The Show Up Fitness Podcast

Full Body Fitness Program Analysis w/ Personal Trainer Expert

• Chris Hitchko, CEO Show Up Fitness • Season 3 • Episode 291

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Ready to stop spinning your wheels and start training like your results matter? We take a classic bro split from a young lifter who wants bigger arms and less fat, then rebuild it into a focused, tension-first plan that actually moves the needle. The fix isn’t more fluff—it’s better sequencing, smarter volume, and a weekly structure that balances heavy work with strategic accessories.

We start by clearing the biggest bottleneck: too much isolation too early. Compounds go first to drive strength and mechanical tension; isolation slides to the end where it belongs. Using a simple CCA pattern—compound, compound, accessory—we stack pressing and rowing for output and then add targeted raises, curls, and triceps work that won’t blunt your main lifts. Along the way, we address common pitfalls like fragile low backs during bent-over rows, shoulder irritation on fixed-path incline pressing, and calf training that never progresses beyond 3x10.

Progression gets an upgrade with daily undulating periodization. One day leans heavy in the 5–8 rep zone, the next expands to 8–12 or 10–15 for volume and skill. We outline weekly set targets, show how to nudge volume 10–20 percent without tipping into junk fatigue, and explain why tension is the north star while stress and damage remain useful indicators. You’ll also hear how to use short, brutal finishers—push-ups, pull-ups, walking lunges—to add conditioning, and how interval runs beat endless steady-state when the goal is fat loss with muscle retention.

By the end, you’ll know how to structure a chest-forward day, a back-dominant day, and an optional leg or accessory day that respects recovery and keeps elbows and shoulders happy. You’ll leave with a plan to grow faster, get stronger, and ditch random workouts for training with a purpose. If this helps, follow the show, share it with a training partner, and drop a review telling us which lift you’re prioritizing this month.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showufffitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Howdy, y'all. Welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast. 30 days of podcasting, day number 17. It's all about consistency. Today is a little different because it is a live video, which you can get access if you're within the show up community. The show up app will have today's video. You can see it and we will break it down so it's a little easier to understand. Still okay if you're listening, but that's one of the benefits when you go through our program. Whether if you're getting certified for life with the SUFCPT, recognize globally, we'll get you into the best gyms like Equinox and Lifetime, Soft Tissue, and or the Nutrition Coach certification. Any of those certs will get access two months to our live platform, which includes mentorship, which is huge. Not talking about some dipshit who's in front of a Ferrari selling you this$10,000 program. You're me making$50K a month. Where are these folk? Because I've never met them, but yet all these ads are out there and people buy into it. Our mentorship's a hundred bucks a month. You can get into these live calls, ask questions, just like today. Mr. Nick, University of Connecticut. I went there 2003. It's 2025 right now, almost 26, almost 20 years ago. And a cool little story, the kleptomaniac that I am. During the holidays, they had these special plates and they had the Yukon symbol. Normally they'd just be white plates, but they're like little fancy plates, almost like a china. So I would take one per day. And still to this day, 20 plus years later, I have a nice little Yukon set of plates. Thank you very much. I paid you a bunch of money, so that's fine. I'm going to take you through this program and analyze what he's doing wrong and how he can improve it. He wants to lose fat, put on some size. He has been exercising, and this is the program. So we're going to optimize it. Day one, supersets, flat bench on dumbbells with dumbbells, lap pull downs, superset number two, cable flies into seated rows. Number three, shoulder press into leg press. Number four, lateral raise into calf raises, five, bar um bar bicep curls, easy bar and tricep extensions, and superset number six, alternating dumbbell curls and overhead rope tricep extensions. Most of them are going to be four sets of eight to ten, with the leg press being 12 to 15. That's day one. The second time he comes in, it's Wednesday, he's gonna be doing a superset again, incline bench press with dumbbells, bent over rows, four by eight to ten. Superset number two, pec deck, which is a chest fly variation. It's a machine, close grip pull downs. Number three, front dumbbell shoulder press. I take it that's just like a maybe a machine, or he says dumbbells so I don't know why he said front, but shoulder press variation, Smith machine squats. Again, the one time we're doing 12 to 15 reps for the legs. Superset number four, dumbbell upright rows, love those. Into straight legged deadlifts, three by eight by 10. And then the last one being hammer curls and nose breakers, which I take it are just skull crushers. So when I look at a program, I ask them, how's it been going? What are your goals? I'm assuming, as he says he wants to get stronger and lose some fat, he's focusing more on arms with the isolation work. So he wants an arm farm. So one of the questions I'm going to ask, and when I'm doing breaking this down for you as the trainer, I'm gonna be a lot more vulgar and tough lovey, but for the client, I'm more empathetic. And this