Best Mass Program?

Just a quick point to all those that are looking at my plan and thinking ‘Bloody hell thats a lot of volume’, You must take into consideration that a certain percentage of my sets are not to absolute muscular failure, but do in fact warm up the muscle’s in question and do act as a pre exhaust/Glycogen deplention exercise.

MJ-Cartwright
Fitness Instructor and Strength Coach
Pontypridd South Wales

[quote]MJ - Cartwright wrote:
I would be more than happy to gain around ten pounds/four kilograms in the next twelve months.
I personally tend to find that when im training in the [[on the whole]] 6-12 rep range, I increase strength with relative ease, but do not increase muscle mass and do not stay as ‘lean’ as usual where as when I train with the program I have outlined, I do gain considerably more muscle.
Thanks for the intersest giterdone.

MJ-Cartwright
Fitness Instructor and Strength Coach
Pontypridd South Wales [/quote]

Ok, that puts things into perspective.
I’m going to sound like a real asshole for saying this, but you know I don’t really mean to…
But…

You are 6ft, 196 lbs at average leanness… And the most you expect to gain in 12 months are 10 pounds?

How can you go on like that?
I would have stopped training and taken up ice hockey or something if all I could get out of 300 or so high-volume workouts per year were 10 lbs! At your stage that’s really rather slow progress…

The exact progress I’d expect from someone who really focuses on the wrong things.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some guys like Bauer and Waylander etc who thrive on high volume… But you’re doing pretty much twice the volume they’re doing, and they are getting stronger much faster than you from the looks of it… They have the genetics for this, you probably don’t.
If Ronnie Coleman had trained your way, he’d probably be stuck somewhere at 230-240 lbs today.
And that’s Ronnie…

If you’re ever up for some experimenting, hit me up with a pm and we’ll see if we can’t make you grow 20+ lbs a year with a less outlandish approach.

Again, no offense… I’m just generally flabbergasted whenever people come on here claiming that doing 10 times the volume that a pro does gives them “great results”, which equals at most +10 lbs a year while being hardly out of the beginner stage, size/strength wise.

That routine may have given you faster/better results during your first few years of training mostly because the majority of beginners of average height can gain their way up to 190 or 200 via pretty much any routine as long as they eat something…
But past that stage, the real world (genetics) generally comes crashing down on most people and just doing half the exercises you know every time you walk into the gym no longer produces anything but pathetic results.

You won’t get your arms over 20 until you can put up some significant weight for reps on the exercises that matter… And strength doesn’t usually come easy when doing 6-8 exercises for biceps with a ton of sets each.

Oh well, good luck with your training of course, though I honestly can’t begin to understand why anyone would settle for such slow progress despite the HUGE amount of work being put in.

[quote]MJ - Cartwright wrote:
Just a quick point to all those that are looking at my plan and thinking ‘Bloody hell thats a lot of volume’, You must take into consideration that a certain percentage of my sets are not to absolute muscular failure, but do in fact warm up the muscle’s in question and do act as a pre exhaust/Glycogen deplention exercise.

MJ-Cartwright
Fitness Instructor and Strength Coach
Pontypridd South Wales [/quote]

You wrote:

You also posted a routine that many larger lifters would never do who are carrying even more size than you based on the sheer amount of volume. You then wrote:

No offense, but this makes you a hypocrite. You didn’t inform anyone of your “LARGE RECOVERY POTENTIAL” when you posted that routine which makes you exactly like any pro who has had a routine GHOST WRITTEN for them in a mag who doesn’t list any drugs he may be taking which would also give them a “LARGE RECOVERY POTENTIAL”.

Yet they still don’t train like you…yet you fault them?

I don’t know too many pros doing MORE volume than you and I’ve watched a few of them.

However, I feel the real point here is that most of those routines found in the mags are generally THE SAME with nowhere near as much volume as you are recommending now. They are also ghost written for the bodybuilder used in the “article” the majority of the time. Further, even if the pro in question did write the article, there is nothing wrong with them listing how they actually train. That doesn’t mean a rank beginner should do exactly the same.

