Dual-factor Bodybuilding routine for Intermediate and Advanced lifters

[dnoyez]

This routine was created by my freind (Weighted chinup)

This is a bodybuilding routine for intermediate and advanced lifters whose primary goals are aesthetics and hypertrophy.

Routine is 6 days a week with 1 rest day.

About this program:

(1) This program is not a traditional bodypart split. We are structuring our workouts around movements. You will look forward to each of your sessions because they will likely all involve a muscle or at least movement you enjoy training. This will play a huge role in your success.

(2) Frequency is high. Almost every muscle is being worked every day and all your lifts are going to be hit 3x a week. You will make dramatic improvements in your main lifts as well as see fantastic size gains and growth from the increased frequency (muscle protein synthesis will stay high throughout the week).

(3) This routine is dual factor. Most bodybuilding routines are absurdly simple to the point where you are training and recovering, training and recovering, etc. This is not viable for intermediate and advanced lifters. We incorporate another variable, fatigue (dual factor approach) so you can make optimal progress.

(4) This routine will make use of scheduled deloads as another measure to manage fatigue from the workload.

(5) Daily undulating periodization is used for this program as a periodization technique. You will be changing intensity and volume requirements for each workout every day a session is repeated during the week. The changes will be wave like. This is ideal for intermediate and advanced lifters since progress is not always made in a linear fashion past a certain point.

(6) Daily and weekly volume requirements for each lift was designed using prilepins chart.

Recommended Exercise Selection:
Front Squat, Romanian Deadlift, Weighted Chinup, Weighted Dips, Incline Barbell Bench, Weighted Pullup

Accessory and isolation movements:
rear delt fly or reverse flies, prone y-raises (just use a very tiny amount of weight for these), tricep pressdown, dumbbell lateral raise, seated row, leg ext, leg curl, bicep curls, scap push ups

No failure.

This routine as mentioned earlier is intended primarily for hypertrophy but I always intend to strike a good balance between hypertrophy and performance and I feel this lift selection addresses both amicably with more emphasis towards aesthetics.

Routine is 6 days a week with 1 rest day in a week. You can have a rest day at the end of the week on Sunday or you can take your rest during the week whenever you feel like it if you wish.

Day 1:
Front Squat @ 80% 1RM 3x8
Weighted Dips @ 80% 1RM 3x8
Weighted Chinup @ 80% 1RM 3x8

Leg extensions 3x10, Tricep pressdown 3x15, Lying Cable Curl 3x10, Reverse flies 3x15

Day 2:
Incline Barbell Bench @ 80% 1RM 3x8
Weighted Pullups @ 80% 1RM 3x8
Romanian Deadlift @ 80% 1RM 3x8

Leg curl 3x10, Seated Row 3x6, Dumbbell Lateral Raise 3x25, Prone y-raises

Day 3:
Front Squat @ 85% 1RM 3x5
Weighted Dips @ 85% 1RM 3x5
Weighted Chinup @ 85% 1RM 3x5

Leg extensions 3x10, Tricep pressdown 3x15, Lying Cable Curl 3x10, Reverse flies 3x15

Day 4:
Incline Barbell Bench @ 85% 1RM 3x5
Weighted Pullups @ 85% 1RM 3x5
Romanian Deadlift @ 85% 1RM 3x5

Leg curl 3x10, Seated Row 3x6, Dumbbell Lateral Raise 3x25, Prone y-raises

Day 5:
Front Squat @ 75% 1RM 3x10
Weighted Dips @ 75% 1RM 3x10
Weighted Chinup @ 75% 1RM 3x10

Leg extensions 3x10, Tricep pressdown 3x15, Lying Cable Curl 3x10, Reverse flies 3x15

Day 6:
Incline Barbell Bench @ 75% 1RM 3x10
Weighted Pullups @ 75% 1RM 3x10
Romanian Deadlift @ 75% 1RM 3x10

Leg curl 3x10, Seated Row 3x6, Dumbbell Lateral Raise 3x25, Prone y-raises

Progression:

Attempt to add either weight or an additional rep(s) every week for each movement at each intensity.

