Good stuff here!
For legs, do you guys focus equally on quads, hams, glutes and calves or do you prioritize one over the other(s)?
How do you split up shoulder work? Hitting front delts on chest day and rear on back day? Or something else all together?
Also, do you do any pressing at all and isolation for the front delts, or do you just focus on the lateral and rear delt?
Something else altogether. I organize upper-body work in terms of Push (= triceps-involved exercises) vs Pull (biceps-involved). Note that both front- and rear delts can be slotted onto either day, depending upon the exercise employed. (IMO, there’s no safe way to do Push lateral-delt work, so it’s always on Pull day for me). Currently my Push day starts with seated DB presses alternated with banded rear-delt raises (for lack of a better name). My Pull day starts with DB lateral raises.
So i’ve been playing around with a program design, was hoping to get a input by any of you that has responded to this thread so far as you’re obviously very knowledgeble. I took the concept Giant Sets and Supersets, but with longer rest times.This is at least more time effective and i’d assume it’s easier to stay focused, haven’t actually tried it yet.
Didn’t want to bore you with every single muscle group, but for chest and shoulders at least:
Chest:
- Superset: 1 round of 10-12 on each, 2-3 min rest inbetween exercises. Slight Incline Cable Press and Low to High Fly
- Giant Set: 2 rounds: 8-10 for each, 3 min rest inbetween exercises
Incline Dumbbell Press, Low Incline Dumbbell Press, Decline Guillotine Dumbbell Press
So thats 8 sets smashed in a relatively short time, and strenght on the presses would not be compromised with the longer rest times, and your not hording equipment since your only using a bench and dumbbells.
And here is one for shoulders as well, with shorter rest:
Giant Set: 3 rounds, 10-12 on each, 30-45 seconds rest inbetween exercises, 2 min rest between each set.
Reverse Pec Deck
Machine Side Laterals
Machine Press
And finish off with some Rear Delt Swings and Cable Y Raise and Cable Laterals
What do you guys think of this? I personally thought this style was more interesting than regular straight sets going from exercise to exericse.
I love giants sets and metabolic stress and all that stuff, only I cannot handle bench pressing at different angles round by round like that.
Trying to get my shoulders set to all those different angles is too confusing and the whole thing is too much. I go backwards pretty fast.
Plenty of great coaches and strong guys use that “Mechanical Drop Set” technique, dropping the incline set by set, so it might be totally cool for you.
1 Like
I just personally don’t like supersets/ giant sets as my main vehicle in the bigger movements/ muscle groups. For arms, delts, abs, calves, it’s great. For chest, back, quads, hams it annoys me more than benefits me. Not saying it doesn’t work, I just personally don’t like it - something always gets nearly 0 focus from me.
What you’re describing sounds like Thibs Growth Factor training. IMHO if you’re natural, this approach will get you a gnarly pump, but it’ll be very difficult to effectively build in any type of progression model. You may end up disappointed in lack of growth in the long run, i.e. versus a simpler approach like ramping to a top set of 6 on BB incline press. Just my experience.
2 Likes
Would you say that applies to Arms as well? Ramping up to a top set for CGBP and Curls?
I like a heavy day, low volume, high intensity. Ramping to heavy 6’s on a few exercises. Blood and Guts style.
Then next time instead of killing myself trying to surpass that insanity, I do a lighter, pumpier, high volume, lighter Growth Factor style workout. It’s a way to recover from the tough stuff because it’s the opposite. But pushing the pace keeps it from being “easy.”
In the middle there is a medium weight, medium rep day that’s like “regular” training. No too light, not too heavy.
I got this scheme from Fred Hatfield. He was all sciencey, talking about how the 3 rep ranges worked all three muscle fiber types. And the light day built like sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and the heavy day build the other kind of hypertrophy.
1 Like
So thats two workouts in a week, or do you rotate the workouts every other week?
I was using Push/Pull/Legs and lifting weights 4 times a week. So every week one lucky body part was worked twice and the other 2 parts got off easy.
Week 1 -Push Heavy, Pull Medium, Legs Medium, Push Light
Week 2 - Pull Heavy, Legs Medium, Push Medium, Pull Light
Week 3 -Legs Heavy, Push Medium, Pull Medium, Legs Light
And on and on.
It was a pretty cool setup, I always felt Ready to Go. To wave volume over the training cycle I just adjusted the number of times I lifted during the week. When I needed a deload I went to the gym 3 times. Then back to 4 workouts per week for 3-4 weeks. Finally to bump up the volume I’d lift 5 times in one week.
It didn’t have to mess with tricky percentages or get strict with particular workouts for days of the week. 2 days on, 1 day off. 3 in a row then 2 off, whatever. Low stress!
3 Likes
Playing a little around with program design. I made a thread the other day about shoulder routines, and for shoulders i plan to use about 6 exercises, but for chest, i really only like three exercises. My focus is on the upper chest for now, so im using the Low DB Incline Press and the Low to high Fly for upper chest, and im also doing Flat DB Press to stimulate the middle pecs a little.
So the workout goes like this:
DB Incline: 2 warm up sets, 2-3 work up sets ramping up to a 8-10RM, and then reduce the weight by 10 percent and do two back off sets of 10-12, reduce weight by another 10 percent and do a final back off set of 12-15.
Flat DB Press: Ramp up to 8-10RM.
Low to High Fly: 3 sets, 8-10 reps a step away from the machine, 8-10 to failure closer to the machine.
8 sets total, all done to concentric muscle failiure, done once a week.
Does this look like a good hypertrophy focused chest routine? Any inputs would be greatly appreciated.
Hey, so i’ve seen some videos of John Meadows where he shows a way to use your 7 favorite exercises for a muscle group all in one workout. Basically you do warm up with the first exercise, and then do a set to failiure. Then you do one feeder set for each exercise and then one set to failiure.
Was trying to put together a program based on this, here is an example chest day with upper chest emphasis.
- Low to High Fly: 5 warm up sets, 1 set to failiure
- Low Incline DB Press: 1 feeder set, 1 set to failiure
- DB Incline Fly Press: 1 feeder set, 1 set to failiure
- Converging Machine Press: 1 feeder set, 1 set to failiure
- Cable Fly: 1 feeder set, 1 set to failiure
- High to low Cable Press: 1 feeder set, 1 set to failiure
- Decline Push up: 1 feeder set, 1 set to failiure
Week 1: 3 RIR on all sets
Week 2: 2 RIR on all sets
Week 3-5: Failiure
Week 6-8: Intensity teqnuice on 3 of the sets, regular set to failiure on 4 sets.
Does this plan look solid?
Try this, -he lays it all out/pecs in a bottle…
2 Likes
My version of “just do 531”
2 Likes