Intermediate lifting program bodybuilding

The middle level has never been looked at much because people often refer to themselves as beginners or experienced bodybuilders. This makes it tough for intermediate bodybuilders to find a routine that suits their own individual experience. The truth of the matter is that most people in the gym are actually beginners or intermediates. It is important to understand where you stand in the bodybuilding levels because you must use a routine that maximizes muscle gains from your own experience level.

For instance, if you are a newbie, don't do a 7-day split, those are for the experienced. Newbies should do a simple but extremely effective for newbie only 3-day full body routine.

What if you are an intermediate? Well, keep reading. What about for the intermediates? Well, then we would have to concentrate on building muscle mass and defining the muscle groups. In order to do so, they must use this routine:. By using this routine, you are focusing on both building muscle mass and defining the muscles at the same time. You must combine both compound and isolation exercises into your workouts. By doing repetitions for each set, you will stimulate maximum hypertrophy.

However, this is based on the average person. Every person responds to weightlifting differently, some better, some worse. Simply try this routine and then adjust it according to your own unique body type. Warm-up sets require at least 12 repetitions depending on the size of the muscle and the amount of weight you are using. It is very important to warm-up and stretch the muscle group that you will be targeting before you start your routine. Failure to warm-up and stretch properly before workouts can result in severe injury.

For example, if you are going to be doing heavy barbell bench, I recommend that you warm-up the triceps and shoulders before heavy benching. To gain maximum muscle growth, you must keep the body guessing. Change up your workout regiment as well as the exercises.

Follow this routine as your previous routine becomes stale and boring. After 2-to-3 months on this routine, switch back to the previous regiment to avoid repetition.

If you do not switch routines every two or three months, not only will it be boring, you will start to hit plateaus. Your body will only grow so much with one workout regiment. After that, you will not gain any strength or size to your physique.

To surpass this plateau, you need to switch up your workout regiment, switch up your exercises and add additional calories towards your diet. A beginner's routine would typically be focused on building as much muscle mass as possible.

An advanced bodybuilding routine would typically be focused on defining each muscle group for competition. An intermediate routine would typically be focused on both building muscle mass and defining each muscle groups.

However, intermediate bodybuilders usually struggle with muscle imbalances due to lack of knowledge in the prior years. For example, most intermediate bodybuilders have a strong general chest, but weak upper chest. The reason is because they focused too much on flat benching when they were beginners. A beginner's workout often takes more time than those of an intermediate or advanced workout. The reason for that is because beginners do full body workouts, which obviously take more time than splits.

However, an intermediate and advanced bodybuilder must spend more time in the gym weekly than a beginner bodybuilder. The reason for this is because the muscles of an intermediate or advanced bodybuilder recover quicker than those of a beginner. Their body is used to the constant intense stress of weightlifting and therefore will not respond as it once did before.

That is why beginners take frequent off days so their bodies can get used to the stress. Another reason why they might recover quicker can be because they maintain stricter diets which provide plenty of proteins, amino acids and vitamins for them to quickly rebuild their muscles. Unfortunately, the longer you weight lift, the slower your gains will be. Beginners get "newbie gains" when they first weight train. These gains will typically last about months. Newbie gains include rapid muscle gains and a rapid increase in strength.

The amount of muscle gained will vary among different body types. The muscle gained during this stage is permanent. For intermediates, they will start to notice slower muscle gain, even though they have a better understanding of the sport as they did before when they were newbie. Intermediates understand the importance of protein and amino acids and supplements in general. Advanced bodybuilders gain little muscle mass because their body is used to the stress of bodybuilding.

Basically, enjoy your newbie gains because there are long difficult days ahead of you. Beginners typically utilize bodybuilding accessories such as bodybuilding gloves. These accessories are meant to help them reduce the pain that weights can do to your hands. Advanced bodybuilder typically utilizes other bodybuilding accessories like weighed chest dip belts.

These accessories are meant to help them lift heavier for more muscle stimulation. That is kind of the trend I see in my home gym. However, some bodybuilders simply don't use any bodybuilding accessories and have achieved tremendous success nonetheless.

