Prepare to elevate your strength training regime as I, Gus Holland, chart a course for seasoned athletes to push past their plateaus and enter the realm of advanced workouts. Discover proven strategies to increase your training volume, diversify your exercises, and master your rest intervals for muscle optimization and injury prevention. I'll break down detailed workout splits, from three-day routines to five, complete with an arsenal of targeted movements for each muscle group, ensuring you understand the nuances of rep ranges and tempo control. Hydration and supplementation also come under the spotlight, equipping you with the knowledge to fuel your intense training demands.
As we forge ahead into the heart of strength conditioning, I reveal a specialized three-day workout split, complete with cable machine alternatives and a leg day that will challenge even the most experienced lifters. Safety is paramount, and I'll share essential tips on proper equipment usage, such as weightlifting belts and the importance of a spotter. We'll also explore the complementary roles of daily ab workouts and cardio, even on your off days, to maintain a holistic approach to fitness. Transitioning to a five-day split, we focus on isolating muscle groups for maximum impact—with insights on form, recovery, and customizing your training to your body's unique needs. Join us in this fitness journey to share, learn, and strengthen our community together.
Prepare to elevate your strength training regime as I, Gus Holland, chart a course for seasoned athletes to push past their plateaus and enter the realm of advanced workouts. Discover proven strategies to increase your training volume, diversify your exercises, and master your rest intervals for muscle optimization and injury prevention. I'll break down detailed workout splits, from three-day routines to five, complete with an arsenal of targeted movements for each muscle group, ensuring you understand the nuances of rep ranges and tempo control. Hydration and supplementation also come under the spotlight, equipping you with the knowledge to fuel your intense training demands.
As we forge ahead into the heart of strength conditioning, I reveal a specialized three-day workout split, complete with cable machine alternatives and a leg day that will challenge even the most experienced lifters. Safety is paramount, and I'll share essential tips on proper equipment usage, such as weightlifting belts and the importance of a spotter. We'll also explore the complementary roles of daily ab workouts and cardio, even on your off days, to maintain a holistic approach to fitness. Transitioning to a five-day split, we focus on isolating muscle groups for maximum impact—with insights on form, recovery, and customizing your training to your body's unique needs. Join us in this fitness journey to share, learn, and strengthen our community together.
Speaker 1:
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of Way of Life. I'm your host, gus Holland. Today we are going back over strength training advice. Before I showed you how to do a beginner program for a strength training athlete. Today we're going to go kind of more of an advanced approach, going to cover the correct amount of fluid intake and a little bit of supplemental use. That's kind of what I've been realizing I was leaving out on some of my previous programming and training episodes. But we're going to touch base on that.
Speaker 1:
But really just to get into it, the difference between the beginner and the advanced strength training programs, it's primarily going to be an increase in training volume and expanding your exercise selection. So what that means is I gave some some pretty basic exercise examples to incorporate into your programming. These might be a little bit more complex or for somebody that's a little bit more versed, I guess, with it within the gym. So you're you're less likely to get injured if you have more experience. Obviously I mean most of the time. So some of these exercises you know, it's kind of like once you've already completed, like you've got bracing and breath control and you've got your, your stretching and everything and you've kind of already know some programming basics and stuff like that, you know. So it's, that's what advanced means. So if you're not there yet, that's okay, go back to the beginner episode, which is, I think, two episodes ago, and start there, and if you're, if that's too advanced, start with less. You know, obviously we don't want anybody to get hurt, we want positive life changes, and yeah. So anyways, back into advanced version of of a strength training program.
Speaker 1:
You're going to stick to that two to five minute rest window, depending on how many, I would say depending on how many sets you're doing. So if you're doing two to three sets, I would say like two to three minute rest period. If you're doing three to five sets, I would say you expand that to have a two to five minute rest period. So that mainly is really just to let your muscles recuperate before hitting the next set or the I mean the next exercise, so that you don't. I mean it prevents injury a little bit, but it also prevents you from getting gassed out through your throughout your workout.
Speaker 1:
A lot of these workouts, especially for the advanced group, are going to be anywhere between 45 minute and two hour workouts, depending on how complex you make it and if you add in any extra stuff such as, like an extended amount of cardio, extended stretching, you know what have you. Or if you're, you know training with a partner that's going to extend it as well. It's going to be safer because you have a spotter, but you know you should always have a spotter, but training with somebody kind of guarantees that you have a spotter for every exercise. So, anyways, this is going to be a three, three, four and five day splits is what I'm going to cover again. The, like I said, the difference is the volume and the exercise variation. So for the three day split, it is going to be very similar to the beginner three day split If you listen to that episode.
