In that post, I also mentioned at least one exception, that of block training. A concept that has primarily been applied to cycling (at least that I’ve seen), this has athlete performing multiple days of hard training in a row (the idea being to accumulate fatigue to stimulate fitness) which is then followed by several days of easy training. I’ve done this in my own cycling training and even used it with one advanced bodybuilder (I had him training the same body part hard three days in a row before taking several days off).

But I want to expand on the concept a bit more than even that since the alternation of relatively harder and easier time periods can be expanded to much more than just a single day of training.

Many athletes will alternate training weeks in terms of overall hard and easy stresses. So over the course of a month you might see an alternation of relatively easier and harder weeks within the month. This seems to be quite common in the training of Olympic lifters, harder weeks (where harder may mean more volume, a higher relative intensity, or both) are followed by much easier weeks.

Even the Bulgarians, who were infamous for loading to daily maximums week-in, week-out are reported to have taken at least one week per month at a lower level of loading to allow recovery to occur.

This concept an be taken even further as well. Early periodization texts talked about using double shock microcycles (a microcycle is usually taken as a single week of training) essentially two weeks of hellish loading followed by 2 or more easy weeks. The idea was to seriously overload the athlete to stimulate further gains once they had stagnated with more standard loading.

The most excellent book, Practical Programming (by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore, with contributions from Glenn Pendlay) describes a similar idea but formalizes it. After two weeks of break-in training, the athlete is loaded heavily for two straight weeks, followed by a multiple week deload to allow improvements to occur.

I’d note that while this approach can be valuable for high level athletes, it will ONLY work if the athlete takes the required easy after the heavy loading. This is where most go wrong, they’ll go hard for two weeks and then won’t want to cut back training after that and they’ll blow up completely.

It can go even further than that, of course: easy months can alternate with harder months and I’ve even seen it mentioned that some elite athletes will often take the entire YEAR following the Olympics easy to allow the stress of that previous year to dissipate.

I’d also note that, while I’m making it sound like the hard periods and easy periods have to be equal in length, that certainly isn’t the case. Some people can string together several hard days and only need one to two easy days to recover,

I’ve seen particularly hard workouts (usually involving the setting of personal records) require nearly a week of recovery (easy days) before loading can be increased. This is often true of competitions as well, there can be a week or more of just complete exhaustion following the meet, necessitating either time off or easy training for recovery before training is ramped up again.

As well, some systems of training (the Russians were notorious for this and swimming still seems to do similar things) have an athlete training hard for months on end, before pulling way back (tapering), with the hopes that the cumulative fatigue developed during the months of hard training will dissipate at just the right time for the athlete to peak. You also hear about folks ‘missing their peak’ all too often in these systems so I’m not sure it’s an ideal way to train for most.

So what’s my point?

I guess, if I had to make one, I’d suggest that even the recreational trainee consider how wise it is to try to train at the same level (whether high, low, or in-between) year round, which is usually what see in the gym. The intensity is unvarying on either a day to day basis, a week to week basis, or what have you. And the individual simply stagnates. There are no easy periods to allow for recovery to occur, which would allow for periods of harder training to stimulate further fitness gains.

In this article (and Part 2, coming soon), I want to argue fairly strongly for the inclusion of both hard and easy days in training. The key in this approach, and this is what I’ll address, is that the goal should be to keep the hard days hard and the easy days easy. This will make more sense shortly.

The original idea of alternating hard and easy days appears to have come out of early running training (probably the Oregon system under Bowerman); that’s at least the first modern appearance of the concept I’m aware of. I suspect a lot of this had to do with keeping the runner’s joints from exploding while they were running on a hard track. In any case, alternating harder workout days with easier workout days worked better than trying to go hard all the time.

As I detailed in the articles about interval and steady state training, most of the work that most sprinters do is fairly low intensity, what I didn’t get into much detail of was sequencing but, generally speaking, they too follow a hard day/easy day approach. So if maximum speed work is done on Monday, this is followed by lower intensity (e.g. extensive tempo work) on Tuesday. Speed endurance (hard) might be done on Wednesday with more extensive tempo on Thursday, another speed session is done on Friday, easier work is done again on Saturday.

There are various and sundry reasons for this approach to training. The Bowerman runners were likely trying to avoid injury. With sprinting, it’s usually explained by the high intensity work causing some type of neural fatigue that takes at least 48 hours to subside. There is also an impact issue with track sprinting, too many high intensity days leads to joint injuries and an injured athlete is one who isn’t making any progress.

I’d say that most athletes train more or less in this fashion for the simple reason that it’s difficult to give a workout high quality and full effort under conditions of fatigue. In terms of getting the most out of the hard workouts, it’s necessary to be rested, and that usually means interspersing them with much easier days to allow recovery.

Exceptions, of course exist. A current trend in cycling for example is something called block training (which I mentioned in passing in The Ultimate Diet 2.0) where several high intensity days are strung together followed by an equal number of easy days. So three days of hard workout might be followed by three days of very easy work or even taken completely off. The hard/easy concept is still being adhered to, just on a slightly longer time frame. Cycling also has no impact and generates none of the neural fatigue of sprinting so they can get away with it. Some distance runners will occasionally ‘block’ train in this fashion but it seems to be more the exception than the rule.

Please note: there are a variety of different approaches that are currently being referred to as ‘block training’ or ‘block periodization’ these days and what I’m talking about above is not the same as, say, Issurin, Verkoshanksy or Bondarchuk’s ‘block training’.

And that sort of leads me into my main point in this post: most athletes (and I’d say this tends to include a lot of obsessive fitness and dieting types) don’t like easy days and either fail to include them at all or don’t perform them properly.

Why? Because they are so easy.

