Hey there, sorry for the selfish question but I think there are others who are wondering the same. What kind of program or protocol would you recommend to give the biggest visual change in a shirt in just a few weeks time? I’m going to have high school reunion early next month and I want to impress the people that I haven’t met in over a decade =)
I’m thinking something that focuses on high pulls and/or overhead press variations or am I wrong? Currently heavily considering the high pull blitz program.
[quote]Mizery wrote:
Hey there, sorry for the selfish question but I think there are others who are wondering the same. What kind of program or protocol would you recommend to give the biggest visual change in a shirt in just a few weeks time? I’m going to have high school reunion early next month and I want to impress the people that I haven’t met in over a decade =)
I’m thinking something that focuses on high pulls and/or overhead press variations or am I wrong? Currently heavily considering the high pull blitz program.[/quote]
Shoulders and traps specialization. Give those muscles everything you have and train the rest for maintenance.
Train delts and traps 3 days per week and divide the rest of the body into the remaining 2 days.
Something like:
Monday: Delts and Traps
Tuesday: Legs and arms
Wednesday: Delts and Traps
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Chest and back
Saturday: Delts and traps
Sunday: OFF
I like to do 3 different workouts:
Workout 1 (Monday) is heavy
Workout 2 (Wednesday) is more isolation/pump techniques
Workout 3 (Saturday) is supersets of one heavy movement and one pump movement
The key is to avoid doing a lot of work for the other muscle groups, you wont lose anything in a few weeks. But you need to be able to devote as much recovery energy as possible on the target muscles.
Thank you very much coach! Yeah, one of your recent articles managed to convince me to not worry too much about the other muscle groups when doing a short specialization for a particular muscle group or when taking short vacations =)
I think this next question is somewhat related to this thread so I don’t think I should make a new one. From your experience, what is the best way to come off a specialization program for a muscle group or lift (smolov, high pull blitz, bodypart specialization etc)? I’m just a bit skeptical that doing one bodypart/lift once per week is enough to maintain whatever gains you get from doing it say 5 times per week before that, or is this thinking unreasonable? Thanks again in advanced CT.
[quote]Mizery wrote:
Thank you very much coach! Yeah, one of your recent articles managed to convince me to not worry too much about the other muscle groups when doing a short specialization for a particular muscle group or when taking short vacations =)
I think this next question is somewhat related to this thread so I don’t think I should make a new one. From your experience, what is the best way to come off a specialization program for a muscle group or lift (smolov, high pull blitz, bodypart specialization etc)? I’m just a bit skeptical that doing one bodypart/lift once per week is enough to maintain whatever gains you get from doing it say 5 times per week before that, or is this thinking unreasonable? Thanks again in advanced CT.[/quote]
FROM EXPERIENCE… when you focus on bringing up one lift via high frequency training (Smolov is an example) not all of the strength gains can be maintained. Some of the gains are due to neural factors (neurological facilitation). When you do the movement less often those factors will slowly erode and performance will decrease. However the gains due to muscular adaptations will stay with you, these can be maintained more easily.
For example I once brought my snatch-grip high pull from 125kg to 180kg in a bit over 3 weeks (I actually did nothing but explosive pulls for those 3 weeks). When I got back to regular training my high pull dropped to 165-170kg… so a loss versus my peak, but still significantly heavier than my starting point.
If you specialize mostly on hypertrophy, then the gains will stick with you when you switch to regular training.
What type of program to switch to depends on your goals and training experience.