Simple Muscle Building Template For Longterm Gains

The world of fitness is a very hectic one indeed. Everywhere you will find some “expert” declaring some new training method over the other.

Well here is a quote you might appreciate if you’re confused on what to do:

“Methods change. Principles last forever”.

In reality, there are TONS of things you can do to build muscle, but when everything is organized, it will come down to three main things.

1. Volume

Volume is probably the most influential variable for muscle building as it is directly correlated with many things such as number of contractions and total time under tension.

This is most prominent in bodybuilding as bodybuilders will aim to basically trash a muscle, feed, recover, and repeat the process to build muscle. It also is probably the most misunderstood and/or miscalculated variables because it literally will dictate what happens in a program. Because of this, programing volume is one of the most important things to do.

When programmed correctly, it will get you huge. Despite what many pro-strength guys say, a good amount of volume with just the right intensity will get anyone bigger and stronger.

2. Intensity

Although volume may be the more influential variable for building pounds of muscle, there has to be enough intensity or load for hypertrophy to occur.

3 sets of 12 with 50% of your 12 rep max isn’t going to do much for your muscles in most cases.

Just look at guys who can squat hundreds of pounds. When have you ever seen a skinny guy squat with 500 pounds on his back?

A lot of training programs are going to focus on one of the two methods as it is possible to gain muscle (for a while) focusing on one method.

For example, Starting Strength has its guys go low to medium volume while focusing on adding weight on the bar every workout for basically as long as you can.

It’s simple and it works wonders. The only problem is that there will be a time when just adding weight on the bar won’t work as effectively anymore. The same goes for a volume based programs.

Whether it is due to muscular or neurological reasons, doing only one method will slow down your results and inhibit your body’s ability to recover.

Which brings me to the third and most important factor in muscle building:

3. Recovery

Whatever training you do, it will places stress on the body. A more volume based approach will places more stress on the muscles and a more intensity based approach will place higher stress on the nervous system, although they both overlap.

This means that each approach and everything else you do in the weight room is literally just a form of stimulus on your muscles and nervous system.

This stimulus will bring your body out of homeostasis (or allostasis for those who want to be more specific) and from there, it will try to bring itself back to it.

To do so, it must recover and in that recovery stage is where supercompensation happens and hypertrophy actually occurs as the body tries to rebuild itself from the past stress placed upon it.

Without recovery, there are no muscle and strength gains.

On the other hand, without the stimulus there is no use for recovery.

Of the two methods, both work and should be used for maximum strength and muscle gains. The problem is that there are tons of ways to combine the two. Add in the need for recovery and planning a muscle building program can get confusing very quickly.

To remove this confusion, I’ll propose a simple template that will take advantage of both methods while integrating enough recovery so you never burn out.

Month 1: 6-8 Reps

Month 2: 10-15 Reps

Month 3: 6-8 Reps

Month 4: 10-15 Reps

Basically, on month 1 and 3 you will focus on the lower end of the hypertrophy spectrum and will perform a bunch of heavy compound exercises. On months 2 and 4, you will lighten up the load and stock up on isolation exercises.

Another way to explain is like this (thanks Anthony Mychal)

1. Minimal exercise selection, little to no isolation. Lower reps. No pump. All strength and power.

2. More exercises, lower percentage of 1RM, more isolation, more pump work.

So a full body workout in month 3 will look something like this:

Power Training

Med Ball Throw 3 X 5

Box Jumps 3 X 5

Resistance Training

1A) Back Squats 3-4 X 6

2A) Weighted Pull Ups 3-4 X 6

2B) DB Incline Press 3-4 X 8

3A) Farmers Walk 3-4 X 25 yards

And a workout from month 4 (upper body workout) will look like this:

Power Training

Frog Jump To Med Ball Throw 3 X 3

Resistance Training

1A) Barbell Flat Bench Press 2 X 8

1B) Chin Ups 2 X 8

2A) DB Flyes 3 X 10

2B) Lat Pull Downs 3 X 15

3A) Barbell Cheat Curls 4 X 10

3B) Diamond Pushups 4 X 15

3C) DB Bicep Curls 4 X 12

3D) Tricep Extensions 4 X 12

As you go through the months, you will be alternating between both volume based and intensity based training. This will allow for recovery between both methods which in turn means you will get bigger and stronger.

Simple yet effective.

Is That Really Necessary?

One of the hardest things to do when creating a training program for anyone is deciding if everything you wrote down was really that necessary.