Let me put this into some real-world and personal perspective. On the bike, my maximum power output is somewhere in the realm of 300-330 watts. On a moderate aerobic level ride, I’ll typically be around 180 watts. For a harder aerobic ride I’ll be around 200 watts. For intervals, it can range from 270 watts to 350 watts or more depending on the duration and how much I feel like suffering (and what I’m trying to improve).

On easy days (of which I have two, Tuesday and Thursday. I take Sunday completely off from training) I might ride at 140 watts or less hitting a heart rate of about 120. It feels like there’s no pressure on the pedals, I’m just going through the motions, moving a little bit of blood through my legs, it makes them feel better than doing no training at all.

I usually ride for 40-45 minutes of easy spinning (simply because this is the length of an episode of most tv shows), normal workouts are generally 1-1.5 hours which is about the most that my butt and my mind can handle on the trainer. So I’m doing around 50-75% of my normal workout volume at a piss-easy intensity.

If I can’t stand the bike, I’ll go walking on the treadmill (or, if need be, outdoors) and my heart rate rarely goes above 100. Just a little bit of movement, a little bit of blood flow, burn a few hundred calories.

But most people aren’t satisfied doing that kind of training. They don’t like doing the short duration (an easy/active recovery workout might only take 20-30 minutes). They figure that if they took the time to drive to the gym, they should do a full workout session. So the duration starts to climb.

Then there’s intensity. Proper ‘easy’ training should feel utterly easy, like there’s no effort at all. And the obsessives don’t like that, not at all. It doesn’t feel like it’s accomplishing anything (No pain, no gain, right) so the intensity starts to climb. Where it should be an easy 130 heart rate or lower, it’ll start climbing to the aerobic range or higher. Suddenly, what should have been easy days start becoming medium days.

But it’s even more insidious than that: these medium days end up being too easy to really stimulate fitness, but too hard to allow complete recovery. It’s this weird no-man’s land that doesn’t accomplish anything good.

Which has another major consequence, without the ability to recover sufficiently, the hard days can’t be as hard. Because you can’t do a quality session when you’re tired. So the hard days start becoming medium days as well. And it all goes wrong.

The hard days can’t be hard enough, the easy days are too hard and the whole week ends up being this weird sort of medium intensity across the board.

Now, this isn’t an absolute and will depend somewhat on the sport. An endurance cyclist in an early base period might be doing nothing but daily medium intensity rides to get some miles into his legs before intensifying things. But as the hard workout start becoming harder, it becomes more crucial for the easy days to become that much easier. The week goes from having a fairly constant intensity level to alternating very high highs with very low lows.

Clearly, to improve fitness (or whatever kind), the hard workouts need to be hard. Hard enough to stimulate fitness gains.

But that also means that the easy days need to be easy.

Read Keep the Hard Days Hard and the Easy Days Easy: Part 2

Rest Days

I want you to ask yourself how many days off you take each week. And when I say off I mean off. Not “I do an hour of aerobics but that doesn’t count.” I mean off. One, maybe two. Probably not that many. How many people (the ones wearing the various braces) are in there every day, sometimes more than once? Either they are doing weights multiple times per week and cardio on the off days or they are doing both each day.

Trust me, I’ve been there too, trying to train 6 days/week (I at least conceded one day off per week, although I didn’t do that consistently until my late 20′s) and wondering why I was burnt out, tired all the time, not performing well, etc.

But you argue, Lance trains 6 days/week, so do most road cyclists. Well, elite road cyclists are genetic freaks, train full time (they don’t have job and such cutting into their time) and the majority of the peleton is using drugs so you really shouldn’t derive very many conclusions about how you, who has a job, has real life stress and isn’t preparing for the Tour De France.

Most runners run 6 days/week. Yeah, and most runners are overtrained and chronically injured. And Arnold and his ilk lifted 6 days/week. Genetics and drugs. Same with the Bulgarians, the Soviets, you name it. These are the genetic elite, training full time with no job or life stress, and juiced to the gills. Unless you have all those things going for you, you shouldn’t try to emulate their training. And given that a massive percentage of elite athletes report being overtrained, perhaps even they should be training less frequently.

Which is simply a long winded way of suggesting that, if you are anything like the normal trainee, you’re doing too much. You probably train too many days per week and take too few days off. You’re lifting 3-4 days/week and trying to do cardio another 3-4 days/week (this is especially true if you are a fat/weight obsessed female). And you wonder why your joints are always kind of sore, you don’t really look forwards to your workouts anymore and everything that signals, if not true overtraining, at least overreaching (the distinction is another topic for another day).

So, I want you to look at your current training schedule, how many days are you training, how many days do you have off? I recommend that everyone, and this is true from the beginning exerciser to the elite athlete have at least one day completely off from training. That’s the minimum.

This is called passive rest, I want you to sit around all day. I’m not a religious person but this is best summed up by a quote from Charlie Francis’s book Speed Trap. Francis had asked his coach if they could afford to take Sunday’s off. His coach told him “The Lord made the world in six days, and on the seventh he rested. Do you think you could do better than that?” Most elite athletes take at least one day off from training each week and the ones who don’t usually pay for it in the long run. Why do you think you need more training than they do? If you simply can’t stay still and not do something, go for a brisk walk outdoors. But stay out of the gym. See if you aren’t refreshed when you go back to the gym the next day.

At least one (and probably two) other days per week, you should be doing active rest. This is light activity done to improve recovery. An endurance cyclist who typically trains for 2 hours might spin very easily (at a heart rate of 130-140 or lower) for 30-40 minutes. And I mean light spinning, almost no pressure on the pedals. It pumps some blood, burns a few calories, and helps recovery. Sipping a protein/carb drink during active recovery may help shuttle nutrients to the worked muscles. A runner should do some sort of cross training to give their connective tissues a rest. Try the EFX/elliptical or something non-impact.

