Program Design For Hypertrophy
Hypertrophy Block 1
Weeks 1-4: 20-15 rep range for high volume work
Week 5 deload; which will allow recovery of tissue and systemic fatigue from hard training
Hypertrophy Block 2
Weeks 6-9: 15-10 rep range.
Week 10 would be deload
Note the difference in rep ranges from Weeks 1-4 and 6-9. Hypertrophy block 1 is lighter weight and higher reps. As we do not want to provide the same stimulus to the body our next hypertrophy block would be slightly heavier loads and slightly less reps which would be a new stimuli and provide an overloading stimulus to what came before it.
Strength Block
Weeks 11-14: 6-3 rep range
Week 15 deload
Few things to think about during your strength block.
1) mentally this is a great change of pace from training in the high rep ranges
2) a radical change of pace from the stimulus provided in the previous 10 weeks
3) the heavy training while not as hypertrophic as high rep ranges does provide some hypertrophy, but more importantly it provides strength gains that can be used to potentiate more hypertrophy later.
4) The strength block also provides a resenitization to the type of metabolite training utilized in the higher rep range blocks.
After this strength block and its deload you are ready to go back into hypertrophy 3 which will be very similar to Hypertrophy 1 except you are now bigger and stronger and thus able to utilize heavier loads for repititions.
I once told a bodybuilder who was struggling to put on mess that if he want from being able to bench 225 for 2x10 to 315 for 3x10 then you will by default be bigger. Period. Above is a way to systematically work toward those goals instead of spinning your wheels going in circles with your training and loads being utilized.
Remember muscle grows in response to an overloading stimulus, a stimuli that is more than previously. However, you need to be able to recover from that stimulus. Recovery is Key… So let’s talk about recovery and supplementation…