is a kid who's in his 20s, probably like, bro, do we want an arm farm? You want some giant arms? Why are we isolating so much? If you can't bench press 225, that's where I want you to focus on. I want to know how much he's doing on dumbbell flat bench press. If he's using 30s, 40s, I would like to see 80s plus up to 100 pound dumbbells in each hand. Then you can do some isolation work at the end. But if you're not into that higher load, let's focus on just getting really stronger. Because when we push, horizontal push, chest is working, but your triceps are working significantly at the elbow due to extension. When we pull back and biceps. So we don't have to isolate as much, and we can get a superior workout by doing like a CCA variation. I don't see any abs in here, so I would just do a CCA and add in abs. And as he's doing some calf raises one time, he's doing three by 10. That's not going to get your calves all jacked up, kid. Let's do it two to three times for the workout. Have more of a calf specific day. Have more of a hamstring quad specific day with isolation. You can tell these are just random exercises. Maybe you found it on some website or men's health. It's a great starting point. Could you get bigger from doing this? Absolutely. VFI, volume, frequency, and intensity. The mechanisms for hypertrophy. 2010, Dr. Schoenfeld did one of the most cited meta-analyses. I call it the STD principle: stress, tension, and damage. Now, today, 2025, it's more leaning towards specifically more towards tension, but I don't throw out stress and damage. I will use damage as an indicator based on your history. What I mean by that is when was the last, how long you've been doing this for? Let's say he's been doing it for three months. When was the last time you were sore? And if he's never sore, then let's up that intensity. The volume, we can do more sets, the intensity, as I just said, and then the frequency. Why not do three times per week? So right now, if we look at day one, the flat bench cable flies, he's hitting seven sets on day one, day two, incline dumbbell for four, pec deck for three. So he's getting 14 total sets per week. I like to see some increase, 10 to 20% per week in volume. So if you want to stick to this, do five sets next week or throw in another chest slash back exercise. I'm under the influence that because I don't have him in front of me, I'm not interviewing him. He wants to focus more on arms. He's not doing much of legs. He probably has these little chicken legs, which is fine. But I would add in some more leg work, obviously, but I would do three workouts. How I would make day one better is let's focus more on you choose. As the trainer, I will choose. It's probably going to be more of a chest day, the second workout more of a back day, and maybe the third workout more of a leg day. You could have four workouts, four, the fourth being like an accessory day. That's when you can do all of your isolation stuff if you want. How I do it, and I have 17-inch arms. A lot of people look at my arm farm, like, I want arms like you. But I do not isolate my arms very much within my workouts. I do it throughout the day. I'm not saying you have to be a weirdo like me, but why not buy some dumbbells? Wake up in the morning, create a new routine, do some low back or mobility stuff to strengthen your core and do some curls. Do that for 10 minutes. Do some close grip push-ups for hitting your triceps. You can do a little routine in the morning where you just check this stuff off so you don't have to do it later on. So then you can get more of value out of the compound work. When I say compound work, if you look at superset number two, cable flies. It's an isolation for your posterior deltoid. Sorry, it's an isolation for your uh your chest. I was thinking reverse cable flies. So why not do an incline dumbbell there or a bench press? So if we're doing a bench press with dumbbells first into lap pull downs, now I want to do some type of press again. So let's do incline and the C to rows are fine. Second, the third circuit now, dumbbell shoulder press, I'm fine with and leg press, I'm fine with that as well. So you keep that the same. But then the fourth one, instead of doing lateral raises and calf raises, I would take that calf raise, bring it up to the first superset. So then we have chest press, lap pull downs into calf raises. And that'll be your first CCA. And then for the second superset, we're doing incline press into a seated row into some ab work. Or if you want to do more calves, you could do seated there. Now for the third one, leg press, shoulder press, that's fine. You could add something additional in there as the accessory. The fourth one, I'm not doing lateral raising calf raises because I put them up there in the top. So I'll take out that fourth one, move up the superset of bicep curls in the tricep, and I'll put those as an accessory now. So let's do some chin-ups and let's do some push-ups, maybe loaded push-ups or banded push-ups, followed by that easy bicep curl. And then for the last one, let's add in another leg. Let's do some lunges or something, followed by you could do an AA here because this would be the fourth CCA technically. So we're going to do some lunges into tricep extensions into lateral raises. And then have a little fun. Let's give them a challenge. At the end, put five minutes on the clock. How many push-ups can you do on day one? At the end of the second workout, do the same thing with pull-ups. On the third workout, five minutes, see how many walking lunges you can do. So now you're making you're getting that like metabolic conditioning. He has a day right here just for cardio, which is fine. I'm all about getting some lists, some