The Synergytraining Blog

By Lee Labrada

The saying that “bigger is better” is one that is deeply ingrained in the psyche of many of today’s bodybuilders. In today’s competitive arena, muscle size is king. Most bodybuilders refer to muscle size simply as “mass.” And “mass” has become the currency of bodybuilding. The more mass a bodybuilder has, the more attention he gets from his peers and admirers.

Almost all of us could use a little more mass to improve the look of our physiques. Mass can give your physique the powerful look that turns heads and creates a buzz wherever you might go.

Building mass is not that complicated, but requires discipline and effort. If you aren’t willing to put out both, then my mass workout is not for you. If on the other hand, you are ready to slap on another 10 pounds of hard, vascular muscle, you’re reading the right article!

Traditionally, bodybuilders use their “off season,” or the period of the year during which they are not actively competing, as the time to add new muscle mass to their physiques. That’s because training for mass requires, amongst other things, consuming extra calories in the diet, which in most cases temporarily results in a bulkier, less “cut” look.

Fall and winter are a great time of year for non-competitive bodybuilders to focus on adding new muscle size. That way, there is still plenty of time to sharpen up the physique in the spring, in time for the summer bathing suit season.

Building mass is a function of three elements:

1) Training intensely enough to stimulate muscle growth
2) Eating correctly to support new muscle growth
3) Resting sufficiently to allow complete recovery from workouts and fuel muscle growth

Although we will touch briefly on eating for mass and resting/recovery, we will be focusing on training. Any training that you do to gain mass must meet two requirements:

1) Your training must be of a sufficiently high enough intensity to tax the target muscles thoroughly, but;
2) Your training must not over-train your target muscles

Training for mass is a little like walking a tight rope. On one side, you can fail if your workouts don’t sufficiently tax your muscles. You must train hard enough and long enough to create the stimulus for new muscle growth.

On the other side, you can fail if you do too much in the gym. This results in over-training, the bane of the bodybuilder. Over training means that you have over loaded the muscle to a degree that is counter productive, yielding no results, or worse, muscle loss. How do you know when you’re over-trained? Typically, when you are over trained, your muscles will be chronically sore, you’ll feel weaker in the gym, and generally run-down. No fun! Backing off from training, eating more nutritious food, and rest will usually mitigate over-training. The best thing is to not get over trained in the first place.

It has been my experience in over twenty-five years of bodybuilding that most trainees do too much in their quest for muscle mass, and end up over trained. It has also been my experience that you are much better off erring slightly on the side of doing too little when it comes to your workouts.

That doesn’t mean that you should get lazy and wimp out of doing heavy, intense workouts. It just means that you should develop a sense for how much training is “enough.” How much training is enough training then? Let’s talk about the growth threshold.

Your growth threshold is the point at which the level of fatigue in your muscles reaches a point that is high enough to elicit a growth response. Your goal during any workout should be to fatigue your muscles more and more with each succeeding set. In other words, you want the muscles to progressively get more and more tired out, until you reach a point where the muscles are functionally “worn out.”

Careful; it is also at this point that your muscles are most vulnerable to over training! The level of fatigue in your muscles will be so high at this time that anymore exercise is counter productive.

It is for this reason that you should focus on training intensity and not training volume during your workouts. With a focus on training intensity, your goal is to fatigue your muscles as fast as possible with as much weight as possible for the prescribed number of repetitions. We will discuss repetition range later in this article.

All too often, beginners get hung up on training volume, which boils down to the total number of sets and reps performed per body part (or similarly, the total amount of time spent in the gym.) This misconception is due in part to the “more is better” mentality prevalent amongst beginning trainees. The logic goes that if three sets of an exercise is productive, then six sets will be twice as good. Don’t fall for this common fallacy.

So if the focus should be on training intensity, what can you do to increase it?

