Stepping Stones - Part 2

You have now hopefully completed your first 6-12 months of training. You are feeling on top of the world, feeling stronger, leaner and ready to progress further. But, your gains have slowed down considerably; your strength seems to have dipped completely, why? you may ask, when I'm putting all this effort and more, in!!

Well, this again is a about adaptation, the body adapts very quickly to new stresses put upon it. You have to train harder for the same gains, this, is where most new starts to training give up. How do we keep the gains going? This now is where training starts to get more interesting, it is how to make sure the body is put under new stresses for more growth and thus, better results..

By now, your nutrition should be a whole lot better, correct ratio of carbohydrates, proteins and fats to help the body train, rest and grow. Nutrition is in my eyes 80% of how you will look!! Yes, 80%!! It's not a typing error, if your nutrition isn't up to scratch, ensure it is, by contacting a professional person that will help you. Without a good solid diet in place things won't get a whole lot better no matter what type of training you do, period!!

You have now only trained the whole body, good solid programmes, now is the time to progress to split routines!!

Split routines are designed to fatigue a body-part to exhaustion, to break down as many muscle fibres as possible so they grow back stronger for the next training session. This means doing multiple sets on one body part, the bigger the muscle the more sets in can endure. This is generally done once a week, but can be repeated depending how experienced you are to training, for this article I would say to train a particular body part every 7 days to start with. Remember, this is not set in stone, but, even after all my 30+ years in training is still how I train to this present day.

So, I have given you the basics of what split routines are, here is how a basic split routine would look like.

Monday

Chest/bicep
Incline flyes - 4 sets 10 reps
Incline bench press - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps
Cable crossover - 4 sets 15 reps

Bicep
E/z curls - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps
Hammer curls - 4 sets 10 reps

Tuesday

Quadriceps/calves
Leg extensions - 4 sets 12 reps
Squats - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps
Hack squat - 4 sets 10 reps

Calves
Standing calve raise - 4 sets 15 reps
Seated calve raise - 4 sets 15 reps

Wednesday - rest day from weights

Thursday

Back/triceps
Back
Lat pull downs to front - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps
Barbell bent over rows - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps
Long pulley seated rows - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps
Dumbbell pullovers - 3 sets 15 reps

Triceps
Pushdowns - 4 sets 12 reps
French press - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps

Friday-shoulders/hamstrings

Shoulders
Seated lateral raise - 4 sets 12 reps
Front barbell press - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps
Front barbell raise - 3 sets 12 reps
Bent over dumbell raise 3x12 reps

Hamstrings
Seated leg curl - 4 sets 15 reps
Lying leg curls - 4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 reps

Abs can be worked at the end of each session if desired. Never train abdominals at the start of a weight training session as they are stabilizing muscles and if fatigued at the start it will detract from your session.

So there you have a four day split session to be followed for 8 weeks then again to be upgraded.

So as you can see bigger bodyparts get more sets I.e. Chest 12sets, bicep 8. What you have to remember is bicep will also be also be worked on back days and tricep on chest days so no need to overload them with big workloads at this stage of your training life!!

Also , this type of split routine is a pre-exhaust, which means an isolation exercise is done before a compound movement so flyes(isolation) before bench press (compound) this allows blood to enter the muscle and allow more nutrients in before your heavy compound movement. I like to give clients fairly new to split routines these, as it tends to help them in the way of injuries, attempting to heavy a weight on their compounds when the muscles are still cold.

To clear up sets and reps, 4 sets of 12 means doing 4 sets of 12 repititions with the same weight, try to increase the weight when possible.

4 sets 12, 10, 8, 6 means do 1 set 12 reps, put on more weight, another set of 10 reps, put on more weight, another set of 8 reps, more weight, then finish with 6 reps. This is called hypertrophy training, one of the best ways to increase muscle growth.

As with any form of training please ensure you warm up well, before your working sets do 2-3 warm up sets then proceed with your working sets as per the plan.

There are many ways to skin a cat as they say, for me ,this is the best way for people with around 6-12 months training to proceed. I could go on for-ever over the pros and cons off different routines and formats but that's for a different article further down the line.

Look out for article stepping stones 3, when I will go into a bit more depth about split routines, drop sets, bulk sets, negatives etc and try in laymans terms to explain what they are and when they can be used in your next routine, until then keep training hard, eating well and resting when you can, most of all be consistent with all of this and the Physique you desire will be one step closer.