Workout of the Week #24

Welcome to workout of the week number 24, a 4-day push-pull athletic muscle building workout.

What is athletic muscle building?

If you have followed workout of the week number 10, I’ve also had an athletic muscle building workout, and there it was a full-body, but I was referring to an interview that you can see on my website with the head of strength and conditioning of the All Blacks Dr. Nic Gill and he refers to the concept of athletic muscle.

What is athletic muscle?

If we look at a simplified version of our muscle, you basically have contractile elements, that can contract and produce force, and you have non-contractile elements. And the athletic muscle refers to the so-called functional hypertrophy, the hypertrophy or the growth of the myofibrils, so the elements that can contract and produce force.

What is the training goal?

Number one we want to build athletic muscle, also known as functional hypertrophy or myofibrillar hypertrophy.

Let’s have a look at the training variables.

As opposed to most of the hypertrophy, for the athletic muscle building, the functional hypertrophy, the intensities are a bit higher so 80 to 85% of the 1 RM. We use 4 to 6 repetitions and the exertion is near maximum to maximum. The effort is a repeated effort. And if we have a look at the exercises we use variations of the Olympic lifts, we use squatting movements, hinging, pushing and pulling movements. The exercise order moves from most technically complex to least technically complex or from most muscle mass involved to least muscle mass involved.

And if we look at a few more training variables, we train 4 days a week, that’s what we discussed. The training is a station training, and the training split is a push-pull, but also we have an explosive focus and a strength focus. And we’ll look at into that when we go into the workout, but let’s think about it like this we have the push and the pull, and we have the explosive focus and the strength focus, so you will find once we go through the program, that we have an explosive push workout, we have an explosive pull, and we have a push strength focus and pull strength focus.

How does it look?

We’ll find out once we jump into our program right now.

So here we are inside of our program, you’ll see the program overview, and then you’ll see we do two consecutive days, we do the explosive push and the explosive pull, followed by a rest day, and two more consecutive days, where we do the strength focused push and the strength focused pull.

Let’s have a look how that looks.

So workout number one, the push with an explosive focus, therefore the first exercise is a push press, I’ve added from the blocks, because you do multiple repetitions, so preferably you push press it up, drop it to the blocks and then start from there again. If you don’t have blocks you can always drop it to the ground, but then you would have to clean it, power clean it to get it back onto your shoulders, so preferably since it’s more repetitions, we have blocks and we do it in a cluster, meaning you do one repetition 10 seconds of intra-serial rest and then you do the next repetition until the completion of the prescribed repetitions in this case 6, followed by a back squat band resisted, accommodating resistance, followed by a bench press with band resistance.

So you can already see we have the accommodating resistance, which allows for more acceleration throughout the entire range of movement, and the last one is the front foot elevated split squat also band resisted. So if you look at the setup here, the set reps and intensities stay constant, so in the first week it’s three set of 6 at 80% of the 1 RM which equates to an RPE of 9, remember the exertion was near maximum to maximum, so RPE of 9 or more.

If we go to our second workout, the explosive pull, we start with a power clean, also there we have our cluster set, so one repetition 10 seconds of intra-serial rest, and then the next repetition until the completion of the set of the prescribed repetitions. Next one is the deadlift band resisted followed by the bench row band resisted, and then the single-legged RDL band resisted. Also here we follow the same set and rep and intensity structure throughout the three sets. 3 sets of 6 at 80% of the ! RM.

If we have a look at workout number three, so again a push, but this time we have a bit more of a strength focus, therefore we do the front squat, a lower body push, the bench press an upper body horizontal push, then we do the bulgarian split squat, a lower body unilateral push, and then we do the shoulder press a vertical upper body push. Here the set and rep structure now changes slightly to the explosive days, and the intensities are a bit higher 85% of the 1 RM for 4 repetitions, 3 sets and in the last workout, the strength focused pull workout, we do a deadlift, a pullup, a single-legged hip thrust, and dumbbell single arm bend over row. And also here you see 3 sets of 4 at 85% of the 1 RM.

If you ask yourself why 3 sets of 6 at 80% of the 1 RM on one day, and then 3 sets of 4 at 85% of the 1 RM on the other day, then it works pretty much on the explosive days intensity goes up repetitions go down on the strength days we work in reverse order, so repetitions go up over the weeks and intensities go slightly down, and if you download this workout, you can see the glossary explaining the terms, you can read about myself, you can read what other people have to say about me, and last but certainly not least there is a chance to enroll for the membership. Inside the membership you get the 4 week program, this one was just the first week of this program, the full program is periodized over four weeks.

Anyway let’s finish that off and go back okay so what are the next steps number one you download that workout, it’s free you just have to give your email and then you get it sent to your inbox. Number two you join the membership, the membership now we are at program number 24, so you already get 23 other training programs focused on strength, power, strength endurance, power endurance anything you can possibly wish for, and you like this video in case you liked it and you subscribed so you get notified when the next workout comes out basically next week and you can watch the previous workout here I see you next week with our next workout.