Secondary Workouts for Increased Muscle Size and Conditioning

Primary by definition means something that is first or highest in rank, quality, or importance. Hypertrophy is primary to me as a bodybuilder, provided the additional mass maintains my symmetry. This is my personal narrative of how I learned the value of secondary workouts. My appetite for massive, dense muscle led me to HIT. I grew up a disciple of Dorian Yates and his High Intensity Training philosophy. It served me well for over a decade, but muscle tears and joint pain grew to the point I thought competitive dart throwing sounded appealing. I think that is a sport? I’m formally educated in things that impact a balance sheet more than things that impact body composition. However, I do have 24 years of experience pushing iron, seasoned with 21 years of competitive bodybuilding. Educated by trial and error, I’ve amassed a bit of knowledge along the way. Nearly two years ago, much of this knowledge was turned on its head by my coach John Meadows and a collaboration of

Biotest products. John challenged my comfort zone – short, intense, infrequent training sessions. Workouts started to last longer than 60 minutes, sometimes much longer. Before long, he pushed me to increase my workouts from four to seven per week. I considered reminding him of my age, but he’s older than me so the age argument wouldn’t work.

Initially, I broke down. I was unable to get past muscle soreness lasting upwards of four days on things like legs. That’s when Biotest graciously stepped in and put me on a protocol of Plazma,

Mag-10 and Indigo-3G. John assured me of liquid-metal, terminator-like recovery ability and within two weeks that’s exactly what happened. Brutal leg workouts that once left me sore for four days now left me sore for maybe one day – at most!

With increased work capacity and the ability to recover I settled into a seven-day-a-week training schedule, which looked like this: Monday – Heavy Legs Tuesday – Heavy Chest & Shoulders Wednesday – Heavy Back Thursday – Pump/Explosive Legs Friday – Pump/Explosive Chest & Shoulders Saturday – Arms Sunday – Pump Back I broke up with my old girlfriend (cardio) because I simply lacked the time to devote to the relationship. Happiness ensued: I much preferred iron to an elliptical; anabolism over catabolism. Okay, okay…I still walk on the treadmill occasionally in 20-30 minute bouts, but only so I can listen to my favorite preacher Matt Chandler on my MP3 player. 1.5 miles/hour doesn’t really count as cardio does it? The beauty of Plazma,

Mag-10, Indigo-3G and now Micro-PA is they afford additional opportunities to grow in the gym. I guess some guys would like to take a pill, lift for 30 minutes once a week and get huge, but I’m not one of them. I like to train and enjoy putting in the work. It’s just how I’m wired. Increased recovery leads to the ability to increase training frequency. I found secondary workouts, labeled Pump/Explosive in the previously listed schedule, vital to the point of becoming borderline primary for the following reasons:

1. Explosive work tends to quickly recover the nervous system. I once thought, “What does the nervous system have to do with hypertrophy?” Well, burn yours out with too many heavy, grinding sets and you will soon learn its importance. A fried central nervous system will stop you in your tracks.
2. Pumping as much blood into the muscle while leaving reps in the tank floods it with nutrients, significantly aiding recovery.
3. Fast paced workouts that border on lactate-induced training trigger a cascade of hormones which aid not only recovery but also body composition.

The secondary workouts soon became some of my favorite training sessions. I feel they contribute as much to hypertrophy as the primary workouts. I liken secondary, relationally, to primary workouts much like the often asked question of which is most important – nutrition or training? The answer is that you can’t have one without the other. If you’re not utilizing secondary workouts you’re missing a huge opportunity to progress. Here are the basics for setting up a secondary pump/explosive workout:

1. Eliminate all intensity techniques. No drop sets, forces reps, partials, giant sets, iso-holds, etc.
2. Leave reps in the tank. Stop sets short of failure.
3. Keep reps high. Perform sets of 10-30 reps on exercises unless focusing on explosiveness.
4. Include one explosive exercise in the workout. Perform lower reps (5-6) on one exercise using lighter weight. Focus on moving it as explosively as possible during the concentric portion of the rep.
5. Keep total sets to 12 or less.

Coming off competitions in Slovakia, the UK and Canada every one of my workouts followed the secondary basics for the past four weeks. I trained seven days per week, but I approached every workout like a secondary. It was a great way to train while re-charging mentally and physically after a long diet, travel and competition schedule. Fully refreshed, I kick off my Olympia prep next week along with a new program by John: Carnage. Follow along on my training log as I lay waste to iron for the next 12 weeks!