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Legit thread mirinGYMMAXXING 101
Contents:
- Intro
- Genetic components
- Why you should be going to a gym
- Frequency, Intensity, Volume
- Exercise selection
- Training & Dieting for different goals/aesthetics
- Cardio
- PEDs & Injury prevention
1. Intro
This isn’t a thread about the importance of developing your physique etc. because there are already a million of those and you don’t need to see a skinny morphed pic of The Rock for the tenth time to know that being jacked or aesthetic is attractive. This thread is about using resistance training and diet to attain whatever physique you deem to be the most aesthetic in the most efficient manner, without the use of PEDs. There will be walls of text, a lot goes into training properly and writing programs so if tiktok has fried your mind this isn’t the thread for you.
2. Genetic Components
You are never going to look like your idols.
Before you get obsessed with attaining the physique of your favourite model or fitness model, you should know that the likelihood of you ever looking the same as them is so low that its not even worth thinking about. Don’t copy their training either, what worked for them will probably not work for you, for all the reasons about to be explained.
Genetic variation is huge, and your bone structure, muscle insertions, body fat distribution, baseline hormone production (you can improve this), and ability to gain muscle & maintain low body fat, will all determine the physique that you’re able to attain. Its not worth nit picking the best of the best and saying “long biceps insertions are the most aesthetic” because you can’t change your insertions, but you can grow your biceps and make the best of what you have. I could include examples of good and bad insertions/bone structure but that isn’t the point of this guide. No matter your genetics, you will always look better for maximising your potential.
3. Why you should be going to a gym
If you have the money and ability to access a gym with free weights and machines, you should. A large number of people on this site will tell you that you just need calisthenics, calisthenics builds a more aesthetic physique, the gym is unhealthy and a waste of time etc etc. These claims literally aren’t based on anything, other than these people associating the gym with hulking bodybuilders and fat powerlifters. You don’t have to be either of these, you can use the gym to attain whatever physique you want. Additionally, the gym is so much more efficient in developing the type of physique associated with calisthenics, which is dominant arms, shoulders and chest, with good back and abs development, and overall very lean. These features are not exclusive to calisthenics, they are seen in its practitioners because you need them to excel in calisthenics movements, but you can develop the same things through lifting weights in a fraction of the time. There is an abundance of literature on the topic which no one wants to read, but this article sums it up and has the benefit of identical twins as subjects: https://www.t3.com/features/these-i...kouts-which-one-built-muscle-more-effectively
You could write 50k words explaining every advantage of lifting weights vs calisthenics alone, but again no one wants to read that and I certainly don’t want to write it. In the case of 99% of exercises (calisthenics have their place in a lifting program), free weights and machines offer more effective loading, progression and stabilisation which is extremely important in terms of muscle building (but muh stabilisers idiots name one “stabiliser muscle” and I’ll consider reading your argument). Go to a gym if you can, if not, calisthenics will work too, just not quite as well.
4. Frequency, Intensity and Volume
(incoming wall of text, this is the boring stuff but it makes a huge difference when you understand it)
In the sea of advice available online there are dozens of theories on the above. The truth is a range of different frequencies, intensities and volumes (We’ll call the F I and V) are effective, but no one wants to be in the gym for 5 hours a day 7 days a week achieving the same or less progress than the guy who goes for 1 hour 4 days a week. So we should strive to get the most progress possible by doing the least amount of work required.
In my opinion the best online resource for this is Renaissance Periodisation’s free online guide.
In order to determine our FIV, we need to understand what a working set is. Working sets will make up your training volume (V). In order to perform a working set you need to put some weight on the bar, which is your training load/intensity (I). And we don’t want to do all of our working sets on the same day once a week, because then we’re wasting time, and opportunities to cause muscle protein synthesis (turning protein into muscle tissue (making gains)), so we need to figure out how many sets we’re going to do each day, and how often, which is our training frequency (F).
