Volume One Available as EBook Download

Just a heads up: Strength and Physique: The Articles is now available as an Ebook. 

Any day now I'm going to be a dad. It's been one long waiting game for the past week, and I have no idea how much longer it's going to take. I'm looking forward to this next chapter in my life, that of fatherhood and being a family man. I've resolved myself to the fact that everything I do and plan from here on out will revolve around my child. To say that raising a child will dominate your life is an understatement. When a coworker of mine found out my wife were having our first child, he said to me, "You can forget about working out ever again." 

I don't plan to withdraw completely from my interests and hobbies, but I do plan to pull back a bit. In my bodybuilding book Neo-Classical Bodybuilding there is a training strategy called "body part specialization." 

Body part specialization is a strategy where you devote most of your training to one or two muscle groups and put the training of all other muscle groups on maintenance mode. Your body has limited recuperative abilities, so body part specialization allows you to focus your energies on developing a muscle group lagging in size or strength without losing size or strength on other muscle groups. 

Specialization is something you can apply to your life outside the gym as well. For me the next 3 months it's about all the baby. Baby Specialization! Everything else (training, blogging, writing) is on maintenance mode.

Q: Hello, I consider myself to be partly a hard gainer but no beginner. Therefore I plan to modify the Hypertrophy Training for Ectomorphs program in your book by taking 8-6-5-12 reps instead of 10-8-6-15 as in the book.

My question: If I follow this program I will end up training my biceps and triceps each for 4 sets 3 times a week, in other words 12 sets each week. Isn't that a little too hard on the arms, especially if I am 45 years old?

-CS


My Answer: The program calls for you to train each body part 4 sets 3 times per week, regardless what pyramid scheme of reps you use.

It's not going to push you into the overtraining zone, but if you're scared that it will, then cut the arms altogether. With smaller body parts, you are less likely to overtrain, because the amount of nerve force is so low compared to large body parts. You are more likely to overtrain squatting or deadlifting three times per week than doing biceps curls and dips 3 times per week. But even then, 4 sets is not much.

If you are older and you feel you've been hormonally castrated through the years, then you may benefit from single set training programs from the early 20th century.