People involved in heavy weight training can do something similar for passive rest, just very light cardio activity (brisk walking, spin on the bike) but, again, the intensity should be pretty low. If your trying to bodybuild, your focus should be on lifting anyhow and 3-4 days/week should be plenty for everyone. Most powerlifters only lift 4 days/week (on average) although many are starting to do extra stuff of late. Again, these are typically full time athletes and there is always the steroid factor to consider. Why do you think you need more time in the weight room than they do? If you want to do a little aerobic conditioning, either double it up on one of your training days or keep it very low intensity on the off days.

Even for general fitness exercisers, I think taking extra days off (or performing active rest) is beneficial. Find places to cut your weight training down (most people’s workouts are absurdly long) and put some of your cardiovascular work after your weights (on upper body days). I think you get the idea. Find a way to get your training down to 3-4 days/week total with 1 day completely off and a couple of days of active recovery.

Try this for the next 2 weeks, cutting back your training days and increasing how many days you rest and recover. See if you don’t freshen up and start to get more enthusiastic about the days you are in the gym. In the follow up to this article, in 2 weeks, I’ll talk about taking longer breaks from training and why it’s such a good idea.

More Rest Considerations

Now, I want you to ask yourself when the last extended break from training you took was. By extended I mean more than a day or two off from training, more like a 5-14 day span where you stayed out of the gym, where you either did nothing or did something completely different than your normal training program. If you can’t think of one, try to think about the last time that you got sick or injured and were forced to take an extended period of time off from your training. What did you notice when you came back?

Unless it was a very extended time off (more than 2 weeks), I bet you were far more enthusiastic about your training, some of those little twinges or aches had gone away. Perhaps you busted through your previous plateaus after a short break in period.

And then, if you’re like everyone else out there, you went right back to training the way you had done before. Hammering for weeks, months, even years on end without a break. Or until you got sick or injured again. Repeat the cycle until you wise up. If you ever do.

Odds are, if you’re like most out there, the mere idea of taking 5 days (or more) off from training fills you with fear. All your strength, muscle and fitness will just disappear. And, oh my god, you’ll just get fat.

Except that the detraining studies, and real-world experience, show something different. You lose very little fitness in a 5-14 day span, depending on what you’re looking at. I mean think about it this way: if you spend 11.5 months out of the year getting in-shape, how much fitness can you honestly lose in 5-14 days? Not very much is the answer.

Given how overtrained many people are, many come back stronger or fitter than before. Even in terms of fat loss, I’ve seen people who were training at insane levels and watching their diet get leaner when they took a break from all that training and ate more (this magic trick usually lasts about a week maximum).

Almost all athletes take easy periods in their training (some call this unloading or deloading) although this depends significantly on how they are training. And the ones that don’t should. The average scheme is to train intensely for 3 weeks and then take an easy week where volume, intensity, frequency or all three are reduced. Others will go 5-6 weeks and then take an easy week. My generic bulking routine, alternates 2 weeks of easy training with 4-6 weeks pushing the weights up I’d probably suggest, on average, taking a full week off from training after every 3 cycles (18-24 weeks) of continuous training.

Longer cycles of 16-18 weeks are often followed by periods of 5-10 days completely off from training. Charlie Francis, sprint coach extraordinaire, often gave his athletes 5 days completely off from training between every 12-16 week block. So they’d work up to a new peak over 12 weeks (on a 3 week hard/1 week easy schedule) including their final taper, take 5 days off to recharge and then do it again. Yet most people training recreationally think they can go all out year round (bodybuilders are notorious for this).

Additionally, at the end of every training season, most athletes will take anywhere from 2-4 weeks away from their sport during what is called the transition phase (where you transition from the previous season of training to the next). This used to be called the off-season, athletes would sit around for a month or two but, with periods that extended, they would detrain and lose a lot of fitness. Now it’s closer to 2-4 weeks but with some amount of activity to prevent too much fitness loss.

So, i want you to look at your last year’s training, when’s the last time you took an extended break from training, or took a week or two to do something completely different. Stay out of the weight room, go do bodyweight circuits in the park. Hike in the hills for some leg training, just go do something different. And don’t be afraid to take 5 days of easy training every 3-4 months to give your body and mind a break, you won’t lose anything and you may find that you gain a lot when you come back to the gym. Both physically and psychologically. Because, let’s face it, if training is a chore and you’re not pushing yourself, you’re not making gains anyhow. Taking some time away from your training can refresh the mind as well as the body and get you more excited about your training.

Training zone recap

I finished the second part by giving some volume recommendations for both training and maintaining loads for the different components (4 of them) of training: pure strength, intensive bodybuilding, extensive bodybuilding and really extensive bodybuilding. Without recapping that entire article, I’ll simply summarize the loading parameters for each below.

Notes: Tempo reads X/Y/Z where X is the lowering speed, Y is the pause, Z is the lifting speed. Some coaches add fourth value for the pause at the top. Rest intervals are in minutes, set length is in seconds. The really extensive zone should be timed for 1 to 2 minutes (up to maybe 3 if you’re a masochist) without focusing so much on reps. If you must count reps, 15-30 reps on a 2/0/2 tempo works fine.

Volume Recommendation Recap

Along with that I gave some volume recommendations for both training and maintaining loads, recapped below. I should probably have noted that these volumes aren’t necessarily volumes per exercise but rather volume/bodypart. So if you want to do two exercises for chest in a pure strength training cycle, you could do 3-5 sets of flat and incline or what have you. Same for the other loading zones.

