Confused about a new training program that has been recommended...please critique

[anakin]

I was in the gym today and I was recommended a new training program by a student instructor. He was cool and friendly, we talked for over 30 mins about my current training plan ... and that it was not good. It caught me by surprise and I listened intently; he is a Sports Science student for the last 6 years. He says that training certain parts of the body just once a week is not enough. They have to be trained more...and more emphasis should be placed on the core of the body (chest, back, legs)...

Here is my normal training plan:

Mon: Back, biceps, belly

Wed: Chest, triceps

Fri: Legs, shoulders, belly

Total time in gym: 60-70 mins.

Now, here is what he recommends:

The training is split in 2 parts (A and B) and then I alternate...so week 1 would be A+B+A:

A: Chest (bench press), back (pull-down), belly (crunches), chest (butterfly), side of the body (lovehandles in English?), shoulders, triceps, belly (again), back (again)

B: lat press(?), legs, belly, back, butterfly, legs, biceps.

This leaves a gap of 4-5 days for each..considering I use the gym 3x per week.

the biggest changes as you see would be:

- most importantly, training body parts more than once per week,
- spending more than 1 hr in the gym, probably around 1hr 30 mins.

What do your ideas about the recommendation because I’m a little confused by this?

Anakin

 

[DIESEL]

Your "student instructor" is full of shyt.

He could be a sports science instructor, but usually a lot of those "eggheads" look like shyt. Look at him, and find out if a) is he big and muscular and b) then ask him point blank if he got that way naturally or by using steroids. That'll tell you a lot about his so called "knowledge". If he's skinny and not that big, that pretty much tells you all you need to know, doesn't it?

I don't understand what is so hard about reading the "GUIDE TO BULKING UP" and trying it for a few months. It isn't fukkin rocket science. All the guesswork has been pretty much eliminated.

D

 

[flava]

yuor instructor wouldnt happen to be doc love would he?

this has got to be one of the dumbest routines i have ever heard of. if you wanna waste time and see catabolic effects every workout, then go ahead and do his little routine.

first of all you gotta understand that no one ca tell you what days certain muscle are supposed to be worked. all they can do is give u guidlines. now about that part where he said "muscles should beworked out more than once a week..." do me a favor, go to the dog pound and look for the meanest nastiest pit bull there and throw it on your instructors nuts. this guy has no clue how much damage this can do to you. if u get cut and wait a day for it to heal a little but then you open the cut again. whats going to happen? itll get worse and take more time to heal, likewise its the exact same with your muscles. so yes you wanna workout your muscle at least every 5-7 days that way it gives them time to heal.

now lets see how your instructor is trying to give u your krytonite, the catabolic effect. simply and briefly all this is is when your body chooses an alternate source for energy when all its current resources are depleated. doesnt sound too bad? well what if i told you that that alternate source happens to be your very muscles that your trying to grow. now this sounds bad. if you havent already figured out the reason you gonna most likely go in to the state is because he has you overtraining. 60-70 mins!!! hell no, thats way too long. you always wanna keep your workouts between 30-45 mins. "well flava how can i do that, i have way too many exercises in one day to keep it between 30-45 mins." well liek i said your working out to many muscles. work no more than two muscle groups when you work out, and do no more than 3 different exercises per group.

nowthe key to getting an effective workout is MAXIMUM INTENSITY. what this means is your muscles grow off of overload. not doing 100 push-ups or dips or high-rep exercises, thats all crap. just ask some of the people on this site who recommend " alot of push-ups" i bet i can get more meat off a chicken wing than off their bodys. you have to use heavy weights with low reps. the best way to go about this is to always keep it between 4-6 reps with weight thats light enough that you can do at least 4 reps but heavy enough that you CANT do more than 6, and do no more than 3 set on every execise.

Ive really just scratched the suface here just to point out a lot of faults i see in your instructors training. if you want, if you give me at least 1 month of your time i would be happy to train you. and belive me i know ALOT more than what your instructor does due to my family. after all just look at your instructors title "Student Instructor" and for haow long has he been a "Student Instructor"? wow 6 years. now i can see why hes still just a student.

 

[Templeton]

Far from being full of **** your instructor seems to know his stuff. An ABA type workout is excellent. I have no idea where this bollocks that the only way to grow is to train a bodypart once per week came from and that only people on gear can train more often. Horse****! Granted training a bodypart once per week is fine but its not the only way. What happened to periodization!?