Speaker 1:
But what we are doing here is, for the most part, is consolidating these these days more, so there's less overlap. So for like day one you would do you do like one back exercise, a couple shoulder, one chest, one arm, right, so that's a total of five exercises. You're going to be doing, yeah, the same same amount of sets for the most part, except your last two exercises, which would be one shoulder and one arm. You're going to increase the amount of sets by one and you're keeping the reps, the same and same amount of rest as well. So as an example, horizontal row, two sets of six to eight shoulder press can be on a machine, it can be dumbbell, you can even just grab like a plate, like a 45 pound or whatever plate you feel comfortable with, but some form shoulder press. And you're going to do two sets of six to eight. But and both of those exercises you're gonna have three to four minute rest. You're gonna have a controlled tempo. Then the you'll do a bench press.
Speaker 1:
Whether that is barbell, dumbbell, incline, decline, it does not matter, it's more based on your preference and what you're trying to target. Oh and just, I don't know if I've even covered this, but this is, this is kind of goes back to the beginner stage. But decline, any type of decline, is going to target lower chest, incline targets, upper chest, flat bench targets, like overall, but primarily like in the middle of your chest. Same goes with flies like dumbbell flies. There's decline, incline and flat bench. So anyways, that third exercise is a bench press. You're gonna do five sets of five with two minute rest, and, yeah, so after that you'll do a overhead shoulder press. So similar to the other one, but I but just make it different, so like, if you did a dumbbell shoulder press on the first one, then you could do like a machine press on this fifth exercise, then I mean on the fourth exercise I'm sorry about that On the fifth exercise you're going to do some form of tricep pull down, tricep press down, depending on what you're doing.
Speaker 1:
Normally that's going to be done on a cable machine. If you absolutely don't have access to a cable machine, that's okay. You can do some form of like a skull crusher. You can do tricep extensions, like bend over on a flat bench and do tricep extension that way with a dumbbell, and that tricep press down or whatever variation you choose. You're gonna do four sets of six, two minute rest.
Speaker 1:
So that's your, your first day of the three-day split. Then the second day is going to basically all be legs. It's just a leg day, obviously. In my opinion you should. You should throw in abs every day or or maybe alternate on your off days, like if you're doing three days split in the gym with this, maybe Monday, wednesday, friday in the gym, tuesday, thursday, saturday, you're doing like abs and stretching and cardio at home or in a park or whatever. But anyways, this second day it's all legs.
Speaker 1:
So you're doing I'm gonna just list them real quick so you're doing a calf raise, leg press, glute bridges or hip thrust, either way, gonna do a barbell back squat or or a hack squat and then sorry for the click, sorry seated calf raise. So two different variations of calf raise. So you're going to. You can do like a standing calf raise and a seated calf raise, or if we used to do is it's kind of old-school training tech technique. But if you actually don't have any weights or a specific calf raise machine or anything like that, you can have somebody. You can hinge at the hips and have somebody sit on your lower back right above your butt. So those are called donkeys or donkey calf raises. And yeah, so that's a impromptu thing that people tend to make fun of you about, but it does work and it loads a lot of weight directly above your calves. So, altogether calf raises.
Speaker 1:
You want to. In my opinion, you want to spam calf raises because your calves, you walk all day. You're walking around, running around, jogging, whatever, anything you're doing, even if you're sitting at a desk, I mean, you're doing some sort of movement with your feet normally. So your calves are used to like an immense amount of work. So you're going to be spamming the calf raises. You want to try and avoid tendinitis or any type of inflammation. So if you ever feel any sort of like intense warm sensation within, like your Achilles tendon or something like that, then that's a sign you should take a break. But altogether, with both variations of calf raises, you should be doing like six sets of eight, in my opinion, taking a two to four minute rest, and so that's for both of those exercises. So you can start, you can warm up with calf raises, you can end the day with calf raises After you start the day with the calf raise. You can do that.
Speaker 1:
I call them hip thrusts. I mean there's different names, different variations, but you see them on TikTok all the time. Basically, you find some way to pad the bar so you don't grind your hip bones to dust with the bar. But yeah, you basically put it in the crease of your hip and you're literally thrusting the weight upward. You can do this for lighter weights. You can do this with dumbbells, you can do this with plate weights, and most of the time what you see is somebody using a barbell with some weight on it, because you can actually do quite a bit, but you want this to be very controlled.
