January Blitz Phase 5 - Hypertrophy

So in the end we had enough time to do 6 days of hypertrophy work to finish off the January Blitz. No this isn't one of those "gain 5kgs in 4 days" programs as you can't gain anything in that time but it was more a trial run of the different method we've focused on for January.

I eventually split it up into 2 x 3 day "bits." (technical i know...)

Bit #1 we kept with the drop off method we used in the other phases. On day 1 we worked up to an 8 rep max and then did as many sets of 6 reps with the 8 rep max weight as we could, stopping at 5 sets regardless (mainly for time reasons). We did this for 3 days in a row. If we reached 6 reps for all 5 sets then you increase the weight for the next day's workout and if you didn't reach the full 30 reps then you decreased the weight for the next day's workout.

We did 6 exercises: lat pulldowns, bench press to the neck, trap bar shrugs, face pulls, single arm lean away lateral raises + chain and hammer curls + chain.

The choice of exercise was actually strategic in the sense that we were purely aiming to build the illusion of growth so as you can see we focused on lats, upper chest, shrugs, rear delts/upper back, side delts and the brachialis. When each of these muscles are developed, you look wide as a barn door, even if you're not!

Bit #2 I simply set a rep target of 25, 37 and 50 reps for each respective day using some of the same exercises but still focusing on the same muscles.

Day 1 - pull up, floor bench press, db shrug, rear delt raise with chains, seated lateral raise and reverse curls + chains

Day 2 - lat pulldowns, bench press to neck, db shrug, ring face pull, standing lateral raise and reverse curls

Day 3 - lat pulldowns, feet elevated ring push up, db shrug, pronated grip db chest supported row, db upright row and hammer curls

No sets were to failure but rather each set was focusing on completing as many explosive, quality reps as possible then the set was over. There's no room for building up excess fatigue in a high frequency training plan.

I have seen some results from this (I was the only one to complete all 6 days in a row) and I think something like this long term could work wonders so I might try it later in the year.

Starting next Tuesday we'll back to our normal workouts and footy training starts Wednesday night so we might need to adjust some of the volume we use but we will still focus on developing max acceleration and speed.