Training Schedule – Part 1: Training days, Times, Sets, and repetitions
To put some practice next to all the theory of the previous posts, I want to explain what my training schedule is for achieving my goal physique. There are some important things that you should know before you copy my training. Each body is different, and has different needs to a certain extent. However, you can use the red line of the story and apply your own knowledge and logic to personalize your training schedule.
Okay so let’s imagine my situation in April. I was finished with a diet. I just lost 5kg of body weight and I am pretty happy with how I look from a body fat percentage. From here, to get to the physique of Zac Efron, I knew I had to get bigger and stronger first, and afterward lower my body fat percentage even more to approximately 8% to achieve my goal. So there are multiple steps in my training schedule.
First I decided to get bigger and stronger, which I thought would approximately cost me 8 weeks. I have trained for years before so my muscles will come back a bit quicker than for beginners since my muscles have some kind of memory of exercising before. After I get to the point that I am happy with my strength, it will be time to cut fat and maintain the muscles I built up, also known as dry training, in order to get to around 8% body fat.
How often do I train? Since there is a real-time pressure for me (approximately three months before summer) I decided that I am going to the gym six times per week. And besides that, I am training my abs at home for 20 to 30 minutes every two days. This means that I train 9 to 10 times per week, with an average of 2(.5) hours per day. If you have the time to go that many times, I highly recommend you doing it. In my old days, I trained a maximum of 4 days per week. Which means that I trained every muscle once per week. With 6 days of training, you can do every muscle twice. If you eat and exercise correctly, your results will exponentially increase. And not just twice as fast. It could go even quicker because you are constantly keeping your body in some sort of momentum/flow. You keep your metabolism going and you can vary more with different exercises.
Okay so now I will explain how I trained for mass and strength for the first few weeks (note that after week 6 I already decided that I am at the muscle level I wanted to be, and not the 8 weeks I previously mentioned!). For me, it was clear from the beginning that bulking (eating extremely much and purely gaining mass) was not an option since I wanted to be lean in the end and not very big. I decided that ‘lean bulking’ was the way for me to achieve my first step towards my goal. I did not eat that much, but I made sure I ate a lot of proteins and drank enough water to make sure my muscles could grow without taking in too much excess energy that will be stored as fat. This way, I managed to gain a lot of muscle without gaining any fat. I think I even lost fat during gaining muscle, that is why I use the term lean bulking.
In the beginning, I weighed 80kg and I ate approximately 2800kcal to 3000kcal per day with around 200g of proteins a day, 50-70g of fat, and the rest being carbohydrates. I will not go too much into detail since my next blog post will be about my eating routine, but here you have an indication of what my intake was to be able to do lean bulking for my body.
Training days
At the gym, I decided to divide my days the following:
Day 1. Back and Biceps, Day 2. Chest and Triceps, Day 3. Shoulders and Legs, Day 4. Back and Biceps, Day 5. Chest and Triceps, Day 6. Shoulders and Legs.
If you look online for training schedules, you might be surprised with day 3 and 6 of my schedule. Most schedules include shoulders in the ‘push’ day, which is Chest and Triceps (Days 2 and 4). However, for me, this build is even more effective, since I dedicate myself to train a lot of shoulder exercises and back exercises alone, and with a normal amount of 3 leg exercises on a daily basis. So to fit everything timewise, it made more sense to move shoulders to leg day. To be fair, I do not regret this decision, since my shoulders have grown immensely (which would never have been possible if I combined shoulders, chest, and triceps in one day).
Muscle groups
Now that we have discussed how often I trained, and what body parts I train which day, we now look into how many exercises I did per body part. Again, you need to feel for yourself what is comfortable for your body. For me, my ideal ‘mass gaining’ schedule looked the following: per body part, I try to aim for 4 to 5 exercises. However, this costs a lot of time, so you need to find out how much time you have, and aim for something that is doable in that duration. Time was never a constraint for me. I tried to schedule my day as efficient as possible so I have time to go to the gym. I try to do as much as possible, since every set, every rep, gets me closer to my goal. And nothing is more important to me than reaching that goal.
I will, later on, give an indication of what exercises I did per body part. But what I can already mention is that it is important that you understand those body parts consists of multiple areas of muscles. In order to grow your muscles in a nice shape, you need to hit every area of the muscle of that body part. So always look for a variety of exercises, so you hit every area.s
Sets
4 sets per exercises are what I aim for. If I am mostly aiming at muscle growth, I try to aim my repetitions between 6 and 8. If I can hit between 6 and 8 reps, it means that the next set I need to grab a heavier weight. When I was younger I was always told to do 3 sets per exercise, while I do not know why I feel that 4 sets are better. I did not do 3 sets for a long time, so I am not 100% sure if it is better or worse for you. But I would recommend doing 4 sets since your muscles can easily do another set, and it just tires them a little bit more, which will make them stronger in the end. This worked perfectly for me when I was trying to increase my muscle strength.
After week 7, I decided that that I wanted to get lean by maintaining the muscle strength I built up and by adding athletic exercises in my training schedule. Next, to that, I went from doing exercises one by one to doing only supersets and tri-sets. This is very intense, but it speeds up the speed of my training and it also stimulates my fat burning metabolism even more! Next, to that, I decided to replace some ‘power’ exercises with ‘athletic’ exercises. This all to boost metabolism.
Genetics
What is important to note is that your genetics have a certain preference for specific body parts. For me, my arms (biceps and triceps) were always my weakest part. They were always sour after just 2 or 3 exercises, and I could not perform more. They just take a longer time to develop for me. However, after week 4, they started to shine and they grow now in proportion to the rest of my body. Don’t give up if a muscle part is a bit slower than the rest, give them the care they need, and they will in no time be as strong as the rest of your body. Genetics help mostly in the beginning, but the more you train, the more even your body parts will become.
In a later post, I will give more information concerning specific muscle exercises and some tips for variations. For now, the next post concerning the exercise pillar will be about attitude and mentality inside and outside the gym.
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