Intensity does not necessarily translate to muscle growth. Workouts with tremendous intensity can actually slow down your muscle gains.

The key to gain as much muscle mass as possible actually lies in the kitchen. Always follow the old adage, "You build strength in the gym. You build muscles in the kitchen. High intensity workouts can hinder your gains because your body will actually overtrain if you are a beginner or even an intermediate.

Beginners should not try intense workouts such as supersets or drop sets. Simply stick to basic compound movements like bench, squats and deadlifts until you think you are ready to go to the next level. To avoid high intensity, try to stick with minutes rest periods. In my opinion, it takes lots of time and effort to move up a single level.

A beginner would typically have years of experience. An intermediate would typically have years of experience. An advanced bodybuilder must have at least years of experience. Anything after 10 years of experience would be considered professional. However, the speeds in which you increase levels are based on time primarily, but also how much knowledge you have of the sport of bodybuilding. You must also know how the body works and how supplements work.

The more you research, the faster you will move up in the bodybuilding community. Time is absolutely essential toward building muscles. If you have patience, you will go a long way in the bodybuilding community. However, time without knowledge is useless.

Therefore, I suggest you join the forums on Bodybuilding. You can feel free to ask questions to many advanced bodybuilders and even to professional bodybuilders. Before you ask a question, make sure you do a search for it first. Most of the time, the question you are about to ask have been answered at least ten times on the forum already.

You can also post your picture and ask other bodybuilders to critique your physique and tell you what your strengths and weaknesses are. Knowing your body type helps you approximate how long the transition between levels will be for your individual body type. Mesomorphs will quickly rise from the beginner stage and into the intermediate in about a year.

Endomorphs will rise from beginner to intermediate in about a year and a half while ectomorphs will do so in about 2 years. There is no changing or altering your genetic makeup, you can only blame or thank your parents. I consider myself to be an intermediate bodybuilder. I have been seriously working out for more than two years and I have joined the forums on Bodybuilding. I read bodybuilding articles whenever I have free time and I have a tremendous passion for the sport.

I gained over 30 pounds of lean muscle within two years. I know, that's really not impressive but I am a creatine non responding ectomorph. I only weighted pounds in the 11th grade and I weigh pounds now in college at the same body fat. I consumed 1. I kept a moderately strict diet because of my high metabolism and thus didn't gain much, if any, fat.

There are three major levels in bodybuilding and each respond better to different workout regiments. Therefore, it is important to understand where you stand. If you are a beginner using an advanced bodybuilder's workout regiment, chances are that you won't gain much muscle or strength.

If you are an advanced bodybuilder using a beginner's routine, you won't get the body that you wanted. Some may get away with continuing a twice-per-week schedule, but many natural bodybuilders find that to be too much—overtraining is common and must be avoided. More on overtraining in the Advanced chapter. Here are two sample training splits, one with three workouts and one with four workouts per week.

For simplicity, I've assumed a 7-day cycle where you do the same workouts on set days of the week, but you can of course adjust this as you see fit. If you feel fully rested and energized after 6 days, by all means, go on a 6-day cycle and ignore what day of the week it is, or vice versa, with an 8-day cycle if you feel that you need more time to recover. Ultimately, it is your body that decides how frequently you can train.

As you get more experienced and grow increasingly stronger, you should be able to start phasing out the assist-part of chins, dips and other movements that uses your own bodyweight. If you're naturally light and can easily do reps with your own body weight; consider using a weight-belt to strap on an extra plate or two. Some exercises, like lateral dumbbell raises and cable crossover flies still require a lot of "feel" to come to its full right. You're wise to increase the weights in small increments to make sure you're not losing sight of proper form.

Another change you will notice is a couple new exercises. Deadlifts and barbell squats are classic mass-builders, which help you build core strength. While it may be nice to use the latest and greatest machines, it's hard to get the kind of mass the classics provides. Many distinguished professional bodybuilders got their massive foundation by sticking to the basics for the first few years. Then, once you've reached a solid base you can experiment more with machines and cables.