Speaker 1:
You want I'm gonna say my notes say two sets, but I would say three sets of six with a three to four minute rest, because you should be doing it pretty heavy. Then you'll do that variation of squat. Like I said, you're going to five sets of five with two minute rest. That's pretty good. You definitely want to have a spotter. You're going for strength, so you're trying to do a heavy volume, heavy amount of weight. If it's I'm not even gonna throw out a number if the weight is enough for you to be considering it heavy, you should be definitely wearing a belt, a weight belt. You should be doing some form of knee sleeves or knee wrap, most likely knee sleeve, and yeah so the okay. Yeah. So then and have a spotter, do a spotter.
Speaker 1:
Then you're gonna go to leg press. You're going to do the four sets of six If you're feeling really good and not very tired, or whatever. I mean one. If you're not very tired, you didn't do enough weight on your previous exercises, but if you're feeling really good, I mean you could do six sets of six on leg press and just really go deep, really fill it in your lower part of or I don't know what you where the hamstring ties in to your glute. So anywhere between four and six sets of six with a two minute rest as well. You're gonna finish the day out with that C to calf raise. You can throw in some abs, you can whatever. Definitely that this should be like high protein days and a lot of rest afterwards, because that's heavy leg day. Third day you're gonna hit.
Speaker 1:
It's basically gonna be kind of like that back and bicep split that I talked about previously and do a couple bicep exercises and a few back, few back. Sorry, I blanked out, spaced out, but notes here say two bicep exercises, three back. But I'm gonna go three and three. So the way I like to do it is a warm up with like a bicep, one of the bicep exercises. So you can do I'll do a bicep curl. It can be a regular dumbbell, you can involve bands, like it's a banded bicep curl, some form of bicep curl, even if it's like a preacher curl, anything like that. I would say do two sets of six to eight heavy weight, three to four minute rest in between rep and then you're gonna hit the back Two, I'd say three sets of six of like a wide lat pull down, that'd be pretty good.
Speaker 1:
You want to really control this. You want to definitely incorporate your bracing and your breathing and leaning back slightly, pulling it to your chest and a lot of people have trouble incorporating their lat muscle or you know getting that mind muscle connection and I've said it previously but pretend like someone is about to tickle you really fast in your rib area and you know how you kind of tighten up and you know almost do like a side bend to protect that area. That is the same way you are activating your lat when you do a lat pull down. So yeah, and then you're gonna do some form of row. This is gonna be a T bar row. I grew up doing T bar rows in the football gym, but whatever, any type of row, five sets of five, two minute rest and then try and do some form of. What I really like to do after the T bar row is do like the seated cable row, if that's available to you, or you can do some form of like a neutral grip vertical pull down maybe, or even a narrow grip pull down, but four sets of six on that two minute rest. Then you're going to. Basically you're gonna finish out the exercise. You're gonna really like this, especially if you like a pump.
Speaker 1:
I'm gonna say you're gonna superset a dumbbell bicep curl. Unless you've already done the bicep dumbbell bicep curl, then maybe do a preacher curl or some form of machine bicep curl. Whatever do the bicep curls, four sets of six, two minute rest, but in between each one of those sets, superset it with a hammer curl. So that's really gonna hit your back of your alice and you're really gonna see crazy pump and a lot of growth in your bicep. So that is I would just I'd keep it equal, but both of those do four sets of six.
Speaker 1:
So, just as an example dumbbell bicep curl, one set of six and then immediately hit the hammer curl. Four set. I mean one set of six. I would take more of like a three to four minute rest on that and then hit it with another superset, take another rest, another superset, take another rest, another superset. Then you take your final rest, get a bunch of water in you, any type of supplementation that you do preferably a protein shake directly after, if you're not gonna be consuming a meal or a high amount of protein within the next 30 minutes or 45 minutes. I would go ahead and hit a protein shake, especially since one this is this. All should be pretty, excuse me, pretty heavy weight. But also you just yeah, especially on day two, you did your legs pretty good, so anyways, you're gonna want to consume some protein ASAP and lots of water.
Speaker 1:
So before I get into the four day split and the five day split, I am gonna touch base on fluids, specifically water. So the kind of rule of thumb and it does vary, but rule of thumb is half of a fluid ounce per pound of body weight. So as, as a man, if you're 180 pounds, roughly try and consume 90 fluid ounces of water, and it varies based on how much you sweat and how much cardio you're doing per day. So those are. I say those separately because some people just naturally sweat more in the gym or on a day to day basis and the cardio obviously is going to accentuate that. But keep those things in mind roughly half an ounce per pound of body weight. That goes for men and women, and that's water, so you can consume other fluids.
