Workout of the Week #15

Welcome to workout of the week number 15, a 6-day a week high frequency hypertrophy training program.

High frequency refers to every muscle group is trained more than once a week, and we’ll get into detail when we look at the training program.

So for now a hypertrophy training program, what is the training goal?

Simply build muscle mass.

Let’s have a look at the training variables, our training intensity ranges from 60 to 87.5% of the 1RM,  so the question stands out, that is quite a large range? Yes we are following a so-called undulating approach, and that means we have different intensity ranges.

We have 77.5 to 87.5%, and we have 65 to 75%, and we have 60 to 70%. The repetitions are 5 to 15. Also here quite a large range. Yes, we have 5 to 7, we have 8 to 12, and we have 10 to 15. The training exertion is near maximum, and the training effort is a repeated effort. It’s hypertrophy workout, so it’s a repeated effort.

Let’s have a look at the exercises. We use compound multi-joint exercises, but we also use isolation and single joint exercises, and we use bilateral and unilateral exercises. The exercise order goes from most complex to least complex, and if we look at more training variables, we have the training frequency of 6 days a week. It is a station training, but includes complexes, antagonistic complexes. And the training split is a muscle group split.

So how does that program look?

Let’s have a look inside. So here we are inside of our training program, if you download that PDF you can have a look, there’s an overview of the training program, then you see the table of content and then the weekly overview.

So here you can see what I was referring to with a high frequency, basically we actually have two different workouts. When it comes to how the workouts are organized, so we have chest back and shoulders as one, and then we have legs and arms, but this is repeated thrice. So we have chest, back and shoulder, in workout 1, 3 and 5, and then we have legs and arms workout 2, 4 and 6. So every muscle group is hit three times a week.

Let’s have a look at the first workout. And there you can see for the chest and the back we use antagonistic complexes, and we do a bench press followed by a bent over row, then we do a dumbbell incline bench press followed by pull-ups, and then the shoulder exercise we do standalone, we do the shoulder press and the upright row.

If you look, you can see here within the complex, the rest between the complex the exercises is 90 seconds, and at the end of the complex at 3 minutes. If we look at the intensities, the sets and the reps, we do 3 sets of 7 reps at 77.5%, which equates to an RPE of 9.

And if we look at our second workout, for the legs and the arms, we see we have the first three exercises for the legs, we have the front squat as a standalone exercise, then the Bulgarian split Squad as a standalone exercise, and then the RDL for the posterior chain, the hamstring.

But then for our arms, again we have antagonistic complexes. So we do the barbbell curl in combination with a French press, and then we do the dumbbell incline curl in combination with the dumbbell triceps overhead extension, and if we look at our set and rep structure, we do 3 sets of 7 reps at 77.5%, which equates to an RPE of 9. And you can see here for our squats, bulgarian split squats and the RDL, we have longer inter-serial rest periods, and for our complexes we have within one complex 1 minute at the end of the complex 3 minutes.

If we go to workout number 3, again chest back and shoulders, you can now see again we have our complexes for the chest and the back, and the shoulders are standalone exercises, but here you can see now the so-called undulating approach, so the intensity is lower than in the previous workout, but the volume is a bit higher. So now we do 65% of the 1 RM, 3 sets of 12 repetitions, the RPE is still a 9. So the exertion levels remains constant, the intensity goes down, the volume goes up. Same structure here, within the complex 90 seconds of rest, between the exercise at the end of the complex 3 minutes rest.

And the same structure we’ll see for workout number 4, again legs and arms. Here we have the back squat, as the first exercise, as a standalone exercise and then we go to antagonistic complexes, which is the single-legged leg press, and the single-legged RDL. For our arms we do barbbell scott curls in combination with the french press or the skull crusher. French press or skull crusher can be used interchangeably some people call it French Press some call it skull crusher. And then we do the dumbbell curls alternating, complexed with the dumbbell triceps overhead extension.

For the standalone exercise, we have five minutes inter-set rest and then within the complex 1 minute. And here you can see in the single-legged leg press, there is a mistake that should also be lesser rest period, I will adjust this. But then also, if we go to our set and rep structure, we do 3 sets of 12 reps at 65% of the 1 RM, which equates to an RPE of 9.

And if we go to our workout number 5, chest back and shoulders, we do complexes again we do dips followed by lat pull-downs, then we do dumbbell flies, followed by cable row, and then we do our dumbbell shoulder press single arm and the dumbbell single arm lateral raises. Here again we see now our undulating approach, so intensity is lower than in the first workout, but higher than in the third workout. That is the principle of undulating. We do 3 set of 10 repetitions at 70% of the 1 RM, and then again, we see our complexes here, and the rest between the complex is shorter than at the end of the complex.

And if we move to the last workout, so workout number six legs and arms, we see the leg press is a standalone exercise, then we do leg extensions and leg curls, then we do cable curls standing for the arms and the cable push down for the triceps. So cable curls for the biceps, cable push downs for the triceps, and then we do concentration curls for the biceps and the dumbbell single arm triceps kickbacks. And also here we see we see 3 sets of 10 at 70% of the 1 RM, which equates to an RPE of 9. So you can see exertion remains the same throughout the week, but intensities, reps and sets change.

And then you can have a look there is a glossary, you can see the descriptor for the RPE, if you’re not familiar with it. You can read about myself, and have a look at the testimonials, what other people say about me. And then we move back to our presentation.

So what are the next steps?

You download that program from my website, then you can join the membership, so this program is the first week of a 4-week program. So when you join the membership there you get the entire four-week program. Please like and subscribe, so you get notified, when the next program comes out. Basically there’s a weekly program, the programs come out weekly, so every week there’s a new program. And if you want to see the previous program, you can also see it here on the screen.