Although Bodybuilding doesn’t use olympic training techniques, it is useful to understand the differences between them.

What is Olympic Training?

Olympic training is often confused with other training techniques, like powerlifting or athletic training. Sports athletic training encompasses a variety of training techniques, to meet the goals of that particular sport. Powerlifting’s goals is to reach maximum strength in the 3 lifts, deadlifts, squats, and bench. Olympic lifting main goal is for overall body strength. It is more primitive and the excercises are explosive body movements. The goal is not to be strong in certain excercises like powerlifting, but to be strong overall.

Olympic Workout Routine:

Olympic workouts are centered around two weight excercises: Snatch and the Clean & Jerk. These are compound excercises done with explosive speed. The Snatch is lifting the barbell from the ground to above your shoulders in one smooth explosive motion. The Clean & Jerk is a two step motion, with each step being an explosive jerk. The first step you lift it from the ground to chest level and hold briefly. Then you will jerk it up above your head explosively, while spreading your legs simultaneously in a lunge position.

Instinctive training is basically where you adjust your workout each time depending on how you feel during the workout.

Why do instinctive training?

Following a strict program day in and day out is boring. Being able to change your routine workout all the time, will give you the energy and motivation to want to work out harder. Over time your body and mind gets stale to the same routine. By changing your routine, you will help avoid plateaus in strength and muscle gains.

Instinctive Training Workout:

Instinctive training is not for beginners. You need to build up a foundation and figure out what works. You will never figure out things, if you are constantly changing your workout on a whim. Save instinctive training for when your more experienced and your body is hitting plateaus.

Many bodybuilders seem to do their workouts from memory at the gym. This is because they do the same routine over and over. I’ve always kept a notebook with me to keep track of my lifts. If you want to do instinctive training, you definitely need to have a notebook so you can keep track of changes.

HST is a weight training program geared for muscle hypertrophy that started gaining popularity a few years ago.

What is HST?

HST stands for Hypertrophy Specific Training. It was developed off of scientific studies on mechanisms that cause muscle hypertrophy(muscle size increase).

Major Principles of HST:

Based on their research, they developed these major guidelines for their workout program.

Mechanical Load: In order to have muscle hypertrophy you need mechanical load (lifting weights).

Progressive Load: In order to continue to make muscle gains, you need to increase the weights slowly long term.

Progressive Rep range change: Every 2 weeks you should progressively change your workout rep range. Ex. 12 reps, 10, 8,6. so you can keep up with the weight increases.

Chronic vs Acute Stimuli: HST advocates hitting a muscle part more than once a week. Many of the bodies reactions to weight training such as protein synthesis, end 48 hours after a workout.

Strategic Deconditioning: Plateaus are inevitable with the principle of progressive overload. To get around this, there must be phase where you lower the weight. Strategic deconditioning allows the muscles to take one 1 step back to eventually get 2 steps ahead.

Low volume: HST believes in low volume training as after more than 1 or 2 sets, it has little effect on hypertrophy. Since HST advocates hitting the bodypart more than once a week, you will hit each bodypart for multiple sets per week.

Compound excercises: HST workouts are geared around compound excercises, as it is shown to be a better stimulus for muscle hypertrophy.

HST Workout:

HST routines are full body workouts done 3 times a week. You will need 2 days between workout days, for example, monday, wednesday, and friday. You will do usually 1 to 2 sets per excercise and 1 - 2 excercises are done for each muscle part. Starting at the rep range of 15 reps, every week you will change the rep range and/or weight load you use on your sets from higher to lower, which follows the basic HST principles on progressive overload and progressive rep range changes. For example on week 1 you will be doing 15 reps of a light weight. At about week 5 you may be doing 6 reps at a heavy weight.

After a few weeks you will do Strategic Deconditioning for a week, to give your muscles a break. During strategic deconditioning you continue to do the low rep range, but you use a lighter weight. Even though you may be tempted, do not increase your reps to go to failure with the lighter weight. THe following week, you will then start the same workout cycle all over again.

HIT is the gold standard when discussing low volume intense weight training routines.

What is HIT Training?

HIT, stands for High Intensity Training and was started in the 70’s. It advocates very intense, but low volume and infrequent workouts. HIT believes in progressive overload (increasing weights long term), in contrast with periodization principles(changing routines periodically to keep the body guessing). Intensity is believed by HIT advocates, to be the main driving force to muscle gains and strength. HIT was a revolution because it said you didn’t need to spend hours in the gym everyday, advocated by bodybuilders such as Arnold Schwarzeneggar. The two biggest names in bodybuilding who used HIT training, were Dorian Yates and Mike Mentzer.