Speaker 1:
But yeah, anyways, back to the splits we were talking about. So for the four day split, it's going to be almost exactly like the three day split, except you're going to start off with a leg day for day one and then start that three day split. So it'd be basically same amount, like six exercises of legs, preferably hitting calf calves twice, two to five reps depending on the exercise, I'm sorry, two to five sets depending on the exercise, and almost always I'd say six reps on the calf raises. You can go up to eight. Once again, this is all heavy weight and you're going to be doing a two to four minute rest on that first leg day. Now, yeah, that sums it up. So just add an extra leg day before the three day split I just explained, and that covers the four day split.
Speaker 1:
For the fifth day excuse me, for the five day split, you're taking the four day split and you're adding an additional workout to like an extra day to the end of the four day split. So basically goes day one legs. Day two shoulder, chest and a little bit of back. Day three legs. Day four is going to be arms, back, shoulders, and then day five is what is what you're adding, and so you're going to do like a tad tad bit of back and mainly a lot of shoulders and tricep, because the previous day was when I said arms of the previous day was biceps.
Speaker 1:
So on the fifth day you would do triceps, shoulders, and like incline bench or like a mid cable chest fly, or both. Honestly I would do both. So what I have written here is a machine row to start, then machine shoulder press, an incline dumbbell bench press or incline barbell bench press, either one. And then I have written or mid cable chest fly, but I would actually say and maybe do like a superset of the incline bench with like a incline fly basically. But really with the flies you really you want to control, you want the form really good so you're not hurting your shoulders, and you really want to squeeze. When you get close to the end of the move, you know like when you're, if it's dumbbells, when the dumbbells are nearly touching, you really want to squeeze the inside of your chest, anyways. So then you would do like a dumbbell shoulder press, dumbbell, lat, raise and then like a tricep, pull down like a like With the rope attachment, like that, and then you get to the end of that movement. You always make sure and really flare out that rope and you're gonna be hitting that tricep really well.
Speaker 1:
The first two exercises were like two sets of eight. The rest were four, four sets of six to eight and once again, two to four minute rests in between reps, and that about sums it up. It's. It's pretty straightforward. You're basically and that that's a good way to progress as well so Going from beginner to advanced or advanced to Expert or whatever you want to call it. You're really just increasing volume, maybe changing Exercise variations a little bit, but you're also Just adding more work. So, like you're going from a three-day split all the way up to a five-day split, and None of the none of these splits include cardio stretching. I Didn't touch too much on abdominals, abdominal work, going over bracing or any type of Movement corrective exercises or injury prevention exercises. So you can see, with all that stuff I listed, I'm not trying to make it more Complicated or convoluted, but you, those are things that you can add in to make your workouts either more and more intense or just more involved to when you're. I mean, some people do the three-day split as far as gym work goes, like I said, but then they're doing like On their off days there, one day they're doing yoga and then another day they're Doing like a full hour-long hit workout, hii T, high intensity, high intensity, interval training. So, basically, what I'm saying is more work equals More work. I guess you're going to.
Speaker 1:
It's always best, as far as this goes, to go with your gut. If you start off at three days per week and You're like, well, I'm, I'm good, like I'm as far as my schedule goes and how my body feels and everything like that, I, I can go from here. Then that's when you assess your weaknesses, your strengths, things, things you want to improve on. Like, honestly, if you're, if you're feeling good with your schedule and the way your body fills, with a three-day split, but you're like honest with yourself and you're like my bracing sucks or my deadlift form sucks, then maybe add a fourth day where you just focus on those things though your deadlift form, your bracing, your breath control, injury prevention exercises or things to kind of like Get the soreness out, you know, and then go from there and once you feel comfortable, you're like, okay, now I'm gonna add a full fourth day of exercise and now that I've got my deadlift down and I've got you know, I'm feeling good. You know, it doesn't always have to be adding a whole extra day of of gym work. So I think about I. I think I about covered everything.
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 1:
I have now added a blog section, so Each one of these episodes is gonna have a blog with it. It's going to have similar information, but in one in a different format, but also, you know, worded differently and you know it's all. It's a whole different piece of content to consume. So feel free to check that out if you want to read. Read up more on this, and every episode has transcription as well. So if you know someone that it's hard of hearing or Could benefit from that, there are. There is a transcript for this now. So that is the news for now, I guess. Share it with a friend. I will talk to y'all later and you'll have a great week, all right, bye.