Workout of the Week #12

Welcome to workout of the week number 12, so again we have something for the Bros here, which is a five day a week modified Push Pull muscle group prioritisation program.

Very soon I need a bit more space to put the longer and longer names onto that page. Anyway, so what’s the training goal?

It’s to maximise muscle growth, also known as muscular hypertrophy, and we prioritise one or two muscle groups.

What does that mean?

Well at times, if people are interested in developing muscle mass, then some muscle groups respond better than others and if you have a muscle group or two muscle groups that are lagging behind, then you can use this training program to prioritise these muscle groups.

Zou can also prioritise muscle groups that are very important, which we will have a look at the end of this training program. But for now, let’s have a look at the training variables.

So the training intensity is 65 to 87.5% of the 1 RM, we are using the full spectrum of hypertrophy, so we’re working on the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, as well as the myofibrillar hypertrophy. I’ve alluded to that in workout of the week number 10, the athletic muscle building program workout, where I explained the difference between sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and myofibrillar hypertrophy.

The repetition range, 4 to 12 repetitions, the training exertion is near maximum to maximum, the training effort is a repeated effort.

Let’s have a look at the exercises.

Well it’s a bro-split, also known as a muscle group split, and we train the muscle groups as they are, so we train chest, we train back, we train arms, we train shoulders, and we train legs.

The exercises are compound movements and isolation movements, and the exercise order, we start with heavy compound movements and then progress throughout the session to lighter isolation movements.

Some more training variables. It’s five days a week, it’s a station training, the training organisation is a station training, and the training split is a muscle group split or a bro split.

So how does that look? This is our program, and let’s jump into it.

So here we are inside the pr program and when you download that PDF, you get an overview of the program, you also get an idea how to structure the days, so we do four consecutive workouts then we rest one day and on the fifth workout, the sixth day of the week, you do the muscle prioritisation.

So let’s have a look at workout number one, and again you see modified Push-Pull-Legs, so this is our pushing day, because the chest is mainly a pushing muscle, the triceps as well. We start with the most complex exercise in this case we start with an incline bench press, then we move to a dumbbell bench press, then we do dips.

Why do we do dips?

Because dips is a very nice exercise to bridge between the chest and the triceps, because it involves the pectoralis major, the chest muscle, as well as the triceps. Especially if the you keep the elbows close to you, you have a lot of triceps activation and then we go into our triceps work, which is the French Press or the skull crusher, followed by the dumbbell single arm overhead extension.

So what what we have here is and that is a bit important to understand if you look at the reps, sets, and intensities, you can see what I mean. The most heavy complex work first and then lighter isolation work later. So you see 87.5f% of the maximum for four repetitions, then in the second exercise we increase repetitions so 6 repetitions at 80% of the 1 RM, and then in the third exercise we do 8 repetitions at 75%, and then for our triceps also we do 6 repetitions at 80% for the first exercise, the Scull Crusher, and 8 repetitions at 75% for the second exercise, which is the dumbbell single arm overhead extension.

And then you see here the tempo for each exercise, you see the inter serial rest, and you see the exercises listed.

Let’s move to workout number two, which is the back and biceps. So this is our so-called pulling movements, the back is mainly pulling and the biceps also is mainly a pulling muscle and there we see the same structure. The most complex exercise first, which is the deadlift 4 repetitions at 87.5%, the second exercise we do a bent-over row, then we do 6 repetitions at 80% 1 RM, and then the last exercise the pull-ups we do 8 repetitions at 75% 1 RM.

We had these discussions before basically was not a discussions I explained it the pullup so 75% that means you take your system mass, which is your pullup weight added weight plus your body weight and therefore you take make 75%. Most people some people cannot do it, they are not strong enough, but the people I work with, they are strong enough. So we work also with the pull-ups at intensities of the 1 RM. So let’s make it simple for ourself, you have someone weighing 75 kilos and that person can do one pullup with 25 kilos extra. Or if it’s predicted from multiple repetitions let’s take the 1 RM example you get to 100, so the system mass is 100, and then in this case, luckily I chose the right example, in this case the athlete would do 75% of the system mass for 8 repetitions. In this case body weight, and then we move to our biceps exercise, we do the barbell preacher curls or Scott curls, named by the first Mr Olympia Larry Scott, double Mr Olympia I think he won back to back. Back in the days when there was only one to two competitors. And then we have our dumbbell curls, we do them alternating.

So let’s have a look at workout number 3, the shoulders. Here it’s a bit different, the shoulder girdle is a bit more complex, and you could argue if you want to take a part of the shoulder girdle like the trapezius, into the back workout.

Here I’ve just done everything, which is the shoulder girdle as a shoulder workout, meaning starting with the pressing movement, the dumbbell shoulder press, followed by the upright row, followed by the lateral raises, and isolation exercise for the lateral delts, the medial head, followed by the bend over raises for the rear delts, posterior delts.

And let’s go to workout number 4, the legs and then also here you see most complex exercise the back squat, followed by a single-legged  leg press, followed by leg extensions, and then for our hammies the most complex exercise is the Romanian deadlift, followed by the leg curls. And again you see the structure similar to the previous workouts.

So that brings us us to the prioritisation of muscle groups, workout number five.

Surprise, surprise, you just take one of the previous workouts and repeat it. Now you’re saying “Okay Christian, you made it very easy for yourself.” Well, that is true, but so I brought an example for you and as I said it’s based on, excuse me, I brought an example for you and that is based on the most important muscle groups, which is basically the chest and the guns, the guns being the arms, for those who are not familiar with that slang. And then we can just take for example from the previous workout the chest, meaning incline bench press, dumbbell bench press, dips and then move into our triceps, so we have the French press or skull crusher, then we have the dumbbell single-arm overhead extension, and then we do our scott curls and our dumbbell curls.

So we can also switch a little bit the arrangement of a session. So we did chest and triceps and now we do chest triceps biceps. So I I really leave that up to you. You could also opt for chest and back, you can also do shoulders and arms, or you could also do legs that’s up to you.

So another example, if we stick to our chest and guns, then here I’ve just given you an example how we can do this. So we do our chest normally like incline bench press, dumbbell bench press, and dips,  and then for the arms, we do supersets, or complexes. So we do antagonistic supersets, meaning you do a biceps exercise followed by a triceps exercise, and then that would look as follows so you would start start with the barbell Scott curls, then followed by the French press and then you do the dumbbell curls alternating and the dumbbell single arm overhead extension. And this is how you can arrange the fifth day, the prioritisation day.

Let’s move back to our training program. So we finished the overview of the program. Now what are the next steps?

Number one, you download the program and follow it. Number two you join the membership and get the four-week customizable program. This is only the first week you get the four-week program which you can customise, you can also fill in your own repetitions, you can fill in the weight, you can fill in your own RPE, whatever you’d like to fill in.

And if you like the video that would be awesome if you subscribe you’re not going to miss this the next workout.

Every week, there will be a new workout, so with this I invite you to watch the previous workout or you can also go and watch the entire playlist, and here you have the opportunity to subscribe I see you next week with our next program.