Do you want to gain power at a breakneck pace? Do you have an open calendar and want to see what you'd look like if you "pushed the envelope" for a little while? Will you want friends you haven't seen in a long time to look at your body and wonder, "Dude, what the heck have you been up to?"
Then this is the article for you.
Coaches of high-level athletes and sport teams typically raise training intensity by adding two-a-day training sessions as part of a loading and rapid conditioning process, depending on the time of year. Every highly competitive athlete, such as Olympic weightlifters, swimmers, football players, or track and field athletes, trains twice a day.
When it comes to strength training and bodybuilding, though, the conventional wisdom is to “give the muscle enough time to rebuild between workouts,” also going so far as to suggest that the same muscle(s) cannot be exercised within a 48-hour timeframe.
The thing is, we're not novices. And we're not cowards.
We know what we're doing in the gym, and our aim is to get as big as possible so that we can be more aggressive. Some may even describe it as irrational.
Allow them to remain slim and average. Two-a-days are the way to go if you want to get big and heavy. Here's how to go about it.
The Products
Training twice a day will help you break through stressful growth plateaus and allow you to do more intense workouts each time you hit the gym.
For starters, the shorter sessions allow you to concentrate more on lifting quality and getting the most out of each set and rep. It focuses on consistency rather than quantity. The ability to "refocus" and recover between workouts allows you to attack each one with vigor, rather than fading out during longer once-a-day sessions.
If you're cutting or trying to lose weight, adding two-a-day training (along with a healthy diet) is like pouring gasoline on a fire. According to research, splitting a 30-minute moderately intense exercise session into two 15-minute sessions separated by about six hours burns more calories than doing it all at once (Almuzaini et al., 1998).
This was due to a rise in EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) – and this was observed even while cycling at a moderate intensity! Consider how much your EPOC will rise if you did two high-intensity weight-training sessions!
The following are the most critical training criteria to improve your muscle-building capacity (Schoenfeld, 2010):
Mechanical stress is generated by the weights exerting external forces on the muscles, causing them to contract.
Metabolic stress is described as the accumulation of metabolic byproducts (e.g., lactate, hydrogen ions, and inorganic phosphate) during and after resistance exercise, which indirectly mediates cell and muscle swelling.
Muscle damage refers to micro tears caused by lifting weights, which are normally followed by DOMS.
The Laws
Both the morning and evening workouts target the same muscle groups.
Two-a-day fitness protocols, which target various parts of the body in each workout, might be familiar to you. It is, however, more powerful to reach the same muscles for hypertrophy.
Be sure to space your workouts 6-8 hours apart and stick to your normal macros. Poor nutrition will impede your ability to train at the level required by this program. Now isn't the time to try out the latest fasting diet. If you do that, you can say goodbye to your rehabilitation and any future success. Prepare to expand by adopting hypertrophy-friendly eating habits, including peri-workout nutrition.
For a 4-week period, follow this program.
Each exercise, increase the weight on the bar while maintaining all other training parameters.
Make sure you stick to the rest periods and keep track of the time. The whole idea is to get in there and wreck havoc, then get out and heal. It won't help if you spend the time between sets updating your Facebook status.
In the fifth week, take it easy. This gives your body time to heal, restore, and regenerate to levels higher than when you began the program, a process known as supercompensation (Zatsiorsky & Kraemer, 2006).
Sessions in the Morning
The nervous system can be re-energized by focusing on compound exercises. This will also include co-contractions of other synergistic muscles, which will help to maintain structural equilibrium and reduce the risk of injury associated with open chain exercises.
Using a controlled tempo with increased time under stress in these morning sessions – a 3122 tempo is best.
Tempo: A rep cadence in which the bar is lowered for three seconds, then paused for one second in the bottom position, followed by a two-second concentric or "up" step, and finally a two-second contraction at the top.
You don't want to push yourself too hard during this workout because you'll need energy for your second workout later in the day. You should feel pumped and stimulated, not exhausted, by the end of your workout, which should last no more than half an hour. You'll need to take your foot off the pedal the next time around if you finish the workout totally exhausted.
Sessions in the Evening
This is where the bodybuilding-inspired material enters the picture. Slow tempos and hard 2-second contractions at the top of each rep are more important in isolation exercises, but the same rules apply.
