High intensity training schedule

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The title of this article does not refer to a song by folk singer André Hazes, but to the training philosophy of six-time Mr. Olympia winner Dorian Yates, who is mainly known for his unique training method, called “Blood and Guts.”

Blood and Guts

In this article, we will take a closer look at Yates’ training philosophy and clarify why his training system rightfully deserves the title “Blood and Guts,” and why even the natural bodybuilder can benefit greatly from training the “Blood and Guts” way.

If the title of this article doesn’t scare you off, and you’re into a training regimen where you push yourself and your body to the limit, then high intensity training is for you!

In part 2, we’ll delve deeper into the training schedule itself and provide our version of a “Blood and Guts” inspired schedule by Dorian Yates.

Underdog from Birmingham

Dorian Yates is not only respected by many bodybuilders for his Mr. Olympia titles, but for his total dedication to the sport, his down-to-earth “no bullshit” attitude, and his extensive knowledge of training and nutrition. Yates cannot be compared to top American bodybuilders like Jay Cutler, Kai Greene, or Dennis Wolf.

This underdog, hailing from Birmingham, decided to dedicate his life to bodybuilding after a short stint in prison, a few years after his twentieth birthday. His English no-nonsense mentality quickly manifested in the way he preferred to train.

Inspired by the ideas and training methods of Mike Mentzer and Arthur Jones, Yates decided not to follow the schedules in fitness magazines, which advised targeting a muscle group twice a week with more than 25 sets per muscle group.

Yates believed that many bodybuilders were trapped in the “more is better” mindset, which prevented them from fully exploiting their genetic potential. A good training schedule should instead focus on short and intense workouts, stimulating every muscle fiber for growth by the bodybuilder.

At the same time, there should be enough time between these intense workouts for the bodybuilder to recover maximally. In Yates’ words: “Short and intense is the way to go for every bodybuilder. Just like your love-making!”

Blood and Guts: Short and Intense

The principle behind “Blood and Guts” is the same basic principle behind all training methods where intensity, not volume, is seen as the primary key to muscle growth.

To stimulate muscle growth, a workout must be intense enough to provide a growth stimulus. According to Yates, it is a misconception that increasing volume, i.e., the number of sets performed during a workout, is the most effective way to stimulate muscle growth. If that were the case, you would never need to train with heavy weights or train to muscle failure. Moreover, the bodybuilder who performs a thousand sets during a workout would be better off than the bodybuilder who performs a hundred sets, which is nonsense.

Training with high volume (i.e., with many sets) keeps your training weights low, and the intensity of the workouts is generally low, thus not stimulating muscle growth.

To illustrate this principle, Yates uses the metaphor of someone working as a builder, using a jackhammer all day. If a high volume were the most effective way to stimulate muscle growth, this builder should have the triceps of a professional bodybuilder because his volume is very high, but the intensity of his work is low (after all, he is able to operate this jackhammer all day).

With one intense set of skull-crushers to muscle failure, a bodybuilder is able to stimulate more muscle growth in his triceps than this builder, who operates a jackhammer for eight hours!

According to Yates, one intense set, after sufficient warm-up, is sufficient for every part of a muscle group to stimulate maximum muscle growth. If you perform more exercises or sets after this, it will only make it harder for you to recover from your workout because the human body has limited recovery capacity. After a workout, the body first needs to replenish the energy lost due to the workout. Only then does the stage begin where the body actually starts to repair your muscles, making you stronger.

When you perform more sets than necessary to stimulate muscle growth, your body will also have less energy available to promote this muscle growth (after all, your body has limited recovery capacity). A workout with low intensity and low volume thus ensures that there is no maximum growth stimulus stimulated, but also that there is less energy available for the body to recover from that workout!

Yates therefore advises focusing on one exercise per muscle group and performing one intense set to muscle failure. For the large muscle groups, you can add a compound exercise that targets the same muscle group, followed by one intense set to muscle failure.

According to Yates, this principle is best applied by a bodybuilder who uses the basic exercises of the bodybuilding sport (such as squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and military presses). These exercises are excellent for stimulating as many muscle fibers as possible and lend themselves well to training to muscle failure. Moreover, these exercises also stimulate the release of more growth hormone and testosterone in the body, which is conducive to muscle growth.