HIT Training Workout:

HIT has various splits, volume, and techniques. There is many ways people have customized their workouts to make them more intense such as; forced reps, static holds, or changing rest times.

The traditional HIT workout split is the 2 day split. Rest days is 3-4 days between the 2 workout days. Each day you will do a full body workout consisting of mainly compound excercises. In the basic HIT workout do one excercise per muscle, 1-2 sets are done per excercises, rep ranges are between 5 and 8, except for leg excercises. Each set should be done to absolute muscular failure.

Sample HIT workout routine:

Day 1

Squats 2 X 12 reps
Incline Barbell 1 sets 5-8 reps
Barbell Rows 1 set 5-8 reps
Tricep Pushdowns 1 set 5-8
Stiff Leg Deadlifts 2 X 12 reps

Day 2

Deadlifts 2 X 12
Shoulder Press 1 X 5-8
Barbell Curls 1 X 5-8
Pullups 2 X 12
Calf Raises 2 X 12

HIT Controversy:

HIT has many detractors for a variety of reasons. Some believe that the low volume simply doesn’t work for most bodybuilders and gives mostly strength instead of muscle gains. HIT doesn’t follow periodization, which many bodybuilders also believe leads to quicker plateaus long term. The high intensity also leads you more susceptible to bad form or injury, especially if you are new to working out. The fact is, HIT has worked for some, but not for others. How well it works for you, will depend on your genetics.

Drop sets are one of the most grueling weight training excercises you can do. If you are looking to shock a muscle into new growth, this may just be the solution!

What are drop sets?

Do one set to muscular failure then as quick as you can, lower the weight and do another set to muscular failure, then quickly lower that weight and do another set to failure. This is repeated for multiple sets in a row.

Drop Set training Routine:

Start with your normal compound excercise, such as bench press. Do a couple sets in the medium rep range, preferably in the 10 to 15 rep range. After the second regular set, you quickly strip off a few lbs and do the drop set. You will continue to do drop sets in rapid succession by lowering the weight each set. You should aim for about 5 drop sets (7 sets in total) per excercise.

Drop sets & overtraining:

Routines based on drop sets can’t be done long term. Your body will quickly adjust to it and you will hit another plateau. This should be used to shock a muscle part after a long plateau. Only use it on the bodyparts that are at a plateau. Save the routine for the other muscles, once they also reach a plateau.

Heavy Duty Training is intense training techniques, created by the well known Pro-bodybuilder Mike Mentzer during the 70’s.

What is Heavy Duty Training?

When Mike Mentzer hit a plateau on his lifts, he then incorporated pre-exhaustion sets. This was done by doing a isolation excercise before a compound. For example, a set of chest flyes would be done before doing sets of bench press. He occasionally would also go beyond muscular failure, by doing forced reps and negatives(with help of a spotter).

Eventually Mike mentzer realized, that the intensity of the previous technique was reducing his ability of maximizing workout intensity overall. He then incorporated a version of Rest Pause training. This allowed his muscles small breaks in between, to allow for a more grueling overall workout.

How it worked is; he would do a weight he could handle only for a one rep max, rest 10 seconds, do another one rep max, rest 10 seconds, reduce the weight by 20%(or keep it the same and get a spotter) and do another one rep max, then rest 15 seconds and do the final rep.

This workout wasn’t intense enough for Mike Mentzer, so he increased it through what he called Infitonic training. What he did was follow each of the one rep max sets in the previous workout, with a one rep max negative. He increased the rest time from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.

Mike Mentzer still wasn’t done. He eventually increased the level of intensity even further, to what he called Omni-Contraction training. In omni-contraction training, he did static holds during the negative reps in his infitonic training. He would hold the wait at 3 different positions of the negative. He held it during the top, middle, and bottom of the negative rep for a count of 3 seconds.

How well does Heavy Duty training work?

Mike Mentzer techniques have been controversial because of the high intensity low volume. It worked for Mike Mentzer and his brother Ray Mentzer, who used these training techniques to get high ranks in top bodybuilding competitions.

Dual Factor training is a opposite view of many traditional bodybuilding workouts, which believes in the idea of Supercompensation (also known as Single Factor Theory).

