-20)

These rep ranges seem really high, but your goal here is to really develop the slow-twitch fibers. Typical fat loss programs only train the legs with really high reps (steppers/cycles), but that leaves over half the body untrained for fat loss.

This type of program really sets your body up to be a fat burning machine, and you only need to do this for about 2-3 weeks. After that you can drop the reps to a muscle building range (see above), and tack on one high rep exercise to the end of each workout to maintain.

I also highly recommend doing rowing as a cardio exercise once a week, this gives your legs a chance to recover, as well as develops more, and new, muscles for fat burning. Here is a sample routine for maintenance fat burning:

Squats(leg extensions) (2 sets), leg curls (2 sets), calf raises (2 sets), 5-10 minutes of intense cycling, or squats (1 set of 40)
Bench Press(flies) (2 sets), shoulder press(lateral raises (2 sets), French press(Close grip bench) (2 sets), pushups to failure (at least 20) or bench press (1 set of 40)
Deadlifts (2 sets), pullups(if you can)/pulldowns(if you can't) (2 sets), barbell curl (2 sets) 5-10 minutes rowing or seated rows (1 set of 40)

Nutrition/Supplementation for fat loss

Eat 6 meals a day, being careful not to consume more carbs than you can readily assimilate. In other words, small portions of rice, pastas, breads, fruit, vegetables etc. (for 180 pound person, aim for less than 50 grams of carbs/meal x 6 meals=300 grams= 1200 calories from carbs). Have a protein source with each meal, and keep fat intake around 20% (preferably from flax seed or olive oil).

Eat lots of fruit and vegetables as your carb sources, as they contain loads of fiber, and are very low glycemic. Try to have one or two fruit or vegetable servings with each meal, like a small apple, handful of broccoli, an orange, handful of grapes, etc. Eat them first to lower glycemic index of any foods that follow.

For supplements, try out the caffeine/aspirin/ephedrine stack a half an hour before your cardio session in the mornings. Even without working out, it boosts fat mobilization by nearly 20%! There are plenty of supplements that combine some of these ingredients for you already, or buy them separately.

Also, if you're cutting back on calories, you might want to invest in a whey protein powder to keep nitrogen levels high and minimize muscle breakdown. HMB and glutamine may also help in this regard.

The hardest part of any fat loss program is discipline. This program is simple, and it will work. But you have to be able to turn down cookies, chocolate, chips, and soft drinks without even flinching. You don't have to starve, just don't snack! And if you absolutely need to cheat, save it for one day a week, preferably after a wrokout when you can use the most calories without storing them as fat.

Remember, the body fights for homeostasis. It doesn't want to lose weight, it wants to survive, not look good! So after a few days of dieting, your gonna get some big time urges for food. Don't give in, otherwise you'll just be caving in to your bodies desire to stay the same, and it'll do just that!

You should see some progress after just one week. Look for new veins popping out, clothes fitting loosely, muscular definition, etc. The first place you lose fat is the last place you stored it, so don't expect to see big progress in your problem areas right away. Just because you lost 2 pounds of fat doesn't mean it came off your stomach, but more probably your back, thighs, arms, and a bit off your belly.

Stick with this program for 4 weeks, and don't cheat, and you'll make great progress. Don't think you can make up for 2 days of binging with extra exercise. If you can't control your urge to binge, your destined to fail until you do learn to control it. I can tell you what you must do, but you have to find the will power to do it!

Anabolic Burst Cycling

Muscle Media had a series of Articles on this new system, and though I'll provide a rough outline here, I recommend visiting their site to find out the details.

The philosophy behind this program is as follows: Keep changing your exercise and diet to keep your body adapting, and your hormone levels optimal. In Muscle Media they quote a bunch of studies that say even without training, and just following the diet will result in eventual muscle gain and fat loss. Of course with training the effect becomes that much more pronounced.

The cycling involves two weeks of heavy training accompanied by eating lot's of calories, then two weeks of a restricted calorie diet, lighter weights and aerobic exercise.

If you eat a lot of food after a period of caloric restriction, the body soaks up the calories in the muscle as intra-cellular fat, fat inside your cells. This fat is used as energy by your muscle cells, letting you train harder. As you continue to pig out, testosterone levels increase, peaking late in the second week, which is obviously a good thing.

If you were to pig out past the two weeks, your body starts storing the excess calories as intercellular fat. But rather than let it get to that, you start dieting. Now the problem you so often hear about diets is that your body thinks it's in a famine, starts hoarding bodyfat, and burning up your precious muscle. But by limiting your diet to two weeks, you again sidestep your body's responses. Again, there's some hormonal thing involved here, the details of which I cannot recall.

