You will temporarily increase the volume and intensity of work done for one bodypart while decreasing the volume and intensity done for the rest of the body.
Credit goes to Greg Zulak of MuscleMag (when it was still around) for introducing me to this concept more than 25 years ago.
This channels almost ALL of your recovery ability into ONE bodypart. Imagine what will happen when all the resources that normally go into recovery for your whole body going into JUST your chest!
Let's say you've got 100 units of recovery energy to use for your whole body. In normal training, it gets divided up between all your muscle groups that you're working.
Your triceps may get 10 units normally...with this type of structure, your triceps will get 95 to 98 units. That is a BIG difference and can really blow up a bodypart FAST.
This program can yield phenomenal gains in very short periods of time and is one of the best ways to get past plateaus in your size and strength.
What the Specialization Program Structure Looks Like
In this case, the chest is the targeted bodypart. If you're doing your back, for example, work your chest with 3 sets rather than 2 on the off-days as it is a larger bodypart.
| Monday | Chest 20+ sets |
| Tuesday | Everything else (3 sets each for back and legs, 2 sets all other parts) |
| Wednesday | Chest 20+ sets |
| Thursday | Everything else (3 sets each for back and legs, 2 sets all other parts) |
| Friday | Chest 20+ sets (I recommend CEO Training for this day) |
| Saturday | Rest |
| Sunday | Rest |
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Limit your workouts to 45 minutes during specialization days. Any longer than this and you will be tearing yourself down too much. If your recovery ability is not great, you may need to reduce your workout time to 30 minutes or less.
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Stick with this program structure for a maximum of three weeks then take a week easy, not working anything to failure, in order to recover.
Specialization Training Days:
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On your specialization days, work with high volume and intensity.
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Use any and every exercise you like...this is the time really have some fun.
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Throw in all the intensity techniques you want from forced reps to partials to drop sets.
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The idea is to really challenge that one bodypart, forcing it to adapt quickly.
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For example, on Monday, do bench press, incline bench, decline bench, crossovers, and flyes. On Wednesday, do dumbbell bench press, flyes, barbell bench, etc. On each Friday workout, I would highly recommend you use my Compound Exercise Overload technique where you do only one exercise for 45 minutes. This is perfect timing as you'll be taking two full days of rest right after it.
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Bascially, do as many exercises as you like and use as many intensity techniques as you like.
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The idea is to completely overload your target muscle group and focus all your recovery energy on that muscle group. I've even gone as far as doing 20 sets with 20 exercises for one set each!
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The first few sessions may be rough but as your body begins to channel its recovery resources more efficiently, you will see dramatic increases in volume tolerance and strength.
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A 20 to 30% increase in strength in a matter of days or weeks can be realized with this type of training, depending on your current level of strength.
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In the real world, this means going from a 200 pound bench press to a 250 pound bench press in three weeks.
Working Your Other Muscle Groups:
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Do not go to failure on the two days where you work everything else - always stop about two reps short of failure using about 8 to 10 reps per set.
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You want all your recovery ability to go to the targeted bodypart and not be used anywhere else.
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These training days are strictly maintenance training, nothing more. Any attempt to train your other parts with intensity will undermine your efforts with your targeted bodypart.
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You will not lose any appreciable strength or muscle mass in the rest of your muscles during this time.
Your Easy Week:
The idea of the easy week (week 4 of the cycle) is to keep some workload on your muscles while allowing your body to recover from the stress of the three weeks of hard training.
You will do 3 or 4 training sessions, e.g. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Do a total body workout, covering all your major bodyparts.
Do 4 sets of 12 reps for back, chest, and legs, and 3 sets for shoulders, biceps, triceps and calves. Don't go to failure on any of these sets. Use a weight that you can get 12 easy reps for. Take about a minute and half rest in between sets.
This will allow you to recover enough to be able to start with your regular program or another specialization cycle the following week.
How to Specialize on Two Muscle Groups:
This system CAN also work with two bodyparts at the same time (under certain conditions).
This will work better for smaller bodyparts and/or bodyparts that work antagonistically. For example, if you want bigger arms, specialize on both biceps and triceps at the same time.
If you try and specialize on something like legs and back at the same time, this won't work...that's like 80% of your muscle mass.
1. Separate workouts - Do two separate workouts for each muscle group, e.g. triceps in the morning then biceps in the evening at thirty minutes for each workout.
2. One workout - For example, biceps for twenty minutes then triceps for twenty minutes or vice versa.
3. Antagonist fashion - For example, jumping between biceps and triceps between each set or between each exercise for forty-five minutes.
The Bottom Line...
This kind of focused work can result in BIG jumps in both mass and strength in a specific muscle group or groups.
It's not easy and it's tempting to want to do more than one big muscle group (or two small ones) at a time, because the results are so good, but resist that temptation.
The more focus and recovery you can put into a limited area of your body, the better your results will be.
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Gain 5.7 lbs of mass in the next 4 weeks? Sounds impossible, right? Not with the Muscle Explosion program. Using a powerful, strategic approach to nutrition and training, you'll see gains in mass and strength the likes of which you've never experienced before.
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