Furyan Strength: The Furyan Sets

Now, we are ready to start unleashing your Furyan. Remember, you are not competing against anyone else. You just have to be better than you were yesterday.

A Note on Gym Availability

The Wellness Center where I work out is open Monday through Friday. Because of this, I am in the gym five days a week. Occasionally, the gym will be closed because of holidays and such but I would say four days a week is my minimum. Everyone’s gym schedule is different and you have to decide what is best for you. Maybe Saturday is the day you spend with your family. Maybe Sunday is your day of rest and worship. Maybe you need to take Wednesdays off. This is where you have to jockey your splits around your availability and there are far too many permutations for me to list out what is best for you.

This is one of the prime examples where what is right for you may not be right for some. So my hopes is that I can teach you enough here so that you can adapt this to work for you.

The Calendar Schedule

Now, while my muscle groupings have not changed, the routine has. I have developed an A and B routine for all of my muscle groupings, which gives me a total of 8 different workouts. For example, the Chest & Back Workout A is more barbell based for my chest exercises and my back exercises revolve more around dumbbells. Chest & Back Workout B then flips that and puts the chest more dumbbells based and the back exercises more barbell based. Switching the formula allows me to attack the muscles via different exercises. The body is highly adaptable so you have to keep changing things up. When you factor in the weekends, I am only doing the same workout once every 10 days.

I tend to track things on a 4 week rotation and it just so happens I have four different Muscle Groupings. So by going to the gym five days a week, in Week 1, I run through my whole “A” program and then on Friday, I get to begin my “B” program rotation.

On Week 1, Chest & Back is getting worked out twice. In Week 2, Shoulders and Lats get worked out twice. Week 3, Legs are getting hit twice. And Week 4, Arms get two workouts on Monday and Friday. But there is always three days in between to give my muscles time to recover. After four weeks with this rotation, you will have completed all four muscle groups twice in one week.

Then it is time to go through, analyze your results, and shake things up. Maybe this is the time to fine tune your workout and make some adjustments. Maybe you decide that Week 5 is going to be dedicated to Strength Training, so you increase the weight 25% but you do reps of 5 instead of 8. Maybe you go the opposite direction and go with some Muscle Endurance Training and you decrease the weight by 25% but do reps of 12 instead of 8. Once that “special week” concludes, you then shift back to a new 4-Week 28-day Track and hopefully, you have done well and added another 5 pounds to all your various exercises.

Muscle Groupings

I am a big fan of antagonistic sets. I mention this extensively in other articles but, for a brief recap, I like to develop my muscle balance via a full range of motion whenever possible. For example, I work in circuits. So I push with a chest exercise (Bench Press) and then immediately move to a middle back exercise (a Seated Cable Row). This gives me that push and pull workout. Because of this philosophy, my muscle groupings are pretty much set together. They are as follows:

Chest & Back: Again, lots of pushing and pulling. Technically, this is Chest & Middle Back.

Shoulders & Lats: Designed for a push overhead and pull down. Traps get worked here too.

Legs: Kind of a catch all but this is Quads, Hamstrings, Calves, Lower Back

Arms: Another catch-all but this is biceps and triceps, with some forearm work.

I have seen other people do breakup their splits differently. I have seen some splits with a push day and a pull day. This is where you see workouts that feature back and biceps and chest and triceps. The theory is that you are pushing with your triceps with your bench press and then blasting them with isolating exercises later that same day. It is pretty sound theory but as I prefer my antagonistic set theory. So the muscle grouping that I have developed seems to be the most realistic approach for me.

How the Workouts Are Built

The method to which I have constructed my workouts are pretty methodical and for a purpose. I have not just slapped together a series of random exercises and called it good. So if you are not too certain about the principles and the theories, try not to deviate too much from what I am presenting here.

I always start my workouts by front loading with the heavy lifts. Simply stated, you want to begin your workout with your heaviest and most difficult lifts when you have the most energy. The weight typically tapers off towards the end of the workout when you are doing more sculpting exercises.

You get the most bang for your buck by doing multi-joint movements. A Bench Press or a Deadlift is going to stimulate more muscle fibers than a Bicep Curl or a Lying Leg Curl. In the Deadlift, you are moving your ankles, knees, hips and you are working fibers in your lower back, glutes, forearms, etc. It is almost an all over workout. Bench Press is utilizing your shoulders and elbows, thus it is a multi-joint movement. These are typically your heaviest lifts, so it makes sense to do these types of exercises first.

