People often times think of extremes when they are mentally preparing themselves to build the best possible physique they think they are capable of achieving. They imagine the old school movies such as Rocky or Blood sport, where the leading character wakes up at the break of dawn to run half a marathon on an empty stomach, only to ingest a dozen of raw clutched eggs upon returning home, followed by a brutal, time absorbing lifting routine.
While all of that sounds cool and hardcore, in real life such extreme workout regimes are simply unsustainable and will get you burned out quickly, no matter how motivated you are.
Now this doesn’t mean that you can’t get into phenomal shape? Absolutely not!
In fact, I’d say that going into extremes is unnecessary and even counter productive.
A lot of people have busy careers, families to take care of or simply don’t want to spend their lives in the gym, which is understandable. My philosophy is that a beautiful body and a gym routine should be a compliment to ones life, not the focus.
Not everybody has the dreams of ambition to become a pro bodybuilder or become Mr. Olympia. I’d say that most people have the goal of achieving the body of an athlete. A body that carries a natural amount of muscle mass along with a low body fat percentage, which allows for just enough size and a visually pleasing physique with the right amount of definition.
Contrary to popular belief, sculpting a body like that requires way less time in the gym than one is likely to imagine. This is a perfect physique goal for people who wish to be in amazing shape and who want to spend only a minimal amount dedicated to working out. Simply put, in this article I will share with you the secret code of sculpting a fantastic body with a ‘less is more’ approach.
THE POWER OF MINIMALISM
To achieve this we should embrace a minimalistic approach and the power it carries related to your physique.
You see, the foundation of becoming as big as possible as a natural lifter isn’t that drastically different from someone who simply wants to build an amazing body with a moderate approach.
The key to a make a minimalistic approach work is to focus on just a handful of exercises that will target a lot of muscle groups with one single movement, combined with just enough weekly volume, ideally spread over 2 workouts per week, to stimulate a significant amount of muscle growth. 80% of a muscle’s maximum growth can be stimulated through performing about 6-8 sets per week.
Armed with this knowledge, you now hopefully realize that you don’t have to spend a whole lot of time in the gym to get into amazing shape. As long as you consistently focus on making progress on your big, key movements with a low training volume, you will have an amazing body.
Training is actually the part that can be minimized when it comes to getting in amazing shape. Unfortunately, training by itself won’t do that much. To see drastic changes in your physique, you should combine your workouts with the proper nutritional changes such as eating a sufficient amount if protein and keeping your calories in check. If you don’t keep your calories in check and don’t eat a sufficient amount of protein, you can train all you want, but nothing will change. Always remember that training and nutrition go hand in hand.
THE MONEY EXERCISES
When trying to get the maximum results out of a minimalistic training approach, we should put most of our attention on the exercises that will give us the most bang for our buck and neglect the fluff.
The key movements you should focus on to build an amazing physique that will be responsible for 80% of most of the gains you’ll ever make are:
Bench press variations, which will take care of your upper body pushing musculature and strength. The pecs, anterior delts, serratus and triceps are the primary muscles involved in this lift and will grow bigger and thicker as you get stronger at your horizontal pressing movements. Bench presses will give you a masculine chest and strong shoulder girdle that radiates power.
Chin up variations, which will take care of your upper body pulling musculature and strength. The lats, rhomboids, rear delts and biceps are going to receive a fantastic growth response from doing heavy chins. This exercise is what’s primarily going to be responsible for that V shape that makes a physique look strong and athletic.
Squat variations, which are the king for growing the lower body musculature such as the quads and glutes. Your entire body will get a fantastic stimulation from squats, since your whole body is involved to stabilize the weight you carry on your back. An aesthetic upper body should always be complimented with a strong, athletic pair of legs. Squats are the best and most convenient way to achieve this.
These exercises or at least a variation of them should form the foundation of any serious lifter’s program. Whether it’s a minimalistic designed program or a fully optimized advanced bodybuilding program.
Combined, these three exercises or a variation of them alone have the power to sculpt a ja, a jaw dropping physique. This is the reason why they should form the base of any training routine where aesthetics is the focus.
The biggest difference between a minimalst training approach vs a maximalist training approach is simply the amount of exercises, volume and frequency you add to the foundational structure of your routine. On the very basic level, things stay the same.
To fine tune your physique, you have the option to supplement the main exercises with a couple of accessory exercises. You should see these exerises as the cherry on the cake, while the foundational lifts are the cake. These should be performed after your main lifts and will serve to bring up smaller, yet important areas that need a little extra attention when trying to maximize aesthetics.
