My lower body isn’t on the same page as my upper body. My legs(like my arms) are too long and lean and genetically very challenging to put any mass on. But with nothing to do in the summer expect 12 hours a week worth of summer courses. I have decided its time to bring my legs and arms upto par with my chest, shoulders and back.
So i was wondering what would be the best way to achieve this? I have four months until university restarts and i start working again. Would it be best to have a schedule thats leg dominant for two months then two months arm dominant? Or is it wiser to train leg heavy for one month and arm heavy for the other then repeat?
I have my diet in order(i hope) and will be doing enough maintainence work for the other body parts.
The leg routine i plan on using will be something like this;
Sunday: Chest, Delts and tris
Monday: Legs( quad heavy)
Tuesday: off
Wednesday: Back and bis
Thursday: Basketball for 90 minutes or swim for 30
friday: legs (ham heavy)
Saturday: off
Or do you guys think i should modify it?
So once again heres what i need to know:
The four months should be divided how? Arm or leg heavy two months in row? or alternate routine each month for four months? (i dont believe i can train arm and leg heavy at the same time as blood flow to calves decreases blood flow to the bi’s)
Can you recommend a better, routine?
Any other tips and tricks for arm and legs growth will be highly appreciated.
Good job on seeing your own weak link and wanting to do something about them.
At this time I am going to just throw out one point that jumped out at me about your plan.
You say your chest and upper body are your stong point and legs and arms are the weak ones. Yet in your routine you display you still have chest and upper body on the first day of the training week when you are at your freashest.
I would suggest putting a leg day first. Say a dl, or squat based day,
then back and bi’s, then another leg day, and end with the chest.
I also see no reason you cant concentrat on both legs and arms during the whole of this time, and maintain the rest of the body.
Your two leg days should come after rest days so you can put max effort into them. So if using your split, your leg days would be Sunday and Wednesday. Slit into quad dom/hip dom., multi joint, bi-lateral and unilateral exercises. As for your arms, when a client comes to me with a request like this the first thing i look at is the rest of his upper body training. Numerous multi-joint upper body movements will help the arms grow so this should be a staple. After addressing this, then look at the specific arm work. It can be hard to specialize in two areas, I would suggest focusing on the lower body (which will help your whole body)and keep your upper body work multi-joint. A possible program could invlove training horizontal pulling/pushing on one upper body day and vertical pulling and pushing on the other, having different rep/set schemes for each. You have 12 weeks which is a good block of time so you could split these into 4 week blocks maybe and us 2 blocks for legs and on for arms.
For hypertrophy, which is the basis for being stronger and a better athlete, EDT is a very good program. I would use the first month for a lot of big, compound exercises, ie. deads, squats, pullups(and chinups), dips,etc. to get your CNS firing and in line. Use whatever sort of rep scheme that has helped your chest and shoulders to grow. Second month, devise an EDT program for legs. Eat big and do pretty vigorous maintenance work on the upper body. You may not have the juice in your legs to play b-ball though! Third month devote to arms EDT-style. If you follow the program, you WILL add an inch to your arms. The last month turn all that new mass into strength by using big weight in a strength type program, ie. low reps with more sets.
Just an opinion!
Thanks for the advice so far guys. The only reason i wont train arms heavy and legs heavy at the same time are because of the blood flow thing i mentioned and well i will have to be in the gym 6 times rahter than four, which is impossible as i have to play in a basketball league on thursdays.
I don’t think i will move the legs upto the first day of workouts as i like to take a day off after my legs to allow them to heal and not walk funny around the gym.
So I guess I will procede with using the EDT principles and the twelve weeks of pain by Ian king. And go leg heavy for 10 weeks, then arm heavy for a month or so and then redesign a new routine starting the last two weeks of august using past experience and the results I achieve over the summer.
Once again thanks, more advice is of course aprreciated, and i plan on keeping you all posted on my results and progress throughout the summer.