5 Day Bodybuilding Workout Schedule

5 Day Bodybuilding Workout Schedule

The following schedule is for those of you aspiring bodybuilders who can devote 5 weekdays to your gym routine.
Follow this schedule to hit hard each major body part once each week.
As with all schedules, feel free to make adjustments here for your specific goals.

Now, split the bodyparts into a 5 day split:

day 1: legs
day 2: chest & shoulders
day 3: back and traps
day 4: arms and abs
day 5: off

Now, impose a heavy-light alteration on top of this, for a 10 day micro-cycle:

day 1: legs HEAVY
day 2: chest & shoulders LIGHT
day 3: back & traps HEAVY
day 4: arms LIGHT
day 5: off
day 1: legs LIGHT
day 2: chest & shoulders HEAVY
day 3: back LIGHT
day 4: arms HEAVY
day 5: off

HEAVY = 100% effort, trying for new best set
LIGHT = 75% of the weight used on the previous heavy day

Now that you have the miscro-cycel, here is how to organize these into a macro cycle:

At the start of your training cycle, choose weights for your initial heavy days that allow you to get 8-12 reps comfortably.

Then: each heavy day, try as hard as possible to increase your reps on each hard set (you do 6 hard sets per bodypart, recall). You will need to keep a small training log to keep track of previous performance. Try to maintain the same form fom day to day---don't get more reps by getting sloppy.

Every time you reach 12 reps, in your next heavy day for that set, increase the weight, but by as little as possible (5 lb increments, or even 2.5 if you have 1.25 lb plates); that will knock the reps back down to around 8 or so the next time.

On your light days, just mimic your previous heavy set in terms of reps, but use only 75% of the weight. On these days, focus on your form, move through the workout more quickly, and do not tax the muscle. A decent pump and tiny burn is all you should get.

If your muscles are still sore on their light day, that is fine and to be expected. If a muscle is still sore on its next heavy day, insert a day off.

Cycle termination: continue these 10 days micro-cycles, progressing every heavy workout as described, until: you fail to improve over your previous best on a lot of your sets and for 2 consecutive heavy days. fo example, if my best bench sets were 225 x 10, 200 x 9, 180 x 7, and then the next two heavy days I got 225 x 8, 200 x 8, 180 x 8, and 225 x 8, 200 x 180 x 9, that would indicate that your progress has truly stalled and your are starting to over train. Consider your set performance increases as votes---every set that improves is a vote to continue the cycle, evry set that stagnates or regresses is a vote to stop. When the stop votes win, terminate the cycle.

When you terminate the cycle, do one whole 10 day cycle using VERY LIGHT weights---50--60% of your heavy weights. During this period, focus on quick workouts and very good form---try to undo the inevitable sloppy-ness that builds up during the load cycle. Don't tax the muscle at all, just get a nice pump.

Resuming the next cycle: after your 10 day VERY LIGHT cycle, restart, using as your starting weights around 95% of your previous cycle best weights. Begin working up in this cycle as before.