By: Alton Hare

Anyway, these past 3 weeks I have been training HARD. My new workouts call for training chest and back twice a week, and everything else once. Legs once because they are such a strong body part on me (currently pushing 28") and also they recover slower because they are so big and have so many muscle fibers and such big muscle fibers to rebuild. Basically here's how it goes spelled out, this is this past week's workout with weights where I remember them:

Bench:
310x3 (lookin' for 315x3 next week, that used to be my max at the beginning of the bc articles), 275x7. A pic of me benching 315: Click Here

I usually do 3 or more sets, but I have found that just one heavy set to failure for strength and one mid-range set for hypertrophy has done great. Then I bust my balls on the db presses and go super fast on the crossovers and flyes which gets me so swollen and pumped...I gotta get pictures of it it's awesome. I get shiny with sweat and my chest and shoulders are just poppin' out. So after bench I did:

Dumbbell press:
115sx7 (way higher than any other db set if you look at past articles), 115sx5, 115sx4

(The 1st two weeks I dropped to 100s on this set and did a high rep set to get a great pump, but this week I was psyched because of my gains and I just wanted to push as much heavy iron as possible).

Flyes supersetted w/ cable crossovers:
35s on flyes for 1st two sets, dropped to 30s afterwards, and used 20 pounds in each hand for strict, slow crossovers, MAN I had a pump like you wouldn't believe! Try this superset for chest, crossovers and flyes, and after each superset rest 30 seconds to a minute to get your strength back, and go at it again, for 3 sets. The short rest is actually important because if you just keep going you're fatiguing too much to handle heavy enough weight for enough reps to get into the hypertrophy range and your pump won't be as high. There's a fine line between endurance training and power training, 30 seconds to a minute should be right for most people, I just take 30 seconds.

Then triceps:
skull-crushers: 95x8, 105x5

Just two sets again, I don't recommend this all the time, but after doing a 3-5 sets for a while I think changing over actually helps keep you from getting "burned out" on that movement and helps build strength because you don't exhaust the muscle's recovery ability.

Dips: 11, 9, 8 (in previous articles my highest set was 8 or 9, I hope to be putting weight on eventually)

Cable Press-downs:
50x12
60x like 8-10
60x 1 or 2 less than last set

On the skull-crushers I rest bout 2 minutes, on dips bout 90 seconds, and cables about 90 seconds. I finish it all off with a set of push ups with feet inclined to failure, then laying on the ground to failure. I can only do a few lol. That's pretty bad considering I can do 82 in a minute fresh. My chest is 44" now, that's cold and with all the air blown out, I heard some guys measure with it puffed out, I'm not gonna say one is right or wrong but when you blow all the air out your taking more a measurement of muscle thickness instead of rib cage size and lung capacity. So I measure flexed with air blown out, around nipple.

That was chest, I'm just gonna run down my best lifts with legs and back bc well, I just don't get as excited about those lol, but they are important and I lift hard, recently I got these squats in separate workouts:

Recently did Db rows: 115sx6, my back strength is finally almost caught up w/ chest strength, it used to be so unbalanced, if u read my first bc articles I talked bout how me and my old partner never trained back like we did chest. Well, putting the same effort into back has paid off, in my pics you'll notice how much more my wings come out, plus I've found training back to be as enjoyable as squats or bench. I'm bent rowing 205x6, I bend over almost parallel, I find I get the best squeeze and pump in my lats when my torso is at about a 110 degree angle with my legs. I'll get pics of that too. I train biceps directly after back now, it works good, the biceps are pre fatigued. This past week I did 21s on barbells with 55 pounds then 2 sets of 8-10 with 75 pounds. Then I did 2 sets of standing dumbbell curls. That's all for biceps. My arms are currently 17", might be a bit more since that was a month ago a week before I started training seriously again. Waist is still a 34, and my bodyweight has gone up to between 198 and 200.

Having a "Good" Workout
I wanted to talk about a few other things, like having a good workout. Sometimes, you go in and the lifts just aren't happenin', your not as heavy as you wanna be. That's not a bad workout. Instead of going for numbers, training for tangible increases, go for feeling. What I mean by that is go for the pump, the exhaustion, even if you don't use heavy weights you are still bodybuilding and your muscles will definitely still grow. Remember using lower weights but going faster and super/giant setting increases intensity, as long as you take a little rest you'll have the strength to maintain that intensity.

I try to put elements of both strength training, volume, and intensity in each workout. Like on chest I start with 2 heavy compound movements, bench and db press, and go on to superset flyes and cables. If I'm feeling especially good I'll do a drop set on dumbbells or an extra, burnout set of bench. That's a little extra volume. Back is the same, b rows then db rows, then some kind of machine row supersetted with a machine pulldown. Legs, squats then leg press, then usually leg curls and/or leg extensions and calf presses. I wanna say the big thing here that EVERYONE should know: You get from a workout what you put into it!!!

You can't wait for a good workout to happen, well you could but the ones that just "happen" are rare. You gotta make it good. I'm enjoying working out more than I ever have lately, and it's because I figured that out. The numbers just aren't so important as they used to be, they still matter but they don't make or break my workouts anymore. Gotta stay away from that.

Now, I wrote an article before about the perfect schedule for high school bodybuilders, I promised a new one for this year, and I got it, it's similar but a few revisions. I train 5x a week now instead of 4x, 4 times was getting too easy really. My body is building up an incredible tolerance to training. I'm not bragging here, the average Joe can build up great tolerance and come to love lifting and feel great from it and not run down if he sticks with it and eats and sleeps right. Here's my current schedule in a nutshell during the week (weekends are left to R&R, but I still eat like a bodybuilder and sleep enough, those are the main things on weekends cuz you don't wanna come in Monday laggin'):

Each day is basically:
7:00 am wake up
9:30 protein bar
12:30 school lunch

3:30 arrive home, mix 2 servings Gatorade powder with one scoop of Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Protein (the vanilla ice cream is pretty good, mixed with glacier freeze Gatorade it tastes fruity, with a hint of vanilla, not bad), mix another one with 5 g creatine to take with me to the gym.

3:45 to 5 or so (depending on the day, chest/tris runs a little over, back hits about 5, and legs fall a little short).

Shake my shake, guzzle it and drive home.

Take a shower when I get home, come online and write this article lol, this'll be my article writing time now, and at 7 I eat dinner.

7:15-10 homework
10 take ZMA
10:30 take a serving of HDT Pro55 I milk, go to bed

And here's what I train each day:

• Monday: chest/tris "power day"
• Tuesday: back/bis "power day"
• Wednesday: legs
• Thursday: incline chest with rear and side deltoids and dips at the end to finish 'em, this day I go for the pump and don't worry bout the weights, if I'm still sore in my chest it actually goes away completely during the workout and doesn't come back, all the blood helps mucho. Today (Thursday) I was pretty sore in my chest still so I went light on the incline, 175x8, 205x6 then 185x8. Then I do incline dumbbells, slow with a deep stretch to get as much blood as possible.
• Friday: isolation back workout, lat pulldowns, one arm cable rows, hyperextensions, those kinds of things. Its hard to get intensity up on the "iso" movements, so I usually superset most of it or drop set.

- Alton

beautifuldisaster420@yahoo.com

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