4 Week, High Frequency, Full Body, Muscle-Building Program

It’s the right time we stop with the millions of “bro splits” on the Internet and add slabs of muscle to your frame by training each muscle group 4 times a week.

Training is (almost) the same as any other skill. The more you do it, the better you get at it. In this case, you become bigger as a result. And the more frequently you can train each muscle or muscle group (and recover from the training) , the faster it will respond to training stimulus.

So, if you’ve been training just one or two muscle groups per workout session, with a total of only one workout session for that specific muscle group per week, we’re sorry to say but that’s simply not enough for optimal growth. Get ready to switch to a full-body, high-frequency training routine which will bring about the gains, unlike anything you’ve ever tried before.

Let’s talk about the cons of the high-volume bro splits. They will exhaust your trained muscles too much and too fast. For example, if your chest workout day consists of six different exercises for the pecs, they will need a lot more time to recover before they can be trained again. Sure, it’s good to target a muscle from all possible angles and increase its work capacity, however recovering for a week until the next workout, eliminates the possibility of the muscle being exposed to the same training stimulus again sooner, which is a wasted opportunity for more growth. And we know that protein synthesis stays elevated for roughly about 30 hours after resistance training.

To be able to train a muscle more often, you will have to decrease the work or the volume during a single workout session, but that shouldn’t scare you. Instead of training your pecs with 12 sets in one session, you can do those 12 sets spread throughout the whole week, with each session building upon the gains you made in the previous one. However, decreasing the amount of training volume isn’t enough to recover fully. You will also have to choose your exercises carefully.

The reason for this is that even though muscle generally responds well to being trained often, your joints can have quite a difficult time with it. For example, performing heavy bench presses one day and then doing overhead presses and dips the next day can wreak havoc on your shoulder joints and increase the chances of injury.

To train often and safely, you need to choose primarily joint-friendly movements whilst keeping recovery as a priority. That’s why you’ll notice the presence of various chest-supported rowing exercises and body-weight movements in our training program.

Training your whole body in one training session will bring about balanced muscle gains and target your muscles at a higher frequency, namely four times in just one week. Do the math: if you were training your shoulders once a week, that’s a total of 52 shoulder workouts in a year. If you start training them for times a week, you get a total of 208 workouts a year. What do you think your shoulders will look like after that increase? You guessed it, they’ll be considerably bigger.

THE 4 TO 6 WEEK HIGH FREQUENCY (HF) PROGRAM

As we already mentioned, you will train four days a says, but since there are only 3 different workout sessions: A, B, and C, you will end each training cycle with the one you started with. So, week 1 will look like this: On Monday you’ll do Workout A, Tuesday will be Workout B, you will rest on Wednesday, Thursday will be Workout C, you will rest again on Friday, Saturday will be Workout A again. Sunday is a rest day.

Next week you will start with Workout B and you’ll keep rotating the sessions as before.

Each workout session is comprised of alternating sets, which means you’ll do one set of the first exercise in the pair, rest and then do a set of the second exercise, rest again and repeat the same process until all the sets for the specified pair are complete.

SETS AND REPS SCHEME:

● For week 1 and week 2, begin every set of each exercise with a 5-second static hold. This means you’ll be in the most contracted position of the movement’s range of motion. For example, the bottom position of a squat or the top position of row and a pull-up. From this position, do 5 full range of motion repetitions. Then, rest 10 seconds and do another 4-second static hold, again followed by 4 full ROM reps. Rest 10 seconds again, do a 3-second hold, then 3 full ROM reps. All of this constitutes one full set.

● For weeks 3 and 4, perform a 6-second static hold and 6 repetitions until you get to a 4-second hold and 4 repetitions.

● For week 5 and 6, perform a 7-second hold and 7 repetitions, until you get to a 5-second hold and 5 repetitions.

ARMS AND CALVES SPECIALIZATION

If you want to pay special attention to your arms and calves for some extra muscle growth during the 6-week program duration, add this circuit at the end of two workouts in the work of your choosing. You can either do it at the end of Monday’s workout or Thursday’s for example. Do one set of each exercise in sequence and repeat for a total of three rounds. Rest one minute between exercises.

As per the previous instructions, follow the same repetition scheme, by performing static holds and then full reps. Here are the exercises you’ll be doing:

● CHEST-SUPPORTED INCLINE BICEPS CURL

Set a bench at a 70-degree angle and lie on it chest down whilst holding a dumbbell in each hand, with your palms facing each other. Curl the dumbbells up and while doing that twist the wrists so that at the top they face up.

● TRICEPS PUSHDOWNS

Do these with a rope handle attachment. Do a static hold in the extended position.

● SINGLE-LEG STANDING CALF RAISES

Stand on one foot on a block and do calf raises. Hold the top position where the heel is the highest in the air. Do all your reps on one leg and then repeat the same process with the other leg with no rest.

MONDAY: WORKOUT A

Exercise 1 – Dumbbell Row You’ll need: Dumbbells

3 sets