Surely if you train a bodypart and it recovers you train it again and if that is within a week then so be it. Hypertrophy is not only about intensity, you have to figure in volume and rest periods too.

You don't believe me? You still brainwashed into thinking you have to train a bodypart once per week? Go to www.t-mag.com and check out stuff by Ian King and especially Chad Waterbury. Those guys have forgotten more about effective training methods than any of us on here will ever know.

Dont get me wrong, I am not disparaging anyone on here and Diesel's bulk guide will work fine but so will many other regimes.

 

[flava]

Originally posted by Templeton
Far from being full of **** your instructor seems to know his stuff. An ABA type workout is excellent. I have no idea where this bollocks that the only way to grow is to train a bodypart once per week came from and that only people on gear can train more often. Horse****! Granted training a bodypart once per week is fine but its not the only way. What happened to periodization!?

Surely if you train a bodypart and it recovers you train it again and if that is within a week then so be it. Hypertrophy is not only about intensity, you have to figure in volume and rest periods too.

You don't believe me? You still brainwashed into thinking you have to train a bodypart once per week? Go to www.t-mag.com and check out stuff by Ian King and especially Chad Waterbury. Those guys have forgotten more about effective training methods than any of us on here will ever know.

Dont get me wrong, I am not disparaging anyone on here and Diesel's bulk guide will work fine but so will many other regimes.

thank you Templeton, that was amusing.. now i dont wanna be a dik so dont take that to heart Temp, but im going to breifly shed a little light on the subject. but first can i ask you a question Temp? Do you truly know when your muscles heal? most people belive that when the soreness in your muscles is gone that they are back to 100% repaired. this is where alot of people fail and end up doing their chest like 3x a week. even though it may not be sore anymore the muscles are still reapiring themselves, and so the average muscle takes between 5-7 days to fully recover. Naturally the harder you work your body, the longer its going to take to fully recover. even though alot of bodybuilders are full of crap they even know that working out their muscles more than once can hinder their progress.

 

[Alpha male Female Catcher]

I'd love to be able to work my body parts more than once a week but I know that when I do (and I have 17years experience in the gym) my strength takes a nose dive.

If you're a beginner then I suspect that the A B A routine my be OK but I am sceptical that is an optimum solution for someone who is reasonably advanced in their training. I say this because I believe that as a beginer you have less muscle for your body to repair (you do less damage in a workout) and so are likely to experience quicker recovery).

The theory is that the amount of muscle your body can grow/repair stays roughly the same throughout your career so as your muscles get bigger they take longer to recover and hence you need longer recovery periods (admitedly this is just speculation based on something I read in someone exercise book but it gels with my experiences).

For an expose on personal trainers see this article

http://www.t-mag.com/html/40train.html


Let me also re-iterate Demon's point. Does your 6 years experienced personal trainer have the size muscles that you aspire too or would you like your muscles to eventually become somewhat bigger than your perosnal trainer friend's?

Six years is long enough to pack on a solid 30kg of muscle if you know what you are doing (even for a hard gainer like me). If he doesn't have the sort of physique that wouldn't look out of place in a state level body building contest then I would take what he says with a grain of salt.

Sorry to harp on this point but it really pisses me off how many gym instructors and personal trainers there are out there who
have very average man in the street level physiques yet who act like experts at growing large muscles even though they clearly don't know **** about it as evidenced by their own physiques. Taking advice form some 150lb guy on how to become Arnie Swartzenegger is like asking a guy who lives in a trailer park how to become a multi millionaire.

Of course the retort is that unless you have Arnie type genes you will never look like Arnie swartzeneger. In other words the gym instructor with the wimpy physique is simply a hard gainer. That may be true but even hard gainers should be able to pack on a solid 40lb of muscle or so. They may not look like Ronnie Coleman but they should still look substantialy more muscular than your average guy.

If you want to know how to grow large muscles then ask a guy with large muscles, he can tell you because he knows what he did to get that way and there is proof (experimental evidence) that his method works for at least one person (i.e. himself).

Of course not all guys with large muscles are experts on how a hard gainer can develop large muscles but at the very least they know how a person with good genes (and maybe on steroids) can grow large muscles. At any rate though you don't ask a hard gainer with small muscles how hard gainers develop large muscles (because if they still have small muscles themselves then they clearly do not know).

