Consolidating Your Muscle Gains: Advanced Program

After sticking with the intermediate’s program for the last 1-2 years, you have surely experienced noticeable muscle gains. However, lately your progress seems to slow down, or even halt. You keep training hard and your nutrition and rest are adequate, but you have hardly gained any muscle during the last months. Facing this situation denotes that you have to go one step further in your training and enter into the advanced level. This post provides the basic guidelines for designing an advanced program.

Surely you remember how easy was gaining mass during your first months in bodybuilding. Unfortunately, being an advanced bodybuilder, you have to work hard for gaining each additional pound of muscle. As we commented in previous posts, this occurs because your muscles evolve to work more efficiently, and for this reason, you require to increase intensity for further progress. As a consequence of this, the primary goal in an advanced program should be achieving constant muscle stimulation and maximum intensity. As you know, the key to constantly stimulate your muscles is introducing periodization in your training, switching regularly between heavy cycles (mainly compound exercises and low rep range) and light cycles (isolation exercises and high rep range). In addition, it is also mandatory to vary your workouts every 4-6 weeks by altering one or more factors (i.e. number of reps, sets, tempo, exercise selection, etc.). In this sense, it is important to avoid doing always the same exercises, or performing the same number of sets or reps, since the muscles adapt to this workload and then stop growing. For instance, you can alternate the 3-day split introduced in the intermediate’s program, with a 4-day or even a 5-day split.

Intensity can be achieved by staying focused, reducing the rest between sets and giving the maximum in all your sets and using the maximum weight that allows you to maintain strict form. In addition, you can also include in your workouts high-intensity techniques such as supersets, pre/post-exhaustion, descending sets, negative reps or forced reps (I’ll go in detail on each one in later posts). These techniques are great for increasing the intensity of your workouts and stimulate in this way muscle growth. However, they should be carefully used, since they are very demanding on the muscle and can contribute to overtraining, which is always threatening natural bodybuilders when training to the limit. For this reason, watch carefully for overtraining signs (I’ll also go deeper on this in the future), and use adequately high-intensity techniques.

With respect to nutrition and rest, you are probably on the right way, since the same principles provided with the intermediate’s program rule here. Stick eating several small meals throughout the day (every 2.5-3 hours) including enough protein (1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day), drinking plenty of water and sleeping at least 8 hours per night. Be also careful of regularly monitoring your metabolism in order to adequate your caloric intake if needed. You have to take into account that muscles are active tissues that continuously burn calories. For this reason, if you gain muscle, your metabolism will go up, thus you have to adjust your daily caloric intake upwards to meet the demand. Finally, this is probably the right moment for considering supplementation in your program. The basis should consist of a multivitamin/mineral stack and some protein supplement. Then you can experiment with other supplements such as creatine, glutamine, and BCAAs and see what works better for you.

These and other guidelines for developing your advanced program can be found in the article “Advanced Bodybuilding Program” by Matt Danielsson and also in the article “Progression of Training” included in the I.C.E. Training Program developed by Big Cat.

A Fat Loss Program for Muscle Definition

When referring to bodybuilding, most people have in mind muscle development. Of course, gaining muscle is extremely important, but most of the times losing fat is also required to achieve a balanced, muscular and defined body. Losing fat is only possible when combining proper nutrition, cardiovascular exercise and weight training. Find in this post the basic guidelines for developing your fat loss program.

Controlling your nutrition is mandatory for losing fat. You have to adjust your diet in order to consume fewer calories than needed, by creating a small deficit of at most 500 calories per day with respect to your daily maintenance caloric requirements. Don’t go beyond this since diets that severely restricts caloric intake promote loss of lean body weight as opposed to fat. When cutting down on calories, you should keep the protein intake up in order to avoid muscle breakdown (about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day). Control the amount of fat you eat, but don’t eliminate it from your diet. Focus preferably on essential fatty acids and avoid saturated fats and junk food at all. The main reduction on calories should come from carbohydrates. Stick with low GI carbohydrates, especially those rich in fiber, and limit high GI ones (except immediately after training). In addition, drink plenty of water (3 or 4 liters of water per day).

You should eat several small meals throughout the day (every 2.5-3 hours) instead of 3 big meals. This prevents blood sugar level fluctuations, helps control hunger, ensures constant nutrients flow to your muscles, increases metabolism, and avoids excess calories that could be stored as fat. Each meal should include a serving of protein and just enough carbohydrates to replenish glycogen stores in the liver and the muscles. In addition, make the meals smaller as the evening approaches in order to accommodate to the reduction in energy usage that occurs as the day goes on.

In order to increase the amount of fat you burn, you should incorporate to your program some aerobic exercise like cycling, swimming, jogging, rowing, etc. Perform 3-4 cardiovascular sessions per week, lasting 30-40 minutes. Avoid sessions in excess of 1 hour since anything past this promotes muscle breakdown. If you really want to do more cardio, split it up into several shorter sessions. Preferably perform your cardiovascular sessions first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. In this way, you ensure that your insulin level is low. Remember that eating causes an insulin response which inhibits fat burning.

Optimal fat burn is achieved in the 60-70% heart rate zone. Lower intensity (50-60%) burns more percentage of fat calories, but the total amount is not very high. Higher intensity (70-85%) burns more fat calories, but muscle protein wasted is also higher. Thus stay better in the 60-70% zone or use ‘interval training’, which consists of varying the training intensity during the exercise by moving between the different heart rate zones. This has demonstrated to be very effective for losing fat.