One thing I didn’t mention is that, in general, within any given workout, you would work in the same order. So for any given bodypart, strength training comes first (if it’s being done at all), intensive bodybuilding second, extensive bodybuilding third, really extensive bodybuilding last. Additionally, if you’ve never worked in the pure strength training rep range, you should spend at least 6 weeks (if not longer) working in the intensive bodybuilding zone to prepare your connective tissues for the heavier loading.

So now I can finally give some sample routines, right? Well, not quite, I have a few more topics to cover first.

Another Comment on Rep Range Emphasis

Within any given cycle, unless you are specializing (see below), you’re probably best off picking a primary training emphasis, a secondary training emphasis and a maintenance training emphasis. Once again, this is simply to avoid having to try and hit everything at once. As you progress through a training year, obviously those training emphases will change (this is the whole point of periodizing in the first place).

So you might the intensive bodybuilding method as your primary emphasis, pure strength as a secondary emphasis and extensive bodybuilding (picking the higher end of the range since that overlaps with the really extensive range) for maintenance. This might mean warmups followed by 2-3 sets of 2-3 for maintenance of pure strength (which always goes first), then anywhere from 2-8 sets of intensive bodybuilding work (your primary emphasis which always goes second). Finally finish up with 1-2 sets of 12-15 to cover extensive bodybuilding and really extensive bodybuilding zones. Alternately you could do 1-2 sets of 10-12 and 1 timed set to finish out the bodypart.

Bodypart Overlap

In part 2 I talked about the issue of rep range overlap, pointing out that the training zone overlap with one another, allowing for consolidation of training (since it would be impossible to hit everything in a single workout).

In addition, I want to mention the issue of bodypart overlap since this further allow bodybuilders to decrease how many sets are necessary. For example, consider a workout where your training bench press extremely heavy, you’ve done 6 sets of 2 for pure strength work, 2-3 sets of 6-8 for intensive bodybuilding work, and 1-2 sets of extensive work. Let’s also say that you’re training shoulders and triceps in the same workout, both of which are worked during the heavy chest work.

Obviously it would be overkill to try and work either shoulders or triceps at full volume. It might even be overkill to do either in all repetition ranges. That is, during heavy bench sets of triples, triceps and delts are both getting some work in that rep range. You would only need a few total sets for each to round out the workout. Basically, this allows you to use heavy compound exercises to get a lot of work done for the smaller muscle groups so that fewer sets are necessary in the first place. Frankly, outside of the occasional arm specialization routine, it’s rare for me to prescribe more than a couple of direct sets for biceps or triceps: I let heavy pushing and pulling take care of it.

The same goes for pulling exercises: if you’ve worked the hell out of your back, your biceps have already gotten a ton of work. Doing more than a few sets for biceps would be not only unnecessary but complete overkill.

Bodypart Emphasis

Which leads into my final comments on bodypart emphasis (which could and should be an article all in itself). I want to introduce this by saying that, for all but beginner and maybe intermediate bodybuilders, it’s usually impossible to bring up all bodyparts at once. Rather, focusing on one or two upper body and one or two lower body bodyparts, while maintaining the others, works much much better. So in most of my sample workouts, at most two bodyparts are emphasized with the others at maintenance levels.

On that note, the first bodypart (or two) that you work in a workout will generally receive the greatest training effect. So if you want to bring up your delts (strength or size), train them first in the workout, putting chest second and working it at maintenance levels. Will this hurt your chest poundages? Yes. But it’s better than the converse where chest training will limit how much emphasis you can put into your delts.

o when you’re focusing heavily on chest and back, plan on working delts and arms at maintenance. If you want to focus on delts, work chest and triceps at maintenance. If you want to focus on triceps, work on chest and delts at maintenance. The same goes for pulling exercises.

Legs are a little more complicated because the amount of overlap isn’t necessarily as great. Hamstrings are certainly worked during compound leg stuff but it’s not quite the same as how hard delts or tris are worked during heavy benching. This means that you can use more volume for leg exercises (there are also fewer bodyparts to worry about: quads, hams/glutes/ calves) and the sample workouts will be set up that way.

At the same time, my comments on bodypart emphasis still hold: if you always train quads (squats) first, this will limit how much energy you have left to train hamstrings and I think that’s a big part of why so many bodybuilders have terrible hamstrings. Putting hamstrings first and quads at maintenance is a way to avoid this common problem.

Another approach (that can also be used for upper body) is to make one leg workout a quad emphasis workout and the other a hamstring workout emphasis with volume set accordingly. For upper body you might make one workout a push emphasis (with light pull meaning back/bis worked at maintenance) and the other a pull emphasis (with light push meaning chest/delts/tris worked at maintenance).

Training Frequency, Splits and Volume

Although I could most assuredly write pages on this topic itself (I need to get off my ass and stop with the fat loss shit and write a training manual), I only want to make a couple of comments for the purposes of this article.

As I said in Periodization for Bodybuilders: Part 2, I don’t think naturals should train a bodypart any less frequently than about once every 5th day (or twice a week on average). Of course, this isn’t an absolute but I find it to be generally true: any less than this and growth simply isn’t optimal. This gives a few workable possibilities for splits depending on recovery. One would be to use a Charles Poliquin split like

• Day 1: Chest/Back
• Day 2: legs/abs
• Day 3: Off
• Day 4: Shoulders/arms
• Day 5: Off
• Repeat

I would probably personally put some maintenance chest/back work on day 4 but that type of split would be workable for folks who have very flexible schedule during the week, overall good recovery or are using steroids or even some of the new prohormones.

Arguably my favorite split is an upper/lower split (also workable for powerlifting). This is good for people who need to train on the same days each week or who don’t have the recovery to train as often as the above split.

