There are 3 possible objectives for working out:
My aim is primarily hypertrophy with also strength.
I’m 175cm, 76kg and 20% BF. My lifting is intermediate to advanced with 180 kg deadlift (6 reps), 110 kg bench (6 reps) and 160+ kg squat (6 reps).
I have been lifting 7 yrs fully natural just taking normal supplements (vitamins) and creatine.
Typical day diet:
Wakeup drink smoothie since I can’t be bothered with breakfast. Approx 500 cals and 40g protein. It has a banana as a fast acting carb source to get me out of catabolism after the long night.
Lunch eat 2 boiled eggs, some meat and carb - can be sweet potato, sweet corn or bread. On heavy workout days I eat more carbs than usual.
Dinner eat 200-400g meat, veg, maybe some carbs (or maybe not), fruits and 150-250 cals of choc.
Pre-sleep snack ~1-2 hours before sleep. Slow acting protein like cottage cheese, easy to digest carb typically sweet potato and some fat to slow digestion (maybe 8g olive oil).
Notes:
Eating 400g meat in one sitting will be utilized by your body but just not efficiently as if split between 2 sittings, so sometimes I like to split it with lunch. Other times I cant be bothered.
Track everything. If your goals are being met, you can be less strict. But once I see myself drifting, weight going up for example then I will go back to tracking everything.
For travel I take portable food and body scales. Measuring body weight is essential, and for longer travel I want to have majority of my week eating consistently my own cooked meals.
Diet and sleep are the most important things. Diet provides fuel for workouts and building material (protein) to accumulate muscle. Sleep is where recovery happens.
Generally I think of exercises in 3 buckets although its not the complete picture.
These all play an important role together. Compound lifts are the primary exercise tool but then once you have fatigued muscle, then you want to hit the remaining under-utilized muscles with isolation to ensure a good spread of development. Stabilization should be mixed in since it helps prevent injury.
Typically big compound lifts are more oriented around lifting heavy weight. For example a machine shoulder press is pretty hard to get wrong, so you will do less reps but heavy weight. Whereas lateral raises, its more important to focus on technique. You must be lifting them up high, engaging the mind-muscle connection and do a slow controlled release. This means its better to do a higher rep range with proper range of motion.
Lets talk about cheat reps. Theres a place for them, especially to squeeze in a couple of more reps on a heavy set, then controlling the eccentric phase. But you also don’t want to do them over exaggerated either. Its a light touch tool that has its place.
Recovery days are about allowing fatigued muscle to recovery but also to regain depleted glycogen stores in the muscle. Glycogen is what powers the muscle to push hard giving us damage -> repair -> growth. The exact days needed varies between people so you will need to experiment.
There are arguments about whether to take every set to failure or not with some arguing its better to leave “gas in the tank”. Personally I think it doesn’t make a difference and I like to just go all out screaming and pushing myself to failure, especially since I’m doing a bro split with long recovery time per muscle group.
However when it comes to rep sizing per set there are two factors at play:
We can think of this as exertion = work * time. However
reps are discrete units, so if we imagine doing barely 1 rep that might
not be the most efficient utilization since we maybe have a partial rep
left over. Since mechanical load is not equal at each phase during a
single rep, we might get stuck on the bottom in the next rep and not
even do half a rep. So maybe we just lost 50% more possible
exertion.
On the converse imagine doing 50 reps of some useless weight. You will just fatique your muscle since it won’t properly engage the type-II muscle fibers needed for hypertrophy. Research indicates 6-12 rep sets are optimal but we can go lower and higher as needed too.
I don’t recommend full body routines. But any of upper lower, push pull legs or bro split works fine. There are plenty of big people on all of these routines and they work. I personally like the bro split since I can hammer the muscle hard.
Normally I do one muscle group with a one day rest: chest, arms, back, legs, shoulders (in any random order), but now I’m experimenting with 2 days on, 1 day off, 2 days on, 1-2 days off.
My current plan:
Lets see how this goes.
Try to ensure the exercises in a session follow this pattern: one main lift, then target all parts of the muscle.
We get a lot of pressing on incline chest for front delts so here we focus on side delts with just one code front delt movement. Also side delts create the best profile.
This is upper chest focused since that’s my current goal so adjust as needed.
Sometimes I get lifter’s elbow due to an old BJJ injury, so I simply replace my primary exercises with dumbbells and it goes away. Usually its a sign my elbow support it too weak for my lifting weight which dummbbells will build.
Normally I deadlift too but currently I’m in deloading phase so will maybe do it once a month.
Don’t skip leg day bitch.