PROGRAMME FOR GROWTH By Eric Velazquez Muscle isn't built overnight or without a plan. Follow this scientifically proven 20-week training programme for long-term muscular gains How many times have you worked through a heavy lifting programme — pushing and pulling more weight for more reps than ever before, never missing a workout — only to be left scratching your head in the mirror at your narrow-shouldered, stringy-armed lack of progress? Survey says? "Way too many to count."
That's because we — the well-intentioned but impatient population of gym familiars — tend to go balls-out with a heavy routine without really preparing our bodies for the work ahead. Etch this into your brain: when it comes to your body, there are no quick fixes or shortcuts. This is especially true when it comes to gaining measurable, lasting muscle mass. Diving into four weeks of heavy lifts simply doesn't cut it, you brute. You have to use your brain as well as your brawn. Maximising hypertrophy — shoptalk for the chronic enlargement of muscle fibres — requires a more in-depth approach that takes your body's specific muscular adaptations to weight training into consideration. These physical changes don't happen overnight; they're gradual and progressive, but certain. You have an idea in your mind of what you want to look like. To get there, you're just going to have to be more precise, more calculating than ever before — for a full 20 weeks. And that's where the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) in America comes in. After carefully researching many of today's traditional muscle-building programmes — and discovering their shortcomings — these exercise experts put their brains together to crank out a growth-spurring routine grounded as much in science as sweat. So stop floundering with your current, shortsighted routine, you mindless, weight-heaving drone. It's time to get dialled in for significant growth. This proven, seven-phase, 20-week programme is your key to building the body you want. Time and science are on your side. What are you waiting for? PHASE 1 STABILISED GAINS Getting where you want to be involves the deliberate manipulation of four types of cycles: muscular stabilisation, integrated stabilisation, muscular development and strength maximisation. Each phase, or microcycle, lasts 2–4 weeks. First up: muscular stabilisation. "Maximising hypertrophy requires using quite a bit of load with quite a bit of volume," says Rodney Corn, senior education faculty member with the NASM. "In order to use a lot of load and to lift it a lot of times, you have to make sure that the joints, connective tissue and muscle tissue are prepared to take on the demand of that type of programme." Loosely translated: back away from the big-boy barbells — your body just ain't ready yet. Instead, Corn recommends starting on the path to max muscle growth by doing just the opposite of what your ego is telling you and getting into some lighter, more challenging movements that improve your joint strength, balance and stability. "Consider this a preparatory phase," says Corn. "Building muscle is like building a home. What you're doing here is laying the foundation for it." Stabilisation exercises are any moves that challenge the body's core or stability, such as one-arm cable flyes, curls on an exercise ball or single-leg overhead presses. These unorthodox exercises, though performed with lighter weight, call more muscles into action by forcing the body to balance against the resistance. The net result is an increase in stabiliser and joint strength. Don't start shaking your head just yet, ball-hater. "It's really a total-body challenge," says Corn. "Your ego just needs to get past it. Once you train like this, the proof is in the pudding. Clients that I've trained like this understood the next day why it's not as easy as they thought." This four-week phase — which the NASM refers to as Stabilisation Equivalent Training, or SET — has you plough through 3–4 sets of 8–12 reps for each exercise. Here's the catch: they're all compound sets, meaning you work the same muscle group through two exercises, back-to-back. The first movement is a typical strength exercise, such as the bench press. The second is of the stabilisation variety, such as the alternating flat-bench dumbbell press. To keep your metabolic motor running, limit rest periods during this phase to 60 seconds or less. PHASE 2 HERE'S THE BEEF Once you're beyond your ego-sacrificial preparatory phase, it's time to start reaping the rewards. The next phase — Muscular Development Training, or MDT — gets you back into your comfort zone, musclehead. For Weeks 5–8, dive into more traditional schemes of 2–3 exercises per bodypart, 3–4 sets per exercise and 6–12 reps per set. This phase is probably much more akin to what your body is used