• Monday: Lower body (squat emphasis for PL’ing, or quad emphasis for bodybuilding)
• Tuesday: Upper body (bench emphasis for PL’ing or push emphasis for bodybuilding)
• Thursday: Lower body (DL emphasis for PL’ing or hamstring emphasis for bodybuilding)
• Friday: Upper body (light bench + back emphasis for PL’ing, pull emphasis for bodybuilding)

For folks with even poorer recovery ability, the above could be changed to a three day/week program alternating workouts. So each workout gets hit three times every two weeks.

• Monday: Lower body
• Wed: Upper body
• Fri: Lower body
• Mon: Upper body
• Wed: Lower body
• Fri: Upper body

In this scheme, I wouldn’t make any of the days a specific emphasis but volume could be cut back to allow everything to be hit.

On the topic of volume, you’ll note that I gave somewhat large set ranges for the different types of training. I wanted to comment on that for a second. I have found, over the years, that individual volume tolerance is, well, individual. Young males with high testosterone can adapt to higher volumes of training while your classic ‘hardgainer’ frequently does better with lower volumes (but higher frequencies and avoiding failure). Women generally need less volume than men and older individuals can’t handle the same volume as younger folks.

So whereas a young male with high testosterone might do 8 sets of 6-8 Intensive bodybuilding) for a given bodypart, a similarly aged male with low testosterone or a female or older male might only need/be able to handle 2-3 sets of 6-8 per bodypart. Just keep that in mind in the sample workouts; I’ll be using rather ‘average’ volume recommendations but you can adjust them up or down depending on your own personal recovery capacity.

Too much variety for me to give you more recommendations like that. Alternately, you could probably apply some of the autoregulatory concepts going around, training a given exercise until a given % strength cutoff if you don’t know how much volume you can handle. I’ll also note that volume tolerance can both be improved (by gradual volume increases over time) and detrained (by doing HIT/low volume shit all the time).

A Word on Progression

Bodybuilders make a lot of mistakes that prevent them from realizing their goals. That alone could make an entire book. Here I want to focus only on one thing: progression. Unless you’re drugged or genetically superior, your muscles only respond by getting bigger if you continue to challenge them. Within the context of this article series, progression means adding weight to the bar. Now, there are tons of different ways to progress weights and this is too long (and overdue) as it is. I’ll only make this comment: you should strive to add weight to the bar whenever you can do so in good form.

So if you get to the high end of a rep range and feel like you have a rep left over, add weight at the next workout. This will probably drop you to the low end of the rep range and then build up again. For really extensive bodybuilding, you would increase weight when you got to the high end of the time range.

Note that this doesn’t apply to pure strength training methods but explaining how best to progress this would take too long. Just remember that, in general, if you’re not getting stronger, you’re not getting bigger. And if you’re not getting bigger, you’re not getting stronger. So if you’re not adding weight to the bar over time, you’re just another bozo wasting his life in the gym with nothing to show for it.

Sample Workouts

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’m ever going to get around to writing Part 4 of this series which would have had some sample workouts. Maybe someday or when I write my training book I’ll get back to it. Hopefully the above at least gives you some ideas about how you might set things up.

Holistic Training

In his original holistic training schema, Dr. Hatfield proposed using three different intensity/rep ranges to optimally stimulate a muscle. This included sets of 4-6 done explosively, sets of 12-15 done rhythmically and sets of 40 done fairly slowly. Different types of workouts were done in a fairly complicated cycling pattern (Hatfield called this ABC training) and, frankly, keeping everything straight was a huge pain in the ass.

As a starting point, there’s fundamentally nothing wrong with this schema although I’m going to tech it up a little bit in a second. I also feel that Dr. Squat left out a type of training of utmost importance to the bodybuilder: pure strength training. I’ll discuss that below.

Different Fibers, Different ‘parts’ of the Muscle, Different Types of Growth

I’m going to assume that anybody reading this magazine has a basic understanding of fiber types. In (very) brief, there are three major types of muscle fibers: Type I (or slow oxidative), Type IIa (fast oxidative/glycolytic) and Type IIx (fast glycolytic). The old Type IIb fibers turn out only to exist in animal models, IIx describes the highest threshold fibers in humans.

Each fiber type has a distinctive physiology in terms of force and growth capability, fatigueability, etc. Type I fibers have the lowest force output and growth potential and take the longest to fatigue and Type II fibers have a higher force output and growth capacity and fatigue more quickly with Type IIa being intermediate between Type I and Type IIx. We might simplistically look at the rep schemes of holistic training as hitting a given pool of motor units: sets of 4-6 for Type IIx, sets of 12-15 for Type IIa and sets of 40 for Type I. This isn’t necessarily incorrect although it goes a little beyond that.

Dr. Hatfield may have been one of the first Americans to latch onto the idea that there were different components of a muscle that contributed to muscle growth. This goes along with the European idea of myofibrillar vs. sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (this topic is discussed in greater detail in my Ultimate Diet 2.0). Myofibrillar hypertrophy refers to growth of the actual contractile component of the muscle fiber while sarcoplasmic hypertrophy refers to growth of everything else: glycogen, water, minerals, mitochondria and capillaries. The key thing to note is that each component requires a differential type of stress to stimulate growth.

Pure strength training

As I mentioned above, the one thing that Hatfield (as I recall anyhow) left out of his holistic training was pure strength training. This can describe a lot of different types of training but let’s define it hear as anything below 5 reps. Heavy sets of 2 and 3 (doubles and triples) with a near maximum weight for example.

The key thing to realize is that strength production is a combination of both muscular and neurological factors: a variety of neural adaptations takes place in response to pure strength training that increases strength output without making people bigger. I know that there is a long-held belief that there is an absolute relationship between strength and size but it’s not that simple: athletes like power- and Olympic lifters increase strength without getting any bigger all the time and they do it by maximizing neural factors.

