Hard Body Training for Women

Here’s what you need to know… Women tend to have a higher pain tolerance when it comes to training, can recover faster between sets, and are able to sustain a higher volume of work. Men are welcome to try the program, but they may not be able to hang! This program has you training the same muscles two days in a row: heavy lifting the first day and pump work for the same muscles the next day. Training the same muscles two days in a row facilitates recovery and lengthens the duration of the anabolic phase. The workout plan calls for five mandatory training days per week with an optional sixth day. That extra day will help you get leaner super fast, but you’ll get amazing results with just the five main workouts. What To Expect This program will be uncomfortable at times, painful at others. It will force you to focus on performance. You’ll get stronger, faster, more powerful, and more resilient. The end result will be fat loss, more muscle in the right places, and a strong body. This is the type of training I used with one of my clients who won her first two physique competitions this year, training without drugs, while having two kids and a full time job working construction. Can Men Do It? Maybe, If They’re Woman Enough Can guys do this program? Sure, they can try. Muscle is muscle and we’re all the same species, but women don’t have the same needs when it comes to building an aesthetic physique. They don’t need to emphasize building the pecs. Instead, they need more focus on the glutes. And since they need muscular but not massive arms, tons of direct arm work isn’t necessary. Women also tend to have a higher pain tolerance when it comes to training. Females can recover faster between sets, and are able to sustain a higher volume of work during a session. So if you’re a guy, you’re welcome to try the program, but it will be even more uncomfortable for you! The Basic Structure The program calls for five mandatory training days per week with an optional sixth day. That extra day will help you get lean faster, but you’ll get amazing results with just the five main workouts. This program uses a cool concept: train the same muscles two days in a row. You hit them hard with heavy lifting the first day and then you do pump work for the same muscles the next day. This actually facilitates recovery and lengthens the duration of the anabolic phase. Protein synthesis stays elevated for 24 hours post-training, but by having a second session the next day that’s less traumatic, you extend protein synthesis significantly, thus building more muscle. It’s important that the second session is pump work and not heavy lifting, though. We don’t want to cause any muscle damage on that second day. We only want to activate the cell signaling responsible for stimulating hypertrophy and pumping nutrients into the muscles. I also include metabolic conditioning (metcon) to get you lean fast without risking the loss of muscle mass. The metcon will actually help you build more muscle while getting leaner. Explosive work also plays a big role in the program. It increases the insulin sensitivity of muscle, making you more prone to storing ingested nutrients in the muscles instead of the fat cells. Additionally, explosive work gives the body a harder, more sculpted look by improving myogenic tone. The schedule looks like this: Monday: Lower body strength/hypertrophy work Tuesday: Lower body pump complex/lower body metcon Wednesday: Upper body strength/hypertrophy work Thursday: Upper body pump complex/upper body metcon Friday: Optional sprint/energy systems session Saturday: Whole body explosive work Sunday: OFF Load Progression The program uses two main systems of progression: programmed progression and double progression. Programmed progression refers to a cycle where the weights are planned in advance based on your 1RM. So you’ll need to establish your maximum load for one technically solid rep on the back squat, push press, and power clean from the hang. The percentages used during this whole program are all based on that 1RM. Double progression is a system where you have a target rep range instead of a precise number of reps to do, 6 to 8, for example. You will use the same weight for all your work sets. The goal is to be able to do all the work sets with the upper limit of the range (8 in our example) with the same weight. When you’re able to do that, you increase the weight at your next session. If you can’t get 8 reps for all of your work sets, that’s fine, but it means that you’ll keep the same weight during next week’s workout. So when you see a percentage given for an exercise below, it uses the planned progression. When you don’t see a percentage, it means you’ll use the double progression approach. The Program Monday Exercise Wk Sets x Reps %1RM Rest A Box Jump 3 x 10 B Back Squat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5 x 4 5 x 5 5 x 6 3 x 3 5 x 3 6 x 3 3 x 3 3 x 2 3 x 3 Test Max 80% 80% 80% 90% 90% 90% 95%
Origin: Hard Body Training for Women