The Year One Challenge for Men: Workout Spreadsheet Note: This page has been updated for BLS 2.1. The original 2.0 page is. If you have ever tried working out in the gym to get more muscular you have probably been bewildered and overwhelmed by the conflicting and contradictory information in magazines and books on bodybuilding. Popular magazines don't help either. They have models on their covers with perfectly chiseled bodies, but the advice inside is usually written by overweight journalists who are too busy to go to the gym.

So it was a refreshing change to find an audio book by Michael Matthews called ' Bigger Leaner Stronger'. He systematically debunks a whole load of bodybuilding BS, and explains that it really is possible to get bigger without getting fatter, and it is possible to get leaner without losing muscle. Three seemingly contradictory goals, but a means to achieve them. Click to go directly to the spreadsheet part What's the Catch? In a nutshell, you are going to have to put in a lot of effort and discipline. You can't just rush out and buy a few supplements and expect an overnight transformation.

In my case it took over a year just to get strong enough to even think of starting the program. Because I am 54 years old and have a much-less-than-average muscle strength. In fact not much muscle to speak of. I never have. I was an under-performer at school sports, and apart from managing to swim lengths in the gym pool, I haven't ever been able to manage any of the common sports, like running, cycling, soccer, cricket, etc. They have just been beyond me.

In August 2013 I joined my local gym and hired a personal trainer to help me once a week. My goal was to learn how to do the 'Big 3' exercises: Squats, Bench Press, and Deadlift.

Books Bigger Leaner Stronger Free Roscow Pdf DOWNLOAD NOW books bigger leaner stronger free roscow pdf download now - bigger leaner stronger bigger.

Even the Hardgainer FAQ agrees on this point. Flippie van Schalkwyk was an experienced personal trainer, but he still battled to get a sporting klutz like me to do the exercises properly.

It took over a year for me to get my muscles strong enough to do a passable version of each exercise. I was managing about 50% of my body weight, which is about average for a beginner.

Flippie stopped personal training in January 2015, and Kirk Wentworth took over. I also decided to train twice a week, supervised on Fridays and unsupervised on Mondays.

This increased the volume of my training, and meant that I could make faster gains. My Bench Press got to 80% of my body weight, and Deadlift to 100% body weight. Squats lagged behind a bit at 75%, but still a big improvement over 4 months. Watch What You Eat Also, you are going to have to change your diet. I took the advice of various writers and reduced my sugar intake almost completely, and carbohydrate intake to around 20% of my daily meals. That means that I significantly increased my protein consumption.

I feel much better for it: sugar and processed carbs make me tired and continuously hungry, and junk food in general is not neither healthy or nutritious. I can't remember the last time I had a coke or a big Mac.

I shudder to think of all the damage I did to myself over the years by eating rubbish. So I'm not advocating the Banting, LCHF or Paleo diets, but I you will need to eat 'whole' food: if you can recognise what animal it came from, or you can see the shape of the vegetable, then its probably OK. Avoid processed foods of all kinds, including fizzy drinks, liquefied fruit drinks, and all 'convenience' stuff that doesn't require refrigeration and comes in a plastic wrapper.. If it contains carbohydrates then get the low-GI version, or skip it altogether. So I eat muesli, yoghurt, eggs, bacon, avocado, vegetables, meat, fish, chicken, cheese, and small amounts of milk in my morning decaf coffee. If I eat bread it is in small amounts, such as brown bread and no more than 2 slices. If I have a sandwich for lunch then I'll find one with at least the same amount of protein as carbs.

Michael Matthews thinks I'm crazy and says that I can eat a lot more carbs than I do, but he too says avoid processed forms of food, and eat whole food. He has published several recipe books with good eating ideas. But I don't live in the USA, so many of the recipes use ingredients I can't get or haven't ever heard of. For the 'bulking' phase (you have to start with this if you don't have much muscle to begin with) Mike recommends 1g of protein per pound of body weight per day (that's 2.2g of protein per kg per day). He also recommends 2g of carbs per pound, and 0.4g of fat per pound.

But bear in mind those carbs aren't cheap junk food carbs, but derived from real food that hasn't been processed to death. Similarly, the protein comes from meat, fish, chicken and eggs, with only a small proportion from shakes or powders. He rightly points out that most bodybuilding supplements are a waste of time and money, but does suggest 5g Creatine Monohydrate daily, plus some protein powder.

I also use Glutamine on my exercise days, because it reduces muscle soreness quite significantly for me. When I started The Year One Challenge exercises I changed from 2 days a week to a 4 day-a-week program (done over 3 days), so that I end up doing a different day every Friday when I meet with Kirk, so he can supervise my exercises and point out mistakes or bad form. That's quite a jump, and represents about 5 hours per week in the gym.

Quite a change from 1 hour, but it has been a gradual progression, not some heroic leap. Slow and steady is best when it comes to gym work. Two years later I am doing 3 days a week, on a Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, using the BLS 4Day program. What Do You Need? First and foremost you need access to a gym or exercise area with free weights and the racks needed for Bench Press, Incline Bench Press and so on. Secondly you need to buy and carefully read the book ' Bigger Leaner Stronger' Second Edition.

