I’m looking to get back in the gym soon to bulk up after a while out. This seems like really sound advice and will definitely give it a go! I’m about 9 and a half stone atm (won the genetic lottery and have about 5% body fat no matter what I eat)
How do you structure your days at the gym, push, pull, legs or mix it up more?
Sounds good.
Like I mentioned in the post
I'd recommend something like:
Tuesday: Squat + Bench Press + rows + direct arm work
Those sessions will probably take you the best part of 2 hours - but at least it's only 3x a week. Best reason to structure your training like this is you get to train all your body parts frequently.
I'm sure you've heard people say you make gains outside of the gym. You "break muscle down" at the gym and then it heals and recovers over the following 1-2 days and "comes back stronger".
Following something like this you hit something leg based 3x a week (squat twice and deadlift). You break muscle down and build it back stronger 3x in a week. You also do some kind of pressing 3x a week, back 2-3x, shoulders twice.
If you did push/pull/legs but still only went to the gym 3x a week it would be a whole week until you did legs again, a whole week until you did bench press again etc. Muscle would recover in 2 days and then just be sat waiting for you to train again for 5 days.
Professional bodybuilders split their training up a lot more, into body parts and push/pull/legs type things. People try to imitate them and assume they must know best - but don't copy what pro bodybuilders do. If you're 5'8 and 300lbs of solid muscle with 2 grams of exogenous testosterone in your system you have quite different needs to basically anybody else. Copy how actual athletes train - it will be a lot more like this.