3-Day Full Body Rapid Strength & Muscle Building Routine
Greg O’Gallagher & Tom Ness
www.RoadToRipped.com
Road To Ripped – Bonus Guide Objective: Rapid strength gains on key movements including bench press, chin ups and squats -‐ with secondary importance on standing press and deadlifts. Timeline: 8 Weeks What to expect: 40 lbs on your bench and chin-‐ups and 60-‐80 lbs onto your squats in 8 weeks. Monday & Friday: 1. Bench Press: 3 sets x 5 reps 2. Weighted Chin ups: 3 sets x 5 reps 3. Barbell Squats: 3 sets x 5 reps Bonus (optional) Triceps cable pushdowns and barbell curls: 2 sets of 6-‐8 reps
Wednesday
1. Standing Barbell Press: 3 sets x 5 reps 2. Deadlifts: 3 sets x 5 reps 3. Hanging Leg Raises: 3 sets x 5-‐10 reps Bonus (optional) Dumbbell Lateral Raises and Calf Raises: 2 sets of 10-‐15 reps
Notes
Rest 2-‐3 minutes between sets. When you can complete all 3 sets for 5 repetitions, increase the weight by 5 lbs the next workout. Perform two warm up sets for each exercise. 60% of work set weight for 5 reps and 8% of work set weight for 3 reps. For chin-‐ups perform bodyweight for 5 reps. Then half of your work set weight for 3 reps before going into your three work sets. For hanging leg raises go right into your first set, there’s no need for any warm ups. ©2014 & Beyond, RoadToRipped.com – All Rights Reserved
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Road To Ripped – Bonus Guide If you’re performing the bonus work, build up to the top end of the rep range for both sets before increasing the weight by 5 lbs.
The Thinking Behind the Routine
This routine is highly simple and minimal. Don’t underestimate the simplicity of this routine for being ineffective. The sheer power of this routine is that you can add about 40 lbs to your bench press and weighted chin ups and 60-‐80 lbs to your squats and deadlifts in 8 weeks. Imagine going from benching 160 lbs for 5 reps to 200 lbs and doing chin ups with 20 lbs for 5 reps to 60 lbs for 5 reps. And squatting 200 lbs for 5 reps to squatting 260 lbs for 5. That’s going to result in some of the most incredible muscle gains of your life. After about 8-‐12 weeks, you will plateau on this routine. At first you should be able to add 5 lbs to your chin ups and bench press each week and 5 lbs to your squats every workout (10 lbs per week). But after about 8 weeks you will max out. Doing this routine for about 8 weeks is like a fast track to building incredible strength and muscle. Unfortunately most people follow high volume 5 day splits designed for slow and minimal strength development. This leaves so much muscle growth on the table.
Modifications
If you already have well muscled legs and don’t want to add a ton of size, I’d suggest doing pistol squats instead of barbell squats. This will build strength and athleticism without as much hypertrophy as squats. Instead of deadlifts, I would do power cleans, a great exercise at building power and explosiveness throughout the legs and posterior chain.
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Road To Ripped – Bonus Guide If you want to focus on more upper chest development I would do incline press instead of the regular bench press.
Plateau Buster
If you plateau on this routine before the 8 weeks, I would change the rep scheme. Instead of doing 3 sets of 5 reps on core movements, I would do 3 sets of 8 reps. This means you’d have to reduce the weight by about 7.5%. So if you’re doing 200 lbs for 5 reps, you’d need to do 185 lbs for 8 (92.5% of 200 lbs).
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