New Workout Program Chosen. And it is...

Hey Everyone,

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  I had an excellent legs workout on Friday and then I traveled to see my brother and dad about 2 hours south in Portland, OR.  My girlfriend and I both had a great time seeing family but the combination of the legs workout on Friday and the cramped car ride had us hurting.  You know what they say though...

So as I spoke about in my last post, one of my biggest goals going further was to have more structure and that I was going to look for a new workout program to follow.  I did have some criteria that the program had to fit for me to consider it...

• Could not be a quick fix type of program.  No "Get Jacked in 7 Days" Craziness
• Had to be designed and authored by a reputable source
• Could not be based around a product. (Hebalife, Body by Vi, etc..)
• Had to have some sort of nutritional guide built with it as well.

I spoke with some of my friends that are highly involved with the fitness industry after rolling around a couple different fitness sites looking for new programs and the one that I have chosen is Cory Gregory's 16-Week Muscle Building Program.  I have followed Cory Gregory's work for a while and I am definitely a fan of his contributions to the fitness community along with his personal work.  If you know nothing about him than do yourself a favor and check out his biography.  Coal miner to President of MusclePharm.  

I was mostly drawn to his program due to the fact that it involves growth by proven scientific methods and not just dirty bulking.  All of the nutritional & supplemental plans were designed by Dr. Mike Kim, MusclePharm Executive Director of Medicine.  It is a 4 month program that is broken down into 4 VERY different phases.  Mixing up lifts, reps, weights, and routines all along the way for optimal results.  If you go to the link (which I will provide at the bottom) you can go to his page and they have the ENTIRE program in .PDF form to follow along.  I will not get into the nutritional/supplemental side of it on this blog but I will talk about the 4 phases and how the weight training differs in each phase. 

WEEKS 1-4 - THE FOUNDATION PHASE

The first four weeks are designed to really shock your body if you are a beginner.  You are scheduled to work out every body part once a week at a very high intense pace.  Most exercises are combined into supersets and call for 10-12 reps.  He stresses on the importance of short breaks and not to go light just because you see the amount of reps involved.  Go fast, Go heavy and be ready to be shocked.  He explains that he designed this phase for "future hypertrophy and long-term gains."

WEEKS 5-8 - PYRAMID PHASE

The next 4 weeks change it up a bit when it comes to how your sets and rep counts are built.  Pyramiding refers to a set where you start with a high number of reps and lighter weight and continue to lower the reps/raise the weight until your done.  You must make sure that you reach failure on your last set.  Some of the sets are designed to start as high as 20 reps and end at 2.  However, this has to be achieved with proper form.  He goes on to explain that this will give you a more deep muscle soreness and fullness look to the muscles. 

He was also nice enough to throw in a day of HIIT training for us...You should already know about that from my previous post, right? (Hint...click HERE if you do not remember)

WEEKS 9-12 - PUMP PHASE

So at this point you are halfway through the program and your thinking that it will start to get easier as you are getting strong right? WRONG!  This phase throws in another exercise into the mix...literally.  Instead of super setting two exercises like in phase 1, you will now have to push yourself harder and complete tri-sets of exercises with no breaks in between.   He emphasizes to not cheat yourself and lower the weight to much just because you see the amount of lifts you are going to do.  This is the phase where a lot of lifters will start to really see the cut definition in their muscles and the lean physique. 

And yes...more HIIT Cardio.

WEEKS 13-16 - DETAIL PHASE

Cory finishes up by explaining the remaining phase and how it is designed around traditional body building routines like Arnold Schwarzenegger made famous.  This final 4 week phase involves double split workout schedule where you hit all muscles groups twice a week.  You train 6 days a week instead of 4 and it involves a lot of high intensity super-sets, tri-sets, and other advanced techniques.  

Since the actual workouts are on the website I was no longer going to post my actual workouts on my blog.  However, if there is interest I can post weekly details so you can see what the weight of my lifts and progression that way.  Needless to say I am very excited to start tomorrow.  I do want to point out that this post was a VERY brief overview of the program and that there is tons of other information regarding it that I did not touch on. (like the entire nutritional and supplemental parts)  Plus, If Cory Gregory already replied to my tweet by saying that the #Hypeisreal then I have to trust it...

Until Next time...

-Ryan

Follow me on Twitter

Follow me on Instagram

Cory Gregory's 16-Week Muscle Building Program