The Ideal Mass-Building Program
The Ideal Mass-Building Program
Centopani, Martinez, Kuclo & Morel Say, “Stimulate, Don’t Hibernate!”
Q: For someone who wanted to take winter to pack on as much mass as possible, do you think it would make sense to do a very simplified routine that was made up entirely of basic movements like squats, bench presses, deadlifts, barbell rows, military presses, and weighted chin-ups and dips? Or do you think they should also include isolation movements too?
Victor Martinez
You should spend your time and energy over the winter months on compound movements, because those are what will build mass. Take chest, for example. Don’t worry about the pec deck, cable crossovers or dumbbell flyes. Instead, do bench presses, incline presses, decline presses and dips— not all of those at every workout, but you get what I mean. Do military presses, dumbbell presses and upright rows for shoulders. Your back workouts should be deadlifts, chins with different grips, barbell rows, dumbbell rows and T-bar rows. Leg day should be all about squats, leg presses, hack squats and stiff-leg deadlifts. You should add in a few sets of lying leg curls because most guys do need more hamstrings.
I wouldn’t even bother with arm work unless your arms are a real weak point. In that case, stick with barbell curls and skull-crushers. But generally speaking, you shouldn’t go near the cables in your gym until spring, and the only time you should use machines is for a couple of leg movements like I said. Everything else should be barbells and dumbbells. Your work sets for upper body should be for 8-10 reps, and your lower body should range from 8-15. Try to get stronger in all the lifts, but keep those reps. One really good thing about this is that when you do go back and add in the isolation movements again, it will be a shock to your muscles and you’ll get another little burst of growth.
Evan Centopani
I don’t think you necessarily need to use only the basic movements, but I would certainly put a greater emphasis on them. For example, maybe you typically only do squats or deadlifts every other week or even less often. I would do them every week. Or, if you do machine rows instead of barbell or dumbbell rows at times, I would only do the free-weight versions during this phase. But more than changing the actual exercises, I would look into changing how you perform them. Traditionally, many people assume that the most effective way to gain mass in the off-season is to do lower volume and lower reps. That might be a good idea if you’ve been using higher reps and more volume. If you haven’t, you could very well make some good gains by upping your reps and volume for a couple of months. If you normally use a lot of intensity techniques like forced reps, rest-pause and drop sets, this might be a good time to focus more on straight sets. But conversely, those techniques could be beneficial to you for the next few months if you haven’t been using them, and thus your body isn’t used to them.
A lot of bodybuilders tend to “save” the types of intensity techniques I’ve mentioned for their pre-contest training. If you think about it, the off-season would be a time when they would be better suited. You’re eating more calories, more carbs and doing less cardio. That means you have more fuel and energy available for recovery. Recovery is really the name of the game when you are trying to grow. Stimulate the muscle to the best of your ability, then feed it and let it rest. As far as rest days, you might want to take more of those if you feel you need them. It’s all an individual matter. You need to get in tune with your body and pay attention to how you feel when you train x days a week versus y days.
Steve Kuclo
Let’s make a distinction. If a person is fairly new to training and doesn’t have any areas of his physique yet that you could identify as weak points, it would be fine to just focus on basic compound movements for a few months. But if someone has been training for a few years and has identified areas that definitely lag behind and thus need extra attention, I would be more inclined to keep isolation movements in the routine.
For example, someone might have a weak side or rear delts. Obviously your shoulders are involved in the overhead presses as well as several other basics, but the carryover toward the specific areas that need to grow may be inadequate. In that case, I would keep lateral movements to the side and to the rear in the workouts. Or, suppose a guy has really bad calves. It would be silly to have him blast away on squats and deadlifts for a few months and add more size to his quads and hams, without ever doing a single calf raise. His calves are only going to appear worse in comparison by the end of this theoretical off-season. So you could do mostly compound movements, but don’t stop doing specific targeted work for areas that truly need it.
One thing I would also suggest is to increase the training volume, but increase your calories and add in an extra rest day or two. Let the training work to stimulate the gains, then feed the body well and give it plenty of rest to recover and grow.
Juan Morel
For the purposes of putting on as much mass in the shortest time possible, I think your best bet is to focus on all those basic, compound movements. You really don’t need the isolation exercises, because things like your arms and calves will still be getting a ton of indirect work. One thing I would add to this is that I don’t believe working with low reps is going to do much except build your strength. Muscles need more reps to stimulate growth, so forget about three to six reps. I would do all my sets in the 8-12 range, maybe even 8-15. There’s this idea that anything more than 12 reps is too much for making gains. Personally, I have found that’s just not true.