to, but again, volume comes into play. You work each bodypart with two exercises per training session, which you may not think sufficient, but Corn cautions against adding more movements. "You can throw in a third exercise for each bodypart once per week, but it's important to remember that all training is cumulative," he says. "So whether you train your chest for 12 total sets on one day or spread it out for four sets on three different days, you've still done 12 sets for that week. The bonus of reducing the volume in each workout is that you recover better and are able to perform at a higher intensity the next time." Also, training each muscle group only once a week, regardless of volume, results in a drop in some of the acute responses that benefit muscle growth, such as increased synthesis of protein, prostaglandins and insulinlike growth factor-1 (IGF-1), which all return to normal levels 36–48 hours after a workout. PHASE 3 STABILITY PLUS One of the biggest enemies of weight trainers is overtraining, a condition marked by decreases in strength, stamina and motivation caused by subjecting the body to the same stimuli for too long. This usually sets in after 6–8 weeks of training with the same protocol. As such, this programme includes active recovery times that allow your body to recuperate and repair itself without losing any of its strength. Most lifters often find themselves stronger after such periods. Enter Integrated Stabilisation Training, or IST, which focuses solely on the stabilisation exercises you implemented during Weeks 1–4. This two-week intermediary phase not only helps increase your flexibility, core strength and joint stability, but it also serves as a catapult to the next phase. "Most people don't incorporate active rest or recovery into their own routines, so we build it in for them," explains Corn. PHASE 4 GET SET TO GROW Building off of the last two weeks of IST, you move back into SET for Weeks 11 and 12, this time using slightly higher loads for your compound sets than you did in Weeks 1 and 2 and aiming for the 8–10-rep range. With your joints bolstered and muscles primed, it's now time to move back into your second muscle-development phase of the programme. PHASE 5 ACCELERATED DEVELOPMENT Weeks 5–8 were a cosy security blanket for you. No unfamiliar exercises, no complicated moves — just good, old-fashioned iron pumping. Well, you can breathe a sigh of relief because you're gonna get back to it for Weeks 13–16. During this MDT phase, you should achieve noticeable increases in the poundages you handled in Weeks 5–8. Aim to modestly improve your weights on each successive workout because during your next phase, it'll be time to get into some serious loads. PHASE 6 STRENGTH AND NUMBERS How much weight can you bench or squat for five reps? What about three? Starting in Week 17, find out. Maximum Strength Training (MST) is the apex of the programme — everything you've done for the previous 16 weeks has built towards this. You've pounded your core, reinforced your joints and built in more body balance than should be allowed by law — hell, you're in the best shape of your life. Now, it's all going to pay off in sheer intensity. The MST phase is used to increase absolute strength and motor-unit recruitment to allow for the use of heavier loads in the future — and the new muscle is yours to keep. Each bodypart gets three exercises a week during this phase — two in one workout, one in another — performing 4–5 sets per session at 3–5 reps per set. Exercise selection for these two weeks will keep you in the nuts-and-bolts realm of squats, bench presses, barbell rows and overhead presses. Because of the heavy weight being used, Corn recommends letting your body rest a full 3–5 minutes between sets to recover. Exercises for smaller bodyparts like biceps, triceps and calves can be kept in the 6–8-rep range. All reps should be performed explosively but under control to avoid injury. PHASE 7 R&R THE RIGHT WAY After taxing your body with heavy loads in Weeks 17–18, you move back into two weeks of IST. However, instead of performing 15 reps on your working sets in the first week, aim for 12. The following week, bump that number to 15. This "winding down" period takes you through Weeks 19 and 20 and allows for muscular refinement and recovery, bringing out detail in your new muscle and keeping your strength levels high. After Week 20, the fitness world is your oyster. You can either start again at Phase 1 (SET) and go through the entire programme again, or enter a maintenance phase by alternating between SET and MDT phases. Regardless of your approach after Week 20, one thing's for sure: You'll have new and abundant slabs of muscle to work with. M&F For more information on maximising muscle gain and athletic performance, visit the NASM online at www.nasm.org