The Experiment Before The Experiment

by: Pm - August 26th, 2007

Even though I have one more M&F “Roadmap to Bigger Arms” workout left to complete, I went through a dry run for my next training phase during yesterday’s workout. The M&F workout has worked great. In fact, I highly recommend that you give it a try if your arm training (or growth) has become stale. But, like any exercise routine, you can’t expect it to keep working forever. The body is very adaptive, so if you don’t mix it up every several weeks your results will start to level off – and eventually drop off.

For those of you who haven’t been following along, to give my body a little added rest (in the form of an extra rest day) and to help keep my muscles guessing, I am planning to experiment with an intense 4x/week, full-body program for the next 6-8 weeks.

My plan is:

• To include an exercise for every body part in every workout

• To emphasize 1 major body part per workout with an extra exercise or two

• To train 2 days on and 2-3 days off, such that I never work out more than two consecutive days in a row

• Adjust my diet to include more dairy/egg protein and more supplemental EAAs, and glutamine. Also, will continue taking my pre-workout Speed Stack with beta-Alanine, my CGT-10 post-workout, and ZMA before bed as well as add a daily multivitamin to enhance recovery.

Although yesterday’s routine didn’t go quite as planned (I had to shift some exercises around because the gym was too crowded to wait), it did give me some indication about what I’m in for. For starters, I’ve been reminded to check my ego at the door. When you’re training that hard for that long, it’s inevitable that some of your poundages are going to drop as you progress throughout the workout. (Example: After doing squats and seated cable rows, I was only able to use about 75-80% as much weight as I normally use to bench. Is that a bad thing? Probably not. Sure it doesn’t look as cool using 3 plates per side as 4+, but I think it actually burned my chest up more. Why? Because my body’s not accustomed to doing things this way… and that’s one of the major objectives of this experiment.

The next thing that I learned is the workout takes a little longer than I expected. 30 seconds rest between sets and exercises is just not enough for me (at least not yet). When you’re including multiple multi-joint exercises for different together in the same workout you’re body needs extra time to catch-up, Again, not necessarily a bad thing (especially since I’m gaining an extra day off); just something to keep in mind if you’re planning on following along at home.

Another thing I noticed is that you don’t quite get the same “pump” in all muscle groups with a full body routine (at least not yesterday’s routine) that you get with more isolated body part training. This may have something to do with the fact the muscles seem to get fatigued faster with this type of regimen? In any case, despite the beneficial psychological benefits of the pump, there are no proven physiological benefits to having it (i.e., your muscles grow with, or without, the pump). It’s also possible that yesterday’s workout was just a fluke, so we’ll see how things go when I hit the gym again for part #2 today.

Here’s the make-shift routine that I experimented with yesterday. It’s not ideal, but, as I mentioned earlier, some on-the-fly adjustments needed to be made to accommodate the crowded Saturday morning gym.

• Squats - 2 warm-up sets, 4 working sets (10, 10, 8, 6 reps)
• Seated Cable Row – 1 warm-up set, 3 working sets (12, 10, 8 reps)
• BB Bench Press – 2 warm-up sets, 3 working sets (10, 10, 6 reps)
• Rear Delt Raises – 3 sets (12, 12, 10 reps)
• Hack Squats – 3 sets (10, 10, 8 reps)
• Hammer Strength Shrugs – 3 sets (10 reps each)
• BB Biceps Curls – 2 sets (10, 8 reps)
• Triceps Cable Pushdown – 2 sets (10, 9 reps)
• Standing Calf Raises – 3 sets (15, 15, 12 reps)
• Crunches – 3 sets (25, 20, 20 reps)

When I go back to the gym this morning, I plan to execute the following workout:

• Deadlifts - 2 warm-up sets, 3 working sets (8-10 reps each)
• DB Incline Chest Press – 1 warm-up set, 3 working sets (10 reps each)
• Hamstring Curls – 2 warm-up sets, 3 working sets (8-10 reps each)
• Seated DB Shoulder Press – 3 sets (10-12 reps each)
• Lat pull-downs – 3 sets (10-12 reps each)
• Incline DB Curls – 2 sets (8-10 reps each)
• Scull crushers – 2 sets (10 reps each)
• Seated Calf Raises – 3 sets (12-15 reps each)
• Hip Thrusts – 3 sets (12-15 reps each)

Well, that’s about all the update that I can give you right now (aside from the fact that my muscles are already starting to stiffen-up pretty good from yesterday’s workout). For those of you who are interested, I will update my progress frequently. So, be sure to check back often.

…till next time.

Happy Heaving,

PM

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