Deloading:

Every 3-4 weeks

either take a week off from the gym

or alternatively

go to the gym but only perform the first set for each of your lifts. Don't attempt to increase poundage's or volume.

Time off is far more effective at dissipating fatigue but I only include the second option because many lifters refuse to take any time off from the gym.

You WILL need a deload at some point.To put it into perspective, in a whole week you are doing about 70 total reps for EACH of your main movements with intensity undulating around 75-85%, with each movement being trained 3x in a single week.

Don't let this put you off, this routine is periodized and designed to be sustainable, but one of the methods used is the scheduled deload.

Thanks for reading.
WC

 

[dnoyez]

Miscellaneous: Intensity, Workout Structure, and Auto-Regulation Techniques

In order to get the most out of any program, you must enjoy what you are doing. This post will attempt to address a few optional concepts a lifter can utilize in order to make each workout more enjoyable and productive for them and even more suitable to their preferences.

That being said, I always advocate following the authors instructions for any routine and would not recommend making changes until you have a good understanding of the routine and have been running it for at least several months or even longer.

Intensity:

I stated in the OP that this is a hypertrophy routine foremost. The intensities we are undulating between are 75%,80%,and 85%. Basically, between a 5-10RM. My rationale for choosing this intensity range for this routine was because it is simply the most time efficient intensity for the purposes of hypertrophy.

Zatsiorsky:
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That being said, higher intensities can be just as effective for hypertrophy, it just might not be as TIME EFFICIENT because although rate of protein degradation is high, the number of repetitions performed is low, so total degraded protein (hypertrophy) could be low if not enough work is performed.

This can be solved by simply doing more reps at the higher intensity, but this is more time consuming.

If you want more emphasis towards performance you can choose to use intensities such as 80%,85%,and 90-95% and undulate between these. See my training log for the volume targets I used for higher intensities (80-90%).

Workout Structure:

You can structure the lifts performed for each of the 2 workouts that are repeated differently if you prefer, however, you must maintain 2 variables when it comes to workout structure:

(1) each lift should be trained 3x a week
(2) every muscle or almost every muscle should get hit every day you're in the gym

You also need to make sure the workouts are sustainable. Trying to do something like Incline and Front Squat and Weighted Pullups on the same day is very challenging, but doing something like front squat and dips and chinups on the same day is a lot more viable and sustainable.

Be smart with this and reasonable as well, this routine is hard enough.

My current recommendation based on the lift selection I suggested is to use the exact same structure I outlined for the workouts. IME it is the most sustainable.

Auto-Regulation Techniques:

This can be a thread on it's own but I want to make mention of a few fun and simple to incorporate auto-regulation techniques a lifter can implement on this routine and possibly see benefits from.

These are very optional.

(1) Regulate accessory work based on fatigue and time. If you are really fatigued, feeling bad, tired, didn't get enough food, low on time, have to go work, etc then you can just perform the main 3 lifts for each workout and go home, you can skip the accessory work and isolation.

If you frequently are low on time when you're training you can incorporate this. However, at the minimum you should at least make sure each workouts accessory movements get performed at least 2x a week (this means you can have 2 days a week where you don't perform accessory movements). I wouldn't go any lower and ideally I would recommend doing accessory work as indicated in the OP (everyday).

(2) Use total tonnage requirements for each lift instead of aiming for a specific number of reps per set.

Example:

Instead of aiming for Front Squat 3x5 @ 85%, do Front Squat @ 85% for 15 total reps. The amount of total tonnage is the exact same, however you are not focused on getting a certain number of reps in each set.

Simply do as many sets as you need to achieve your total volume goal. It might look something like 5,4,3,3. The same amount of work is performed, you are just taking as many sets as you need to achieve it instead of requiring you to get a certain number of reps per set.

You can reduce fatigue by exploding a volume goal across more sets too.

This is a fantastic technique and I am seriously considering reverting to this as my standard way of handling volume. I have had fantastic success with this in the past.

(3) RPE. Look it up.

Thanks for reading.
WC