Abdominal Rollout
The abdominal rollout is a classic unweighted ab exercise that deserves a place in your repertoire.
Start this exercise on your knees, and once you can do at least 30 reps before reaching technical failure, increase the difficulty by remaining on your feet, like a plank.
Once you can do at least 30 reps on your feet before reaching technical failure, start doing weighted sit-ups or cable crunches instead.
The Bigger Leaner Stronger Deload Week
Some people say deloading by reducing workout volume (number of hard sets) is better than reducing intensity (load) and vice versa.
I’m in the middle (I think both can work fine), but I lean toward deloading volume for two reasons:
Studies show that reducing volume instead of intensity is more effective for decreasing fatigue, which is the main goal of a deload.2
Research shows that reducing volume instead of intensity is more effective for maintaining performance.3This makes it easier to pick up where you left off when you get back to your hard training.
So, here’s what I recommend for your deload weeks while on Bigger Leaner Stronger:
Workout 1
Deload Push
Barbell Bench Press: Warm-up and 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Incline Barbell Bench Press: 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Dumbbell Bench Press: 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Workout 2
Deload Pull
Barbell Deadlift: Warm-up and 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Barbell Row: 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Lat Pulldown (Wide-Grip): 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Workout 3
Deload Legs
Barbell Squat: Warm-up and 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Leg Press: 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Lying Leg Curl: 2 sets of 3 reps with last hard-set weight
Put at least one day in between each of these workouts.
Everything about the workouts remains the same as your hard-training workouts with the exception of progression, as there’s no progression in your deload workouts (because you don’t do any hard sets and, instead, do just sets of three reps with your last hard-set weight).
Can You Do Cardio on Your Deload Week?
Sure.
That said, remember the goal is to significantly decrease the amount of stress on your joints, ligaments, nervous system, and muscles. As you can imagine, doing too much high-intensity cardio won’t help with that.
So do as much walking and light physical activity as you’d like, but limit HIIT and similar activities to an hour or so for the week and you should be fine.
What Should You Do With Your Diet When Deloading?
If you’re cutting, you can maintain your current calorie intake while deloading, unless you feel the need for a diet break, in which case you can increase your intake to your approximate total daily energy expenditure.
If you’re lean bulking, you can maintain your current calorie intake or reduce it to your approximate TDEE if you’d like a break from all the food.
Should You Just Take a Week Off Instead?
Maybe.
To find out, try a deload week and write down how you feel coming back to your hard training and how the first week goes. The next time around, do the same with a rest week (i.e., a week off).
Going forward, pick whichever seems to best suit your body.
It’s also helpful to plan your deloads or rest weeks to coincide with trips, holidays, vacations, or any other upcoming disruptions to your routine. This way, you don’t have to interrupt any of your hard training.
Finding Your Starting Weights (Week One)
It’s all well and good to know that you should put enough weight on the bar to do your hard sets in the 4-to-6-rep range, but how do you determine this when you’re starting out?
Finding your starting weights is mostly a matter of trial and error. You start light on an exercise, try it out, and increase the weight for each successive hard set until you’ve dialed everything in.
Thus, the goal of your first week is to learn your weights for all the exercises you’ll be doing in that phase. Chances are you’ll find your starting weights quickly and easily and feel comfortable diving right into proper hard sets in your first week or two on the program.
To Get a Spot or Not?
Most exercises don’t benefit from spotting, and even those that do can be performed safely without assistance. That said, having a spotter does provide two advantages:
It encourages you to go for that extra rep or two you might not want to try otherwise.As you know, you don’t need to take sets to technical failure, but you need to come close most of the time. That can be scary when you have a heavy bar on your back and your legs are on fire.
A spotter can give you the confidence boost you need to power through those last couple of reps.
It can (strangely) increase your strength.This sounds silly until you experience it for yourself. You’ll be struggling, and the moment your spotter puts their fingers underneath the bar, you suddenly find the strength to shoot it up.
So don’t be afraid to ask someone in the gym for a spot on exercises like the bench press and squat if it’ll help you progress more comfortably.
Just make sure they know the golden rule of good spotting: so long as you’re keeping the weight moving, you don’t want their help.
You want to move the weight without assistance if possible, so they shouldn’t touch the bar or assist unless they’re absolutely needed.
•••
And just like that, your second training wheel is firmly in place, and you’re about ready to start your journey toward a bigger, leaner, and stronger you!
Before I send you on your way, however, let’s talk supplementation and make sure you know exactly what you are and aren’t going to take while on the program, and how to get the most out of your supplementation regimen.
Key Takeaways
A training phase is a block of training designed to accomplish a specific goal, like increased power, strength, muscle growth, endurance, or recovery.
