Workout of the Week #10

Welcome workout of the week number 10, so we made it to 10 already, and this time we talk about a 3-day a week athletic muscle building workout.

So you might ask yourself, athletic muscle? What does that mean?

There is an interview on my website with Dr Nic Gill, he’s the head of strength and conditioning of the All Blacks and he outlines that principle of athletic muscle. Essentially, if we look at our muscle that is very very simplified, we have contractile elements and non-contractile elements contractile elements are the elements that can contract, so that produces force and non-contractile elements are basically elements that cannot contract.

And therefore we also have in very simple words the so-called myofibrilla hypertrophy where we build the muscle mass through an increase of myofibrils, as opposed to the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, the so-called nonfunctional hypertrophy, where the muscle gets more volume but doesn’t necessarily increase its’ force producing capabilities.

So, a long story made short, we are working on athletic muscle, the so-called functional hypertrophy or myofibrilla hypertrophy.

The training variables, we work from 75% of the 1 RM to 87.5% of the 1 RM, from 4 to 8 repetitions,  the training exertion is near-maximum to maximum, and the effort is a repeated effort.

If we look at the exercises, it’s fairly simple and straightforward. Variations of the Olympic lifts, squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, lunging and single leg squatting. We order the exercise in a way, that we start with the most complex and then progress throughout the session to the least complex.

More training variables.

The training frequency, as I outlined, 3-days a week, it’s a so-called station training and the training split is full body split. A few more things to mention, here you can see, that once we are inside the program, we are using a so-called undulating approach, meaning the intensities and the reps are changing from exercise through exercise within a week, and you can see this in the PDF that we are going to look at in a minute. But if you download the Excel file from the membership, you can see that even more clearly, so how does that muscle building workout look?

Let’s have a look inside.

Here we are inside our program, the 3-day full body athletic muscle building workout, you can see a little bit of an overview of the strength training workout here, the table of contents the muscle building workout structure throughout the week, and then if we look at our first strength workout you can see we start with an exercise that is a standalone exercise, and after that we have complexes you can see that through the 2A and 2B and 3A and 3B.

What’s also important here, for the power clean now we are using something called cluster sets. A cluster set, is a set where the repetition or the string of repetitions is interspersed by a short rest period. So in this case we do one repetition, we rest for 10 seconds, we do the second repetition, we rest for 10 seconds, and we do the third repetition. So between each repetition there is a brief rest period of 10 seconds, so don’t walk away from the platform or sit down you have to stand on the platform breathe a bit and then go into the next repetition.

So we can see here, we have 4 repetitions, I just said 3, we have 4 repetitions at 87.5% and after each rep we do 10 seconds of rest until the completion of 4 repetitions. The next one is a back squat complexed with bench row, so we do a bilateral squat and an upper body pull horizontally, and then we do a Bulgarian Split Squat in complex with a Bench Press, and then we do something for the posterior chain the Romanian deadlift at the end.

And then here you can see for example, we have the tempo specified for each exercise and we also have the rest period, so what’s important to understand, here we are at 2A so that means you do your squat, you get 2 minutes of rest, you then go and do your bench row and at the end of the bench row you get 4 minutes of rest. So within the complex 2 minutes, at the end of the complex 4 minutes.

Let’s have a look at athletic muscle building workout number 2, here we have complexes 1A and 1B,  2A and 2B, we start with a push press, also the cluster sets similar to what we’ve seen in the previous strength workout, and the complex is a push press with a pull-up, so we’re doing a vertical push movement and then we’re doing a vertical pull movement, so it’s antagonistic movements.

Then we do a front squat and a dumbbell incline press, so when you look at the strength workout, you see we have four exercises, here in the first session we have 6 exercises, and it follows the heavy – light – medium principle. And since it’s an advanced strength training program this heavy – light – medium is not done through intensity or exertion, it’s done through the volume load.

The exertion remains pretty much the same throughout all sessions, but the volume load is less. Volume load means the total number of repetitions in a given workout multiplied with the total load lifted. And then you’ll see that in muscle building session number 1, the volume load is highest, in strength session number 2 lowest and in session number 3, it’s between session 1 and session 2.

Let’s have a look at muscle building workout number 3, we do a clean pull and then we do a combination or complex of box squat and dumbbell row. Then the single-legged leg press complexed with a barbell shoulder press. And then we do something for the posterior chain or that’s also complex here then we do the hip thrust. We have first exercise is a standalone then we have 2A and 2B and then we have a complex of 3 exercises, which is the single-legged leg press, the barbell shoulder press and the hip thrust.

And you can see here in this strength session 3, we have the highest number of repetitions and the lowest number of intensity within the week, but the exertion is pretty much the same as an RPE of 9.

So let’s move back to our overview.

We’re back, now what are the next steps?

You can download this muscle building workout for yourself, then you can join the membership, and  inside the membership you get the full strength training program. The full strength training program is a 4-week strength program, where here you only get the first week.

And then you like, and subscribe. You like the video, you subscribe to the channel if you wish then you get notified if a new workout is released.

Ao you can check here the previous strength workout, and you can subscribe and I see you next week with the next training program, which is a 4-day strength and power development program.