What Routine, What Supplements?

Training Bodybuilding
1

If you were done working (for the most part) for the fall and winter, had all the time in the world to lift…and had enough money for any supplements you wanted?

You want to gain the most amount of muscle mass possible and don’t really care about gaining much fat.

When I was working a lot (I run my own company), I was doing a full-body workout M, W, F…For the past 3 weeks, I’ve been doing the following:

Monday: Push (heavy) chest, quads, shoulders, tri’s, calves
Tuesday: Pull (heavy) back, hamstrings, biceps, rear delts, traps
Wed: off
Thursday: Push (medium)
Friday: Push (medium)
Sat: off
Sun: off

A typical monday is:

Squats 3x5-8
Bench (I try to change it up each time, flat, incline, decline, DB, BB, etc) [3x5-8]
Decline, or flat flyes [3x6-10]
Lateral Raises 3x6-10
Tricep push-downs or skull-crushers [3x5-8]
Throw in some calf-work at the end.

Then, Thursday, I’d pretty much hit whatever I didn’t hit there, but go for 12-15 reps…but hit those exercises again heavy the next Monday (Normally I’ll squat heavy and do leg presses for 12-15…or if I did decline bench and flat flyes, I’ll do incline bench and decline flyes, if I did lateral raises, I’ll do shoulder presses, etc)…

I realize 18 sets may be on the high end, but I’m getting 9+ hours of sleep each night and putting down 3500+ calories a day with about 225 grams of protein.

Throughout the summer while I was doing M, W, F full body, I did a lot of working, toting 100+ pounds around many times a day, buckets, tools, equipment, wheelbarrows, for 5-10 hours a day…so my body is definitely used to being “pushed.”

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As for supplements, I’m taking a multi vitamin, 4 grams of fish oil per day, ZMA before bedtime, and I’ve been considering some BCAA’s…probably pick those up tomorrow.

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I like my current program but want to make sure I’m doing enough … I read Maximum Recruitment Training and it seemed like it was for people with a busy lifestyle who didn’t have the time to put into a “full-time” routine. I read The Super-Accumulation Program and that sounds like it might work, but I’m a little hesitant to over train myself like that for 2 weeks.

So anyway, what would you do?

2

milk…squats…eggs

3

Stock up on plenty of lean meats(beef, chicken, and fish), eggs, tons of vegetables, oatmeal, tubs of protein powder, fish oils, BCAA’s, creatine, and a little “junk” to break monontony.

I’d work out at least 4 days a week, upper/lower split varying the weight/rep scheme each week.

And if I wanted to spend more money, I’d buy a test booster and some thermogenic/energy supp.

4

“You want to gain the most amount of muscle mass possible and don’t really care about gaining much fat.”

If it was me…

I’d be eating mass amounts of protein all day. 2xbodyweight to start. I’d be boatloading BCAA’s with extra leucine and a carb source around workouts. Eating 7-10 meals a day.

For training
I’d be doing a low volume high frequency training geared towards extreme strength gains. Also very agressive weighted stretching done after each bodypart.

You said you didn’t care about fat gain but I’ll include that too…
I’d be drinking green tea or taking green tea extract and doing cardio 3-6 times a week.

Supplements
Protein powder, creatine, fish oils, waxy maize, BCAA

This is pretty much what I’m doing now ha, but if I had no other responsibilities I’d likely be able to eat more and get cardio done more often. The key thing for me would be protein all damn day and with that a lot of water(1.5-2 gallons).

5

[quote]scottiscool wrote:
“You want to gain the most amount of muscle mass possible and don’t really care about gaining much fat.”

If it was me…

I’d be eating mass amounts of protein all day. 2xbodyweight to start. I’d be boatloading BCAA’s with extra leucine and a carb source around workouts. Eating 7-10 meals a day.

For training
I’d be doing a low volume high frequency training geared towards extreme strength gains. Also very agressive weighted stretching done after each bodypart.

You said you didn’t care about fat gain but I’ll include that too…
I’d be drinking green tea or taking green tea extract and doing cardio 3-6 times a week.

Supplements
Protein powder, creatine, fish oils, waxy maize, BCAA

This is pretty much what I’m doing now ha, but if I had no other responsibilities I’d likely be able to eat more and get cardio done more often. The key thing for me would be protein all damn day and with that a lot of water(1.5-2 gallons). [/quote]

What he said. This is the quickest way to get huge.

6

Cool guys, thanks. I’m definitely eating a good bit more and sleep has been great…I wake up with good body parts that were sore the night before.