Also get ' The Year One Challenge for Men', both by Mike Matthews. I bought mine from, but they are available on Amazon and many other book sites. I also recommend the audiobook from Audible.com, and the narrator is quite inspiring. An optional extra: I bought some 'fractional weights', namely four 1kg plates and two 0.5kg plates that fit an Olympic size barbell. This allows me the flexibility of choosing any desired weight, not just multiples of 5kg, which is what my local gym can offer. I use these small weights to progress in smaller increments where bigger increments simply aren't possible for me, or may cause injury. They are a bit of a schlep to carry around, so if you are going up in 5kg increments, don't be a dumb hero: rather be cautious and stay injury free.

The gym is already full of dumb heroes. Java Object Serialization Compatibility. I also have some straps for Deadlifts (so I don't drop the bar) and some weightlifting gloves for lifting cold steel bars in cold weather. If you have an Android smart phone, get from the, or use any app that can display and edit Excel files, and. Then you can download my workout spreadsheet and use it to know what exercises to do and record your weight and reps.

I found it was too clunky carrying the Year One Challenge book around. A word about the one-rep maximum (1RM) calculation: I have used the well known that is explained in. I have tweaked it a bit, especially where the rep range deviates from 4-6 to the 10-12 rep range.

I have done this to make the numbers a bit more realistic and practical. Strength Week In Bigger Leaner Stronger 2.1 Mike introduced the notion of a Strength Week: As you know, one of your primary goals as a natural weightlifter is to get stronger, and particularly on the big compound movements.

That’s why the core of the Bigger Leaner Stronger program, as laid out earlier, is a hybrid between traditional strength training and traditional “bodybuilding” workouts. The program combines the compound lifting found in strength programs that builds a foundation of strength and size and the isolation work found in bodybuilding workouts that helps develop smaller muscles that contribute to overall proportions and aesthetics. Out of these two elements, however, the former (heavy compound lifting) is far more important than the latter (doing isolation work) for reaching your goals. The bottom line is the majority of your progress with your physique is going to come from your progress in your squatting, deadlifting, and bench and overhead pressing.

That’s why I recommend that you make every fourth training week on the program a “Strength Week.” That is, for every three weeks of “normal” workouts, you do one Strength Week. In this week, you will follow a more traditional strength training layout, which has you perform the same exercises several times in the week but has you do fewer sets each workout. The purpose of the Strength Week is to give you more practice doing the key exercises (the more you do them, the better you get) and help you get stronger faster.

Before I started I was doing the bro workout.stuff you get outta fitness magazines. Just a bunch of light stuff and supersets.i would do a lot of heavy stuff too but was overtraining by doing too much. I stuck pretty close to everything he said from keeping my workouts under an hour to staying in that 4 to 6 reps range (Now I'm doing more of a 2 to 3 rep range to gain more strength) but the 4 to 6 range is great to build strength and muscle. I'll go back to it when I start cutting here soon. I try to stick pretty close with everything he says because I trust what he says and it's always worked or turned out to be true. The supplements aren't really necessary BUT when your cutting I d recommend them.

Yohimbe.green tea.caffeine those are powerful fat burners and have been proven scientifically to help with burning fat besides that you don't really need any. This is the program I've been using since October and I'm really loving it. I was hesitant to go on it at first because of the bro-split and thinking that I needed to hit each body part 2x per week, but I found myself recovering better and making steady progress following Mike's principles even while I'm on a cut. It's basically a variation of 5/3/1 -- Mike himself calls it a powerbuilding program.

• I wouldn't recommend it for complete beginners -- personally, I benefited from doing compound lifts at least twice a week (for example, ), as it gives you more opportunities to progress and lift more weight. It also eases you in the whole lifting thing, and I feel that 3x/week is just right to not burn a beginner out. I'd stay on that until progress starts to stall.

• The 4-6 rep range for the most part is really, really good. I eventually found it difficult to progress using the 8-10 or even 6-8 rep range, but I'm consistently making gains on the 4-6 rep range despite being on a cut. Slow progress, mind you (I aim to increase by 1-2 reps per exercise per week), but progress nevertheless. • Lateral and rear delt raises in the 4-6 rep range is fucking difficult.

I still can't figure out how to do it without massively cheating. The slightest increase in weight makes the movement extra difficult. I changed this to lighter weights and went to the 6-8 rep range with plans to go back to the original 4-6 rep range later. • At first, it's going to be brutal.

9 sets for each body part will burn like hell at first, especially for chest. I distinctly remember not being able to complete the 6th set of incline bench (sometimes, even the 5th set) during the first few weeks, but I eventually adapted and now I'm steadily making progress. • Squatting once a week kinda sucks, that's one of the drawbacks here.

I personally substituted the leg press for 3 more sets of squats. You also hit back just once a week, and I really like my weighted pull-ups. • Personally it takes me more than an hour to complete most of the workouts, but that's more because of my equipment limitations and I spend a lot of time changing plates and such since I workout at home. If I'm really strict with my rest periods and have all the weights in front of me, I can be in and out within a little over 60 minutes. • The diet advice is on point, too. I'm really surprised to see myself steadily increasing reps/weight for most if not all of the exercises despite being on a caloric deficit -- I would like to think that it's because of the high protein diet (I do 1.1g/lb of bodyweight) and the way the workouts are designed.