Back to working sets, Renaissance Periodisation has the best definition imo:
Now what does this mean, because some of you have never seen these terms or abbreviations before:
- Between 30%1RM and 85%1RM on average
- Between 5 reps per set and 30 reps per set on average
- Between 4 reps and 0 reps away from concentric muscular failure (4 RIR – 0 RIR)
1RM = your one rep max on a given exercise, you can test this or use a calculator (strengthlevel.com is my recommendation). You use this to find out what weight you should be using for your working sets.
Concentric muscular failure = you can’t perform another rep, even if the taliban had you hostage and placed a gun to your head, demanding one more rep, you couldn’t bring the weight up. This is extremely important to fully understand. Most of you will fail in this aspect. Training to failure is extremely difficult when you don’t let form break down, studies have shown people stopping 10+ reps prematurely thinking they had achieved failure, especially on lower body exercises. You need to experience true failure, try it out with ~80% 1RM, go until you literally cannot move the weight anymore with proper technique.
RIR = Reps in reserve, meaning the number of reps away from failure. This is why you need to see what going to failure feels like, or you won’t be able to estimate RIR.
So, how many sets do you need to do, how often should you train each muscle, and how heavy should you go, now that you understand FIV.
In order to figure out your number of sets per week, its important to considering the following: minimum effective volume MEV (minimum number of sets required to see muscle growth), maximum adaptive volume MAV(number of sets required to produce the maximum muscle growth possible, anything over this is unnecessary, but not too detrimental), and finally maximum recoverable volume MRV(the maximum number of sets you can do without negatively impacting muscle growth, going above this number often will be detrimental to progress).
Now, no one wants to test their MEV, MRV and MAV, it would take years. So here are some rough guidelines that will vary from person to person, for each muscle group, and also with the intensity of each working set;
The following are for a single muscle group, not your entire workout:
MEV: 4-8 working sets per week
MAV: 8-16 working sets per week
MRV: 16-20+ working sets per week
We now need to find a frequency that allows us to train each muscle a minimum of twice per week (for large muscle groups like chest, back, quads, hamstrings & glutes I wouldn’t advise more than 2x due to recovery time), and also achieve our volume landmarks. It is also important we do 3 or more sets for a muscle group on the day that we train it, any less probably won’t provide enough stimulus for growth. You might be realising that this isn’t going to turn out like a normal training split, but instead a “full body split” built around the muscle groups you want to emphasise the most. Here’s an example from Renaissance Periodisation on how you might program you chest work:
View attachment 2324928
You can see how the rest of you training would slot in the same, you could add your back, legs shoulders or arms work in on the same days, or decide that you want it on a separate day which means adding another day/days. Build your program around what you want to achieve. You cant growth everything maximally all at once for a long period of time, you won’t be able to recover for the same reason you can’t do 20 exercises with 5 sets each in one workout, too much stress, too much muscle damage.
Progressive Overload:
Still within the realm of FIV, this is how we keep gaining muscle over time, we vary our FIV. In terms of Intensity, adding 2.5lbs to the bar every week while keeping reps the same, or adding a rep every week while lifting the same weight, or adding sets in order to increase volume. Its important not to “overshoot” on a regular basis, don’t add 20lbs to the bar because you think you can squeeze out 5 reps (assuming you were already working with a properly calculated load), because you will have nowhere to go next session and end up overtraining. You can’t train to true failure all the time. Here’s an example of volume progression of a muscle group from RP:
The deload is important, think of it as a reset button, after which you can make gains on 12 sets again. Do the least required to get the most.
- Week 1: 12 sets
- Week 2: 14 sets
- Week 3: 16 sets
- Week 4: 18 sets
- Week 5: 20 sets
- Week 6: 6 sets (deload)
Thats it for FIV, if you’re still awake after reading I applaud you.
5. Exercise selection
I’m going to make this one quick as its pretty individual, you’ll find exercises that you feel work for your body type and others that don’t, but as a rough guide:
Chest exercises:
Back exercises:
- Any free weight or machine horizontal press, ideally one that allows for conversion (hands moving towards eachother at the end of the rep). Eg. Machine chest presses, dumbbell bench presses, Barbell bench press
- Any machine or cable chest fly
- Bodyweight dips
Shoulder exercises:
- (Lats bias) Any free weight or machine row or pulldown which allows the elbow to track close to the ribcage. Eg. Barbell row, dumbbell row, chest supported machine row, cable row, also chin ups or neutral grip pull ups.