For instance, on days where I am working out my shoulders, the heaviest movements are front loaded. The Linear Jammers and the Military Press are first and foremost in the workout. Then, once you get deeper into the set, you are going to be doing more exercises like Lateral Raises and Power Partials. These exercises will have you lifting much lighter weight and they are essential to sculpting a good “all over” look. But if you are doing things right, you will always do more weight with an Overhead Press than you will with a Power Partial. A Lateral Raise is a wonderful second tier exercise but it is not something you are going to build a program around.

I have preached the importance of circuits before. If you come off your Bench Press and move as quickly as possible to the Seated Cable Row, you are actually letting your chest muscles recover while working a different section of your body. Rather than just standing around waiting for your body to dump all that lactic acid out of your muscles, you are doing more work to keep your heartbeat elevated and burn more calories.

The other thing I have tried to do is alternate certain exercises specifically to give you a maximum amount of recovery time. For example, on days where you work your arms, there are not too many variations of the triceps extensions placed back to back. I try to switch it up where you are performing an extension and then a Pushdown in the next circuit. I find that by stacking too many extensions too close together in the circuits, you just run out of fuel and you don’t have enough energy to perform the proper amount of pushdowns.

Specific Training: Muscle Groups

Before I get started on explaining the breakdowns, I debated and waffled several times regarding how I was going to present these individual workouts. The problem is that this program is constantly evolving and the individual components of the routine that I will be performing when you read this is going to be different. You have to constantly be evolving and I wrote out all these descriptions that then became obsolete when I changed up my routine.

So, first, I am presenting the science behind my routines. I will offer you sample exercises so you are not stumbling through blindly but at the end of the day you have to adapt this program for you.

For instance, you may love to do Cable Crossovers to develop your chest. Unfortunately, my gym doesn’t have that piece of equipment so I don’t have them listed in my workout. Everyone’s situation is going to be different but I feel that if you understand the science, you can adapt the program to your situation. Remember, I don’t want to just tell you what to do. I want you to learn and comprehend so you can adapt your perfect program.

Chest & Back

The Chest and Back typically the workout that most people begin their week with when they are fresh from the weekend. It features one of the “big four” exercises that all programs need to be built around which is the Bench Press. The Bench Press is one of the most popular exercises for a reason and this will make sure you get a full chest workout.

This workout sticks with the tried and true formula for a full range of motion countering the push of the bench press with pulls to exercise your middle back. This gives us that full range of motion with a nice back and forth.

All good chest days include a press in the three key positions: flat, incline, & decline press. You then also need to round it out with some sort of fly. I have alternated the A & B workouts to fit the equipment at my gym. My gym only has one big universal rack and I never want to monopolize too much of the equipment for too long. Routine A is focused around dumbbells for the chest and barbell work for the back. We flip it for Routine B and focus on barbell work for the chest and dumbbell or machine work for the middle back.

Remember, anything you can do with a barbell, you can do with a dumbbell. Barbells are always preferred (say like with a bench press) but Dumbbell Bench Presses makes your arms work independently and you can drop the DBs down lower below your chest. Those deep stretches are where the real work gets done.

To offset the push of the bench press, the best workout for the middle back is the Row. Routine A gets into the really heavy rows. DB Rows are one thing but the barbell rows are where you can really start cranking up the weight for an effective row. This is how you build that back that is a mile wide and has ridges that the ladies like to run their fingers over. If you want a broad back, you gotta get rowing!

Shoulders & Lats

Shoulders have become my favorite workout. The setup is very fast so the workout can go quicker than most and you are going to see new exercises that were not featured in the Tyro and Warrior sets. The formula remains the same in that the true heavy lifting is front loaded in the workout and then more sculpting exercises are toward the end. The workout also keeps with the formula where you press over your head and then pull down.

The key to a good shoulder workout is to make sure that all three heads of the shoulder receive stimulation. You will often hear shoulders referred to as “deltoids” or “delts.” Throwing out all the medical jargon, the shoulders have three heads: the front, the middle, and the rear. The rear head is often neglected because it is the muscle that is the hardest to see in the mirror. The easiest way to think about stimulating the heads is to consider your elbow position. If your elbows are in front of you, you are hitting the front head. If your elbows are at your sides, you are hitting the middle head. And if you are bent over and performing a lift, you are hitting the rear head.

