Training for a lifetime.

Well, where to start??? .

I have tried it all over the years and I mean ALL. There isn’t a workout, set, principle or exercise I haven’t performed! Matrix, drop sets, super sets, rest pause, high rep, and low rep....need I go on?

Training is the most important part of bodybuilding. I know we all need correct nutrition but let’s face it; nothing will work if we train incorrectly in the first place!

"There are many different roads to Rome" I was once told. How true this is ladies and gents. I cannot credit ant one workout/training method for my physique today because a combination of everything is what has worked for me.

So how do we go about designing a specific workout to make us grow?

I suggest to any newbie’s buying magazines, books and training encyclopaedias. Read these and try all the workouts and styles going. Try them for a decent period of time and get used to the workouts so as to know it off by heart. You should get to the point where you find that you have progressed so much that all your weights have increased significantly.

Those of you that aren’t new to training should already know these workouts and strategies, yes? So what now?

Well what I do isn't as common as I believe it should be! Not only do I not know what I'm going to do when I walk in the gym, I don’t even know what type of split I will use at the start of the week!

Come Monday I know roughly the order I will train each body part and on what days but I see how I feel and if I'm ready to use that muscle group.

Once I have decided my split and on what days, I then go to the gym and perform the exercises that I feel like doing on that day. Sometimes I train heavy with low reps, sometimes light and high. Sometimes I use strip sets, sometimes rest pause, sometimes straight sets of four, five, six...etc. You see what I'm getting at; I never train the same week after week and always gauge how I train depending on how I feel that day. It's that simple.

So how often do we train each muscle?

Well this is the million dollar question! We are all individuals with different lifestyles. Dorian Yates trained each body part every six days, some go for seven days, some EOD...it all depends on recovery. If we recover quickly we can train more often. Lea the labourer who works on a building site every day may need to train each BP far less often than Colin the computer operator that sits in an office all day because he is far more fatigued.

I have trained with different frequency and have found that every seven days is best for me. This is the most widely used approach. I can manage more often for a while to great benefit but can’t keep it up for too long due to burn out. It’s something we must all try for ourselves and keep things constantly changing to keep from getting stale.

Time for rest.

We should always be able to recognise when we are knackered! If we are showing the signs of over training or even just getting stale like mentioned above, we need to either back off or stop. I know it’s hard to do this but trust me, a week off will do the world of good. You may think that you’re going to shrink but even if you do, it comes back, sometimes threefold.

To summarise, forgive me if I am rambling, there is no one workout that works best, we must try to shock our bodies into growing by learning all approaches and getting down the gym and going hell for leather.....So what are you all waiting for?