To increase workout intensity, you can:

1) increase the amount of weight that you use on exercises,
2) increase the number of repetitions performed on each set, or
3) decrease the rest time between sets

These are just a few ways to increase your workout intensity, defined here as the total amount of work that you do in a given amount of time. We’ve examined the concepts of growth threshold and training intensity. But how do these two concepts tie together and how can they be used to help you develop more muscle mass?

Here’s how. The point is simply that by training more intensely, you can reach the growth threshold of your muscles more quickly. And that’s what you want to do in order to avoid over-training. If you do a lot of sets with light weights, it takes longer to reach the growth threshold, if you ever do. If you rest a long time in between sets of exercises, muscles have too much time to recover their strength, and again, it takes longer to reach the growth threshold, if you ever do. By training intensely with heavy weights and keeping rest to a minimum, you will quickly reach the growth threshold and the stimulus for muscle growth will be sent to your brain. And remember, once you have reached the growth threshold during a workout, you should stop your workout for that muscle. Any more work is counter-productive.

Let’s put this advice to practical use. When embarking on a mass building program, we don’t want to train like power lifters do, with super heavy weights (90-100% of max) and low reps (1-5 reps/set). Powerlifting stimulates the muscles in a manner that primarily builds strength, with size as a secondary consideration.

We don’t want to train like pre-contest bodybuilders do when they are trying to drop body fat and become more muscular, either, with lighter weights (60-70% max) and higher reps (11-15 reps/set). Pre-contest training is great when you are trying to lean up for a contest or for the beach season, but it stimulates muscles in a manner that primarily builds muscularity and definition, with size as a secondary consideration.

To gain mass then, you should select training poundages that are 75-85% of max with repetitions in the range of 6-10 reps per set.

My mass workout consists of three heavy sets of 2-3 basic exercises per body part. That’s just six to nine sets per body part, excluding a warm up set. That may not seem like much, but it’s enough to trigger super growth when done correctly and supported by good nutrition and rest.

Basic exercises are exercises that stimulate two or more large muscle groups and involve two or more joints. For instance, squats stimulate not only the quadriceps, but also the gluteus and other supporting leg muscles. Squats involve not only the joints of the knees, but those of the hips as well.

Basic exercises deliver results in terms of mass because they tax the big muscles of the body. Basic exercises recruit a larger number of muscle fibers than isolation exercises do. And the more muscle fibers that you recruit during an exercise, the better. My basic mass building exercises include, but are not limited to:

Legs: Squats, Leg Presses, Calf raises
Back: Chins, Bent over rows, deadlifts, shrugs
Biceps: Barbell curls, hammer curls, alternate curls
Chest: Bench press, incline bench press, dumbbell presses and flyes
Shoulders: Military presses, dumbbell presses, side dumbbell laterals
Triceps: Close grip bench presses, dips, barbell triceps extensions

At the beginning of each of these exercises, you should perform 1-2 warm up sets to increase blood flow to the target muscle. This will result in a muscle that is more elastic and less susceptible to injury from the heavier training poundages that will follow. Once the muscle is warmed up, light stretching is useful to further prepare the muscle for training.

Once you are warmed up, select a training poundage that you can comfortably perform 8-10 repetitions with. Perform your first set. Rest long enough to catch your breath, or to allow your training partner to perform his/her set, whichever comes first. This rest period will last about a minute on the average, but may be as long as two minutes with larger body parts such as legs. Gauge your training tempo by your breath.

Increase the training poundage by adding weight, so that on your second set you can perform no more than 8 reps. In a perfect world, you should “fail” on the eighth rep. But things being what they are, if you get to the eighth rep and feel that you can perform another, proceed to do so. The important thing is that you take the muscle to the point of failure. Remember the growth threshold? You want to get there fast. Your muscles should feel more and more fatigued with each succeeding set.

On the third and last set of an exercise, increase the training poundage yet again, to ensure that you can do no more than 6 repetitions. Have your training partner assist you if necessary to help you get the last rep. Don’t over do these “forced repetitions” however. One or two on the last set of an exercise is usually enough. Too many forced reps can lead to over training.