Low Volume, High Intensity

The key to “Blood and Guts” is thus low volume and high intensity. Each workout consists of only one exercise per muscle group, with one intense set to muscle failure. The workouts are performed using heavy weights (80-100% of the maximum weight that can be lifted) and are focused on maximizing the intensity of the workouts. The bodybuilder has to give everything during his set and push himself to the limit, which is why Yates also called his training system “Blood and Guts.”

The basic idea behind “Blood and Guts” is that a workout must be intense enough to stimulate muscle growth. This intensity can be achieved by training to muscle failure, using heavy weights and limiting the rest intervals between sets. The workouts must also be short enough so that the bodybuilder is able to recover maximally after a workout. If the bodybuilder is unable to recover maximally from a workout, it will be harder for him to grow!

Yates recommends resting for about 6 days between workouts for a muscle group. For the large muscle groups (chest, back, and legs), the recovery time is longer than for the small muscle groups (biceps, triceps, shoulders, and calves). This is because the large muscle groups are more demanding to train and require more time to recover from the workouts.

In addition to the short recovery time between workouts, the bodybuilder must also ensure that he gets enough sleep and eats enough protein to promote muscle growth. According to Yates, sleep and nutrition are just as important as training when it comes to building muscle. Without sufficient sleep and nutrition, the bodybuilder will not be able to recover maximally from his workouts and will therefore not be able to grow optimally.

Finally, Yates also emphasizes the importance of warming up properly before a workout. A good warm-up ensures that the bodybuilder is able to lift heavier weights during his set, reducing the risk of injury and increasing the effectiveness of the workout. According to Yates, a good warm-up consists of several sets with light weights, gradually increasing the weight until the bodybuilder is ready for his working set.

In the second part of this article, we will delve deeper into the training schedule itself and provide our version of a “Blood and Guts” inspired schedule by Dorian Yates.

At the same time, this routine should not consume too much energy, so that there is not enough (or not enough) energy left from the human recovery capacity to allow this hypertrophy (muscle growth) to take place.

Of course, there should also be enough time between the training sessions of individual muscle groups to allow the body to complete this muscle growth. And as if this weren’t complicated enough, a training routine must also ensure that the human central nervous system does not become overloaded as a result of too many consecutive workouts.

An ideal training schedule ensures that:

• there is maximum growth stimulation.
• a minimal amount of energy is consumed during the workouts, so that your limited recovery capacity has more energy left to allow this muscle growth to take place.

When a training schedule meets the above criteria, as a strength athlete with the goal of developing your genetic potential, you get the most out of your hard work in the gym, and you will see an upward trend in your workouts.

It’s the challenges that stimulate growth

Aside from all the academic hocus pocus surrounding the concept of intensity, when we talk about high-intensity training, we simply mean hard work in the gym. We’re not talking about endless marathon workouts, where we perform exercise after exercise until two hours have passed, but about a sickening work ethic, as required to build a good physique. We’re talking about an intense set when the athlete trains to absolute muscle failure (with perfect execution), after which it would be impossible to independently perform another repetition of an exercise (with good execution).

Only when you train to the point where it’s impossible to independently perform another repetition of an exercise do you force the body’s defense mechanism to prepare your muscles for the next “attack,” and stimulate hypertrophy.

When you want to grow as a bodybuilder (or as a human), it’s not something that happens automatically, but something that must be forced. In the words of Dutch bodybuilding champion Berry de Mey: “In bodybuilding, it’s just like with everything in life: easy is easy, but it’s always the challenges that stimulate growth.”

Ending a set because you’ve performed a certain number of repetitions is almost always pointless and does nothing to stimulate muscle growth. It only ensures that your body has less energy to recover from a workout, as we saw in the previous article.

The perfect set to muscle failure

In the training schedule below, for each part of a muscle group, after warming up, we perform a single working set, which stimulates maximum muscle growth.

When you’re just starting a high-intensity training schedule, it’s advisable to first ensure that you can perform the exercises of the training schedule correctly. Only after this phase do you train in these work sets to muscle failure, with the help of a spotter.

We stimulate muscle growth with a single working set to muscle failure, which will make your teeth grind, make you beg for your mother, and leave the people in the gym amazed at the willpower and dedication you have to develop the body of your dreams, for whatever reason you have for it.

To train to muscle failure, after warming up a muscle group, you perform one set to positive failure (until you can no longer perform a repetition of an exercise without assistance from a spotter). However, you still have enough strength to lower the weight in the negative phase, where a bodybuilder is strongest.