Incorporating weight training to a fat loss program is indicated in order to maintain muscle while burning fat. Building muscle is important for giving a muscular and hard look to the body once definition is reached. In addition, muscle is an active tissue that consumes energy. Thus the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. This does not apply to fat tissue, which does not consume energy at all. You can use your regular workout oriented to muscle growth, but being immersed in a low carbohydrates diet will decrease your performance in the gym. For this reason, probably this is a good chance to train with high reps (12 and above) and stimulate those forgotten slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are more involved in fat burning because they get their energy more from fatty acid oxidization. Training these muscle fibers also leads to development of more mitochondria, providing a greater ability to oxidize fat.

You can find further advice for designing your fat loss program in the article “How to Replace the Love Handles with a Rock-hard Washboard” by Matt Danielsson and in the “Losing Fat” section of Muscle 101.

Jump to the Next Training Level: Intermediate’s Program

As a result of the beginner’s program that you have been using during the last months, your body has adapted to training and stress and you have mastered the groove of the movements. In addition, you have surely gained some muscle mass and strength. However, you feel that lately the progress seems to be slowing down a little. Now your muscles work more efficiently, so they can handle the workload easily than they used to be. This means that they are not stimulated enough, and for this reason, they grow slower, or perhaps they even stop growing altogether. To overcome this situation, now it is the time to jump to the next level of your bodybuilding training: the intermediate level. You can find in this post the basic guidelines that you must follow for designing your intermediate’s program.

As you’ve learned to use your muscles more efficiently, you require higher intensity for further progress, and consequently you will need more time to recover. Obviously, you cannot increase the intensity and train all your body-parts in the same day. For this reason, you probably will need to split your workouts so that you can focus more on specific muscle groups and train with the proper intensity all your body-parts. The obvious answer is to split the body into 3-4 different days, and extend the rest to allow for full recovery. A split option in a 3 day split workout can be, for example, push movements on day A, pull movements on day B and legs on day C. Train 3 days a week in non-consecutive days using, for example, the following pattern: ARBRCRR and give each body-part at least a full week of rest before training it again. Use three or four exercises per body-part, combining compound and isolation exercises for maintaining proportion and symmetry.

At this level it’s time for introducing periodization in your training. Combine heavy cycles (for strength training and muscle building) with light cycles (for endurance training). During heavy cycles focus on compound exercises and stay in the low rep range for hitting more fast-twitch fibers. During light cycles increase the isolation work for hitting the muscle from different angles and stay in the high rep range for hitting more slow-twitch fibers. In any case, maintain always perfect form and feel the contraction. Periodization will help you to avoid stagnation. In this sense, remember also varying your workouts every 4-6 weeks by altering one or more factors (i.e. number of reps, sets, tempo, exercise selection, etc.).

Of course, nutrition and rest are also very important in an intermediate program. Follow the general guidelines provided with the beginner’s program. Eat several small meals throughout the day (every 2.5-3 hours) including enough protein (1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day). In addition, drink plenty of water and sleep at least 8 hours per night.

Finally, keep in mind that you will probably never see the gains you got when you were a beginner. Although this may be slightly discouraging, you should mentally adjust to slower progress. With determination and consistency gains will still come, but slower than before.

These and other guidelines for developing your intermediate’s program can be found in the articles “Intermediate Training: You're not a ‘Newbie’ Anymore” and “Intermediate’s Bodybuilding Program” by Matt Danielsson and also in the article “Progression of Training” included in the I.C.E. Training Program developed by Big Cat.

Designing a Beginner’s Program

This post is intended to provide advice to those just arrived to bodybuilding when they have to design their first weight training programs. Unlike is commonly believed, beginners need special training. It makes no sense to start with complicated programs used by people who have been training for years. Beginners must stick with simple programs with the basic exercises.

The main goal of beginner’s training, lasting approximately 3-4 months, must be adapting your body to training and stress. In this training stage, it is important that you spend the time in learning the groove of the movements, because at this stage you are building the mind-muscle connection, which, if wrong, can let you to injury in the future. Good news are that during this stage you will progress easily and your muscles will grow rapidly (perhaps the more rapidly that they ever will).

When designing your program, avoid typical beginner’s mistakes, such as focusing only on the muscles you like, e.g. chest and biceps. You have to give attention to all body-parts and focus on learning the basic exercises, such as deadlifts, squats or bench press. Start out light, use proper form, and practice until you've got the hang of each specific movement. Then, and only then, you should start adding on more weight.

Beginners can use a full body workout, training each muscle every workout. Train 3 days a week in non-consecutive days using, for example, the following pattern (W means workout and R means Rest): WRWRWRR. Beginners can also benefit from a 2 day split workout. Split options can be, for example, upper body on day A and lower body on day B or push movements on day A and pull movements on day B. Train 3 days a week in non-consecutive days using, for example, the following pattern: ARBRARR-BRARBRR. Use two, maximum three, exercises per body-part at three sets each. Pick a basic exercise for each muscle and build your workout around them. Stay initially in the 12-15 rep range without failure until you’re familiarized with training and the exercises.

Training is important, but don’t forget that adequate nutrition and rest is mandatory for achieving results. Eat several small meals throughout the day (every 2.5-3 hours) including enough protein (1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day). In addition, drink plenty of water and sleep at least 8 hours per night.

These and other guidelines for developing your beginner's program can be found in the article “Laying the Right Foundation” by Matt Danielsson and also in the article “Progression of Training” included in the I.C.E. Training Program developed by Big Cat.