Now, I suspect that most bodybuilders could give the first shit about being strong, the sport is all about being big and freaky. But I will argue that improving the neural components of strength will help you get even bigger in the long run. The reason, actually, is fairly simple.

Stimulating myofibrillar growth means imposing some combination of tension, fatigue and damage components onto muscle fibers (stimulating sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is more about fatigue and energy depletion than tension per se). By improving strength in low rep ranges with pure strength training, bodybuilders can use more weight in higher rep ranges. This means more tension, more damage and more ultimate growth. It’s also nice to actually be as strong as you look: too many big but ultimately weak bodybuilders walking around out there in my opinion.

Intensity Zones

So with that introduction taken care of, let’s talk about intensity zones, since that is a key concept to all periodization schemes. The one problem I had with Hatfield’s scheme is that it wasn’t necessarily specific enough. As coaches like Charles Poliquin have pointed out, the issue of time under tension may be just as important to the overall growth stimulus as rep count per se. That is to say that 5 reps done in 60 seconds (a very slow tempo) isn’t the same as 5 reps done in 30 seconds or 5 reps done in 5 seconds. The first would be most likely to stimulate sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, the second myofibrillar hypertrophy and the third pure strength and power. As another example, I’ve seen folks perform 40 reps (Hatfield’s ‘long’ set) in 40 seconds which is defeating the purpose: a timed set of 60-120 seconds with no focus on reps would be more beneficial. So let’s look at the different intensity zones.

Strength training: The goal of pure strength training is to improve the neural components of strength production. Weight should be 85% of 1 repetition maximum or higher. Sets should last 20 seconds or less. Generally 5 reps or less done with a 2-3 second negative. Lift as fast as possible. Typically compound exercises such as squats, bench press, power clean, deadlift, etc. are chosen. Isolation exercises can be used for this type of training but your form has to be perfect or you’ll probably get hurt. Strength athletes commonly do many, many sets (6-10 sets of 2-3) but they are usually only focusing on a handful of lifts. A bodybuilder may need to hit more bodyparts which would mean cutting the total number of sets done.

Intensive bodybuilding method (or power bodybuilding): The goal of this zone is to increase myofibrillar size and muscle density. This zone also increases maximal strength although not to the degree that pure strength training does. Weight would be in the 80-85% of 1 RM range. Set length ranges from 20-30 seconds. A generic approach might be repeat sets of 4-6 reps on a 3-4 second down, no pause, 1 up tempo. Rest periods should be about 3 minutes between sets. Depending on volume tolerance and the number of exercises performed, anywhere from 2 to 8 sets per bodypart might be done. As with strength training, compound exercises are usually preferred; isolation exercises can be done but only with picture perfect form.

Extensive bodybuilding method: The goal of this zone is a combination of myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy with the lower end of the range (6-8 reps) being more geared towards myofibrillar growth (with some strength gains) and the higher end of the range (10-12 or even 15 reps) geared towards more sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Due to glycogen depletion, there will be an increase in glycogen and water (pump growth) storage, especially in the higher rep ranges. Weights should be in the 70-80% of 1RM range with set length lasting from 30-45 (or 60) seconds. Rest periods are generally 1-2 minutes. Anywhere from 6-12 repetitions or so on a 3 down, 2 up tempo. Anywhere from 3-6 sets might be done. Anal compulsive bodybuilders could probably subdivide this category into two different ranges, one spanning the 6-8 rep range and the other spanning the 12-15 rep range. A mix of compound or isolation exercises can be done in this zone.

Really extensive bodybuilding method (I’m not good at thinking up clever names for training like the other writers in this field): The goal of this zone is purely sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, with the emphasis on capillarization and mitochondria moreso than on the other components such as glycogen. As I mentioned above, I think the best approach to this type of training is to forget about reps and do 1 or 2 timed sets of 1-2 minutes with the goal being continuous movement. I would generally recommend isolation exercises above the compounds on this one. Admittedly, you’ll see god if you try to squat continuously for 2 minutes (which I once had a mountain biker I was training do) but you tend to fatigue cardiovascularly when you use those types of exercises.

Training vs. maintaining loads

Ok, now you’re thinking that there’s no way in hell you can possibly hit everything I described above, you’d be in the gym for 4 hours every day. Obviously trying to follow 6 sets of 2 in the squat with 4-5 sets of 4-6 with 2-3 sets of 12-15 with 1-2 sets of 1-2 minutes would be an absurd workload.

One thing to realize is that though I’ve made it look like each intensity zone is a distinct entity, please understand that that’s not the case. As I indicated above, there is a certain amount of carryover between zones and it’s better to think of training on a continuum. So even though intensive bodybuilding has as its main goal myofibrillar growth, there are still going to be strength gains. Sets of 6-8 will generate similar (but not identical) adaptations to the 4-6 rep range and the 12-15 rep range will generate similar (but not identical) adaptations to the 1-2 minute range. This allows for some consolidation of training when you start designing programs.

This is also where the whole concept of periodization comes in. The thing to realize is that it’s unrealistic to try and hit all components of a muscle sufficiently all at once. Even endurance weenies, who are known for trying to shotgun their training (distance one day, hills another, intervals a third, technique a fourth) are learning that it’s better to focus on one or two components of training during a given cycle and maintain everything else with the focus changing throughout the training year.

So in any given 6-8 week cycle, you would choose to focus on one or two of the above components (there are 4 total but remember the overlap) and simply maintain the others. What does this mean exactly?

