By: John Berry

Training Session #7: Volume Training

Welcome to the second season of John & Baz's British Bodybuilding Show (formerly known as "The Brit Show").

This season, watch John Berry and Barry Snell (a.k.a. "Baz") take on a series of supplement challenges, starting off with the AST line of supplements.

To View AST's Line Of Products, Click Here.

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Barry, Chin-Ups.

This week, watch AST training session #7, for another grueling and monsterously hardcore workout. As we near the end of the AST challenge, see how Baz's supps are working out! Well, what are you waiting for - click the play button now to watch, listen, and learn!

Note: If you missed the season opener & introduction to the challenge, click here.

Video Segment #9
Training Session #7

SEASON ONE FINALE

The Contest: BNBF Central Championships! Watch 26-year-old British natural bodybuilder John 'The Giant Killer' Berry compete this week in his first bodybuilding competition and bring home a trophy! Word. [ Click here to learn more. ]

This Week's AST Info

Days 43-49:

Barry's Comments:

Ok, this week John threw me a curve ball by introducing a new form of training that I've not tried before, he calls it "Volume Training." I, however, call it a nightmare and not for the faint-hearted! This week's training we had to train 6 days straight so we could hit everything and arms twice in one week.

The only area we didn't volume train was arms, but Oh, My Golly what we did on arms was eXtReMe!! We would train arms for two nights a week by supersetting between biceps and triceps for 15 minutes without a break.

	What Are Supersets? A superset is the alternating back and forth between two (or more) exercises until the prescribed number of sets is complete, usually with no rest between exercises. There are various types of supersets, however. Find more definitions in our glossary.

We would, for example, dumbbell curl for 20 reps each arm with a weight that is hard (but achievable) and then move straight on to french press for 20 reps, again with a tough weight, and then straight back to arm curl 20 reps to french press 20 reps and so on... With the arm curls, I would vary it each 20 reps to either straight curl or across the body curl to hammer curl. This is so you work the whole of the biceps and not just one head.

Click Image To Enlarge.
John, Pull-Ups.

By doing this, you are pushing all the blood from the front of the arm to the back of the arm continuously for 15 minutes, by the time you finish you should have done both at least 6 times each, and when I'd finished the pump in my arms was amazing (I couldn't even get my water bottle to my mouth because of all the blood in my arms)!

Then we had a short rest maybe 5 minutes, and we did it again with two different exercises like rope pull down for triceps and cable arm curls for biceps, again 20 reps each. You can rest but only at the top of the exercise so you never release the weight and the muscle is always under strain. This is where a good training partner helps by pushing you beyond your limits (Cheers, John - I think!)

We did this for all our major body parts like back, chest shoulders and legs but the weights for obvious reasons were not very heavy, and by the end of the week I was totally shattered as we had also increased the cardio to 45 minutes, which I did every night except one, and just to add salt to the wound we also cut the calories down again by about 100 a day. Great week done and things are beginning to change now, 1 more week and I can't wait to see what people think about the before and after.

John's Comments:

Volume training is here to stay! Hi guys, I hope you're still enjoying the show!

This week, I thought I would change the workout. I did this for many reasons:

1. To keep things fresh.
   
   
2. To keep Barry's mind off the drop in food.
   
   
3. To keep the body guessing.
   
   
4. To raise metabolism for end desired result.

This week is "VT": Volume Training. It's very simple yet very effective, ideal for when conditioning is becoming more important to the trainee.

Let me give you an example of our full week VT and how it works.

VT Rest Intervals:
There is minimal rest between sets (about 60 seconds when performed in sequence. (Interestingly enough, you might find you get stronger again during the eighth and ninth sets. This is because of a short-term neural adaptation.) Because of the importance of the rest intervals, you should use a stopwatch to keep the rest intervals constant.

This is very important, as it becomes tempting to lengthen the rest time as you fatigue.

Tempo:
Use a 4-0-2 tempo; this means you would lower the weight in four seconds and immediately change direction and lift for two seconds.

RELATED ARTICLE

Volume Training Vs. Heavy Duty! The bottom line in their argument was that Arnold advocated working out for hours every day, while Mike wanted people to spend as little time as possible in the gym. Learn why and which one is better! [ Click here to learn more. ]

Number of Exercises for VT:
One, and only one, exercise per body part should be performed. Therefore, select exercises that recruit a lot of muscle mass.

For Example:

• Day 1 - Chest / Flat Bench (10 sets of 10 reps of 70% 1 rep max)
  
  
• Day 2 - Back / Bent over Rows
  
  
• Day 3 - Extended Method Arm Training (30 mins)
  
  
• Day 4 - Legs / Squats
  
  
• Day 5 - Shoulders / Military Press (front)
  
  
• Day 6 - Extended Method Arm Training (30 mins)
  
  

Overload Mechanism:
If you would like to continue to use this technique for your training here is how you would progress. Once you're able to do 10 sets of 10 with constant rest intervals, increase the weight on the bar by 4% to 5%, and repeat the process. Refrain from using forced reps or negatives.

The volume of the work will take care of the hypertrophy. Expect to have some deep muscle soreness without having to resort to multiple set techniques. In fact, after doing a quad and hams session with this method, it takes the average trainer about five days to stop limping. It takes Baz 7 days - hahahaha!

Many Thanks,
John Berry

Next Week: Final AST Training Session

Ok guys, well, that's all the information you get for week 9! Next week, we'll wind down the AST challenge with our final training session. Watch Baz and John duel it out in a heated round of Rochambeau! J/K

In the mean time, check out John Berry's BodySpace Profile and Barry Snell's BodySpace Profile.

As always, I hope you have enjoyed this week's British Bodybuilding Show and a big thanks to Bodybuilding.com for all the strong support and especially to you guys - our fans!

BODYSPACE: STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

BodySpace! Create your profile, start a BodyBlog, meet others with similar goals, upload photos, and share effective workout diet and supplement programs with others - quickly and easily! [ Click here to learn more. ]

For those of us that are MySpace fanatics, John and Baz also have MySpace profiles! Check 'em both out!

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