Then there's the clincher. Remember how in the first exercise you didn't train to failure? Now you're going to haul butt.
Make a drop set out of the last set of each exercise. Reduce the load by 20% when you hit failure and continue the package. Rep before you reach failure or exhaustion. The pump, muscle damage, and metabolic stress are all increased as a result of this.
If your workout lasts longer than 30 minutes, however, it's time to put the Chuck Taylors away. You've completed the task.
The Program
| SUN | MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | SAT | |
| AM | Rest | Legs | Chest & Triceps | Rest | Back & Biceps | Shoulders & Abs | Rest |
| PM | Rest | Legs | Chest & Triceps | Rest | Back & Biceps | Shoulders & Abs | Rest |
Legs
AM
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Tempo | Rest | |
| A | Back Squat | 4 | 6-8 | 3122 | 90-120 sec. |
| B | Leg Press | 4 | 8-10 | 3122 | 90 sec. |
| C | Romanian Deadlift | 4 | 8-10 | 3122 | 90 sec. |
PM
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Tempo | Rest | |
| A | Glute-Ham Raise | 3 | 12-15 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| B | Knee Extension | 3 | 12-15 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| C | Hip Thrust | 2 | 20 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| D | Seated Calf Raise | 2 | 20 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
Chest & Triceps
AM
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Tempo | Rest | |
| A | Barbell Bench Press | 4 | 6-8 | 3122 | 90-120 sec. |
| B | Incline Dumbbell Bench Press | 4 | 8-10 | 3122 | 90 sec. |
| C | Weighted Dip | 4 | 8-10 | 3122 | 90 sec. |
PM
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Tempo | Rest | |
| A | High Cable Pec Fly | 3 | 12-15 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| B | Pec Dec | 3 | 12-15 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| C | Decline Dumbbell Triceps Extension | 2 | 20 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| D | Overhead Dumbbell Triceps Extension | 2 | 20 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
Back & Biceps
AM
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Tempo | Rest | |
| A | Weighted Pull-Up | 4 | 6-8 | 3122 | 90-120 sec. |
| B | Chest Supported Row | 4 | 8-10 | 3122 | 90 sec. |
| C | 30-Degree Lat-Pull Down | 4 | 8-10 | 3122 | 90 sec. |
PM
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Tempo | Rest | |
| A | Straight Arm Press Down | 3 | 12-15 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| B | Low Cable Decline Pull Over | 3 | 12-15 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| C | Incline Bench Corkscrew Curl | 2 | 20 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| D | EZ-Bar Preacher Curl | 2 | 20 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
Shoulders & Abs
AM
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Tempo | Rest | |
| A | Military Press | 4 | 6-8 | 3122 | 90-120 sec. |
| B | Arnold Press | 4 | 8-10 | 3122 | 90 sec. |
| C | Dumbbell Shrug | 4 | 8-10 | 3122 | 90 sec. |
PM
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Tempo | Rest | |
| A | Face Pull | 3 | 12-15 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| B | Lean-Away Lateral Raise | 3 | 12-15 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| C | Side Lying External Rotation | 2 | 20 | 4132 | 60 sec. |
| D1 | Reverse Crunch | 2 | 20 | Controlled | 60 sec. |
| D2 | Farmer’s Carry | 2 | 20 | N/A | 60 sec. |
What to Expect
Since the total amount of this program is higher than most, the body can have a "shock" reaction to it the first week. But keep in mind that this is a size program, not a power program.
Go to the next article if you want to improve your squatting, pressing, and deadlifting statistics. This one is solely for the purpose of increasing muscle mass.
Focus on relaxing the muscle by following the tempo directions and using the stress techniques. Size programming like this is aimed at raising sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, and while microtrauma is important, the "pump" and time under stress are just as important, if not more so.
Before each workout, make sure you mentally plan. It takes a lot of concentration to get through the sets and keep the tempo up until the last rep. Maintain your focus; we're confident you'll be happy with the results.
Final Thoughts
It's an easy formula: train more often (within reason) and you'll see better results. Apply the same mentality to bodybuilding preparation as great athletes like Michael Phelps, LeDainian Tomlinson, and Michael Jordan did when they used this technique to their athletic advantage.
It might mean the difference between jaw-dropping gains and someone posing the dreaded question: “Do you even raise, bro?”