low intense steady state. But you know, if you want to check off some of that fat, why not just increase your steps and then put some higher intense cardio? When I say higher intense, I'm not talking about doing max sprint for 40 yards and then resting. You could do that if you're comfortable, but maybe you run for a speed of eight or nine for two or three minutes, walk for two or three minutes, and you do five to ten sets of that. I would prefer that over just simple lists. So then we get into the second workout, dumbbell incline press. As I said earlier, why not focus more on back now? So just flip-flop these. Let's do bent over rows if that's your choice. That's okay. It's a fine exercise. I like personally like an incline dumbbell row or a split stance row because I can load it up a lot more without compromising my back. Not saying bent over rows are going to jack up your back, but a lot of times we we add too much weight and we get too much of a rock. So if the erectors aren't very strong, it could just be a little vulnerable. So I prefer to see like a heavier dumbbell row into that incline dumbbell press. And then let's get into a military press variation, the Smith machine, into now a back exercise. So you could throw in the Benova rows there. For the third one, let's add in the Smith machine squats into more back emphasis, so some pull-ups. And then for that last one, let's get another leg in there. So step ups into leg curls into reverse flies. And then I've just added for the accessory some ab work, some complementary things that are going to help you, but not compromise, not compromise the integrity of that main movement. So what I mean by that is when we're looking here with the dumbbell incline press, which will be second because we want to focus more on back. So the rows are first, then the bench press. I wouldn't want to do biceps or triceps there because they're going to compromise the tension for the main core patterns. So total volume is what I'm looking at. If you were doing 14 sets prior, let's bump that up to maybe 18 to 20. You could have a third day, but just be mindful that you could be hitting 30 plus total sets. That might be a little too much. That's where we can get some like junk volume in there. I know the internet likes to be in different camps, full range of motion, partials. Look at the individual. I like to see what you've been doing, how you've been feeling. If you like training arms, you can have an arm day. I'm not against it, but I think on day one and workout two, we can optimize it by doing more compound movements first. Again, when we push chest triceps, when we pull back, buys, when we press overhead, shoulders, triceps. Compliment with accessories with some leg curls, leg extensions. So the last circuit can be more of a CAA. And then now this is going to be more complete. I'm a big believer that your main meat and potatoes should be those core movements and overloading those. So when you look at the set scheme, he's doing four sets of eight to ten. How about on day one we do six to eight reps across the board? And on the second day, we do 10 to 15 or 8 to 12. So we have more of what's referred to as like daily undulating periodization versus linear. This would be more linear because the next week I would assume that he's gonna do four sets of eight to ten, but maybe add two and a half or five pounds. That's linear periodization. So you still have the progressive overload, which is fine, but daily dup, daily undulating periodization has just been shown to be superior. And that's that book by Kramer and Zatorski that you can check out. That's the Bible for personal trainers and strength coaches. Dupp is just superior. So why not go a little heavier on that first day, maybe even five to eight reps? So exercise one, a dumbbell flat bench press. We do eight, you do a warm-up, both of them. So set one working set would be 10, pull downs 10. Set two, increase the weight, you get down to six. Set three, four to five. That last set you should really get after it. But I would call that three working sets. You are not saving anything in the tank. Get after it.5 to one reps in reserve. If you don't have a spotter, be smart. You don't want to get hurt. But now it's optimal in the sense that you have heavier load more on Monday. On Wednesday, you can go to that 80 plus percent, which would be eight plus reps. And then if you wanted to have a METCON day, you don't have to do the cardio on Tuesday. You could have a workout three where you do a hundred-meter sprint, hop off, max push-ups, max pull-ups, rest a minute and do that for five rounds. Then you do skierg, 30 seconds, you get after it into bicep curls, into tricep extensions, five rounds of that. And then you row for two minutes, followed by walking lunges, or if you wanted to do some type of plyometrics, you'd actually put that first because we want to optimize type two recruitment. So there is a thought process, critically thinking behind why we're doing stuff. If he's not doing plyos, don't just throw him in there because you like doing plyos. But jumping more is gonna work the calves, it's gonna work the glutes. Look at long jumpers and triple jumpers and basketball players. They're exploding type two, recruitment a lot. So you can incorporate that in there. It all depends on the individual. I can go online, which I probably will, and break this program down and say it's not optimal, and you're gonna get some meat head who's gonna say, Well, that's what I do, and I'm jacked. Well, you're also taking a shit ton of trend. For general pie, this kid's general pop, even though he's a young hunk, let's say, and he wants to be a little meat head and put some size on. You're still