Two Day Beginner Strength & Muscle Gain Programme

Cill94

Two Day Beginner Strength and Muscle Gain Programme

Today I'm sharing with you a programme you can use for yourself or your clients who are training twice per week and looking to gain mass. 

I recommend performing this on a Mon|Thurs or Tue|Fri type schedule to allow for recovery. 

This programme is extremely simple and highly effective. Let's delve in. 

 

Progression

The part that takes a little while to understand is how I progress these sessions, but it's crucial to the programme succeeding. 

Reps In Reserve

How many sets and reps you do, and whether you add weight to the bar, is based on your own subjective rating of how many reps you have in the tank. This is called your 'reps in reserve' (RIR) and is a very simple concept. Basically, it's how many reps before you think you would hit failure. It's important that to understand this is based on what you can do with good form. Not looking for reps where you're flailing all over the place. 

As an example, if you do 5 reps and think you could have done 2 more, then you would rate the set as '2 RIR'. 

In this programme, you are trying to keep all or as many of your sets as you can to a 2-3 RIR intensity. Very occasionally pushing it to 1 RIR on a day you feel great is okay, but it's best reserved for assistance exercises that won't impact recovery as much (e.g. curls, rows). 

Bear in mind that you will be bad at rating RIR for a while. As long as you're progressing, it doesn't really matter. If you are struggling to progress, and think you're wussing out, try doing extra reps than what you've estimated you can and see what happens.

First Session

On the first session, you are going to start each exercise with a weight that you think would be doable for 20 reps. For a beginner, this will often be the empty bar (which you should be warming up with anyway). 

Every time the trainee gets the max reps in the range (i.e. 10 reps), the weight is increased by 2.5kg total. That means a 1.25kg plate each side. This is continued until the trainee only has 2-3 reps in the tank. 

Example for first day on bench press: 

30kg x 10 (5+ RIR)

32.5kg x10 (4 RIR)

35kg x 10 (3 RIR)

37.5kg x7 (stopped because only had 2 reps in reserve) 

Second Session and Beyond

On the next session, you'll warm up and start with the weight you finished on, but you'll do reps corresponding to keeping you at 2-3 RIR. Sets of 5 or 6 tend to work well for this. You stop doing sets once you feel you have only 2 RIR. You can try to add reps each set and even try get 10 reps on your last set and, if you do, the weight goes up by 2.5kg for the next session.

Rinse and repeat, while eating for muscle gain. 

Below is an example of what this might look like for a beginner on bench press: 

 

Additional Notes

• "Press" on Day 2 means overhead press - also known as military, strict, or barbell press.
• If you are unable to do back squats and/or overhead press, just do goblet squats and incline press until you can.
• Additional assistance work can be added as needed/depending on how you feel. 
• Rest should be long enough to do your sets with high quality, it's not a cardio programme. 90 sec - 3 mins rest between sets is advised. Longer rest for big exercises, less for things like sit ups or arms. 
• If you can do chin-ups or want to do some form of assisted chin-up, that is an acceptable substitution for lat pulldowns. 

Owenee

that's great, keep it up!!