When it comes to growing larger, stronger muscles there can be nothing more frustrating than hitting a plateau. What’s even more frustrating is that most people will only ever grow about 15 to 20 pounds of extra muscle no matter how hard they train or for how long, unless of course they are one of the few people who are genetic rarities and/or are taking a lot of performance enhancing drugs (steroids).
That said, 15 pounds of muscle has a big effect. It has a big effect on strength, size, appearance and on how well you fill your shirt sleeves.
For most people however, the reason they hit a plateau has more to do with how they train and eat rather then their genetic limits. Normally the way it works is like this. You go to the gym and start training for size, you might even be dialing your food in a bit. You start to grow and see some results. Then after a few months your growth slows and stops. You get frustrated and go harder and more often but nothing seems to be happening. So you go even harder still, adding more sets, more exercises and maybe even more food. You think you re seeing a little more growth but your not sure if it is muscle or if the extra food is now just making you a little fatter. Eventually you sort of burn out (or worse, get an injury) and spiral down your training, your enthusiasm and you ambitions. You might work on shedding some of those extra pounds of fat your gained for while…. then a wile later you will go again…. with exactly the same results.
I have covered this kind of yo-yo-ing before many times over different types of training styles and the reasons for it is always the same… too much focus on doing only one static program with the same weight and rep ranges and pushing harder and harder without any plan to build in peaks and recovery. If you were to ask a sprinter if they trained like this, just trying to go faster and faster every time they hit the track, they would look at you like you were mad. Professional athletes have strength phases, speed phases, recovery phases and peaking phases built into every year of their training and while you may not be a professional athlete you still need to apply this thinking if you want to continue to progress.
So with that in mind lets return to growing some muscle.
The following is a 12 week program that will absolute work to grow any large body parts such as the legs chest or back. Because it involves training the same boy part multiple times a week I strongly suggest you pick just one body part to work on at a time and work on it, as to pick more than one would just over load the body and your gains on both would suffer. At the end of the 12 week period you should go back to training that body part only once a week for about 10 sets while you turn your attention to applying this program to another body part.
Heavy squat: 6 sets of 3 to 6 reps. (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 6 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 3 and slowly start to build again).
Leg press: 6 sets of 15 to 20 reps. (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 20 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 15 and slowly start to build again).
Front Squat: 6 sets of 8 to 12 reps (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 12 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 8 and slowly start to build again).
Heavy Bench Press: 6 sets of 3 to 6 reps. (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 6 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 3 and slowly start to build again).
Cable crossovers: 6 sets of 15 to 20 reps. (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 20 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 15 and slowly start to build again).
Incline Dumbbell Press: 6 sets of 8 to 12 reps (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 12 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 8 and slowly start to build again).
Pedlay rows: 6 sets of 3 to 6 reps. (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 6 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 3 and slowly start to build again).
Pull-down: 6 sets of 15 to 20 reps. (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 20 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 15 and slowly start to build again).
High Snatch pull: 6 sets of 8 to 12 reps (As soon as you can do all 6 sets for all 12 reps increase the weight and drop the reps to 8 and slowly start to build again).
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