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Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Freakmode Volume Training: Train Like A Ripped Freak!

New Exercise and Fitness Review

Volume training is not for the weak. This program is for athletes looking to shock their muscles and shift into a “get ripped and grow” phase. My #FREAKMODE volume training protocol is based on the very popular German Volume Training (GVT) system, which is basically 10 sets of 10 reps.

I have done my share of GVT, but I have found that I get better results—and am less likely to fall victim to overtraining—with 8 sets of 8 reps. I’ve used this workout program many times over the years, and it’s helped me gain muscle and get ripped. Intensity undoubtedly plays a key role.

There are no rest periods between exercises or sets in this program, which drives the difficulty way up, cuts down on your time in the gym, and sends your metabolism into overdrive. This is a basic “pain and gain” workout protocol that will shock your system and help you break through any plateaus.

Note: Due to the intensity and muscle damage that this program elicits, you should only follow it for 4-6 weeks at a time.

Get Freaky Ripped

This plan calls for three weight-training workouts that you’ll crush each week to hit every major muscle group. Each session includes basic, compound movements for 8 torturous sets to stimulate maximum muscle fibers—which is why you are only hitting one exercise per body part. You’ll also perform some unique moves that might not be part of your everyday workout staple, like twisting dumbbell presses, rack rows, Zottman curls, and box squats.

Friday is leg day, followed by two days of rest, light cardio, or cross-training. Why allow more than a day of recovery? Well, because if you’re crushing these workouts and pushing yourself, you’ll have no other choice than to take a few days of rest.

“I’ve used this workout program many times over the years, and it’s helped me gain muscle and get ripped. Intensity undoubtedly plays a key role.”

If you do this program properly, your legs will be fried and light cardio is about all you’ll be able to manage. But don’t consider it backtracking by any means. In fact, the light cardio sessions will help speed recovery and reduce stiffness after your brutal leg session.

I’ve added a core exercise to each workout. Stick with one exercise only, so you don’t fatigue the core muscles to the degree that your strength and technique are compromised during compound lifts. The core exercise will also serve as some active recovery between each set.

Note: Don’t sacrifice form to hit the prescribed rep range for each exercise. If you can only do 5 quality reps on the last set, that’s better than cheating to get 8 and risking injury.

#FREAKMODE Volume Training (FVT) Split

Monday: Chest and back

Tuesday: Rest or HIIT

Wednesday: Shoulders and arms

Thursday: Rest or HIIT

Friday: Legs

Saturday: Rest or light cardio/cross-training

Sunday: Rest or light cardio/cross-training

#FREAKMODE Workouts

Watch the workout videos below, then print or download all the workouts so you can knock them out for the next 4-6 weeks!

Flat twisting dumbbell press
8 sets of 8 reps (3-0-2-1 tempo)

Barbell rack row
8 sets of 8 reps (3-0-1-1 tempo)

Figure-eight bicycle crunch
8 sets of 12 reps per side (1-0-1-0 tempo)

Chest & Back Workout:
Watch The Video – 03:13

Standing dumbbell shoulder press
8 sets of 8 reps (3-0-2-1 tempo)

Zottman curl
8 sets of 8 reps (3-0-2-1 tempo)

Dip
8 sets of 8 reps (3-0-1-1 tempo)

Hanging knee raise
8 sets of 8-12 reps (3-0-1-1 tempo)

Shoulders & Arms Workout:
Watch The Video – 03:12

Box squat
8 sets of 8 reps (3-0-2-1 tempo)

Lying hamstring ball curl (or lying hamstring machine curl)
8 sets of 8 reps (3-0-2-1 tempo)

Vertical chair knee raise
8 sets of 12 reps (3-0-1-1 tempo)

Leg Workout:
Watch The Video – 02:36

Supplement for Success

Don Gauvreau, MSc, CSCS

Volume training burns a ton of calories and will undoubtedly deplete your energy stores. Of course, the food you eat throughout the day will help fuel your workouts and support recovery, but a properly formulated pre-workout powder can help crank up your intensity into overdrive and allow you to push through every last rep!

Supplement staples like branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) and L-carnitine can be very useful to speed up recovery and support muscle growth when following a volume-based workout program like this one.

“Before these workouts, I take 3/4 (and sometimes a full) scoop of Super Freak pre-workout powder along with a gram of L-carnitine,” says Don Gauvreau, MSc, CSCS.

