Hi welcome to another post by Ian Duckett of bodyindesign.
I have had emails over the last few days, regarding the type of program I outlined in my last post.
To cover those emails, here is a basic program for size and strength.
One that I call Power Bodybuilding, as it is a cmbo of power lifting and bodybuilding.

Power Bodybuilding.
Bodyindesign.
Ian Duckett.

Day 1/ Chest and Back.
Bench Press/ 2×5
Incline Dumbbell Press/ 2×8
Flat Fly’s/ 2×12-15
Dead lifts from the rack or strong boxes- pull from knee height up/ 2×5
Chins or heavy Pull-Downs/ 2×8
Heavy Bent Over Rows or Dumbbell Rows/ 2×12
Strive for strength and strike a good value of style and power.

Day 2/
Shoulders and Arms.
Shoulder Press with a barbell –use a power rack and press off pins or press free just outside the rack –seated please—bench 80 degrees/ 2×5
Heavy Power Lat Raise/ 2×12
Curls Barbell –Heavy—2×5
Incline Curls Dumbbell –bench 45 degrees/2×8
Pushdowns/ 2×10
Dips—upright elbows close to your torso/ 2×12-add plates when you need to.

Day 3/
Squats/2×5
Leg Press/2×15
Leg Curls/ 2×8
Standing Calve raise/ 2×10
Crunches –Dumbbell on chest–/2×15
Points.
Now –remember the points I tried to get across to you.
Being strong is not for everyone else—it’s for you to.
Strike a good value of exercise movement to help you lift more—cheat to add to the muscles overload –not to take it away.
Keep an eye on the body as it will try to make a movement easy-it just wants to move it—it does not care if you build big pec’s or not. So watch that bench press–keep your delt’s down and rib cage high. Make sure as you power the lat raise–that even though you power them up you don’t –throw them backwards and that your thumbs don’t raise up first or trap’s, power out to the sides remember.
Always—always –try to beat your last workout records.
Be an animal –when you train—don’t be a ,,, head in the gym –but attack the weight with an inner anger that burns — have no fear— to fear a weight, even a little it will beat you—train hard and mean it—stronger =bigger.
At all other times –be a happy positive person that everybody loves to be around.
After eight weeks take a week off— then start a new program with some slightly different moves—then get brutally strong in those as well.

A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not ships are for.
-John A Shedd.

You must strive to become the best compared to you. Success is determined by the gap you create from where you began to where you are today. It’s the person the biggest gap between where they started and where they are now with their training efforts that is truly the most successful.
Skip Lacour.

Hope this helps you out—Stay on the path, eat clean train hard and heavy and rest when you can—live life and be happy—be what you want to be.-Ian.

The Basics of Gaining Mass.
Bodyindesign.
Ian Duckett.

Here are some guidelines on gaining good solid mass.
Remember- no matter how much protein you eat or drink. It will not amount to a pimple, unless you train hard.

1/
If you are 7% body-fat at 160 pounds –but a year later you are 7% at 175 ponds you will look a lot leaner. This is because even though you are the same percentage, you do have more muscle mass. Therefore you will look leaner.

2/
You can not in the real world gain all muscle and not a little fat. I have on some occasions –had a client –lose body fat and gain muscle tissue. This can happen when the body is under so much pressure to build muscle–that it robs calories from fat cells– for calories needed to build tissue. This is all the while staying the same weight. I have had this happen to myself a few times. But –there becomes a ceiling on this and when you get very lean the body then will burn tissue to perform the hard workouts—eventually you just get a small soft look—flat and in need of fuel.
To get bigger you need to gain weight, good weight. If you gain 3 pounds and 1 pound of it is fat —you will look bigger and leaner.
If you keep this going at this ratio, this is awesome and you will look a lot bigger and leaner as time goes on—as in number 1/

3/
So how is this done?—first we establish a baseline — calories, protein, fats and carbohydrates—that will hold your weight stable.
After 4-6 weeks of this you need to assess what needs to be done. You may after this look leaner and bigger as your body has robbed calories from fat cells to build tissue (this is of course if you train like an animal) to cope with the hard workouts.
This is so simple — here is how you now set to grow.
We now know that we have to now add calories to gain size—we have a start point and all we have to do is add the food up and keep notes.
I prefer to add calories across the board—pro—fat—carbs—to increase muscle mass.
Later we can work out what element you need the most, as some people are very carbohydrate dependent and others are not and need more fats and protein.
But don’t worry about this as yet and for now let’s keep it simple.
Here is what you do add 300 calories to your baseline diet—simple as—1 spoon of olive oil—1 more scoop of whey protein and another ounce of oats—into your day. If you don’t gain on the scale at the end of the week to ten days add another 300 calories. Again across the board –more whey, more –oil, more potato.
Do this till you gain, keep your eye on the scale and the mirror, that way you can be sure you are adding the right percentage of muscle mass.
Depending on how lean you are to start with and how many year’s you have been training —2 pounds a month is good for very advanced trainer as they are more near there genetic limits. But for a intermediate trainer 5-7 pounds a month is good to shoot for.

4/
If you start to gain too much fat to muscle.
This is what I would ask you first :-

Are you training hard enough? If you don’t stimulate it—it won’t grow.