What is Dual Factor Training?

Bodybuilding today focuses on the principles of supercompensation, while most strength and sports training, believes in principles behind dual factor training. Single factor theory, believes in infrequent workouts per muscle bodypart to avoid overtraining. Dual Factor training in contrast, believes it’s advantageous to actually work out a muscle part multiple times in a week, before it’s even fully recovered.

In single factor training, you hit the muscle intensely for one workout day and then (usually) rest it for 6 days. Dual factor training says it’s OK to hit it more frequently and actually can give better results. They believe that the long rest periods of recovery in single factor training, negates the results from the workout earlier in the week. There is two major phases in dual factor training, loading and unloading. The unloading phase is less volume, to allow the body to recuperate from a few weeks of the higher volume loading phase.

Dual Factor Training Workout routine:

Loading phases will be between 2 and 3 weeks followed by an unloading phase of 1 to 2 weeks. If you start to overtrain earlier than this during the loading phase, then you need to lower your workout volume.

Many find a good 2 week loading phase, followed by a 1 week unloading phase, works best long term. You should be hitting each muscle body part two times a week with heavy weights. You can arrange the split however you want, but one example would be 2 upper body workout days and 2 lower body workout days during the week. During the unloading phase, you keep the structure and frequency the same, but drop your set volume significantly.

When to know I am overtraining?

You may wonder how you can tell you are starting to overtrain in your loading phase. Insomnia, significant drop in weights, eye twitches, mental foggieness, are some of the signs of overtraining.

Most bodybuildingers hate cardio. It is boring, repetitive, and uninspiring to most. We love the burn and pump that only lifting weights can provide. In your next cutting cycle, you may want to try circuit training weight lifting, to reduce or eliminate the need for aerobic on your next cutting cycle.

What is circuit training?

Circuit training is a fast paced type of training that gives more of a aerobic style of a weight training workout. It’s main goal is not to bulk up or gain strength, but to keep you lean or to help you lose fat during a cutting cycle.

It can be a great substitute for those who would rather change their weight training routine, than incorporate aerobic excercises in their weekly routine. Throughout the workout, you will move quickly between excercises trying to keep your heart rate elevated. While it won’t completely replace aerobic, it can be a viable substitute for those who hate cardio.

Circuit training workout routine:

There is many different variations of circuit training. Each person can tailor it to their preferences and goals. In general the following basic guidelines to common circuit training splits are:

1)Rep range: 5-20 reps per set

2)Sets per excercise: 1

3)Excercises per muscle part: 1

4) You will go through all excercises for every bodypart 2-6 times
over per workout day.

5) Rest periods are between 1-2 minutes between excercises.

6) These full bodyworkouts should be done 2-4 times a week.

What is Cumulative Fatigue Training?

Cumulative Fatigue Training is where you do sets for a excercise, until you can’t do anymore for a specified amount of reps. For example, if you want to do sets of 8 reps for bench press, you move onto the next excercise once you can’t do 8 reps in a set anymore.

Cumulative Fatigue Training Guide:

How many sets you want to do per excercise is ultimately up to you, but you should choose a weight that you can at least do 5 sets of the specified rep number. Do 5-7 sets for one excercise per muscle part, with 1 minute rests between sets. You should not be getting very close to muscular failure on the specified rep number, until you are near your target set. You can slightly modify these recommendations to fit your body and goals, but care must be taken to ensure you are not overtraining.

If you haven’t lifted weights in years or are new to bodybuilding, this article is for you. Starting out the more complicated free weight excercises too soon, may get you injured. Your first few workouts should be more focused around isolations and machines. There is no reason to start on the heavy stuff like squats and deadlifts, until your body gets used to lifting weights. Expect to be extremely sore for days, after your first few weight training workouts.

Sample Beginner 3 day split:

Below is just a sample workout. You can tweak it slightly depending on what machines or equipment you have available to you. Notice we use dumbells, as they are safer until you get used to muscle failure.

Chest day

Dumbell Chest Press 4 sets of 12
Dumbell Flyes 3 sets of 10
Tricep pushdowns 3 sets of 10

Leg Day

Leg Press 4 sets of 12
Leg Curls 3 sets of 12
Seated Calf Raises 3 sets of 15

Back Day
Lat Pulldown 4 sets of 12
One arm dumbell rows 3 sets of 12
Bicep Curls dumbell 3 sets of 10