So wether you are an easy gainer or a hard gainer you don't ask a guy with only moderate level muscle development have to grow large muscles, rather you ask the easy gainer or hard gainer (as the case may be) who HAS achieved large muscles how they trained to get that way.

I may sound silly stating the obvious but it amazing how many people don't see this point (otherwise there would be a lot of gym instructors and personal trainers out of a job).

 

[Templeton]

Rather than engage in any kind of argument with other members I will give you these links to read so you may try such different approaches and judge for yourselves.

http://www.t-mag.com/articles/211more2.html

http://www.t-mag.com/articles/216hyp.html

http://www.t-mag.com/nation_articles/217hyp.html

http://www.t-mag.com/nation_articles/259div.jsp

http://www.t-mag.com/articles/206reps2.html

Also, if you have access to it, "Essentials of Strength Training & Conditioning" (NSCA) Ch 8 and pp 401-404.

The above contain a wide variation of information from experts in the field. Training a bodypart once per week will work but so will other regimes. Bear in mind also that sometimes it is the CNS that has been hammered and will take time to recover and not the muscles themselves, that is one reason that you should not train at max intensity week in week out. I myself at times will train in such a way but at other times I may train a bodypart at up to every 3 days - I make great progress by the way - of course when training more frequently I will use less exercises and total sets and reduce my intensity (intensity is NOT the only thing associated with muscle growth) plus I will have structured recovery periods. Periodization - as I mentioned before - read work by Tudor Bompa for more information in this area.

Strange that many on here think there is only one way to train for hypertrophy, shades of Mike Mentzer perhaps?

Alpha; I too have read the theory of larger muscle mass taking longer to recover so has to be hit less etc etc - espoused by Arthur Jones, Mike Mentzer and more recently Dorian Yates. I am very sceptical about this myself and a lot of Mentzer's "ideas" have since been discredited and superceded.

Later

 

[Alpha male Female Catcher]

As a professional scientist myself I certainly wouldn't claim any scientific certainty for the hypothesis I mention above (which is why I mention in the original post that it is just speculation I read somewhere). I suspect there is some truth to it though.

In reality there is a vast number of different approaches people take to body building and people have success with an enourmous range of different approaches. At the end of the day the human body is very adaptable (and doesn't refuse to grow simple because you don't work out exactly according to Joe Blogg or whoevers routine).

I don't doubt that you can train a body part more than once a week if you don't work out to maximum intensity. If you do work out to maximum intensity then you do need about a week to recover or at least I peresonally do at any rate.

Working out to maximum intensity interspersed with long rest periods suits my personality, I enjoy it greatly and thats why I'm in the gym as much as anything (its fun). Maybe a reduced intensity but more regular workout also works but its not my style. I never lift a light weight in the gym (apart from warming up) - just a personalty thing (nothing wrong with working out your ego at the same time you do your muscles).

At any rate what ever the scientific basis of my exercise routines they work very well for me. For a (once skinny) endomorph (or is it ectomorph - I can never remeber) I've had plenty of success (more than I dreamed off when I first started). My exercises definitely work for me.

I've been the strongest guy at my local gym (one of Sydney's largest) in every exercise for as long as I can remember. I can still do a maximum bench press of around 370lb (Although there are guys out there who will make me look like a wimp, the world record is around 700lb, in the flesh I have only seen one guy press heavier in my gym - a visitor who once did 400lb). Considering that when I started training at 19 I could barely do a 70lb bench press (and that I'm an endomorph not a mesomorph) I would consider my training routine to have been very successful.

I have also been succesful in developing out right size. When I started training I was around 145lb. About two months ago I was about 265lb (at about 25% body fat). Yeah that's fat but that would still be around 210lb at a competative 5% body fat, which isn't bad. (I'm now putting my money where my mouth is at trying to achieve just those stats, I'm currently at 250lb and boy its amazing how much better I look now - my chest is now noticably bigger than my gut and I look pretty good with a T-shirt on now - but not so much with it off - but I diverge). (Just a note on the weight loss bit I've found squid rings to be really good as they have 14g per 100g of protein but less than 1g fat or carbs).

