OK. I know this sounds like a stupid advert from a fitness mag, but believe me. I've tried this one and it works! It was the first workout I ever tried, or at least it's similar to it, with a few little additions, and it helped me to begin to look the part of a bodybuilder. Commit yourself to this workout just 2-3 times per week (not more because you'll be overtraining, unless you've been working out for a while) whilst following a good diet, you WILL get huge! Well, your upper body will get huge anyway. Don't neglect your legs or you'll just look dumb and everyone in the gym will laugh at you.
At the gym a few months ago, when I was just starting out, I got talking to a personal fitness trainer. He told me that the secret to big gains was change. Not just once per month, or once per week, or even once per workout, but he said that the secret to massive gains was to change every single set! Now I'm not an idiot, but this guy seemed fairly sure of himself and well he was pretty big (except for his legs - he was one of "them") so I decided to give it a try.
His theory was that if you hit a muscle from a lot of different angles in the same workout, that muscle will grow quicker. Fair enough - most bodybuilders know that. The thing he said to do, though, was to change every single set. As you can see below, every set is different.
You should probably warm up with a light set of each exercise first, but I just choose one exercise to warm up with (for example I warm up my chest with a light set of medium grip bench press). As well as this, I always warm up for about 5-10 minutes with some light cardio first. I try to swap it around a bit, just so that I don't get bored and tend to alternate between the punch bag and the exercise bike. By the way, if you do use a punch bag, don't go mad. Just a few gentle hits. Any cardio equipment is fine, or even just jogging on the spot (although this looks kind of stupid), but don't do anything too intense. If you are just beginning to sweat, that's cool. That' s the way it should be. ANYWAY; on to the workout.
You should try to keep each set to about 8 reps.
- Bench Press
- 1 set wide grip
- 1 set medium grip
- 1 set close grip
- Rest and then repeat all 3 sets with the same weight.
- Bent over rows
- 1 set wide overhand grip
- 1 set medium overhand grip
- 1 set medium underhand grip
- Rest and then repeat all 3 sets with the same weight.
- Shoulders
- 1 set military press
- 1 set upright rows
- 1 set barbell shrugs (optional)
- Rest and then do all 3 shoulder exercises again with the same weight.
Do every exercise slowly, except for bench press and military press where you should push out fast and bring the bar back slowly. Try to keep the rest periods down to about a minute between exercises and only about 10-15 seconds between sets. You should repeat this workout 2-3 times per week. Although you should really do barbell shrugs, I've left them as optional because I don't think you need to do them for the first few weeks of training and even after that, not every workout - your traps tend to develop faster than your other shoulder muscles and can make your shoulders look funny.
Like I said, please remember that you MUST work out your legs and abs as well as your upper body. If you don't you will just look like a freak (in a bad way - not a good way!).
Another thing to remember is that you MUST eat the right stuff! I'm no nutrition expert, but I eat healthy balanced meals and steal large quantities of my brother's Prolab N-Large II. It's really good stuff and it works! Anyway, what I'm trying to say is go and find some nutrition articles with some information about nutrition on them.
On a side note, I've recently bought a box of protein bars (Met-Rx Nutrition Bars, I think they're called) from a local store (about 10 times the price of Bodybuilding.com) and they taste really good, as well as having a pretty good nutritional content!
Have fun! GET HUGE!