Bodybuilding workout program pdf

As program length increases, so will the volume. Mechanical tension is a very simple concept. Your muscles have various methods of determining how much load they are under. Said a little more plainly, heavy weight builds muscle. In general, heavier weights are better than lighter weights, provided that you can achieve the appropriate volume. When you workout very hard, your body produces metabolic waste products.

These products need to be cleared out of your body by your circulatory system. The more they build up, the longer the clearance takes. Your body knows that larger, stronger muscle fibers can operate more efficiently, without producing as much of these waste products. There are several ways to increase metabolic stress. You can do large sets with relatively heavy weights. You can cut down your rest time, or do things like supersets, and giant sets.

The moral of this story is that the hardest training will yield the most metabolic stress. As you might imagine, when you workout, your muscle fibers become damaged.

This damage signals your body to repair itself. The most common way to create muscle damage is to increase lifting volume. Imagine that! However, you can do things like forced negatives, which emphasize eccentric loading, to create more damage too. In the long term this is the process that actually builds muscle mass. The 12 Week Free Bodybuilding Program utilizes all three techniques, in the correct proportion, to send a strong muscle building signal to your body.

No matter how strong this signal is. You need to support your daily requirements, and provide surplus of protein so your body can physically make new cells. It can be complicated to gain muscle mass without gaining a ton of unwanted fat.

You need to prioritize protein, and carbohydrate, while eating as much fat as you need to hit your caloric goals. Give the article a read, and download the spreadsheet. Remember, this is only a starting point for your nutrition. I will do follow up articles which will be linked at the bottom for the second and third parts, once I finish them. Each block is written with five sessions. I expect most athletes will be able to do these five sessions in a week.

Each daily session is one vertical column. Most athletes will choose to do it from top to bottom, but you can pick and choose which moves you want to do in which order. The accessory work is in blue, and the daily accessory is in dark gray. Note that none of these blocks are super sets. I will specify when I want you to do a superset or drop set. I generally expect you to keep your rest intervals around 2 minutes.

You can see my 20 WOD addendum to this bodybuilding program here. This week is your introduction to this style of training. The programming becomes very hard towards the end so you should expect that it will only increase in difficulty from here.

This program is designed so that you can do it in any commercial gym, and most well equipped home gyms. You might have to sub a few movements, if you lack cable machines, but you can still build a lot of muscle mass either way. In this program I most often specify the intensity of effort using the acronym RIR. This stands for reps in reserve. If you see a set of 10 that says 2 RIR, that means you could do 12 reps if you truly had to. None of these sets are max effort.

Most of last weeks sets were 2RIR. This week many of them are 1RIR. This is a key part of the program. It allows your body to recover from each session with enough reserves to attack the next session.

In this program, most body parts are trained twice per week, for large muscle groups. Smaller muscle groups, that recovery quickly, are hit 3 or more times per week. If you like this program, but want something with more conditioning check out my functional bodybuilding program! This week is where I put the hammer down. Remember, if you have a set of 8 at 1RIR, then you should be lifting heavier for a set of 6.

On each of these movements, you need to focus on the muscles that are contracting. I expect you to use good, safe form, and put max effort into each rep. Most compound movements should be done focusing a bit more on the weight being moved, where as the accessory work is more technique focused.

This week is a deload week. This week is very important to your overall success. If you want to build strength and functional fitness then check out this program! Recovery is definitely a misunderstood topic. Just mentioning the word brings up images of cryo baths, and weird spa treatments. Read this article were I review some scientific studies on the topic. Your best bets are fairly simple. Aim for a resting tempo of 60 seconds.

Give your body enough time to rest and regain its lost minerals to ensure you have enough energy during sets. Remember, the reps indicated is what you should be aiming to do with weights that allow you to do just 8 repetitions correct form.

If you notice that you can do 8 reps with 20lbs, but the last 2 sets are cheated, then lower the weight. The last thing that you want to happen is for you to injure yourself during a workout. The workout program is designed so you can exercise 3 or 6 times a week. With that being said, if you want to maximize muscle gain, then you should aim for the 6 day split. If you are a beginner, you will find it hard going to the gym 6 times. This is simply because your muscles will not have fully rested.

Start of with 3 days a week and progress towards the full 6 days to maximize your results. Also, it does not have to be either 3 or 6. You can go times. Use the extra 1 or 2 visits to focus on lagging muscle groups. For example, if you notice that your chest is not as developed as you want it to, then just do one extra push day after you finish the 3 day split.

While on the topic of beginners, another benefit of this workout program is that it will provide you with a lot of tools and information that will benefit your long-term development with your fitness journey. After the workout program you will find quick nutrition and supplementation notes.

As well as a list of exercises that you can substitute existing ones in the workout so you can add variability promote more muscle growth. And quite often can completely transform a workout for the better. If you are not aware what those terms mean, here is a quick explanation:.

Finally, all the exercises have a link to a video where the exercise is performed. This is until I build a library of my own with visual demos of exercises. For now, though, this will do. As I previously mentioned it is wise to alternate between exercises and not have the same routine. Adding variability to your workouts prevents your body from getting accustomed to them.

Thus, preventing you from hitting a plateau and boosting muscle gain. When substituting exercises make sure that you follow the Mass and Isolated markers. Mass marked exercises are those that help you build crude muscle mass and strength. Isolated exercises are those that isolate the muscle allowing you to target its full range of motion. Also, those marked with Burn out are exercises that are those added at the end of the workout just to exhaust the muscle.

Also, make sure that you alternating between the exercises that are already in the program. You would be surprised of how much you are impacting muscle growth just by swapping the order of your exercises. Keep in mind that some muscle groups do not have a lot of compound or isolated exercises. So the ones already listed should be enough to work off of. As mentioned, I will not go into too much depth but provide enough for you to understand the fundamentals to nutrition and supplementation when building muscle.

One thing that you need to understand is that in order to build muscle, you need a good diet. A workout program is only half of the work. I recommend starting off with our calorie calculator which will show you how many calories you need to take in order to build muscle.

There is no need to bulk and eat excessive amounts of calories. Crazy surpluses like calories above your amount to maintain your weight is unnecessary and will do nothing more but make you fat. Try your best to eat clean food. Make sure that you are eating enough protein. While, there are a lot of reports that claim that it is not necessary to consume exactly 1g of protein per 1lbs of your bodyweight, there are also a lot of reports that claim that this amount promotes anabolism and ensures muscle preservation.

That being said, supplements will help you improve muscle gain through their anabolic properties. Whey protein is a must. Drink whey protein after your workout to ensure that you stop the post-workout catabolic effect and enter an anabolic state. Whey protein shortly after a workout has been shown to create a favourable environment for growth hormone production.

The second one is creatine. Lastly, omega 3s. They help with muscle inflammation, increase recovery time, and create an anabolic environment for your muscles through mTOR pathways. I have written an in-depth article about how omega 3 fatty acids improve muscle growth. I am a 26 year old fitness enthusiast who has spent the last 9 years studying, learning and experiencing of the world of fitness.

I have decided to share my collected knowledge in the field with my readers in hopes of making lives easier. How can you grow a wider back? Probably one of the most sought after goals in the gym is building bigger arms. And the second…. Great workout routine. The information in your posts are real, thank you.