I picked up some BCAA’s at GNC for the time being…the BCAA’s from this site have way more per serving, and the serving size is half (3 as opposed to 6)…and they’re cheaper from here too, so I’m going to order some soon.

7

[quote]BigRagoo wrote:
Stock up on plenty of lean meats(beef, chicken, and fish), eggs, tons of vegetables, oatmeal, tubs of protein powder, fish oils, BCAA’s, creatine, and a little “junk” to break monontony.

I’d work out at least 4 days a week, upper/lower split varying the weight/rep scheme each week.

And if I wanted to spend more money, I’d buy a test booster and some thermogenic/energy supp.[/quote]

Good post. I would consider Metabolic Drive with high calorie additives (milk, cream, fruits) Surge, BCAA’s, BETA-7, Flameout, Creatine, Carbolin 19, essential mass building supplements. As Big alluded to maybe even throw in some Alpha Male if you aren’t using Carbolin 19 already.

D

8

Am reminded by something Cosgrove said once, about supplementation being, at best, maybe 5% of the equation, and then only if everything else is perfectly dialed in. So say you were to gain 10lbs lean over the next 6 months, and 5% of that would be…

But maybe he’s wrong, maybe its 10%…

Word of caution for the max protein approach. Apparently, if your protein intake outweighs your other intakes of carbs and particularly fats you run a high risk of turning into a protein-burning machine, that is - teaching your metabolism to burn protein for fuel, including of course muscle. Just a word.

9

The idea is to eat as much protein as possible, and most of it come from food. Youre not going to eat 400-600 grams of protein per day from whole food sources and retain your sanity without also eating a good bit of fat and carbs. You can do 500 grams of protein a day off of chicken breasts, egg whites, and shakes…but why the fuck would you want to dot that?

10

[quote]Scotacus wrote:
Am reminded by something Cosgrove said once, about supplementation being, at best, maybe 5% of the equation, and then only if everything else is perfectly dialed in. So say you were to gain 10lbs lean over the next 6 months, and 5% of that would be…

But maybe he’s wrong, maybe its 10%…

Word of caution for the max protein approach. Apparently, if your protein intake outweighs your other intakes of carbs and particularly fats you run a high risk of turning into a protein-burning machine, that is - teaching your metabolism to burn protein for fuel, including of course muscle. Just a word.[/quote]

This would be true if you were going very low carb and also trying to be low fat, which would be a disaster most likely. For all out mass gain carb intake would likely be pretty high and fats moderate so I don’t think would be an issue,

11

If time is not an issue with the training then it would definitely be best to go with high frequency training. You could even do this with moderate volume each workout if you can devote the rest of your day to recovery.

As for the diet, contrary to what most people will tell you, you cannot force your muscles to use more protein by shoving massive amounts of it down your throat. This is just wasteful at best. If you are bulking you should be getting at least a decent amount of carbs, which are protein sparing.

Since your muscles can only naturally use so much protein, there’s no point in going overboard with it. Obviously you probably should overshoot just to be 100% sure you are getting enough, but for a natural trainee who is bulking anything over 300g is definitely overkill.

Now if you were cutting then it would be beneficial to eat extra protein because you are in a calorie deficit and your body will use some of that protein for fuel. As a general rule, you need more protein when cutting than when bulking.

The only way to change the amount of protein your body will use to build muscle would be AAS. This leads to my supplement suggestions if you want to get huge.

Test E 500mg/week
Anadrol 100mg/day
Winstrol 50mg/day

That should see you right :wink:

If you don’t want to go that route, then don’t worry too much about what supplements you are taking. You should include the basics: fish oil, pre and post workout whey protein, creatine, ZMA, BCAAs.

Like somebody already mentioned, supplements probably only account for 5% of your gains if you have everthing else dialed in. The basic supplements I listed will acount for nearly all of that 5%. Do you really want to spend large amounts of money just to get the last .5%?

12

[quote]k1t0r5 wrote:

Since your muscles can only naturally use so much protein, there’s no point in going overboard with it. Obviously you probably should overshoot just to be 100% sure you are getting enough, but for a natural trainee who is bulking anything over 300g is definitely overkill.

?[/quote]

I disagree with this. I have eaten as many calories as I am currently in the past but the thing that has made a dramatic difference in terms of gains for me has been protein without a doubt. Once I brought it to the 400+ gram range my gains skyrocketed. There are precautions with this however mainly very high water intake. Supply and demand, supply and demand.