Many articles have been written about the woes of overtraining. Lots of authors like to wax philosophical to those people without the heart to train like madmen for hours per day in pursuit of a larger and thicker body. It’s true that many bodybuilders can’t keep up with the demands in terms of diet and recovery that are needed to train using high volume. It’s also true that many lifters are just plain lazy, and are quite attracted to the prospect of only training 25 minutes, three times per week. Whatever the cause, high-intensity, low volume training has its fan base.
This article isn’t for those readers. Instead, we’re going to take a look at high-volume, high intensity training used by bodybuilders seeking to add muscle with a lot of times and hard work in the gym. We’ll use chest as an example for this training session.
Warm-Up
Spend about ten minutes on the treadmill at a very moderate pace, followed by five minutes of very light benching to get the chest ready for the work ahead. You should have a moderate pump and be breathing at an elevated rate.
Mass building phase
Begin your day with two heavy incline presses – bench and dumbbell. Then complete two flat pressing movements – bench and dumbbell. Complete 4 sets of each of these three exercises, keeping the repetitions in the 8 to 15 range. For many people, this would be a full workout on its own! Train with slow, methodical repetitions, and don’t worry about going past failure on any sets.
Isolation phase
You’ve done the work to build the chest up. Now it’s time to complete the work required to shape the chest. Select three movements of the isolation variety. Popular choices include cable crossovers, dumbbell flyes, and the wide variety of machine presses and pullovers in your gym. Complete 4 sets of each of these three exercises, keeping the repetitions in the 8 to 15 range.
Cool-down phase
Immediately following your workout, spend 5 minutes walking at a very slow pace on the treadmill. Stretch and massage your chest at this time as well. Doing so will help eliminate soreness later, and will move blood form the pumped chest back to the other parts of your body. Take a shower and then enjoy 40 grams of whey protein to aid in recovery.
Follow-up & Supplemental
There are some things you can do outside of the gym which will help your body recover – and grow – following a very tough high-volume chest training workout. For starters, you should stretch your chest immediately after your workout, and 6 to 8 times per day for the three days following your tough workout. This will break up lactic acid buildup and help to alleviate soreness faster. Eat a surplus of calories to allow for new muscle to grow. Drink your calories and protein grain in the form of whey protein several times per day. Be sure to enjoy 8 hours per sleep each night, and avoid stressors whenever possible. Good luck growing on high volume training!