Bodybuilding II Template

While similar to our hypertrophy templates, the Bodybuilding I and II templates include more isolation work, training volume, and exposure to advanced techniques designed to maximize muscular hypertrophy.

Who Should Use This Template?

The Bodybuilding II Template is designed for individuals who meet the following criteria:

• Have significant previous training experience (>12 months) training with barbells who are also looking to prioritize muscle growth. If you’re new to training that’s great! We recommend our Beginner Template or Beginner Prescription After that, check out our Hypertrophy I, Powerbuilding I, or Bodybuilding I templates.  Don’t worry, this template will still be available for you when you’re ready.

• Individuals who have been focused on strength, e.g., they’ve been running a powerlifting- or strength-focused program or similar, who are looking to break up their training for 4-6+ weeks with a muscle size-focused program.

Due to the variability in how individuals respond to a given program, it is possible that some will actually respond better, e.g., gain more muscle, to some of our other programs. In any case, these templates and accompanying 60+ page text serve as a guide for prioritizing muscular size and how-to program for it.

Finally, these templates can be run in either a calorie surplus (e.g., weight gain) or deficit (e.g., weight loss) depending on goals.  See the nutrition section of this document for further discussion here.

What’s Included?

The Bodybuilding II download includes a total of four 8-Week templates:

• Bodybuilding II 3-day
• Bodybuilding II Block I (4-day)
• Bodybuilding II Block II (4-day)
• Bodybuilding II Block III (4-day)

Each template includes three or four days of resistance training involving five to six exercises per day. Over the course of the training week, all the major muscle groups are hit with what we estimate to be the correct amount of volume, intensity, and frequency, to drive muscular hypertrophy.

Additionally, each template includes three to four days of conditioning. The Bodybuilding II template gradually introduces the trainee to aerobic and anaerobic conditioning elements over time to improve cardiorespiratory fitness, work capacity, and body composition while meeting the current physical activity guidelines.

With these features, the Bodybuilding II Template contains three blocks of programming that can be run in isolation or in succession, e.g., one-after-another. In the latter scenario, the individual can run this program for extended periods of time as long as the trainee is continuing to demonstrate a trend of improvement.

The first block of training begins with moderate training intensity and training volume. Training volume builds over the course of the first three weeks as the individual acclimates to the workload. The goals of this phase are to 1) increase muscle size, 2) develop proficiency with the use of RPE across a variety of repetition ranges, and 3) build work & recovery capacity to improve tolerance for training as the workloads increase.

The second block of training starts with a low stress week to facilitate recovery from the accumulated fatigue of block I. Next, this phase includes higher training intensities compared to block I, additional increases in training volume, and adds some advanced training techniques like supersets. The goals of this training block are similar to the first.   

The third block of training similarly starts with a low stress week to facilitate recovery from the accumulated fatigue of block II. From there, this phase includes additional intensity on the priority lifts, more training volume, and advanced training techniques like supersets and partial ROM failure. pre-exhaustion, drop-sets, etc.  The goals of this training block are similar that of the first and second.

It should be noted that, in contrast to many other “bodybuilding” programs in existence, this approach is purposefully NOT designed with the intent of overwhelming a trainee with volume or completely ignoring strength work of any kind. Rather, the program is built around a core of compound lifts, with progressively greater exposure to training volume, advanced training techniques, and isolation work.

Equipment Needs

All three templates allow the user to select the exercises they wish to perform, which run the gamut from typical barbell exercises (e.g. squat) to machine-based exercises (e.g. leg extensions). It is possible to do the entire template with access to only a barbell, rack, and weights- though some of the exercise variation will necessarily be decreased AND, you’ll have to sub out some of the isolation work for bodyweight or barbell-based exercises. For example, instead of using a leg extension machine, an individual could do a banded leg extension sitting on a bench, a goblet squat, or box step-up. Similarly, instead of doing a leg press, an individual could do a split squat. In short, more resources for equipment increase the variations an individual can perform, though they aren’t strictly necessary.

*Customers receive FREE lifetime updates to the template. No refunds are available for downloadable products at this time.