Last night, after I left the gym and went grocery shopping with a gargantuan pump, I was thinking to myself, “Building the Monolith is one of the best and most productive mass building routines I’ve ever done in my life, in fact, it might be number 1!” It got me thinking about my top 5 mass building programs I’ve ever done. This is basically a living breathing list, because obviously there are a lot of programs I’ve yet to try, but from what I’ve done in my life, this is where they currently stand.
1. Building the Monolith The program that got me to a gargantuan 220 pounds that barely fit into the tux I rented for my wedding. The lifting is straight up HARD in this program. You really have no choice but to grow because 5x5 with your top set weight, Widowmakers, 10x5 on Press, and hundreds and hundreds of reps of assistance work put you in a recovery hole that’s hard to dig out of without eating like an absolute bear. I think this is a big time Plateau buster and will shock you into new growth like you haven’t seen in years. Or that was my experience, at least. I consider this to be Jim Wendler’s Magnum Opus(for those that believe it’s BBB, keep reading.)
2. Fortitude Training This was the program that led me to the promised land of new growth after being in a 7 year Plateau. I really started putting thought into my training program. I tweaked my volume, frequency and intensity following the guidance of Scott Stevenson that represented a stimulus that really was the key to really making awesome gains again. This is a very fun way to train and really gives you a lot of different ways to hammer the muscle with different styles of sets to not only offer novel stimulus, but also keep every session entertaining and exciting. The auto regulation kept me from ever getting bored and excited for every session.
3. The Surge Challenge/M3 This was Step 2 in my huge Spring/Summer/Fall of growth I had in 2022. Something about the way this program synergized with the Surge Workout Fuel helped me absolutely explode in growth in a very short time-frame. From 204 to 213. It was awesome to take part in this challenge, which I’ll always be grateful to @Tim_Patterson and @Ellington_Darden for. I had so much fun with the varied and different workouts with different rep styles. I will definitely revisit this program in the future. It was cool following all of the other logs and seeing everyone else get so much bigger from this program too. I think the proof is in the pudding on this one and very well documented across T-Nation. You can find that program and the accompanying supplements right on this site and they both get a big stamp of approval from me.
4. Boring But Big Challenge Step 1 of my big 2022 to get as jacked as possible for my wedding and another one available on this site! This was the program that got me over 200 pounds. The exercise selection, volume and level of food this program required slapped a lot of mass on my body, in what felt like a very short, 6 weeks. Another program that gave me ridiculous pumps and this was the timeframe when teens at the gym started asking me what cycle I was on.
5. Deep Water Beginner 10x10 combined with more protein and total food than I’d ever eaten in my life added a ton of shredded mass to my physique. This can be done in a garage as well(honestly, so can 1,3,4 on this list). You really learn to dig deep to push your body to levels it’s never been to build muscle you never dreamed you could have. This is the hardest program I’ve ever run, and it feels almost easy by the time you finish it, that’s how much you adapt and grow if you’re eating the accompanying diet. I can’t recommend this program enough. Also, the ebook is free on Jon Andersen’s website and he’s very responsive to messages on Instagram if you ever have questions!
Honorable Mentions DoggCrapp-I absolutely love rest pause sets and Widowmakers. Dante Trudel is one of the biggest geniuses in the history of Bodybuilding and so influential on those who made programs that made my top 5(except Darden, who’s a true Iron Game OG, and almost certainly was an influence on Dante). The only reason it didn’t make it up higher is the stiff level of competition and the fact I didn’t run it long enough to give it a fair comparison.
Scooby’s Teen Workout Plan- This was the program that got me jacked as a teen and was my go-to for roughly a decade. It can probably still be found on YouTube. It built the foundation of my physique and got me way stronger. Bulked me up from 155 to 175 at the same height from my freshman year to junior year of high school. Scooby taught me a lot.
Buff Dude’s 12 Week Plan- Another plan I got from YouTube. I did this during the spring of my senior year of high school, through the summer to help me Bulk up to the 197 pound weight class to wrestle at in college. The increase in volume was exactly what I needed to gain mass at this phase of my life. It would be interesting to run it again, but my values and training principles are so much different now, I’m not sure it would hit the same.
I certainly hope you enjoyed the breakdown and found the list helpful. Not sure how many will see this, but I thought it would be very cool to look back and reflect on my training.