Need a training routine to give me mass!!!!
 

hey guys, getting back to the gym properly this week went today just to climatise myself again with everything however some advice needed please.

I have recently read a book called the abs diet and there is a whole body routine in it that you do 3 times a week.

What is best for mass? doing a full body routine 3 times a week or splitting the body parts up into 3 days of training one muscle group once a week? I have just been reading an article where it was saying that to get best results you need to do body parts more than once a week and also the more muscles you hit in a session the more muscle you will get?

I am willing to do what it takes to get bigger i have 3-4 months to get as big as i can (and before anyone says about food i eat 6 times a day and have loads of protein :-)

what routine should i do? if anyone has read the abs diet is this routine any good or would i be better doing something like this 5x5 thing i have started to hear about?

many thanks in advance to all and i hope i dont sound daft but i am only new here and dont want to be one of those who in a years time is still doing dumbell curls and hasnt got any bigger!

:WEIGHT~13:

oh yeah....
 

by the way i can train 3 times a week

Check out Rippetoe's Starting Strength. It is a great routine for putting on mass.

hey ross86 have just done a quick google on this Rippetoe's Starting Strength you mention is there any site in particular you suggest looking at? is this a particular training routine you yourself have used? if so did you get good results? this might be a really silly question but the program i found looked very simple and very short i take it that this is what works best though? I am doing my best to put all the stuff i have read in magazines and things out of my head and take on training from the start as best i can so please forgive stupid questions! :-)

You talk about putting on mass and you talk about the abs diet... they are conflicting goals. In order to put on mass effectively, you likely will not be burning any fat. If you control your diet well then you wont' put on any excess fat but I really dont' think you'll lose any.

In order to get abs you have to drop your bf% to sub 10% generally.

You really need to pick what you want to do? And why only 3-4 months to get big?

IronWorker

Rippetoe is all over this site. Type in 'starting strength' or 'ripp' and I'm sure you'll get more than enough hits. Journals are a good way to look at a program and how people have done with it. I know there are people on this site that are currently on it and have a journal for it.

Quality over Quantity (I've been saying that alot lately :D). It may look short and easy, but looks can be deceiving. :wizard:

ahh sorry i wasnt very clear really in what i said about the abs diet - let me re-phrase a bit! lol i read the book found it interesting and what not but it was more the training side of things that intersted me, they reckon that the most effecient way of building muscle was to do a whole body routine 3 times a week rather than split muscles down and only train a body part once a week. i am comfortable with the fact that to build up i am going to ineveitablly put on some weight as well but if i want to do it right then im up for it. I have 3-4 months as i am trying to get in the police force and due to an op my weight is very low so need to get some muscle on to bulk up i currently way 9 1/2stone and obviously going into the police i would prefer my weight gain to be muscle than just weight gain! does that make more sense?

cheers kane, sorry im still new to how this site all works but will go and have a search now and see what i can dig up. I agree with you though quality over quantity any day in all aspects of life :-) im hopefully going to be trying to get my 1 rep maximum measured for the big compound lifts so i can try to work out what i should be lifting to be getting maximum intensity rather than go in the gym and lob around useless weights my time is precious and i dont want to waste a second! have you ever used this method of training? what is your personal opinion on it? thanks for the help guys

I completely agree with Kane about quality over quantity. BUT I would like to point out that the way most people do Rip's Starting Strength and the way they conceive of it is NOT about quality but most definitely about quantity. So keep that in mind....anything volume routine that is about reps and sets, as most beginner routines are, by definition is about quantity unless you make a concious effort to change that. In this case it would be to not load the bar while form is turing into complete do-do :biglaugh: and concieve of different ways to progress that allow you to emphasize the "quality" aspect of it rather than the "just get all your reps at whatever cost".

In this case I would not advize you to test your 1RM. It won't do you any good. You will just get a relatvie test of your ability on that day and being new it it you could likely hurt yourself in the process. You need to really learn and groove in the lifts first. Plus once you get started you strength will be changing so quickly that the initial 1RM test will become quite useless. By the same token if you try to start with TOO high an intensity you won't be able to progress very long without hitting a wall. All you need to worry about is progressive overload. The idea is not to make every workout the be all and end all but to see an accumulation of progress over a long string of workouts.

In the future there will come a time when you can start thinking more in terms of intensity alone but right now is not the time. Call this the honeymoon phase where you get better at the movements while getting stronger.

It's a good program but it's not perfect for everyone. No program is. Keep your mind open while doing it and don't think you have to keep plugging away while things are breaking down. I'm not going to get into any modifications or warnings because lots of people have made this program into part of a dogmatic belief system and I don't want to argue religion :biglaugh: You should be good to go for the first month or more. But I would advize you to learn the basic lifts first and NOT as part of a progressive routine but as part of a period of PRACTICE. Learning the lifts while programming them is one thing I DON'T agree with. This idea comes from a COACHING standpoint and is not appropriate for individuals coaching themselves.

point taken eric3237 thanks :-) i have spent the last 2 weeks in the gym using practically no weight on the bar learning form for a range of excercises mainly, squats, bench press, deadlift, chin, bent over rows etc. i have seen so many of my mates injuried in teh gym from throwing the weights up and down rather than actually lifting them. i am quite happy not to be lifting the massive weights as long as im working at 100% of my effort whilst keeping form then in my eyes ill be training as hard as the guys pushing 3 - 4 times my weight. im trying my best to get all parts of training spot on as far as i can thats why im trying to find a good training program for mass rather than go in the gym doing nothing but dumbell curls :-)