I've been training for the last 7 years... started on January 1 2006 lol. The first year was as you'd expect... nice gains, from there it became tough. The first 4 years I training for strength. Followed for the most part a modified west side template. On January 2010 I decided to change my approach to training but more focused on diet as at the time I was around 25% bodyfat and not happy with my health or conditioning.
So from that point I read everything I could about becoming lean and staying there. By June that year, I reached my goal and was around 10%. I follow an intermittent fasting diet that I designed from reading a few of the different one available in the interwebs to lean out... then back to a more traditional diet to maintain/bulk. I've also successfully done the seeming impossible which is gaining muscle while losing fat. I decided early on that this wasn't a practice way of gaining size and took way too much work lol. I found it much easier to do the following:
4 to 5 week block gaining at a moderate pace
Deload for 7 to 10 days with a mini cut via intermittent fasting
Back to gaining
That approach (for me) keeps me pretty lean, I find almost all fat gained over the gaining block is stripped off during the mini cut.
Right now, my 4 day a week training split looks like this:
Sunday: Legs
Monday: Shoulders/Chest/Triceps
Wednesday: Back/Bi
Friday: Legs
Sunday: Shoulders/Chest/Triceps
Monday: Back/Bi
Wednesday: Legs
Friday: Shoulders/Chest/Triceps
You get the idea, so every 5 to 6 days I'm hitting a bodypart this is what I've been doing for some time, don't plan on changing it anytime soon.
My training ideology is pretty simple, progression! I practice two methods of muscular growth, Ill define the reasoning or method to my madness in a few paragraphs. So, the first being function hypertrophy (Myofibrillar growth) let me break that down for you. In a muscle cell you have the actual protein content in the cell, or myofibrils, and you also have fluid surrounding the protein, the sarcoplasm. Strength is primarily influenced by the amount of protein contained in the cellular filaments, or the myofibrils. Second; Non-functional hypertrophy is an increase in the non-contractile (storage fluid) elements of a muscle fiber and it has been shown to occur largely with bodybuilding style training, the 8 to 12 rep range.
I like to use both methods, I focus on the higher rep range theses days and only because I have my fair share of injuries. I like use the following and very rarely go lower than 5 reps in a set:
Sets x Reps
5 x 5 ~ Myofibrillar
6 x 6 ~ Myofibrillar
4 x 7 ~ Myofibrillar
5 x 8 ~ Some Myofibrillar predominantly sarcoplasm
4 x 10 ~ Sarcoplasm
3 x 12 ~ Sarcoplasm
3 x 15 ~ Sarcoplasm
Here is a pic better explaining both:
As you can see less strength is gained because fewer myofibrillar fibers are grown in a sarcoplasmic training environment which is why I use both. Not to discourage sarcoplasmic training as the extra space can be used for glycogen storage. If you use a combination of both there would be a greater myofibrillar muscle content.
More to come....
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