Upper/Lower Split For A Hard Gainer

Ste — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:57:11 +0000

Cutting The Confusion On Training Splits

Unfortunately there are so many different views on training methods that it can all be a little confusing. The trouble is that every persons body will not act in the same way when put under serious microtrauma or muscle damage. Some of the various problems body-builders encounter are over-training, under-training and poor nutrition, resulting in a plateau. For optimum results you need to give your body the correct amount of training, combined with the right delivery of nutrients and adequate time to repair. Everyone responds differently to training and the amount of repair time needed vary greatly.

Ever see that guy in the gym and watch the workout he does and wonder how he gets so huge? I know I have in the past witnessed huge guys doing triple drop sets and chuckled about their lack of training knowledge. The guys which grow easily using traditional body-building workouts are genetically gifted mesomorphs. There’s also the guys who’s bodies respond well to heavy training and need little effort to maintain mass, and lets not forget the guys who take advantage of steroids and use the anabolic route to get huge.

When most body-builders share advice they tend to see things from only one perspective. If they used an isolation split workout doing single body parts each day and they got huge by doing it, they assume that every person will get huge by following this workout and as a result they recommend this workout to everyone. This presents problems since people tend to follow a training path which is of little benefit to their body type.

A Bit About Muscle fibers

Type I :- These are known as slow twitch endurance fibers. They prefer to use fat as a primary energy source and contract slowly. These have little impact on mass gain. They are generally stimulated when when an activity is greater than 2 minutes.
Type IIa :- These are known as fast twitch oxidative-glycotic fibers. These are somewhere between type I and type IIb, however training can have a large influence on how these fibers act. Endurance training makes them take on a role more like type I and strength training makes them take on a role more like type IIb. They are relied on in exercises between 15 seconds – 2 minutes.
Type IIb :- These are known as fast twitch glycotic fibers. They prefer to use glucose as a primary energy source and contract quickly. They perform explosive movements and have the most influence on mass gain.

Performing high repetition exercises with light weights stimulates type IIa fibers to act more like type I fibers and take up an endurance type role. Performing less repetitions with a heavier load stimulates the type IIa fibers to take on an explosive movement role and act more like type IIb fibers. This should be taken into consideration when conducting a training split as your growth potential will be reduced by performing low repetition training, as well as the needless consumption of energy which could be used to build other muscles.

Enough Of This Rubbish Where’s My Split…..

Ok! ok! relax it’s coming but first lets just get a few things straight. This training split is a mass gaining split, aimed at someone who is hyper-tropically challenged or in other words - finds it difficult to add mass but with an advanced training background. It will deliver a sufficient amount of proportionally correct muscle damage , without over-training and also give adequate time for recovery when combined with a good nutritional program.

The split consists of four workouts per week consisting of an upper body and lower body split.