FREQUENCY, VOLUME AND REP RANGE
As this program is designed to get you into amazing shape in as little time as possible, you’ll only need to make it into the gym 2 times per week.
Your workouts will be separated evenly where you perform the workout every 3-4 days. For example Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Saturday is perfect. Obviously, you should choose days that are most convenient for you. But make sure the 3-4 day in between rule is respected.
You will rotate between workout A and workout B. They target the same muscle groups, but with slight nuances on exercise execution and the areas they hit. This will make sure that every area gets fully developed, it will prevent overuse injuries from happening and it will keep things fresh and avoid boredom from doing the same thing over and over again.
With only 3-4 sets per muscle group per workout (slightly more if you add the accessory exercises), your weekly training volume will be on the lower side and that’s totally okay for muscle growth. While studies have shown that higher training volumes are better to maximize growth in a shorter time frame, there’s absolutely no need to worry. If you’re a training minimalist short on time, you can still get 70-80% of the growth you’d achieve with a higher weekly training volume. Over time, as you’ve become strong and efficient at the key lifts, the results will even out and you’ll end up with an amazing rock hard physique. It will just take you a bit longer to achieve the same results with a lower training volume approach.
Your main lifts will be performed in the 5 to 10 rep range as this range is extremely efficient for exercise execution, fatigue management and strength progression. Not only will your muscles grow larger, due to the neurological component of this rep range, you’ll also get more efficient at lifting relatively heavy weights.
Assistance exercises will be performed in a higher rep range of 8-15, since we are going to focus more on cummulative fatigue. Going too heavy on assistance lifts often times leads to unnecessary injury. The optimal hypertrophy rep range is between 5 – 30 reps and optimal growth per set is achieved when one ends a set close to failure. Leave the heavy lifting for the big key exercises and optimally stimulate your smaller muscle groups with more pump work in a slightly higher rep range.
THE 2 DAY PER WEEK ‘GET JACKED’ MINIMALIST WORKOUT
TRAINING A
• Barbell bench press 3-4×5-10
• Chin up (weighted) 3-4×5-10
• Barbell squat 3-4×5-10
*Hyper extension supersetted with Upright rows 3×8-15
*Triceps rope extension supersetted with Bicep cable curls 3×8-15
*Calf raises 3×8-15
TRAINING B
• Incline bench press 3-4×5-10
• Neutral grip chin up (weighted) 3-4×5-10
• Split squat 3-4×5-10
*Glute ham raise supersetted (or leg curl) with Lateral raises 3×8-15
*Skull crushers supersetted with Dumbell hammer curls 3×8-15
*Calf raises 3×8-15
The first three exercises marked with a dot are the foundational key exercises for the training routine. These will give you the most bang for your buck and cannot be skipped if you want to maximize your results in the least amount of time with the least amount of exercises.
Aim to get stronger at these over time by using an appropriate heavy enough weight to challenge you in the 5-10 rep range. As you reach the top of the rep range with a certain weight, add weight and work your way up again. Warm up properly and rest around 3 minutes between every hard working set on your major lift. This will ensure optimal recovery between sets and will allow you to hit your lifts with peak performance.
Doing the major lifts alone will undoubtedly transform your body and leave you with an amazing physique similar to that of an a Greek warrior. The assistance exercises marked with a star are optional. They are the cherry on the cake that will fill up certain areas such as the side delts, the calves and the hamstrings, which the major lifts don’t stimulate to their maximal potential.
If you’re a true minimalist and really want to gain as much results in the least amount of time, then simply just focus on the bench press variations, the chin up variations and the squat variations. I promise you that you won’t rergret it.
If you want to spend another 20-30 minutes in the gym per session and top off your physique by refining certain areas that will enhance your physique even more and give your physique that ‘edge’, then feel free to add in the accessory moves marked with a star. To save time, you can superset these, which means you immediately perform bicep curls after your triceps extensions without any rest.
Again, once you reach the top of the rep range on your accessory work, use more weight and work your way up to the top of the rep range again. Rest about 1-2 minutes between every superset for proper recovery to hit your next set with the right intensity again.
CONCLUSION
This efficient 2 day per week full body workout is the ultimate minimalist training method you’ve been looking for if you want to see a amazing results in the mirror. Who said that you need to spend your life in the gym when you want to rock and amazing physique?
I promise you that if you follow this plan as instructed, you will have a body that will leave people in awe and that they won’t believe that you did it by training only twice per week.
Often times less is moreand the majority of the results will come from only a handful of action or exercises in this case. Use this to your advantage in your training and in your life in general.
Now it’s time to make a change and rock the physique you’ve always wanted.
Kevin Mahjoubi