To train to absolute muscle failure, you must therefore train to both positive and negative muscle failure, while maintaining perfect execution of the exercise.

To achieve this, after you can no longer perform a positive repetition, a spotter can help you lift the weight. The athlete then lowers the weight as slowly as possible in the negative phase. The spotter helps you lift the weight one more time. These are called forced repetitions.

The athlete then lowers the weight as slowly as possible again, until he can no longer lower the weight calmly and controlled in the negative phase. The negative repetition should be performed slower than the positive repetition.

The weight of an exercise is not important, but the execution is. When you train to maximize your genetic potential and to stimulate maximum muscle growth during a workout, it’s important to leave your “ego” at the gym door when you enter.

Every exercise must be performed with perfect form, with controlled execution, and maximum contraction to stimulate hypertrophy. Only then are all muscle fibers stimulated for muscle growth.

When you use momentum to perform an exercise, you’re not focused on stimulating muscle growth, but on moving weight from point A to point B. A high-intensity trainer, on the other hand, has full control over the weights he uses and becomes stronger in the long run than athletes who only perform partial repetitions and only move weight instead of stimulating all their muscle fibers for growth.

So leave your ego at the door and perform each exercise correctly. The impressive weights will come later and are nothing more than a means to increase intensity.

Exercises

Although Dorian Yates has always said that he learned a lot from Mike Mentzer, a bodybuilder who made the principles of high-intensity training known in the world of strength sports, he disagreed with Mentzer on one point: his choice of exercises. The most effective exercises to stimulate muscle growth are the so-called compound exercises, which involve multiple muscle groups, such as the squat, bench press, and deadlift.

According to Yates, isolation exercises, which focus on one part of a muscle, also deserve a place in the training schedule of every bodybuilder aiming for maximum muscle growth. For example, you will never develop fully developed shoulder heads if you do not perform a lateral raise for the side of your shoulders, in addition to your heavy dumbbell presses, which mainly target the front of the shoulder.

In the same way, you will never be able to fully develop your chest if you do not perform a flye movement alongside a bench press variant. For this reason, we have chosen only exercises that stimulate all parts of your body for muscle growth and can be safely performed to absolute muscle failure with the help of a spotter.

Volume, frequency, and progression

The purpose of a good HIT training schedule is to give maximum growth stimulus to your muscles with as little work (volume) as possible, so as to waste as few auxiliary substances from the recovery capacity as possible. However, despite the setup of this schedule, there comes an end to the progress you make. When you get stronger, the training stress you expose your body to becomes exponentially greater. If nothing is done about this ever-increasing stress, you will overtrain and make no progress in the gym.

The solution to this is to train all-out for six to eight weeks, training to absolute muscle failure and using more weight in each workout so that you progressively become stronger and keep your body stimulated for muscle growth. After this intense training phase, incorporate two weeks of recovery. During these recovery weeks, you do not train to failure but only for maintenance. This way, your body and central nervous system can recover.

Occasionally, it’s even possible to not train for an entire week so that your body can fully recover its recovery capacity. After these recovery weeks, you start a new training phase, perhaps reversing some exercises or using new ones. Eventually, you return to your original exercises, on which you almost always get stronger than during the first training phase.

Then begins a new training phase, where you again train to failure and beyond, with new exercises. The body’s recovery capacity is then restored again, and you can continue to maximize muscle growth with as little waste of auxiliary substances as possible.

By continuing to switch exercises, you can continue training endlessly with this HIT method, inspired by Dorian Yates’ training schedule and Mike Mentzer’s training philosophy.

Blood & Guts Training Schedule

Below is finally the training schedule that could be the key to the physique you’ve always wanted, if you apply the principles above.

Remember that developing a good physique requires time, hard work, discipline, and great mental strength. This is something that can only come from within. The only one holding you back from training with maximum intensity from now on is yourself. It is therefore your task, if it is your dream to develop an impressive physique, to take control of yourself and let your muscles fight against the only real resistance there is: your own mind.

High intensity training is both physically and mentally exhausting. If you think the training schedule below contains too few sets, you will soon be deceived. When you train with maximum intensity, you will soon start looking for excuses to perform even fewer sets and exercises! Remember the sentence with which this article began. “Easy is easy, it’s just the challenges that stimulate growth.” The schedule below is living proof of that.

Are you ready to train with “blood and guts”?