You don’t fault the pro in that scenario. You fault the clueless person reading the mag weighing 140lbs yet thinking they need to follow what Ronnie Coleman does for legs.

If you really wanted to know how they trained, their training videos would be the best bet, not random mag-info used as filler.

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:

Again, no offense… I’m just generally flabbergasted whenever people come on here claiming that doing 10 times the volume that a pro does gives them “great results”, which equals at most +10 lbs a year while being hardly out of the beginner stage, size/strength wise.
[/quote]

Mind you, they then fault the pros for leaving out steroid info…when they are claiming their own bodies can handle even more than the pros???

How does this make sense?

[quote]Professor X wrote:
MJ - Cartwright wrote:
Just a quick point to all those that are looking at my plan and thinking ‘Bloody hell thats a lot of volume’, You must take into consideration that a certain percentage of my sets are not to absolute muscular failure, but do in fact warm up the muscle’s in question and do act as a pre exhaust/Glycogen deplention exercise.

MJ-Cartwright
Fitness Instructor and Strength Coach
Pontypridd South Wales

You wrote:
My main aggrevance is that various publications due give training programs from ‘such and such’ pro bodybuilder and sometimes gives a diet plan for the pro in question. But does not tell what steroids have aided the bodybuilder in gaining his size. [Although to do such a thing would of course undermine the large percentage of the populus who do see steroids as a bad part of society]

You also posted a routine that many larger lifters would never do who are carrying even more size than you based on the sheer amount of volume. You then wrote:
To answer your question. Im not on steroids. I just have a large recovery potential.

No offense, but this makes you a hypocrite. You didn’t inform anyone of your “LARGE RECOVERY POTENTIAL” when you posted that routine which makes you exactly like any pro who has had a routine GHOST WRITTEN for them in a mag who doesn’t list any drugs he may be taking which would also give them a “LARGE RECOVERY POTENTIAL”.

Yet they still don’t train like you…yet you fault them?

I don’t know too many pros doing MORE volume than you and I’ve watched a few of them.

However, I feel the real point here is that most of those routines found in the mags are generally THE SAME with nowhere near as much volume as you are recommending now. They are also ghost written for the bodybuilder used in the “article” the majority of the time. Further, even if the pro in question did write the article, there is nothing wrong with them listing how they actually train. That doesn’t mean a rank beginner should do exactly the same.

You don’t fault the pro in that scenario. You fault the clueless person reading the mag weighing 140lbs yet thinking they need to follow what Ronnie Coleman does for legs.

If you really wanted to know how they trained, their training videos would be the best bet, not random mag-info used as filler.[/quote]
Especially as you can actually see in their vids that they rarely ever do straight sets on anything… That’s the one thing almost no one ever seems to realize, yet that tiny detail can literally turn a “stupid flex mag high volume routine” into a routine that is surprisingly good!

So are you guys trying to argue that his volume is so high, that it might be at the detriment of his physique? Sorry I’m not really following the arguments here…it appeared as if he was just trying to give his own workout routine as a mass program…

[quote]acelement wrote:
So are you guys trying to argue that his volume is so high, that it might be at the detriment of his physique? Sorry I’m not really following the arguments here…it appeared as if he was just trying to give his own workout routine as a mass program…[/quote]

No one would have said anything about him giving his own routine if he had not made an issue about pro bodybuilders doing the exact same thing. If he expects bodybuilders to list every genetic/medical advantage they have when they discuss a routine, he should be expected to do the same if he clearly labels himself as not average in that regard. Not only that, but to claim that pro bodybuilders are doing routines that natural bodybuilders can’t do…and to then show a routine that has more volume than the majority of pro bodybuilders on the planet would EVER use makes no sense at all.

Why did this need Cliff Notes?