With junk food out of your diet and a nutrition log stretching over the past few months, you should already feel more in control of your eating habits and start experiencing the positive effects of better eating. Now it's time to narrow the focus to your specific goals. Generally, people can be divided into three groups: Those who have a hard time putting on weight ectomorphs , those who put on weight too easily endomorphs , and then there's that lucky handful who're just right in the sweet spot and only need to keep eating to maintain their balance mesomorphs.

Not everyone can be placed squarely to one category, but you quick look in the mirror should tell you which general area you're in. Now, let's look at different strategies for the three basic types of people. Naturally skinny people need a lot of calories to put on muscle mass. While it's easy to think pizza and ice cream should be the ticket to getting those extra calories, they should come from good sources rather than junk in order to promote the muscle-building effort.

Since you have a naturally high metabolism to begin with, you need to a lot of fuel to burn, especially when you're lifting weights times a week. Carbs is your primary source of fuel, in the gym and afterward, so it makes sense to keep the carb intake up.

Examples of good sources of carbs are rice, pasta, veggies, bread preferably the rough, high-fiber types and oatmeal. In addition to fueling your workouts, carbs stimulate the release of insulin, which is highly anabolic.

Insulin also encourages your body to store fat, but that's not a big issue for someone who has to fight for each gained pound. Any fat you may gain along with the muscle can be worked off later. Structuring the diet for an ectomorph is not rocket science—try to eat more of everything!

Starting with your daily caloric average that you derived from your first week with the nutrition log try to add about calories per day. Adjust this up or down calories if you're large or small. If you're an endomorph, the challenge is keeping the fat off while gaining muscle. It's a hard line to walk, but it can be done. This is largely caused by the dual-edge nature of insulin—it helps you build muscle, but it also nudges you toward increased fat storage.

Protein, on the other hand, does not trigger a release of insulin, yet adds good calories that are unlikely to be turned into fat almost regardless. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, you still need to consume fat to function and to burn body fat. Also, since less carbs often mean less vegetables and fiber, you may want to consider daily fiber supplementation for keeping your digestive system in shape. The endomorph diet strategy reflects this emphasis on protein and carb-avoidance.

If your goal is to shed fat, start with your daily caloric average that you derived from your first week with the nutrition log and deduct about calories. In other words, if you took in an average of 2, calories per day while neither gaining nor losing weight before, your new target average intake is 1, calories. Adjust calories as necessary if you're large or small. Mesomorphs are lucky in that they add on muscle relatively easily without having to worry about packing on too much fat in the process.

Still, even the most genetically blessed mesomorphs won't get away with a pizza-and-beer diet. Your goal is to provide enough carbs to fuel your workouts and enough protein to enable optimal muscle growth without going overboard. Complex carbs, such as rice, pasta, oatmeal and rough bread, along with complete food proteins such as eggs, milk, fish, chicken and lean beef should be the base of your diet.

Based on your daily caloric average that you derived from your first week with the nutrition log , add an average of calories per day.

How many weeks should I do this powerlifting program for? Can I add exercises or sets to the powerlifting program? Progress has stalled, what should I do? About The Author. Andrea Valdez is a lifelong athlete, experienced coach, and content creator. Andy Morgan is an online training and nutrition coach.

They are the authors of The Muscle and Strength Pyramid books. If online coaching is of interest, details are here. If you have a question, please comment below. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Inline Feedbacks. View Comments. Load More Comments. Start typing and press enter to search Search …. Day 1. Sets x Reps. Bench Press. Vertical Pull variations » » Chin-ups or Pull-ups Use bands to assist you if too hard to reach the required number of reps, add weight if they are too easy , Lat-pull Down close.

Day 2. Deadlift variations » » Conventional Deadlift or Sumo Deadlift. Day 3. Day 4. RPE Number. Could not do more reps or load without form failure. Could not do more reps, could do slightly more load. Could do 1 more rep. Could definitely do 1 more reps, chance at 2. Could do 2 more reps. Could definitely do 2 more reps, chance at 3.

Could do 3 more reps. Could do more reps. Very light to light effort.