In Bigger Leaner Stronger, your training routines are going to change slightly from phase to phase to expose your muscles to new and different types of movement patterns to more fully develop them.
I don’t recommend changing anything in the middle of a training phase unless you have to due to injury, traveling, or some other pressing circumstance.
Whereas a training phase delineates the goals and duration of a training block, a training routine delineates what you’re going to do in that time to achieve those goals.
As far as results go, the Bigger Leaner Stronger five-day routine is better than the four- and three-day routines, and the four-day routine is better than the three-day routine.
Try not to change routines during individual training phases. That said, if you’d like to “upgrade” to the four- or five-day routine in the middle of a phase, go for it. Try not to “downgrade” unless you have to.
It’s generally a good idea to do your hardest exercises first in your workouts, followed by the second hardest and so forth, because you always have the most energy and focus in the beginning of your workouts.
You also want to do the exercises in a workout one at a time and complete all the hard sets for one exercise before moving on to another.
If you can’t do an exercise in a workout for whatever reason, simply choose an alternative “approved” exercise from chapter 23 to take its place, or do three more sets of an exercise already in your workout.
When you get 6 reps for one hard set, you immediately move up in weight by adding 10 pounds to the bar or moving up to dumbbells that are 5
pounds heavier (per dumbbell).
If your gym doesn’t have 2.5-pound plates, you can add 10 pounds to the bar when you move up in weight.
Doing too much weighted work for your oblique muscles can make your waist look “blocky,” but weighted training for your rectus abdominis won’t.
The goal of a deload week is to significantly decrease the amount of stress on your joints, ligaments, nervous system, and muscles.
Reducing volume instead of intensity is more effective for decreasing fatigue and maintaining performance.
Do as much walking and light physical activity as you’d like during your deload week, but limit HIIT and similar activities to an hour or so for the week.
If you’re cutting, you can maintain your current calorie intake while deloading, unless you feel the need for a diet break.
If you’re lean bulking, you can maintain your current calorie intake while deloading or reduce it to your approximate TDEE if you’d like a break from all the food.
Schoenfeld BJ, Contreras B, Tiryaki-Sonmez G, Willardson JM, Fontana F. An electromyographic comparison of a modified version of the plank with a long lever and posterior tilt versus the traditional plank exercise. Sport Biomech. 2014;13(3):296-306. doi:10.1080/14763141.2014.942355.
Bickel CS, Cross JM, Bamman MM. Exercise Dosing to Retain Resistance Training Adaptations in Young and Older Adults. Med Sci Sport Exerc. 2011;43(7):1177-1187. doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e318207c15d; Izquierdo M, Ibañez J, González-Badillo JJ, et al. Detraining and Tapering Effects on Hormonal Responses and Strength Performance. J Strength Cond Res. 2007;21(3):768. doi:10.1519/R-21136.1; Bosquet L, Montpetit J, Arvisais D, Mujika I. Effects of Tapering on Performance. Med Sci Sport Exerc. 2007;39(8):1358-1365. doi:10.1249/mss.0b013e31806010e0.
Pritchard HJ, Tod DA, Barnes MJ, Keogh JW, McGuigan MR. Tapering Practices of New Zealand’s Elite Raw Powerlifters. J Strength Cond Res. 2016;30(7):1796-1804. doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000001292; Mujika I. The Influence of Training Characteristics and Tapering on the Adaptation in Highly Trained Individuals: A Review. Int J Sports Med. 1998;19(07):439-446. doi:10.1055/s-2007-971942; Bickel CS, Cross JM, Bamman MM. Exercise Dosing to Retain Resistance Training Adaptations in Young and Older Adults. Med Sci Sport Exerc. 2011;43(7):1177-1187. doi:10.1249/MSS.0b013e318207c15d.
30
The Bigger Leaner Stronger Supplementation Plan
My dear fellow, who will let you? That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
—AYN RAND
Now that we have the most important aspects of my Bigger Leaner Stronger program buttoned up—the diet and training—let’s go over supplementation.
As we discussed in chapter 26, this element of the program is wholly optional and not terribly important as far as results go.
Most of what you’re going to accomplish is going to come from the work you do in the kitchen and gym. Supplements can only give you a slight edge in losing fat, building muscle, and getting healthy.
That said, if you have the budget, supplementation (with the right supplements) is worthwhile because its advantages compound over time.
In other words, the minor improvements supplementation can provide in fat burning, muscle building, and general health and physiological function can add up to significant upswings over the course of months and years.
A few chapters ago, you learned about six worthwhile types of supplements you can include in your regimen:
Protein powder
Fish oil
Vitamin D
Multivitamin
Fat burner
Muscle builder
And in this chapter, I’m going to show you how to use each most beneficially.
Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I want you to know that the specific products I recommend are not just what I personally use but are from my own supplement line.
If your eyes are starting to roll (“Oh great, here comes the sales pitch . . .”), I totally understand, but let me explain.
Over the years, I’ve always struggled to find high-quality supplements and companies I could actually trust.
And so I wondered, should I “scratch my own itch” and create the supplements that I myself have always wanted? Would anyone else want them as well?
This wasn’t an easy decision. I’ve made my bones as an author and educator. I’ve sold over a million books, published over a million words of free content on my blogs and hundreds of episodes of my podcast, and worked with thousands of people of all ages and circumstances. And most people think that’s awesome. Go me.
What would happen if I were to start selling supplements, though?
As you can imagine, I feared that no matter how good my products might be or how honestly or fairly I might try to offer them, many of my readers and followers would assume the worst, reach for their pitchforks and torches, and try to run me off the internet.
And so I was on the horns of a dilemma.
On one hand, I saw an opportunity to do things very differently in the supplement space and create 100 percent natural, science-based, and safe supplements that really work.
On the other hand, doing so would mean getting into the 20-ton-turd salad that is the supplement industry and trying to convince people I wasn’t a lying scammer like everyone else.
And so after much deliberation and many sacrificial offerings to the gods of commerce and capitalism, I decided to go with my gut and throw my hat in the ring.
I started a supplement company called Legion Athletics (www.legionathletics.com) and wasn’t sure what to expect.
Would people have enough faith in me and appreciate the products and what makes them special? Would it be a flash in the pan, or would it have staying power?
Well, that was 2014 and I’m glad I made that leap of faith, because Legion is now a thriving business with over 200,000 customers from all over the world who have left thousands and thousands of glowing reviews all over the internet.
One of the primary reasons Legion is going gangbusters is our commitment to complete transparency, from formulating to scientific research, marketing and advertising, labeling, and more.
As you probably gathered from part 6 of this book, I’m an extremely skeptical person and consumer and, quite frankly, would assume that a supplement company is guilty until proven innocent. I’ve approached Legion with that mentality.
In other words, I’ve approached it from the angle of, What would it take for someone like me to buy supplements from Legion? What would I need to see to be convinced?
I’d want to know several things:
I’d want to know who came up with the formulations and what their credentials are.Again, we’re talking about our health here, so I’d want to know a bit about the person or persons I’m trusting mine to.
I’d want to know exactly what’s in the products.I’d want to know every active and inactive ingredient, and the doses of every active ingredient in particular to ensure it’s not “pixie dusted” with tiny, ineffective amounts of ingredients.
I’d want to see science-based explanations of how the products are supposed to work.I wouldn’t want flashy ads with hulking bodybuilders barking buzzwords at me.
I’d want to understand why ingredients were chosen and what they’re supposed to do in the body, and I’d want to see all the relevant scientific research to back that up.
I’d want to see formal proof that the products are legitimate.I trust product labels about as much as I do mainstream news reports, so I’d want to see certificates of analysis confirming the labels are 100 percent accurate.
I’d want to see what other people are saying about the products.That means independent online reviews, reviews from verified purchasers and customers, and opinions from respected industry leaders.
If a supplement company cou
ld satisfactorily check all five of those boxes, I’d probably be willing to give them a try. Otherwise, hard pass.
If you’re like me, then I think you’re going to really like what I’m doing with Legion because it lives up to all those standards, and more.
Simply put, Legion outclasses everything on the market and is the yardstick by which all other supplement companies can be measured.
The bottom line is I’m not just looking to build a supplement company. I’m looking to build a culture that people like you appreciate and want to be a part of.
I believe in respecting customers, telling things like they are, and delivering what I promise. I believe honesty and integrity sell better than cutting corners and relying on ridiculous advertisements and lies.
I don’t just want to sell pills and powders, I want to change the supplement industry for the better.
So, with that out of the way, let’s get to learning how to get the most out of each of the six types of supplements I recommend.
Protein Powder
Most people like to take a scoop of protein powder before and after workouts because it’s quick and convenient, and then again during the day as a snack (midafternoon is popular). This is reasonable.
However, some people get most of their daily protein from powders, which I don’t recommend.
There’s a limit to how much protein powder you should have every day because too much can cause negative side effects like nutritional deficiencies and gastrointestinal (GI) distress.
One of the main benefits of protein powder is that it’s mostly protein (it contains very little carbohydrate or dietary fat). This is great for your macros but not so great for the nutritional quality of your diet because many whole-food sources of protein are also great sources of vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients.
Bigger Leaner Stronger Page 48