Research has found that, in both endurance and strength training, the amount of work you need to maintain something is far far less than what’s needed to increase it. In general, you can cut the volume and frequency by 2/3rds as long as you maintain the intensity and you can maintain a given capacity for quite some time. So say you were doing 6 set of 2 twice per week to improve strength in the squat during one cycle. In the next you could maintain by performing 2 sets of 2 once or twice per week. The same would hold for the other components of training.

I guess while I’m on the topic, I should address training frequency briefly. In the example workouts I’m going to present in part 3 (sorry, I have to get this finished or Justin will have me head), I’m going to assume a body part training frequency of twice per week since I consider that, on average, to be the minimum for natural trainees to make good gains in strength or size. All of the numbers below assume that frequency. Obviously if you use a different bodypart training frequency, you’ll have to adjust training to compensate.

With that said, here’s a chart indicating both training and maintaining loads for each of the different intensity zones of training.

In Periodization for Bodybuilders: Part 3, I’ll start to look at some application of all of this with some sample workouts.

Now, if you go into most gyms, you’ll usually find people working out in vastly different ways: there are your pumpers, the guys who go heavy all the time, etc. But, for the most part, the guys who pump always pump and the guys who go heavy always go heavy. Most bodybuilders tend to stick in a fairly static rep range (could be 6-8 or 10-12 depending on what theory of growth they ascribe to) but it’s rare to see a given individual change that much. There are, of course exceptions.

Basically, it seems like bodybuilders are pretty much the last folks to jump on the periodization bandwagon. As above, most of them tend to stick with the same types of training year round and they pretty much always go balls to the wall. The idea of changing anything (except maybe exercise choice to ‘shock the muscle’ or what have you) just doesn’t seem to be as prevalent among that subculture.

The Problem with Non-Periodized Training

Before tackling the issues of periodization, let’s look at some of the problems inherent in non-periodized training. One is simply that people get bored doing the same thing all the time. Mental staleness can be as real as physical staleness (and recent research suggests that they are related anyhow) and changing something about training (whether it’s exercise selection, exercise order, rep count, or whatever) can get people more interested in training. More interest usually makes people work harder and that alone can generate results.

A second issue is that, even for bodybuilders, there are different components that contribute to maximal size; and each can be trained somewhat differentially. Of course there’s actual myofibrillar hypertrophy (an increase in the size of the contractile fibers). There’s also sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (an increase in non-contractile components of the muscle such as glycogen, water, minerals, mitochondria, etc). Capillary density can be improved (increasing nutrient availability to muscle fibers). You get the idea (note: this topic is discussed in greater detail in my Ultimate Diet 2.0).

A third issue, of course, is one of physical accommodation. Over time, the body often accommodates to a given training style. More accurately, it stops adapting (positively anyhow) and may actually start regressing. Changing training variables from time to time (even if it’s simply to back off the intensity and build back up again) can help to prevent physical staleness.

What is Periodization?

At its simplest, periodization simply refers to some sort of methodical (or semi-methodical) variation in training. Changes can occur in terms of volume, intensity, exercise selection, rep speeds, rest intervals and any other of the myriad training variables. Most athletes periodize to one degree or another. Usually the goal of periodization is to develop fitness towards specific competition periods. Some will even target a single competition and train an entire year exclusively for that (e.g. Lance Armstrong trained towards the Tour De France as his only major competition).

Obviously competitive bodybuilders will periodize towards their competition but I think that even recreational bodybuilders (guys who just want to be big and ripped or just bit) can benefit from structuring their training as well. That structuring, regardless of the specific type, goes under the heading of periodization. So with that basic introduction, I want to look at some of the common models of periodization and then move into how bodybuilders might approach periodizing their training.

Linear Periodization

Perhaps the most common (at least the most well known) model for periodization is the simple linear periodization model (usually being accredited to a Russian scientist named Matveyev). It starts from a fairly high volume of low intensity activity and moves gradually towards a lower volume of high intensity activity (the model is actually a bit more complicated than that and I’d suggest anyone who is truly interested in the topic pick up Mel Siff’s Supertraining book for a more detailed discussion).

So an Olympic or powerlifter would move from fairly high volumes with a low intensity (intensity being defined here as % of 1 rep maximum) to a low volume of high intensity activity. So the powerlifter might move, over the span of 16 weeks, from a rep count of 12-15 to 10-12 to 8-10 to 6-8 to 5 then to triples and doubles, finally peaking for the meet.

Bryan Haycock’s Hypertrophy Specific Training (HST) program essentially a linear periodized model moving from 2 weeks of 15′s to 2 weeks of 10′s to 2 weeks of 8′s to 2 weeks of 5′s to 1-2 weeks of negatives, then a week break and start over again. I should note that it is also periodized within a given 2 week cycle, moving from a submaximal weight to basically a repetition maximum (RM) load by the end of the 2 week cycle.

There are other linear approaches to periodization out there as well although they may be structured a little bit differently. Ironman magazine has long recommended that bodybuilders train in 8 week blocks, taking 2 weeks to ramp up the intensity (in this case defined as effort, taking each set to positive failure) and then working full bore for the next 6 weeks to make strength and size gains before backing off for 2 weeks and ramping up again.

I take the same approach in my generic bulking routine, 2 weeks of sub-maximal work followed by 4-6 weeks really pushing hard before backing off and building up again. Doggcrapp (DC) training is simlar, alternating 2 week ‘cruises’ with 4-6 week ‘blasts’. You get the idea.

Anyone familiar with the basic Hardgainer magazine approach should know that Stuart and the rest of the HG crew has generally recommended a similar approach, take several weeks to ramp up training and then work full bore for some period of time (some HG authors use cycles of 12-16 weeks while at least one recommends extending the cycle, adding weight to the bar, for as long as you can).

