By now you’ve made significant progress in your bodybuilding
career. For the past three to six months you’ve learnt how to
perform the core lifting exercises in a technically correct
manner. You’ve also conditioned the body and developed
sufficient core strength to prepare yourself for a whole new
level of intensity. Hopefully you’ve also built some rock solid
muscle! But that’s only the beginning.
In recent weeks your workouts have probably lost some of their
effect so, even though you’re lifting bigger weights, your
muscles now need even greater stimulation to generate maximal
growth. Don’t expect miracles though – from this point onwards,
every little bit of improvement will take even greater and more
intensive work than before.
Because you’ll be working your muscles more intensively, they’ll
also need more recovery time to adapt and grow and that’s why
you’ll be reducing your workouts to three a week. Each primary
muscle group trained will now need one full week to recover.
After being used to whole body sessions and more workouts per
week it may seem as if you’re not doing enough but the point is,
you’ll be working your muscles very, very intensively and making
better use of your time.
As you gain more experience you’ll be able to tweak or re-design
your basic muscle building program to suit your own individual
needs, but the program described here should provide a useful
starting point. What I’m proposing is basically a 3-split of the
body on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
MONDAY (Chest, Triceps, Shoulders)
1. Chest Exercises
Incline dumbbell press – this is a compound exercise that
targets the chest but also works the triceps and shoulders to a
lesser extent.
Pec-deck flye – this is an isolation exercise that works the
pectorals.
2. Triceps
Dips – this compound exercise targets the triceps but also works
the chest and shoulders.
3. Shoulders
Front military press – this compound exercise targets shoulders
but also works the triceps.
Dumbbell lateral raises – this isolation exercise works the
shoulders only.
Bentover dumbbell laterals – this isolation exercise works the
rear delts.
WEDNESDAY (Back, Biceps, Forearms)
1. Back
Front lat pulls – compound exercise that targets lats but also
works the biceps and mid-back.
Deadlifts – compound exercise that targets the back and quads
but also works hamstrings, calves and glutes.
Dumbbell rows – compound exercise that targets mid-back but also
works biceps and lats.
Dumbbell shrugs – isolation exercise that works traps.
2. Biceps
Dumbbell biceps curl – isolation exercise that works the biceps.
Dumbbell hammer curls – isolation exercise that works the biceps.
3. Forearms
Barbell wrist curl – isolation exercise that works the forearms.
FRIDAY (Lower Body)
1. Legs
Squats or leg press – compound exercise that targets the quads
but also works the hamstrings, calves and glutes.
Leg extension – isolation exercise that works the quads.
Leg curls – isolation exercise that works the hamstrings.
Standing calf raise – isolation exercise that works the
gastrocnemius calf muscle.
Seated calf raise – isolation exercise that works the soleus
calf muscle.
You could start this program by aiming for two sets of 8-10 reps
per exercise but as your strength and size increase you should
really introduce techniques that boost the intensity even
further. This can be achieved in a number of ways including the
use of pre-exhaustion, super sets, partial reps, isometric
contractions and forced reps. These techniques are covered in
detail elsewhere in this series of articles.
About the author:
Rick Mitchell is the creator of the bodybuildingadvisor.com
website that provides guidance and information to athletes at
all levels of bodybuilding experience. Go to Bodybuilding
Advice to learn more about the issues covered in this
article.