in that general pop category, in my opinion. So, to review this and to give a summary, when I look at a program, we want to optimize your goal first. I'm assuming he wants to focus more on chest, back, arms, because that's the emphasis of the program. But as I said earlier, I don't have him in front of me. So I'm assuming most bros want bigger upper body. So I'm gonna use that analogy. Do you have 16-inch arms? Well, let's not do as much isolation work and focus more on pressing compound movements, multi-joint. That's what we want first. You can sprinkle in in the third, fourth, and potentially fifth round or superset. That's what we have here, or CCA is what we call it. And you can do more isolation stuff if you wanted to. But again, I'm going to challenge you and try to come up with a routine where you wake up, you do some lateral raises, you do some tricep work, you do some bicep work, ab work, stuff that I don't think you should be wasting a ton of time on if you're general pop. If you're a bodybuilder, your programs are completely different, and you're listening to your coach, and that's that world, but that's 0.01%. And the irony behind that is a lot of these young hunks want to look like the bodybuilder, so they just do those bodybuilding programs. But that'll be like watching Steph Curry and how he trains and trying to do everything, but he's at a level that's significantly superior than you. Start with the basics, shoot past dribble, practice your free throws, shoot a couple hundred three-pointers a day. You're not even doing the basics right now. So ask those questions. How much can you bench? I want to know that. That's gonna go into my thought process behind this. Because this guy could be jacked and he's benching 315. Or maybe, just maybe, because there's no dumbbell work, he's dumb barbell in the past and he hurt himself. So he has this assumption that barbells are bad for you, which we know isn't the case, but that's how a lot of this stuff starts. This guy does a program, this one right here, and all of a sudden his shoulder starts feeling better. He gets certified. I got my NASA and I'm the best tragedger in the world. Stability ball squat curl process, and my shoulder feels better, and I don't do barbell anymore. Therefore, barbells hurt you. No, you didn't know how to move originally. So when you do it right with proper supervision from a qualified coach, you get the results superiorly, and you can do whatever freaking exercise you like. When I work with someone who's been benching with the barbell for a while, and their goal isn't to increase their bench press. I may take a block, a mesocycle, and go more into dumbbells. That's fine. For people that don't barbell incline press, a lot of times it puts a lot of stress on that AC joint of the shoulder. It brings you back more into extension than a barbell bench press would. That's why they don't do incline because it's a fixed path and you don't have the ability to move your wrist as you do with dumbbells. So when you incorporate dumbbells, the shoulder has time to kind of rest up, do some soft tissue work, get into the infraspinus, the rhomboids if you need to. Implement a lot of pulling to centrate that joint better. It's not to say that we need to do this magical two or three to one ratio pulling on the pushing. Some people emphasize that, and that's to each their own. But we cannot blame exercises. This is a very, very common bro split. I look at the total volume for the week, if they're goal of size. Let's increase that because volume, frequency, intensity, with the number one most important thing being tension. I will still do stress, as I said, with the metabolic circuits at the end. So if you wanted to, you could do max push-ups, max ossies, bicep curls, tricep extensions, and don't rest. Just go into it. That's okay just to get that pump at the end for five or six minutes. But doing, because this, if you're doing three sets of eight to ten lateral raises of calf raises, I see that as just kind of wasted time because I can pull that out and I can sprinkle it in with intent and not compromise force production. Shoulder press, leg press, calf raises. I'm not compromising my shoulder press or my leg press by adding calf raises in there. Cable, um, no, we're not doing cable flies. So incline press, seated rows, lateral raises, not compromising the first two core patterns. So then I can just eliminate that fourth superset right here, and then I can bring the other ones up and I'm getting more bang for my buck. And that's the beauty of the CCA. Most people don't want to be spending two, three hours in the gym. We can condense it and get a lot more bang for your buck. If you have some programs you'd like me to check out, be more than happy to review them. Give us a little history on the individual, send me that program, and we'll help you. That's what becoming a qualified coach is all about. Get into your story, share this. Mentorship we have, and you will learn more in a couple of weeks, I guarantee you, than any textbook certification, because you get to ask questions and learn the why. Coaches and trainers today don't know the why. They just throw random exercises into a program and say, do it. And if 10 people do it, a couple of them may get results. And then they're going to use those transformations that see, work with me. This person got great results. What about the people who worked with you that didn't get the results or got hurt? That's the difference between a qualified coach who understands the human body, programming, overload, volume, frequency, intensity, and the why behind your exercise selection. Have a great day. Y'all remember big biceps are better than small ones. Keep showing up.