I have staggered the exercise so that we are not overloading one head and leaving you with no energy left at the end so that the second or third head gets neglected.

As a general rule, you want to use free weights as much as possible. Cable exercises should only be about 25% of your workout but cables are practically a necessity with lat exercises. Eventually, you are going to get to a point where you can do Pullups and that is always a preferred exercise over a Lat Pull Down. But, again, we want hypertrophy and I cannot perform 10 to 12 Pullups in a row. So we grind on the Lat Pulldowns until we can get to that level. Same as always, grip is everything. As you read through the exercises, you will see that the majority of the exercises are variations of the pulldown. Wide grip, close grip, reverse grip, v-bar… You’ll see the flow.

Legs

Leg Day is probably the least attractive and least appealing of all the exercises and I am still trying to separate out the exercises to make sure you get maximum stimulation, like I have done with the shoulders and the arms. This is the area where you will undoubtedly push the most weight, find your tank drained the fastest, and feel the least confident to continue on in this quest for fitness. But if you can slay that demon and keep moving forward, legs improve everything in your arsenal and make everything else easier.

I will say to move very slowly when it comes to Leg exercises because too much weight combined with bad form can legitimately get you hurt. But fluffing around with too little weight is not going to allow you to achieve your goals either. But Legs feature the Deadlift and the Squat which is two of the four critical exercises that every program needs.

While we are targeting a variety of muscle groups with the key Deadlift and Squats, the ancillary exercises that round out the program are designed to improve what we will call the “Key Two.” As hamstrings are tremendously important, you will see Romanian Deadlifts. You don’t want to neglect your calves so you will see lots of raises to keep them toned and strong.

Remember, we are looking for muscle symmetry so you want your calves to have the same circumference as your biceps. That is good tip if you are wondering if you need to do more during leg day.

Biceps & Triceps

I consider Biceps and Triceps to be one of the “fun” days when it comes to my workout. I like giving my arms a unique training day all to themselves.

“Biceps” by its very definition means “two-head” and so naturally that means “triceps” translates to “three-head.” What I have attempted to do in the circuits of my exercises is stagger the individual lifts so that the two heads in the biceps are not hit in back to back exercises and I have attempted to do the same with the triceps.

Biceps has a short head and a long head and we need to exercises that stimulate both of these muscles. Exercises that feature your elbows in front of you put focus on the short head and exercises where your elbows are behind you stimulate the long head.

Triceps are rather different but here is the easiest way to understand them. Any sort of extension over your head works the inside of your arm. Any sort of exercise where you are pushing weight down works the outside of your arm. So I have tried to alternate the circuits where you are pushing over your head and then pushing down. The third head is that horseshoe shape that shows up between the inner and outer heads. You can target that by performing a Reverse Grip Pulldown.

By alternating with these exercise styles and alternating the head focus, you will create dramatic stimulation in your arms.

As you can see here, on a four week track, each workout is performed once every 10 days, which I feel is more than enough time for each workout to feel like something new and your routine does not get stagnant.

Ask any professional and they will tell you that overtraining a muscle is never good. Your muscles do not grow during the pump. Your muscles grow when they are healing, stitching themselves back together, and while you sleep. 48 to 72 hours is really the most recovery time needed for any muscle group. So splitting up Chest A and Chest B with three training days in between is more than enough time for you to recover.

As you read through these routines, there may be exercises that I have omitted that you prefer to do. Take this blueprint and make it your own but just be mindful of how the workouts are put together. The big three exercises that all routines should be based around include the Deadlift, the Squat, and the Bench Press. I think the fourth that should be added to muscle’s holy trinity is the Pull-Up. But even after a year of training, I still don’t have enough upper body strength to do enough reps to achieve hypertrophy. So I feel lat training is essential as well.

So keep in mind if you evaluate your exercises, you don’t want to substitute an exercise that is good to build a routine around (i.e. Deadlifts) and replace it with something less effective. Keep your routine front loaded with at least two to three circuits that revolve around heavy lifts. Then let the back half of your routine revolve around sculpting exercises.