Guidelines for a bulking routine

There’s a legend in gyms that we’ve all heard more than once, and for beginners, it’s kind of like the fitness philosopher’s stone. It says that to train for size you have to do few reps with heavy weights, and to train for definition, lots of reps with light weights.

This isn’t true. In fact, the routine could be the same for both size and definition, since what really determines if you’re bulking or cutting is the diet you follow. Whether you’re on a hypercaloric diet (with excess calories) or a hypocaloric one (with calorie deficit) will usually decide if you gain muscle or burn fat.

That’s why routines in both phases should be hypertrophy routines, meaning the goal is to build muscle, because what we don’t want is to lose the muscle we’ve already gained. In this post, we’ll focus on the guidelines to follow in a bulking routine, which is the most common phase around this time:

Guidelines for a bulking routine

• Intensity: this word is the key to fitness. All exercises done to grow must have high intensity, meaning a load that makes it tough to reach the number of reps planned in the set. You should always train at a very high intensity.
• Number of exercises: usually for big muscle groups like chest, back, and shoulders (sometimes shoulders are treated as small), 4 exercises are done; for small groups like biceps, triceps, quadriceps, and abs, 3 exercises; and for hamstrings, glutes, calves, and forearms, 2 exercises.
• Sets: the number of sets is usually 4, although you can add some pump sets or drop sets to really congest certain muscles. Supersets aren’t commonly used.
• Combinations: when pairing a main group like chest with an auxiliary one like triceps, the latter can be trained with fewer exercises or sets but with the same intensity.
• Repetitions: the rep range for hypertrophy is always between 12 and 6. Personally, I prefer to stay between 10 and 6 to keep intensity even higher. Exceptionally, some groups like abs and traps are trained with more reps but never exceeding 15, and calves can have longer sets up to 20 reps to get a good pump.
• Increasing weights: one of the keys of hypertrophy routines (Weider) is to increase the weight as you go through sets. When you increase weight, reps go down. For example, bench press could be 10-10-8-6 reps with 50-60-70-80 kg. It’s important to raise the weight to boost intensity, starting moderate in the first sets and finishing strong, reaching muscle failure.
• Muscle failure: this is when you can’t do a single rep more, actually it happens when you need help to complete the last rep. Usually, this is done on the last set of exercises or at most the last two sets. It’s one of the principles hypertrophy is based on—aiming for muscle failure with increasing weight.
• Rest between sets: rest is usually a bit longer than normal, ranging from 60 seconds for groups like biceps, up to 90 or even 120 seconds for exercises like bench press or squats.
• Total workout time: it should never exceed 60′, and if you train two groups in one day, it shouldn’t go over 75′ (not counting cardio).
• Routine management: usually you train 4 or 5 days a week, with a 4-workout periodization. For example, Monday chest and triceps, Tuesday back and biceps, Wednesday shoulders and abs, Thursday legs, and Friday you start again with chest and triceps.
• Exercise variation: the routine should be varied. It can stay the same for two months or change weekly, but always keeping basic exercises like bench press, squats, pull-ups, barbell curls, French press, deadlifts…
• Strength weeks: it’s important to include strength routines every 4 to 6 weeks during bulking phases to activate different muscle fibers, maintain or even improve overall strength, and boost metabolism.
• Cardio: it should be 100% personalized. Depending on whether you tend to hold onto fat or struggle to gain weight, you should do from 0 to 4 post-weight training cardio sessions (always) of about 30-40´, or even some HIIT sessions of 15-20´.