“During my workouts, I like to sip on a mixture of BCAAs in water. As soon as I’m done training, I swig back the rest of my BCAAs and another gram of L-carnitine. It’s a pretty simple supplement stack, but it works great for maximizing workout performance and recovery!”

Loads and Rest

For the compound exercises, which are the focal point of this program, stick with 50-60 percent of your one-rep max (1RM). Your goal should be to get out 8 quality reps of each set without going to complete failure, except on the final set of each exercise. Perform the exercises listed back-to-back and, as mentioned, cut out all rest between each set to keep the intensity way up.

Barbell rack row

The opposing exercises (push/pull), as well as the core movements, will provide active recovery. Once you can complete a full workout with all the reps prescribed, increase the weight by the smallest increment available.

Tempo

It’s very important to control all movements and follow the prescribed lifting tempo for each exercise in the program. The lifting tempo used in this program is written in a sequence of four numbers, such as 3-0-2-1. The first number represents the eccentric or negative phase; the second number represents the stretched phase; the third number represents the positive or concentric phase; and the fourth number represents the peak contracted phase. The number assigned to each phase of the tempo represents the number of seconds you should take to complete each phase.

In other words, the first number represents the time (in seconds) it should take you to lower the weight, the second number is how long you should pause at the bottom, the third shows how long it should take you to lift the weight, and the fourth number shows how long you should squeeze at the top.

Flat twisting dumbbell press

A recent study conducted at McMaster University showed that slower tempo training elicited a greater response in protein synthesis when compared to faster tempo training.¹ Another study showed that longer time under tension per set resulted in greater EPOC and energy expenditure.²

Example of 3-0-2-1 Tempo

3 = 3-second eccentric contraction (negative part of the movement)

0 = no pause at the bottom, or “stretched,” portion of the movement

2 = take 2 seconds for the concentric contraction (the actual pushing or pulling of the weight)

1 = take a 1-second pause at the peak contraction of the movement

References

Burd N.A., & Andrews R.J., et al. (2012). Muscle time under tension during resistance exercise stimulates differential muscle protein sub-fractional synthetic responses in men. J Physiol. Jan 15;590(Pt 2):351-62.

Scott, C.B. (2012). The effect of time-under-tension and weight lifting cadence on aerobic, anaerobic, and recovery energy expenditures: 3 submaximal sets. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. Apr;37(2):252-6.

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About The Author

Alex Savva is a sought-after strength and conditioning expert, founder of CircuitFIT, co-founder of Pharmafreak and much more.

Bodybuilding.com Articles

Freakmode Volume Training: Train Like A Ripped Freak!

Monday, 29 September 2014

Ask The Muscle Prof: How Can I Build Muscle Like A Beginner Again?

New Exercise and Fitness Review

Q When I started training, I made huge gains in size and strength. Now nothing works. I hit every body part twice a week, blasting them with 20-30 sets per workout. Still no growth. What gives?

I’ll be honest with you: Plateaus are one of the most difficult things you will have to face as the number of years you’ve trained continues to climb. As a scientist, I’ve spent countless hours trying to figure out how we can avoid training plateaus. I’ve also looked into the reasons untrained people grow quickly while highly trained people can barely make gains at all.

It all has to do with how your body adapts to training. Once you know why you plateau, you’ll be able to counter your body’s adaptive impulse by strategically manipulating your training frequency and volume. Let’s dive in!

The Adaptive Trap

The primary model used to explain how we respond to the rigors of training is Hans Seyle’s General Adaptation Syndrome. Originally, this theory explained how your body responds to stress in general, but over time we’ve come to understand that hard-training athletes deserve their own version. In either case, the theory posits that we move through three stages of adaptation: the alarm reaction phase; the resistance phase, and the exhaustion phase.

The alarm reaction phase commences during training, when you break down muscle tissue with either heavy loads or high volume. After a workout, your body is pretty beat up, and as a result your performance declines for a short time. At this point, the stage of resistance is triggered.

During the resistance stage, your body adapts specifically to the stimulus you imposed on it during the alarm reaction phase. If you lifted heavy, for example, the body adapts to make you stronger. If you trained for hypertrophy, your muscles will grow.

Ideally, we fluctuate between the first two stages. When we stop making gains or plateau, we have officially entered into the stage of exhaustion.

There are three likely reasons for this plateau. One is a lack of variation in training itself. This makes it impossible to enter into the alarm reaction phase because your body is too familiar with the training stimulus.