Think of it this way, you always hear about how you should vary your training to prevent your body from adjusting to a routine, using different exercises, different levels of intensity, maybe even workout in a different gym. Well, this is varying your diet to prevent your body from adjusting to a routine.

In fact, a further step is to cycle your protein intake, especially during the dieting phase. The thing is that your body has amino acid stores, and if you constantly have high protein intake, there isn't really a need to keep these stores max'ed out. So your body adjusts, and to get the same amount of amino acids into your blood, you have to keep on increasing the amount of protein you eat.

It's like building a tolerance to protein, definitely a bad thing! So they recommend you eat lots of protein for three days, then low protein for three days to keep your body guessing, and having plenty of protein in your system most of the time. As an example, for say a 200 lb individual, high protein=200-250 grams, low protein=100 grams.

ABC Summary

Two Heavy weeks followed by...	Two light weeks
Very intense workouts, maybe 4 times a week. Each muscle only once a week (if you can do it more, your not doing it hard enough!) Eat lots, at least a few extra hundred calories a day. Eat about 5-6 meals a day, about 500 calories per meal. Little or no cardio. Extreme stretching in second week.	Light workouts, 3-4 times a week. Maybe use higher reps and use this period to build more mitochondria. Cut way back on the calories, but keep protein high. 5-6 meals a day to stave off hunger. At least 3 X 30 minute sessions of cardio ( preferably in the morning ). Cycle your protein 3 days high (~150-250 grams), 3 days low (~50-150).

German Volume Training

Some consider this to be a tried and tested standby for gaining mass that has stood the test of time. It'll blow you away, and I would recommend doing it only sparingly to shock your muscles unless you have some incredible recovery ability.

So here's how it works:

Pick a good exercise for each muscle (preferably compound exercises like the squat, bench, barbell rows, barbell curls, etc.).
Then do 10 sets of 10 reps of that one exercise using the same weight for each set. It should be about 60% of your 1 rep max weight, or in other words, you should be able to do about 20 reps the first set (even though you won't!).
Take a rest of 90 seconds between sets, or superset and 120 sec rests.
Work each muscle every 4-5 days.
Continue this for ~5-6 workouts per muscle, then take a week off (light training)
Repeat with 10 sets of 6, with more weight

In order to train every muscle every 5 days, I developed the following training split, though there are dozens of different days you could set you r workouts up:

5 day split
	Mon.	Tue.	Wed.	Thu.	Fri.	Weekend
First week	chest, biceps, triceps	rest	legs, abs	rest	back, shoulders	chest, biceps, triceps
Second week	legs, abs	rest	back, shoulders	rest	chest, biceps, triceps	legs, abs
Third week	back, shoulders	rest	chest, biceps, triceps	rest	legs, abs	back, shoulders
Back to first week

This allow every muscle to be worked every five days (with 4 days of rest), except once every 5 workouts it will be worked after 5 days of rest. The focus will be on larger muscles like legs, chest, back and shoulders. Arms could be supersetted, and get maybe only 5 sets per muscle. You have a rest day between ever workout, except for once on the weekend (Fri./Sat. or Sun./Mon.), so overtraining could be avoided quite easily.

An easier split is dividing the body in half, say legs/arms and chest/back/abs and work each group Monday, Friday, Wednesday while you work the other group Wednesday, Monday, Friday. You workout only Mon., wed, Fri. and each muscle gets worked every4-5 days as well. The only problem is, hams, quads, calves, bi's, and tri's are an awful lot to train in one session, so I split it up into AM/PM workouts.

High Intensity Training

This training methodology was developed by Arthur Jones, the inventor of Nautilus, and popularized by Mike Mentzer. It has many followers, and it has its good points

High Intensity Training involves brief, infrequent, intense workouts. Each set is taken to a point of momentary muscular failure, i.e. when you cannot perform another rep with perfect form.

By brief workout, I mean 20-30 minutes, mostly warm-up. By infrequent, I mean once a week. And by intense, I mean one all out set, pushing yourself to the limits. Then you spend the next 6 days building muscle, and preparing for your next session.

I personally have never tried this system, but the internet is full of people who follow it religiously, and make gains. For more details on it, and an all around good bodybuilding site, visit Zap's Gym.

I'll post more details on this system when I have time to research it more, and maybe try it out myself.

Last Modified:
February 10, 2000

Exercise is not without its risks and this or any other exercise program may result in injury. To reduce the risk of injury in your case, consult your doctor before beginning this exercise program. The advice presented is in no way intended as a substitute for medical counsulation. The developer of Muscle101.com disclaims any liability from and in connection with any information conveyed on this web page. As with any exercise program, if at any point during your workout you begin to feel faint, dizzy, or have physical discomfort, you should stop immediately and consult a physician.