- (Upper back, traps & rear delt bias) Any machine or free weight row with the arms ~45 degrees out from the ribcage. Eg. Dumbbell rear delt row, chest supported machine row.
Biceps exercises:
- Cable, dumbbell or machine lateral raises, free weight or machine overhead and incline presses. Band or cable face pulls, free weight or machine rear delt rows and raises.
Triceps exercises:
- Free weight or machine curls of any description, will also be used in any pulling movements done for back growth. Eg. Standard dumbbell curl, dumbbell hammer curl, barbell curl, cable curl.
Quad exercises:
- Any free weight or machine tricep extension, done overhead, cross body, by the side. Eg. Dumbbell french press, dumbbell skull crusher, cable tricep extension.
Hamstring & Glute exercises:
- Any machine leg press, Barbell or smith machine squat any variation, leg extension machine, hack squat machine.
Calves:
- Stiff legged or Romanian deadlifts, hip thrusts, hamstring curl machines of any description.
- Any and all calf raise variations (just point your toes under load its not complicated).
6. Training and dieting for different goals/aesthetics
There are so many different opinions on what is most aesthetic so the best thing to do, is decide for yourself and train around that. While the physique you develop as you train is mostly genetic, you can emphasise different muscle groups to lean into whatever it is you find most appealing. I think putting most of your training resources into shoulders and arms, calves, back, some legs and chest, results in the most aesthetic physique. Whatever you choose to emphasise is up to you, just program those muscle groups with more frequency and volume than the others and they will grow more.
Dieting for your goals is vital, I’m not going to tell you which foods to eat, just what you should be aiming for, when and why. Firstly you need to eat 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight, or 2.2g per kg. Non negotiable for muscle growth, just do it. Secondly, if your starting point is very skinny, you need to lean bulk. 300-500 calorie surplus, gain 20-30-40lbs first, then cut by going into a 300-500 calorie deficit until you’re as lean as you want to be. Repeat the process, with the calorie surplus becoming smaller as you get closer to your goal muscle mass, this could take a decade or 3 years depending on your goals. If your starting point is fat, you need to cut straight away, 500 calorie deficit until you’re 10% bodyfat, then lean bulk if you want more muscle or maintenance calories if you’re happy with muscle mass. This also includes skinnyfat. Don’t bulk if you’re skinnyfat you’ll just end up fat, get shredded first then decide what you want to do.
7. Cardio
Cardio is straightforward, pick a form you like, do it a couple days a week for health & body composition. If you want to be leaner, do more, sprinting is also great for a million reasons. Try and do your cardio as far apart from your gym sessions as you can so you don’t feel weak in the gym.
8. PEDS & injury prevention
99% of people on this forum DO NOT NEED PEDS to achieve the physique they want, yes the make it easier to gain muscle, keep body fat low etc, but they heavily interfere with every other aspect of looking good. Hair issues, brutal skin issues, you’ll spend the rest of your time fighting a losing battle against the PEDs for the rest of your appearance, not to mention how time consuming and annoying it is to have to inject multiple times a week. It you aren’t sleeping 8-10 hours a night, eating whole foods in abundance and lifting properly for 3-5 years, you don’t need PEDs to make massive progress. Its like being a 9 year old 35% body fat and getting LL and a bunch of facial surgeries before you even know what you look like.
In terms of injury prevention when you already warm up properly (google warm up videos on youtube there’s millions of them), 99% of injuries occur due to improper form, using too much weight, or fatigue leading to form breakdown, as long as you stay within 30-85% of 1RM with good form you should avoid injury. This leads on to the final point, which can make or break your training. Exercise execution is critical, you need to focus on the muscle you want to develop, learn mind muscle connection through posing & contracting your muscles, control your eccentrics and don’t swing the weight up or use other muscles to complete the rep. Watch Mike Mentzer training footage, if you’re not sure.
