🩻 Muscle Anatomy

🧠 Basic principles to internalize

1. Internalize the function of each muscle.

   Generally muscles are responsible to bring the body into action, i.e. to move specific body parts.

   • Examples

2. Understand where each muscle is in its stretched position.

   Focus on the stretched part of an exercise. I.e. when you identified the position where the respective muscle is stretched, choose exercises where the resistance is maximized in this position. Ideally, the resistance curve of an exercise should be maximized throughout the whole movement, but most importantly in the stretched position as studies have shown that the stretch is much more important for muscle growth than the contraction.

   • Examples

3. Push yourself.

   And when I say push yourself, I mean PUSH yourself. As much as possible. No matter, what your head tells you, no matter what your cardio fitness might tell you, if you are still able to perform another repetition according to the strength of your muscles, then perform it. Apart from reaching the required intensity stimulus for muscle growth, this also helps to get a feeling where your actual and absolute limit (i.e. muscle failure) is. As soon as you confidently figured that out, science says it suffices when you push yourself up to 2 RiR (Reps in Reserve) to maximize muscle growth/ stimulation. But the reason I still encourage you to go until muscle failure is, because I believe many gym-goers stop waaaay too early with their repetitions when performing an exercise (i.e. way too far away from muscle failure & even from 2 RiR), which is why they don’t build muscle. Some people claim they work out regularly since months or even years, but don’t see any improvements, and I believe this is often one of the main reasons. These kind of people stop as soon as the exercise starts feeling uncomfortable, but they (strongly) underestimate how many more reps their bodies are capable to perform despite this discomfort.

4. It’s all about them half reps!

   Can’t perform another rep with full range of motion? Most people stop here. But what you should do, is perform the exercise with the same movement, same concentration, same focus on the stretch, same everything, just perform it only until the half of the movement and repeat as many times as you can. Now kid, if you’ve come this far and your workouts actually look like this, now you have reached the ultimate level of muscle failure.

5. Pick a weight where the amount of reps of your muscle failure lies within the range of 8-12 reps (excl. half reps).

   For instance, you’re doing an exercise with a specific weight. The chosen weight lets you perform 12 reps easily and you have the feeling that you still have some RiR. Then, this is a clear sign for you to increase the weight for this exercise. Vice versa, when you perform an exercise, exhausting all the strength potential your body consists of (without sacrificing form!) and you’re not able to reach a number of 8 reps, decrease the weight slightly.

6. Last but not least: Progressive Overload.

   Each workout session, each exercise, each set — try to improve. Ideally the amount of repetitions. Even if it’s just one (or half a) rep more, it’s a success. Only thing to be aware of here is: One more rep with a significant worsening of your form doesn’t count. Keep form as perfect as possible and within this restriction, you should improve. Sometimes increasing amount of reps seems unattainable, especially when not dieting in a calorie surplus (i.e. bulking). In this case, you can focus on improving your muscle-mind-connection, optimize your form, reduce resting time in-between sets, or increase volume (e.g. by including drop sets). These examples still represent some form of progress.

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🔑 Key Takeaways / TL; DR

1. Focus on the STRETCH.
2. PUSH yourself as much as you can and in every single workout (your body is capable of much more than you think; make the discomfort to your comfort zone).
3. Stay CONSISTENT.
   1. Until you see progress in your body, it’s a long process. Be aware that you need to commit for at least 1.5 years to get where you want to be.
4. MAXIMIZE your protein intake (at least 1.6-2.2g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day).
5. And…
6. Focus on the STRETCH once again. </aside>

🦮 Guide — Workout split choices for different time availabilities/ commitments

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Time Availability/ Commitment ↔ Split Choice:

Note: Science says a muscle should be trained twice a week (assuming adequate intensity and volume — in the form of sets and repetitions — are given) for optimal stimulus/ growth. The provided workout splits below, that meet this rule, are marked with “⭐️” and, hence, can be considered ideal (at least if your goal is to build muscle the most efficient way possible). Obviously, how efficient a workout plan is, still depends on the chosen exercises, as well as the assigned volume for each exercise. For some of the workout split examples below, I’m providing explicit blueprints further down (i.e. including the best exercises for each muscle and, correspondingly, the ideal number of sets and reps), which can be adopted/ applied undoubtedly.

1 Day/ Week:

1. Full Body Split

2 Days/ Week:

1. Full Body Split ⭐️

3 Days/ Week:

1. Full Body Split with one day exclusively dedicated to chosen focus areas (e.g. glutes & hamstrings) ⭐️
2. Upper/ Lower Body Split (with the part you want to focus on (e.g. upper body) twice and the other part just once per week)

4 Days/ Week:

1. Upper/ Lower Body Split ⭐️

5 Days/ Week:

1. Upper/ Lower with one day exclusively dedicating to focus areas ⭐️
2. Upper/ Lower x PPL ⭐️
3. Push, Pull, Legs (PPL) with skipping the muscles of personally lower priority once in the week-cycle (e.g. legs)
4. Arnold Split with skipping the muscles of personally lower priority once in the week-cycle (e.g. shoulders & arms)
5. Bro Split (every muscle group once per week)

6 Days/ Week:

1. PPL ⭐️
2. Arnold Split ⭐️
3. Bro Split </aside>

🧾 Workout plan blueprint

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Building a workout plan for yourself is actually quite easy. There are just a few things to keep in mind:

• As mentioned previously, ideally you want to stimulate (i.e. train) each muscle twice within seven days. Thus, everyone who just works out once per week has to accept that they won’t build muscle as effectively as people who work out twice a week or more.
• Studies have found that, in a set number range from 1-6, every additional set is strongly beneficial for muscle growth. However, when surpassed, muscle growth with every additional set is minimal, if not even plateaus. Thus, in the ideal/ most efficient scenario you dedicate six intense sets to every muscle in each cycle (e.g. if you follow a PPL workout plan, completing all muscles once (i.e. after the first leg day) would be the first cycle of the week). If you want to be on the safe side, e.g. because you’re unsure whether your workout is intense enough or just with your focus areas, you can aim for 8 sets.
• A simple calculation reveals the volume you should aim for per week and per muscle: 6-8 sets per muscle x 2 times per week = 12-16 sets per muscle, per week
• Now, it’s just about choosing the right exercises. Below I have compiled the generally considered best exercises for each muscle.

Important notes:

1. The information above also indicates that people, who work out twice a week and follow a full body split, have to spend more time in the gym to reach the volume goal for each muscle.
2. 🚨 You should treat (1) the number of sets per muscle, and (2) the orientation of working each muscle twice per week, as fixed. 🚨 </aside>