Another reason you might be lingering in the exhaustion stage is that you have overreached and may possibly slide into overtraining.

However, if you challenge yourself with new workouts, eat and sleep well, and train each body part twice per week, it’s unlikely that these factors are causing your training plateau. More than likely, the culprit for your plateaued gains is that your training frequency is simply too low.

The Other Anabolic Window

I know what you’re saying: “Two brutal workouts isn’t enough? It’s what Arnold used to do—and it feels like a ton!” Hear me out.

From a scientific standpoint, the stage of resistance manifests as an increase in protein synthesis within the muscle. This may not surprise you. What might be surprising is that this increase is influenced by more than just how hard you train or how much protein is in your shaker bottle. Your training status has a lot to do with it, too.

If you want to grow like you did back in the early days, you’ll have to find a way to get the most of the short window you experience now.

In a fairly recent study out of McMaster University in Canada, scientists had untrained individuals perform an intense leg workout, after which they analyzed the protein synthesis that took place in their bodies.¹ These researchers found that protein synthesis lasted for 72 hours after the bout. Great, huh?

The good times didn’t last forever, though. After only 8 weeks of training, the window of elevated protein synthesis had shrunk to as little as 16 hours! This means the stage of resistance wouldn’t even last to the end of the day if the person trained in the early morning. If someone has been training for three or more years, the response may be even briefer, along the lines of 4-12 hours.

If that’s you, then training a body part twice a week for months on end isn’t likely to bust you out of your rut and deliver new gains. If you want to grow like you did back in the early days, you’ll have to find a way to get the most of the short window you experience now.

Frequency Up, Volume Down

What if I told you the answer to busting through sticking points was to train each body part up to six days per week? To many, this would be a reason to label me a lunatic or question my nattyness. Surely, this type of frequency would make you overtrain in a hurry, right? Not necessarily.

Here’s what you need to know: Training frequency, which is how often you train, is independent from volume, which the measure of how many sets you perform per workout. So if you currently perform 15 sets per body part in a workout, I wouldn’t have you perform those 15 sets six times per week.

Instead, I suggest taking those sets and equally dividing them into six days instead of two. For example, if you train 15 sets of chest on Monday and 15 sets on Friday, you would now train only 5 sets per day, Monday through Saturday.

The science behind high-frequency training

As a scientist, it is critical that everything I say has a research-based background, and high-frequency training definitely does. One of the breakthrough studies supporting my advice was performed by Dr. Raastad and his colleagues out of Norway in 2011.²

These researchers took elite, resistance-trained athletes who were training every body part three times per week and broke their workload up over six days per week, with a lower volume per workout. Then they kept another group on the three-times-per-week program.

By the end of the study, the elite lifters training each body part three times a week hit a plateau in gains. On the other hand, the lifters who trained six days per week were able to increase their quad size by 10 percent in a matter of weeks, and their strength skyrocketed!

A 1994 study out of Finland supports these findings.³ Researchers looked at elite weightlifters who typically trained once per day. Due to their elite status, these athletes were in a frequent state of plateau. Researchers then took their training volume and split it up so they were now training twice per day on all workouts.

So, if they usually performed 20 sets in the morning, they were now performing 10 sets in the morning and 10 at night. As with the Norway frequency study, this was enough to drastically overcome their plateau.

Let’s say you normally perform 12 sets of legs for two workouts a week. To give your body a new stimulus, you could divide that into 6 daily sets spread over four workouts a week. Or if your volume is even greater, you can divide it equally between six workouts a week. Below is an example of how you might modify your training.

Traditional

Barbell Squat
5 sets

Leg Press
5 sets

Superset

Leg Extensions
5 sets

Seated Leg Curl
5 sets

Barbell Lunge
5 sets

Front Barbell Squat
5 sets

Stiff-Legged Barbell Deadlift
5 sets

High-Frequency

Barbell Squat
5 sets

Leg Press
5 sets

Superset

Leg Extensions
5 sets

Seated Leg Curl
5 sets

Barbell Lunge
5 sets

Front Barbell Squat
5 sets

Stiff-Legged Barbell Deadlift
5 sets

Just remember: Your body can adapt to high-frequency training just like it did to low-frequency training. Once that happens, you can shock your system by compressing volume into fewer training days.

The fact that your body is no longer accustomed to this stimulus may very well trigger protein synthesis for 24-48 hours the way it did back when you were a novice.