I've also got 19" arms (I can remeber my first gym instructor who won an Australian state (NSW) title with 17" arms - he was short) saying to me that you can't build 19" arms with out steriods (so on that account I would also say I've also been successful - as I don't use steroids - and I'm not even a mesomorph). The point of all this bragging (which is not good to do in front of girls - but your not girls I'm trying to pickup or dating) is to make the point that my one day a week very high intensity training works and very well for me at least - which is why I advocate it. Off course the other lower intensity but more regular methods might also work - I wouldn't know I've never tried them long enough to find out (and have no intention too). (I have tried them long enough to know that I loose heaps of strength - don't know what it does to body size though).

One thing I would point out though is that I myself also do some unconventional things and yet as described above I've had plenty of success (more than the average guy I see training in the gym).
For one thing I don't change my exercise routines around much in order to shock my my muscles as every expert and his dog recommends (I only change my routines by making the weights heavier). Also my once a week workout goes for around 3 hrs not 1hr (which is supposedly bad because it depletes you of too much glycogen or whatever to make a good recovery).

Also I have tried Mike Mentzor's only two sets for each exercise bit but gave up because I just had too much energy and strength left over at the end of the workout. So I still do my typically 12 sets per body part (3 * 4 different exercises). And someimtes after completing my routine I just stay in the gym and continue to workout for the shear hell of it (its fun). The only thing I agree with Mike about is that you can go for a week without working out and make good gains. I don't think his so called high intensity workout is high enough intensity though - you just can't train a muscle group to failure (what ever that is supposed to mean anyway) in just two sets. I don't agree with all (or even most) of what Mike wrote by any means but I think he was on to something with the value of long rest periods.

Bottom line is I don't care what men in white coats say about the proper way to exercise is, I know what works for me and I'm doing it.

 

[Alpha male Female Catcher]

I should probably also mention that though I spend 3 hours in the gym as I have 3 to 5 mins rest between sets I don't spend anything like three hours actually exercising. For example in my first 45 min in the gym I would do around 12 bench press/ incline etc sets and as it takes me about 20sec to do a set that means I only spend around a 4 minutes actually exercising in that first 45 min.

 

[anakin]

Originally posted by DIESEL:
He could be a sports science instructor, but usually a lot of those "eggheads" look like shyt.

Originally posted by Alpha male Female Catcher:
Let me also re-iterate Demon's point. Does your 6 years experienced personal trainer have the size muscles that you aspire too or would you like your muscles to eventually become somewhat bigger than your perosnal trainer friend's?

You both brought out an important point. I noticed it too first but kept quiet because I wanted to let him say what he had to say. When someone is offering advice, it’s always good to, at least, listen…anyway, 30 minutes later, I was still there and since I was running late I had to leave pretty quick. Yes, you are both spot on. He is skinny/average build, to put it in perspective, a little bit bigger who plays that guy in the movie Spiderman…after 6 years of training. In fact, come to think of it, ALL the instructors are about that level.

I learnt on Monday that these “eggheads” mock the large guys saying that they are “peacocks” and only work out to look good. These guys argue that “one should develop their bodies to look like a tree…with a strong “trunk” (belly, back, legs) and that the “branches” (arms & shoulders) should not be bigger than the trunk. These large guys often have branches (arms, shoulders) bigger than their trunk, and that such trees naturally snap because their trunks cannot handle it…” In summary, they argue that it is not good for the long-term as more emphasis is paid to areas where they just want to look good (arms, shoulders, etc).

This argument between the two schools of thought reminds me of the ‘nice guys v jerks’ argument …

I did a workout routine with 2 friends today, and they are big. (one of them is almost at Alpha male’s level, he is in his early 30s but very short 5 ft 2 – looks fantastic). Unbelievable workout session…we did shoulders and legs today and I did some new exercises and pushed myself beyond words can describe. My shoulders are killing me One of my friends said that he had questioned one of these instructors and they did not know what “cortisol” meant when asked about it and not to listen to them.

Anyway, I have decided that I won’t experiment on this ABA routine. I do not know the scientific basis behind it … but I do know that my strength would suffer…I find that when I train to my limit, it does take me about 6 days to recover again.

I was initially confused. He said the complete OPPOSITE of what I had learnt and thank you, all, for your replies and input…inc. Prosemont via PM

Anakin