Musclenow Program

[gbrice75]

I'm wondering if any of you are familiar with it, and if so your thoughts? I know it's 10+ years old now, and some of the philosophies are probably yesterday's news, but it's what got me interested in lifting years ago, and I still apply some of the principles today. For those of you who aren't familiar, here's a very dummied down overview:

I won't get into the entire diet principles, i'm just going to briefly discuss the training principes/routines. The author says to train every set to complete failure, and the ideal plan is 5 days a week. The program consists of a 6 week 'cycle', as follows:

WEEK 1
Monday - Chest, Shoulders, Abs
Tuesday - Back and Triceps
Wednesday - Legs and Biceps
Thursday - Chest, Shouldes, Abs
Friday - Back and Triceps

WEEK 2
Monday - Legs and Biceps
Tuesday - Chest, Shoulders, Abs
Wednesday - Back and Triceps
Thursday - Legs and Biceps
Friday - Chest, Shouldres, Abs

The 4 remaining weeks continue to follow suite, so each muscle group gets trained 1 or 2 times/week depending on the week. There is also a guideline for sets and reps:

Week 1 - 2 sets, 8-11 reps (find a weight that will cause failure within that rep range. Once you can do more than 11 reps for any given exercise, you add weight for the next SESSION of that exercise, not next set) You are to drop weight after each set to stay within the target rep range. (i.e. if you do 8 reps on the bench press and hit true failure, you are not going to be able to do 8 reps again to failure, therefore you decrease weight to hit failure again on AT LEAST the 8th rep)

Week 2 - 3 sets, 4-7 reps (same as above, but you'll obviously use heavier weight that causes failure within that rep range)

Week 3 - 3 sets, 4-7 reps

Week 4 - 4 sets, 8-11 reps (original/lighter rep range)

Week 5 - 5 sets, 4-7 reps

Week 6 - 5 sets, 4-7 reps

At this point you can either take off a week and start over, or just start over at 2 sets again. Supposedly this 'cycling' will prevent overtraining.

I've tried to follow the program to a 'T' several times, and by the time week 5 rolls around, it's just brutal. Also, training 2x a week (for the most part) already seems like overtraining, ESPECIALLY when you're getting into the 4 and 5 set weeks.

What do you guys think in general about this program? Again, this is one tiny portion of the entire program, but it's the heart of the training part.

[bucks_243]

The diet portion has to be high carbs and high protein it sounds like. If your not in the gym your probably cooking. I have been doing a similar program and the same thing happened to me. By week five I was eating constantly and/or sleeping so I took a week off and went back at it. I was sore from head to toe and not the good sore I mean the "I'm about it rip a tendon sore" so I stopped that program. I think it would work for certain genetically gifted people or a few more years of experience than I have.

[gbrice75]

You're right, the diet was roughly a 50/40/10 split, but it cycled between higher and lower calorie days. Yes, there was alot of cooking involved (but no different from my diet now) and I was extremely sore to the point where I couldn't work out the same group, especially only 3 days later!