It’s always easier to say yes than it is to say no especially when you know you can handle the extra. The cool thing about the human body is that it can take a lot of stress when it needs to. This is vital in life or death situations but when it comes to the gym, it’s not such a good thing anymore for most people.

For example, just a couple of weeks ago I started training again after 2 months of inconsistent training. I started with a modified version of Jason Ferrugia’s Muscle Gaining Secrets program (which is freaking awesome and you can get it right HERE).

I started with 4 sets of 5 goblet squats with a 100 pound dumbbell. I was repping it out like there was no tomorrow and when tomorrow came, it sucked…. Really really bad.

My hamstrings and glutes where being roasted 24/7 for 2 weeks. I could barely get into a full squat position without breaking down let alone trying to work out again. Even upper body workouts were useless as the pain was just sitting there and wouldn’t budge.

The worst part was that I didn’t even get any results from it. Even though it was only one training session, I felt like I should have gotten something from it…

After those 2 weeks, I restarted again with 1 set of 10 on week 1-3 while adding an extra set every week. Not only did I not feel any soreness, the muscle just grew like weeds on me.

The moral of this story is that you should be questioning everything you write down on that piece of paper you call a training program.

It’s always easy to add stuff in. Just look at Crossfit. Those guys don’t give a fuck what they do and the results they get. They just want get in, train till they heart bursts through their chest, pick it up, and leave.

On the other hand, it’s hard to take things out. What many don’t realize is that recovery is just as if not MORE important than the actual training session itself.

Training is where you provide stimulus to the body and recovery is where you reap the rewards. Without recovery, you will not get results.

At the very beginning of a program, things such as intensity or volume will increase overtime. Actually, at every part of a program, something will be increasing. This is the rule of progressive overload.

There will come a point though that you can only handle so much while still increasing variables in a program, especially if you play sports and or don’t have the greatest capacity to recover faster.

If all you need is 3 sets of 6 to get your targeted result, is 3 sets of 8 really that necessary? It’s not like you are going to build extra muscle because of it.

Of course, there are some times in a program where you should go beyond what you need but most of the time, you will not need to and if you don’t need it, why do it?

If your main goal is jump higher or punch harder and you need to work on your posterior chain, then deadlifts and or glute thrusts would take up most of your lower body training. Because of that, your squat volume should go down.

Simple, easy, but not everyone does it.

This doesn’t mean though that if you add a couple of reps on something, everything should go down. This is subjective as it is about science.

Some people do really good with high volume/frequency training and others don’t but when it comes down to it, certain parts of a program demand more overall focus than others.

If you are a hardgainer and trying to build muscle, maybe you shouldn’t be doing too much aerobic training and instead focus more on the resistance training.

If you are a powerlifter trying to get your deadlift up, it might not be smart to be sprinting 4 times a week.

If you are trying to burn fat, maybe it’ll be better if you do “just enough” work on your power movements than it is to spend most of your time on it and neglecting the circuit that comes right after.

If you are going to train biceps 3 times a week, then you don’t need to do 12 sets of curls every workout.

If you play a sport 4-5 days a week, it might not be the best idea to go to the weight room 4 times a week.

Remember, the goal of training is to provide a stimulus. Preferably the exact and minimum amount of stimulus you need for your goal.

Recovery is where you get the results of the stimulus you placed on your body.

Train hard, recover hard.

When in doubt, ask yourself “is that really necessary?” If it’s not, take it out and focus on what is.

An Experiment For Flexibility

Being a martial artist who is fortunate enough to be given natural flexibility, it seems real odd to me how come others aren’t flexible.

For the past few weeks, I have been working with some teens that can’t touch their toes to save their lives. Me being able to go to a split at a moment’s notice felt like saying “WTF”.

So I took these two kids, one being a basketball player (with horrible spine problems). Both were only able to reach their knees while standing up so I decided to take them and work with them for a couple of days to see if I can make them improve.

The basketball player (let’s call him “D”) could not squat without lifting his heels no matter how many times you told him not too (which according to his chiropractor was partly due to his spinal problems). The other (let’s call him David because that’s his actual name) and D could not touch their toes while standing up.

On separate occasions, I took them one by one and worked on a couple of things that worked.

Actually, it worked really, REALLY well.

My main goal for D was to get him to finally squat to parallel while keeping his heels on the floor throughout the exercise. My main goal for David was to get him to at the very least reach his ankles, if not his toes.

Everything I did was pretty much unplanned and contained a lot of experimentation but by the end, I was able to make a crude but effective system for improving flexibility and mobility in a certain position.

