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.
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