beginner hypertrophy routine - help?

[bobo]

Hey guys,

i've been trying to keep up my working out at school and it's a lot harder than when i'm on vacation, since i have a lot less time. i can only work out 3 days a week, and want to make sure i'm getting the biggest bang for my buck - i just got my pair of gymnastics rings in the mail yesterday!

what would be a good routine to maximize hypertrophy 3x/wk? i was thinking:

day 1: vertical push/pull pair (antagonistically paired), cores & legs (antagonistically paired)

day 2: same but horizontal

day 3: isoemtrics, plus sprints for my legs

for my leg workouts i've been having a lot of fun with walking lunges with a barbell on my back, i think it's a good exercise for me esp. because i'm not fully comfortable in the full range of motion for a back squat yet.

do you guys have suggestions for which exercise progressions i should select to maximize hypertrophy?

thanks!

[Neal Winkler]

Ditch the isometrics.

On friday you could repeat monday and then monday repeat wednesday and so on. A, B, A, B, A, B....

Or you could do an A, B, C, A, B, C...., where "C" is dips and curls or MMPu/MPPl.

Sprints are fine for one day but you might do them on wednesday instead of fridays.

Just do the exercises from the book and get progressively stronger at them. Any rep range from 1-12 (maybe up to 15ish) will cause hypertrophy, but 5-10 is a good range for beginners to concentrate on.

For legs, lunges are fine but you should keep practicing squats so add those in eventually.

[JasonB82]

Hi,

I was under the impression that the isometric movements, which make you move with keeping your arms straight will cause hypertrophy as this is what Coach said in his popular article (forgot the name but its one of the two at the beginning of the site and in the book). From what I remember it was about how something like an iron cross etc where the arm must be kept straight while the body still moves puts a hell of a lot more tension on the bicep and so cause alot of hypertrophy? Im sure I read Gregor backing this up too?

Can you please explain this, as I also want a decent amount of hypertrophy with my strength, and was looking to add in more hard isometric stuff with the basic strength excercies (at 3 sets of 10 rep,or 5 sets of 5, to increase volume). Also wouldnt these isometric moves increase time under tension?

Would really appreciate your advice.

Thanks

Jason

[Neal Winkler]

Isometric is when the joint does not move but the muscles are contracting. So, an exercise where the arms are held straight and the body is moving would only be isometric for the non-moving joints.

I guess I wrote that because he just wants to get bigger and using FBE's is simpler in terms of prescription because that's what everyone has always done. There is less territory to explore with non-isometric exercises.

But, I honestly don't remember why I wrote that because any type of contraction can cause hypertrophy. Or maybe I thought he was talking about something else because the terminology we use here is FSP and not isometrics. I really don't remember.