It is a 3 step system and it starts with:

1. Foam Rolling

I firmly believe that self myofascial release is EXTREMELY important when working on flexibility issues. Time and time again I see trainers just recommend stretching, which obviously works (when done correctly) but from what we know now, is NOT the first thing to focus on.

Foam rolling has a lot of benefits from improving tissue quality to increasing tissue length (without decreases in power). Not to mention it feels so fucking awesome, except when it’s your first time. Especially when that first time is my 6 inch in diameter PVC pipe with no foam!

Along with the PVC pipe, I used a tennis ball to get some areas like the pec minor, plantar fascia, and hip flexors.

2. Dynamic Warmup

Dynamic warm-ups are all the rage right now in the fitness world. They help increase flexibility, mobility, body temperature, and general awesomeness.

Most “lower level” trainers would opt for regular static stretching minus everything else as the cure for “inflexibleness” but I beg to differ.

My reasoning for choosing a short dynamic warm-up was due to the ballistic nature of some specific exercises such as leg swings that would allow for gradual increases in movement during our session as well as get in some mobility drills just in case that was also a problem.

Although from what I saw, the improvements were minimal it still help a lot for the third and final step.

3. Assisted Ballistic Stretching

Here is where I got put into use my background in martial arts and the memories of having 4 black belts on me to keep me in a perfect split for minutes at a time.

Obviously I wasn’t going to kill the kids but I needed to figure out a way to reach farther and go WAY beyond than they have gone before even if it was only for a split second.

In this situation, I would have them get into the position and pull or push them into a much deeper position while instructing them to breath.

We would continue to do this in a rhythmic nature and increase the range of motion at every rep.

After this I would tell them to do the movement/stretch themselves and compare to how they were from before to see the improvement and what I saw was freaking awesome.

But before that, let me explain what I did to them specifically.

Case Studies

If you can re-call, D’s main problem was that he could not squat with keeping his heels on the floor and squatting to parallel at the same time.

After a short 5 minute foam rolling session where we emphasized the calves, quads, hamstrings, adductors, and plantar fascia we went into a dynamic warm-up.

Knowing that one reason he could not squat with his heels down was just a neural problem or in other words, he just wasn’t used to it, I focused the warm-up on actually squatting with some isolated ankle mobility drills such as rocking ankle mobs.

For a good 10 minutes we worked on ankle mobility and constant practice of keeping the heels down, regardless of his squat depth where sometimes we past the point of his ability to have his lower back in proper position.

I’m sure a bunch of “functional” trainers are going to get me for this blasphemy but oh well.

After those 10 or so minutes, I made him finally work up to a 35lb goblet squat and got him to get to parallel with his heels DOWN and in perfect form.

1 for me and D.

For David, his main problem was not being able to touch his toes.

Again, I made him go through a 5 minute foam rolling sessions where we emphasized the same areas.

After the foam rolling session, I made him go through a series of dynamic movements to gradually get him to feel slight stretches that surpassed what he could normally do statically.

The ones that I think helped him the most were leg swings and the stretch kick which is just a more extreme version of leg swings.

Last, I really emphasized the ballistic assisted stretching with him. In this phase we did 2 things. The first were assisted Cossack lunges and sitting toe touches with me pulling his hands to his toes gradually.

With the Cossack lunges, my goal was for him to stretch his hamstrings and adductors dynamically while working on ankle mobility on the opposite leg. I would assist him as he couldn’t do it himself.

We then did the sitting toe touches were I instructed him to breath in and out at every rep to not only promote relaxation but also set a rhythm for every time I would pull him down.

We did around 6-8 reps of this and every time I would pull harder and harder.

At the end, I told him to stand up and touch his toes.

Remembering that before these 20 minutes of stuff he could barely even reach his KNEES, actually seeing him be able to grab just above his ankles was mind blowing.

I felt like one bad ass coach.

Conclusion

There is actually nothing new to this system, at least not to me as my warm-ups are like this (minus the ballistic assisted stretching) but for some, it’s pretty revolutionary not to mention kick ass.

It is just foam rolling to “untie” the knots, dynamic stretching for movement in conjunction with reaching the limits of your flexibility and then assisted ballistic stretching to surpass what you can normally do.

If you are inflexible like my guys D and David, I would do this every day for 30 days.

For others, every other day is fine.

Again, this is crude and the way I went about it might have been a little chaotic as there might be a better way to do this but so far, this is what has worked for me without tearing up a client from the inside out.

Get back to me in 30 days and let me know how it goes.

Danavir Sarria's Strength Blog

Monthly Archives: July 2012