Tudor Bompa and Fred Koch (who seems to hav stolen Bompa’s approach pretty much verbatim) have both suggested a linear periodized scheme for bodybuilders that is more along the lines of bulking and then cutting. You start with a few weeks of anatomical adaptation (basically low intensity training to condition connective tissues), then move into hypertrophy training (generally a fairly high volume of work in the 75-85% 1RM range), then to maximal strength work (85% 1RM or less) then to cutting (a strange program centered around 100-200 reps per exercise, something I find profoundly silly).

On and on it goes, as I said above, linear periodization is probably the most common approach to periodizing. But it has problems.

The Problems with Linear Periodization

In recent years, linear periodization has come under fire from a number of different strength experts. Vladimir Zatsiorsky (author of “Science and Practice of Strength Training”) Charles Poliquin and powerlifting guru Louie Simmons all jump to mind. The problem, they note is this: while you are training one biomotor capacity (i.e. muscular endurance, hypertrophy, maximal strength), the ones not being trained are going to hell (ok, not their exact words). But you end up detraining one capacity while you’re developing another.

For example, a powerlifter working in the 10-12 rep range (more of a hypertrophy range) is going to be losing maximal strength capacity (and all of the adaptations that go along with that). An endurance athlete doing nothing but low intensity endurance training is detraining leg speed (for sprinting) and lactate threshold capacity (the highest intensity that they can maintain without accumulating too much lactic acid). Studies done years ago found that athletes moving into low rep ranges (for maximal strength) frequently lost muscle size. Adding back even one high rep set (remember this, it’s important) frequently prevented the problem.

I’d note that, for bodybuilders this isn’t quite so much of an issue as, outside of the different components that contribute to size I mentioned above, bodybuilders aren’t really training different biomotor capacities throughout the year. Rather, everything they are doing is going towards muscular size (or maintenance during dieting). So the criticisms of linear periodization in this context aren’t exactly right.

As well, many of the criticisms of linear periodization are based on the old idea of one long annual cycle starting from low-intensity and high-volume and moving towards high-intensity and low-volume. Modern training uses shorter cycles and HST, DC, my generic bulking approach, etc. are all based around repeating 8 week cycles rather than absurdly long 52 week cycles. So, again, the criticisms against linear periodization here aren’t exactly correct. However, I’m going to finish out this article as if there were better ways of doing it and look at them next.

Solution Number One: Nonlinear Periodization

One of the first proposed solutions for the problems above was something usually referred to as nonlinear or undulating periodization. Both Poliquin and Zatsiorsky recommended alternating 2-3 week blocks where a given capacity was emphasized and others were trained at maintenance.

So a Poliquin type of program might entail 2-3 weeks of 10-12 reps, 2-3 weeks of 5-6 reps, 2-3 weeks of 7-9 reps (the return to high reps help to avoid muscle loss), 2-3 weeks of 3-5 reps, etc.

Zatsiorsky’s approach was slightly different but he was addressing other types of athletes than simply bodybuilders. Basically, working in 2-3 week blocks, specific biomotor capacities (i.e. strength, power, endurance) would be emphasized while other capacities were trained at maintenance. So a 3 week block where aerobic endurance was emphasized would see lactate threshold training worked at maintenance and then the focus would switch, lactate threshold would be emphasized while aerobic endurance was maintained. I should mention that Bompa did occasionally give lip service to that type of alternation in his books, you’d alternate a few weeks of maximal strength training with a few weeks of hypertrophy training.

Solution Number Two: ‘Conjugate’ Periodization

Pedantic note: although it has come to be called ‘conjugate periodization’ popularly is not what was originally mean by the term. What I am going to describe below is really concurrent periodization where all different capacities are trained to some degree each week and throughout the year.

Conjugate periodization has probably been promoted most heavily by aforementioned powerlifting guru Louie Simmons. Claiming that old school linear periodization is dead (nobody tell Ed Coan), he believes that conjugate periodization (developed, of course, in Russia) is a superior way to train. For a more detailed examination of the conjugate system, I’d suggest “Supertraining” by Mel Siff.

In his system, all aspects of powerlifting performance (bar speed/technique, maximal strength, hypertrophy, general physical preparation) are trained at the same time, simply with a different emphasis on each. Bar speed and technique are trained with speed work (10 sets of 2 or 8 sets of 3 with a submaximal weight), maximum strength is trained with multiple low rep sets and hypertrophy is trained with multiple higher rep sets. All three rep ranges are used every week of the year (more or less). There’s more to it, of course and anyone interested in learning more about Louie’s system can check out Westside barbell or Elite Fitness’s website.

Other Options

Of course, the above hardly describes all of the possible options available. One is to simply combine training and train different aspects of muscle in the same training cycle. An old school approach to training was to follow warmups with 3-5 heavy sets of 5 (training a combination of maximal strength and myofibrillar hypertrophy) with multiple sets of 12-15 (training sarcoplasmic elements). First you go heavy, then you get a little bit of a pump. Technically, I’d describe this as a combination of tension and fatigue training and my generic bulking program is built around that idea.

Another is to hit each type of training but in different workouts per week. This is also sometimes referred to as non-linear or undulating periodization and you might do sets of 3-5 one day, 8-10 another, and 10-15 on the third. My Ultimate Diet 2.0 is structured in this fashion with each type of training (power, tension, depletion) set up to optimize with that day’s daily diet.

Others will do one heavy power workout and one higher rep pump workout per week, hitting each bodypart roughly twice per week. Bodybuilder and all-around smart guy Layne Norton is a big proponent of this and he’s got the results to back it up.

As you can see, there are lots of options and ways to get around the ‘problems’ which can be associated with linear periodization. However, rather than detail the above types of programs, I want to talk about some other ways that bodybuilders can periodize their training.

Read more in Periodization for Bodybuilders Part 2.