Now, go on to the second exercise and repeat the pattern that we followed here. If necessary, you can go to a third exercise, but I only recommend that for larger body parts such as back and legs. I have gotten my best results from limiting total sets for small body parts like arms to 6 total sets. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you are training fast and heavy, it’s the just the right amount.

Strive to increase your training poundages periodically.

The foundation of any good workout program is built upon constantly striving to lift heavier weights, tiring your muscles out more, and making them adapt to the increased workload by growing.

Now that we have discussed exercises, sets and reps, let’s look at our training split. During my early years of training, I engaged in a four day per week routine that looked like this:

Monday: Chest/ Shoulders/ Triceps/Abs
Tuesday: Back/ Biceps/ Legs
Wed: OFF
Thursday: Chest/ Shoulders/ Triceps/Abs
Friday: Back/Biceps/Legs
Sat/Sun: OFF

If you look at this split, you’ll see that I trained each body part twice per week. This routine is especially difficult on Back, Biceps and Legs day, as a lot of effort must be expended to get a good workout when training back and legs in succession. I must admit that this workout worked well, however, for the first few years. I put on over 40 pounds of muscle using this routine. The extra days off on the weekend really help.

As my muscles grew larger, I noticed that they required more time to fully recover from workouts. Hence, I adjusted my four-day-per-week split to look like this:

Monday: Chest/ Shoulders/ Triceps
Tuesday: Back/ Biceps
Wed: OFF
Thursday: Legs /Abs
Friday: Chest/ Shoulders/ Triceps
Saturday: OFF
Sunday: Back/ Biceps
Monday: Legs/Abs

Repeat cycle.

If you examine this two-on, one-off split carefully, you’ll see that I am training each body part three times every two weeks( instead of four times every two weeks, as on the four day per week routine.) This added rest really helps with overall recovery, which you need lots of to enjoy huge gains in muscle size. In fact, this routine is so effective, that I still use it to this day.

On the days off, you can do 30 minutes of your favorite cardio work to improve your recovery. One of the benefits of cardio is that it increases blood flow throughout the body, which aids in flushing the waste products of exercise out of your muscles. That means faster recuperation in between workouts for you.

No matter how hard you train, in order to put on solid mass, you must feed your body correctly and get enough rest so that your body can compensate for your workouts by growing more muscle. Don’t underestimate the need for consistent high protein meals throughout the day. And don’t forget to get at least 8-9 hours of sleep per night when you are on a mass building program to get the best results.

With hard work, perseverance and dedication to your training, nutrition and recovery, you will be well on your way to unveiling a “New You” soon

1. Calories.
The essence of any weight gain program is this: you must consume more food calories than you are burning, on a daily basis. The reason for this is that we must create an excess of calories in order to gain body weight. It is really a matter of simple arithmetic WEIGHT GAIN = CALORIES EATEN > CALORIES BURNED

2. Small frequent meals.
Eating too much at one meal leaves a “”hard gainer”" unable to eat for hours on end, so pigging out is self-defeating. Small frequent meals ensure that your body has a constant supply of nutrients to keep it in an anabolic state.

3. Protein.
Consume at least one gram of protein per pound of lean body weight. Proteins include: Scrambled egg whites or egg substitutes, chicken breast, turkey breast, lean ground turkey breast, fish, and fat free cottage cheese.

4. Complex carbs.
Consume at least 3 grams of complex carbs per pound of bodyweight. Complex carbs include: Oatmeal (avoid instant or sweetened oatmeals), cream of wheat, brown rice, wild rice, baked potatoes, sweet potatoes (yams), beans, corn, peas, lentils, lima beans, barley, 100% whole grain
breads and cereals, grits and corn tortillas.

5. Essential fats.
Get yours from unrefined sources such as flax seed oil, nuts, salmon, etc.

6. Minimize empty calories.
Stay away from foods containing empty calories such as products made from refined flour, and those that are high in sugars and saturated/hydrogenated fats.