3-Day Bodybuilding Routine

Hello

In the near future, after finishing my current strength-focused block, I want to turn my attention to pure hypertrophy. I’d say I’m at an intermediate sort of level (natural) - I have 16" arms (4" improvement), I weigh 220lbs (40lb gain), 265lb x 1 bench and 310lb x 5 deadlift and have been working out for 3 years.

The problem is I have quite a lot of time constraints and I’d ideally like to follow a routine of 3 days per week. That is what I have done for building strength and it has worked well, but I’m worried it won’t be enough when I switch my focus to mass.

I thought I could either do 3 whole body days per week or I could split it up into upper body push, upper body pull and lower body. My ultimate goal is almost purely aesthetic - I want to be bigger, proportional and leaner - but all of the routines I have found seem to be 5 or 6 days per week which I just can’t afford.

I was just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on which would be best? Or if there is a better routine out there? Or if 3 days is just simply not enough?

Thanks for the help.

Best 3-day bodybuilding routine.

Hmmm…

HMMMMM…

DC.

Edit:

For the love of God, I will E-Brain anyone who says DeFranco’s and doesn’t have an AWESOME physique with pictures verifying so.

I would suggest
day1. Chest/shoulders/tris (or bis)
day2 Back/bis (or tris)
day3 legs

However, if you really want it, you should be able to find a way to get atleast four days a week in. Is there really four days out of the week that you can’t sacrifice an 45min-hour out of the day?

I would go with:

Chest and upper back
Legs and lower back
Shoulders and arms

But yeah, hypertrophy is about focused attention, so 4 or 5 days would be better.

I’m all about strength, and don’t know a lot about building for definition or fixing weak spots in bodybuilding physiques. But if I were to design a program for building muscle for myself, I would personally work with something very basic while still using progression and heavy movements.

day1 push
bench variation to 6rm
DB press - 2x40seconds
tricep work - 3x40seconds
pushups 2xf

day3 pull
c&j 5x1
pullup/variation as many as you can in 10 minutes (beat each week)
barbell row - 4-5x15
upperback (face pull, shrug, etc. use a bar + different grips to engage different parts of the upper back) 4x40seconds
rear delt fly - 3x30seconds
biceps 3x15

day5 squat
squat variation to 6rm
romanian deadlift - 3x20
leg press - 3x8-10
kettlebell swing (use dumbbell if you have to) - 15 swings, 1 minute rest, 15 swings, etc. repeat till you die

EDIT: Obviously, throw in other movements you feel you need to work on. If you have a small, hard to build muscle, add in an extra set, or if you just think your tricep head needs to be bigger, add in kickback for a few sets, or whatever like that. I think a big thing people forget is that progression and strength is necessary in the development of muscle. So just keep that in mind when you’re looking for a program.

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
I would suggest
day1. Chest/shoulders/tris (or bis)
day2 Back/bis (or tris)
day3 legs

However, if you really want it, you should be able to find a way to get atleast four days a week in. Is there really four days out of the week that you can’t sacrifice an 45min-hour out of the day?
[/quote]

Thanks a lot. That is the same split I meant when I said upper push/upper pull/lower.

I know I should go in more often but as a med student with a 40 min commute to hospital and another hour commute to gym as well as girlfriend and friend and studying commitments its hard. Ideal world I would train 4-5x per week but its just not possible right now.

Thanks a lot for the help!

[quote]louiek wrote:
I’m all about strength, and don’t know a lot about building for definition or fixing weak spots in bodybuilding physiques. But if I were to design a program for building muscle for myself, I would personally work with something very basic while still using progression and heavy movements.

day1 push
bench variation to 6rm
DB press - 2x40seconds
tricep work - 3x40seconds
pushups 2xf

day3 pull
c&j 5x1
pullup/variation as many as you can in 10 minutes (beat each week)
upperback (face pull, shrug, etc. use a bar + different grips to engage different parts of the upper back) 4x40seconds
rear delt fly - 3x30seconds
biceps 3x15

day5 squat
squat variation to 6rm
romanian deadlift - 3x20
leg press - 3x8-10
kettlebell swing (use dumbbell if you have to) - 15 swings, 1 minute rest, 15 swings, etc. repeat till you die[/quote]

Thank you very much, that seems like a great plan.

Another thing, if you can only get to the gym 3 days a week, you could easily add in a bodyweight session at home, before work, after work, etc. It would be small, but aid in recovery, work capacity, and muscle size.