Are you eating correctly? Are you cheating and eating the wrong foods or binging at the weekends?
If so —train harder —pull your socks up—and balance your calories at where they are at now.
Stay at your new baseline—(with your socks pulled up) until you start to look lean again—then push forward again.

5/
Post workout is a very important part of the mass gaining jigsaw and is essential to keep the new muscle tissue gained.
After a workout your system is screaming out for carbs and amino acids. If they are not ingested ASAP you are at a big disadvantage.
This is another area you can bump up the calories and it not go near a fat cell.
After a workout take two scoops of VP2 in water with 2 scoops of HSC or 5-6 rice cakes. Snack a jacks are good (yes they are full of sugar and fast acting carbs—but this is what you need) on the back of the carbs will ride the protein. This will aid recovery and trigger the growth mechanism.
Please refer to the AST leaflet provided on post workout nutrition.
I have said many times that I consider a workout is a wasted workout without the post workout nutrition plan.
Train hard eat clean Ian.

What is Bodybuilding and what constitutes a ‘beginner’?
Firstly I class Bodybuilding as any consistent form of exercise with the intention of increasing lean muscle mass. Whenever I tell people that I am a Bodybuilder, they usually snigger then say I’m not big enough. After I explain the difference between natural and non natural Bodybuilding, they say ‘oh, my friend/relative used to be a bodybuilder’. My neighbour actually said to me ‘my husband used to be a bodybuilder; he used to eat raw eggs and everything!’ This is like saying the old guy that is a member of the local golf club is a ‘golfer’. Sure he plays twice a week for £1 per hole with his mates and the odd prize but is he really ‘a golfer’?

So, back to the 2nd question. What is a beginner? In male Bodybuilding they have a Novice category. This means that they simply have never qualified for the British Finals. Some of the Novices have better physiques than the weight class winners. They are not novice lifters, just novice competitors. A beginner for purpose of this article is someone with less than 1 year lifting experience.
Anyone however can benefit from this programme, irrespective of their experience. It is sometimes good to forget all the fancy spilt routines and advanced forms of overload and go back to good basic exercises with good form. I once attended a seminar by a Bodybuilding / Physiotherapist from Australia called Paul Wright. He was great. Paul could see exercises from both sides of the fence. Let’s face it, some of our isolation work to build weak body parts isn’t exactly functional, but as Paul said, there are around 10 exercises and with slight adaptations we could build a great physique without many isolation variations. I am not going to simply list Paul’s favourites but tell you my own personal list.

I am not going to get too technical and bogged down with rep ranges and technique notes. Any decent exercise book will list and describe the following exercises (I will recommend some at the end of the article). If unsure, ask your local gym instructor to demonstrate. If you are lucky they will have a slight experience of free weights, if not, find someone else. Do not accept 2nd rate tuition. You will simply copy their bad habits. I could write a full article on the lack of quality instructors in Gyms (I spent 2 years working as a gym instructor so I have seen them)

So, here we go.
Some people under train, some over train. Some can train 6 days per week, some get great results training twice per week. For a beginner I recommend 3 weight training sessions per week. (If this is impractical, 2x per week is a good start but 1x will not work!)
Try to spread the workouts out. Not Mon, Tues, Weds. Mon, Weds and Fri is ideal or something similar.
You will choose 1 major exercise per workout. Day 1 will be Deadlift. Day 2 will be Bench Press and Day 3 will be the squat. I would recommend you record your reps/sets/and weight for these 3 exercises. They will be your bench marks.

Day 1 Upper 1
Deadlift
Pull ups/Pull Downs
Bent over row/seated row
Barbell curls
Low Back extensions

Day 2 –Legs
Squats
Step Ups
Lunges
Calf raises
Crunches
Oblique twists

Day 3 Upper 2
Bench Press/Dumbbell Chest press
Feet Raised press ups
Military press/Dumbbell shoulder press
Bench Dips/Dips/Assisted Dips
Rotator cuff work
Lower abdominal crunches

As you can see I have listed alternatives on a couple of exercises such as Bench press/dumbbell chest press. This is a) to allow for lack of equipment but also for variation of stimulus whilst achieving the same result.
Always try to have at least 1 day off between workouts, sometimes 2. 5-10 mins general warm up will do such as bike/x trainer/skipping. Start with 3 sets of 10 for each exercise. 2 warm ups sets and 1 working set. Slightly increase the weight with each set.

Each programme should be changed regularly but if you are changing it each week as a beginner you won’t see the adaptations. I would recommend sticking with this programme for 12 weeks then re assessing.

In my next article I will detail how to take your physique to the next level using more advanced training techniques and I will also discuss bodybuilding nutrition.

See you soon.

Eat, Sleep and Train.

John

Thanks for choosing to read my blog.
I am honoured to be associated with AST and being on here alongside my fellow competitors and friends Ian, Dell, Wayne and Jay.
I will be adding to the blog weekly so be sure to bookmark it and check it out.
I hope you liked the videos. They were filmed as it is so no editing was done of the exercises. I enjoyed watching them myself. It gave me chance to see things I do well and also areas I can improve. I recommend every serious trainer has someone to film them training and be self critical.

I am having a break from Max OT after filming the vids. I am working more on the kickboxing and kettlebell work but I am already thinking about my next 12 week Max OT period. I will be keeping the basic exercises such as squat, deadlift, dumbell press and push press but varying the others. I cant wait.