Push/pull/legs

This is my favorite split posted by c_c in his training thread:

3-way, yates-inspired

Day 1 - Chest, Biceps, Triceps (yes, in that order to give tris a rest after chest)
Day 2 - Legs
Day 3 - Off
Day 4 - Delts, Back (in that order)
Day 5 - off
Day 6 - either restart the cycle or another off-day… You can do this routine over 3 days a week or repeat it after every 5th day… Your call.

(warmups in this case I’d do something like 8, 5-6, 3-4, work-set or so.

(for each “-”, pick one exercise that fits the category)

Chest
-Low incline exercise (bb, db, machine), ramp up over 4 sets with relatively even weight jumps. I’d use 6-10 or so as your rep-range. (move up in weight in small increments once you can do 8, 9 or 10 reps… Make sure you “own” the weight before moving up)
-flat or decline exercise (bb, db, machine) ramp over 3-4 sets. 6-10 on final set.

Bis
-alt. db curls, EZ curls, low cable-curls… Whatever. 3-4 sets (could go 8 reps, 4-6 reps, work set), ramped, 6-10.
-incline offset grip curls, preachers, machine curls… 2-3 sets ramped
6-10 or 8-12 on the last set.

Tris
-CGP (elbows tucked, grip as wide as necessary so that you can stay fully tucked…), In-Human Press, S-wide-RGB (DC grip), HS dips…
3-4 sets ramped, 6-10 on the last.
-PJR’s, Larry Scott Extensions, Rolling DB extensions on the floor, Lying EZ extensions (bar comes down behind head), … 3 sets or 4 sets ramped.


Legs

-Squats, Front squats, Leg Press, Hack Machine squats, Power squats, whatever. 4-5 sets ramped, 4-6 reps on top set (could do two sets here), then rest, reduce the weight some and do a 20 rep widowmaker… (which basically means that after 8-10 reps or so you hold the weight and catch your breath, then grind out a few more reps, repeat until you get 16-20 or so… If you do front-squats as your main exercise, do the widowmaker on the leg-press or hack machine. No warm-ups needed, though you could do one)

-Ham exercise (can be done before quads in case that the widowmaker just leaves you dead on the floor) like rev hypers, lying leg curls, sumo leg presses, SLDL’s… 3-4 sets, 6-10 on the last

-Calves (do the DC protocol for these if you think you can stomach it :wink:

-pulldown abs or whatever


delts

-Overhead press of any kind (DB, BB, smith high inclines ala Rühl would probably be a good idea, we’ve talked about them a lot in the forums recently) 4 sets, ramped up, 6-10

-Laterals, better machine laterals if you have a good lateral machine… 2-3 sets ramped… 8-15 or 6-10

-Backwidth (or thickness first, depending on which is weaker in your case): Pulldowns (don’t cheat too much), Rack Chins (if you know how to do them right), pullups (weighted), that kind of thing. 4 sets ramped, 6-12 or so. (I would suggest rack chins or pulldowns or HS machines over pullups here, seriously)… And keep your biceps out of the movement.

-Backthickness
Yates Rows, Rack Pulls (only if you didn’t do free-weight back squats and/or sldl’s on leg day. This split shouldn’t have low-back involvement on two days, if you want to do both deads or rack deads and back squats/sldls, rotate them each week/cycle!), Kroc Rows (if you can get the technique down), HS row machines… You get the idea.
Rack pulls are done with a back-shrug at the top, i.e. you pull your delts back, chest out and tense your upper back…

4-5 sets (less for rows, more for heavy pulls), 6-10 or 8-12 at the end if it’s a row (kroc rows are 12-25, and done sort of like a widowmaker squat with the pauses etc)… And one heavy 6-8 followed by one lighter 8-12 (or the other way around) if it’s a rack dead/deadlift.

-rear delts: pinch-grip rows (Grab the plates with their lips pointing out, instead of the bar. 10-15 or so as a rep range then, go light at first! that’s obviously not a regular bo row, weight-wise…), face pulls, rev. pec deck… 2-3 sets, ramped, 8-12

*Pours some liquor on the e-ground for C_C’s absence.

What the fuck?

Why is DC being overlooked so much?

http://www.T-Nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/copland_training_ii

I’ve been doing this for the last 6 weeks. It’s a bit more strength oriented, but for me it’s a perfect 3-day split.

[quote]SSC wrote:
What the fuck?

Why is DC being overlooked so much?[/quote]

I’m by no means an expert on DC or anything else, so feel free to correct me.

My understanding of DC is that it’s for advanced trainers when they’ve gotten to the point where strength gains from other, more traditional programs are either badly stalled or whatnot. That’s not to say that certain DC strategies can’t be incorporated into another program (e.g. stretching, drop sets, blahblahblah), but the program itself is really only supposed to be for advanced trainers.

The OP doesn’t seem to fit the bill for that.