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Maximum Strengthspan | Ultimate Workout | Men's Health
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00:00So a few years ago I went all in on getting stronger and yeah that got me gym stronger
00:05but other things like the explosion in my basketball game, my ability to run and just
00:09my ability to have endurance got just a little bit weaker and just a little bit slower and
00:14that's because I was only training with one kind of strength in mind and in truth strength is not
00:18just something very simple like that but there's a span of strength. We have absolute strength,
00:23we have explosive strength, we have what I call aerobic strength, there's functional strength and
00:27then there's that whole aesthetic thing that we think about and these are five different areas
00:31of strength and if you truly want to be a badass now and also way into your 50s, 60s and
00:36beyond
00:37then you want your workouts to build around all of these kinds of strength not just gym strength.
00:47That's exactly what this program does and we're going to do it in four days a week with an optional
00:51fit day just so we can get a little bit of arm work in. Now how do we get our
00:54strength span program done?
00:57The prerequisites you need to hit every single day. I want you to try to get six to eight thousand
01:01steps a day.
01:02We want some level of general activity in our days. We don't just want our activity to come in our
01:07workout.
01:07So we want to try to hit that note. Second thing we have to do, we want to eat around
01:11maintenance calories
01:12and you can eat a little bit above that. In terms of the workout programs we've done here at Men's
01:16Health,
01:17diet wise this is going to be one of the least restrictive. We want to eat healthy, we want to
01:20eat the right things,
01:21that is all in our nutrition video. But overall you don't have to restrict yourself too much and you
01:26can enjoy life. You can enjoy what you're eating. That is the fun part of this workout and again this
01:30is meant to be a workout that you can do for long term that's going to serve you in the
01:34long term too.
01:35And then the last thing we have to do when we are training, we do have to train hard. If
01:39you're getting
01:40through your eight to ten rep sets and you're not feeling like you're challenging yourself much using 25
01:45pound dumbbells every single workout and you're not feeling like on those final two reps you're really pressing,
01:49you're not going to get everything you need out of this workout. So you want to make sure that you're
01:54training in that zone of two reps in reserve. We want the final two reps in every set to kind
01:59of be
02:00hard and we want to be a little bit unsure especially on the last set of a workout whether we
02:04can really
02:05hit our reps on that. Now that we've got all that covered before we actually dive into the program we
02:09need to cover one other thing and that is your cardio conditioning. So I'm not going to exactly list this
02:15in
02:15the workout but what we have to do is at least three days out of the week we do want
02:19to get a
02:20little bit of aerobic work into our training. This doesn't have to be long because I know everybody
02:24if you're like me you hate doing cardio but we do need this component because again you want to be
02:29able to you know survive on a basketball court survive if you're playing with your kids for a long
02:33period of time or survive if the elevator is out one day at the office and you have to do
02:36the stairs.
02:37You want to be prepared for those things you don't want to be out of breath so we want a
02:40little bit of a
02:40component of cardio. I'm not going to say which workouts you have to do them in but at the end
02:45of
02:45three workouts you want to spend at least four to ten minutes doing a little bit of cardio. There are
02:52two versions of this that we have for you and you can do all of these on any cardio implement
02:57that you
02:57want or you can do them simply with some kind of bodyweight move for example we can do burpees we
03:01can do mountain climbers. Either way what you're going to do your two options a your sort of long cardio
03:07version of this you can go 90 seconds on 30 seconds off and if you do that for four to
03:12five rounds
03:13you're going to push your heart rate enough and you're kind of thinking of that as a sustained
03:17cardio option. Your other option for this we're going to go 20 seconds super hard max yourself out
03:23and then you're going to go 10 seconds off you're going to do that for eight rounds that adds up
03:26to
03:27just four minutes but that is a basic Tabata done correctly a Tabata is a great way to really
03:33stimulate and improve your vo2 to really stimulate your whole cardiovascular system and the best part
03:38it's over in four minutes the key to that though is you have to go hard during those 20 seconds
03:44whatever you're doing whether it's a skier whether you're running whether you are doing burpees you
03:48have to max yourself out for those 20 seconds and then the 10 seconds rest it goes by really fast
03:53so
03:53you're going to attack one of those options onto your workouts three days a week and that is going to
03:57cover your cardio now let's get to the program this is a four days a week program it's going to
04:04cover
04:05all of the strengths we talked about before and there is an optional fit day you don't have to do
04:09that but i'll tell you it's fun and it's probably the most pump friendly workout you're going to get
04:12out of this program day one we're going to start off with total body power again you need that explosive
04:18power component for life and you're going to get that with this day we're going to lead off with
04:23a walk out to scorpion so we get a nice good overall total body stretch and we start to get
04:27ourselves warmed up you can do a 60 seconds on for this 30 seconds off and you're going to do
04:31three
04:32rounds of this after that we jump into the workout one thing with this workout you want to think about
04:38taking nice big rest periods we want to take as much as two to three minutes between each set but
04:43what i want you to do is when you're on your working sets you want to be really powerful and
04:47really
04:47aggressive we're going to start off with a deadlift concept with a hinge concept that's always going to be
04:52your most powerful move in your workout program and we're going to go to a trap bar deadlift jump
04:57now this is going to have you going a little bit lighter on or a lot lighter actually than your
05:02trap bar deadlift i would honestly think about just throwing even tens or quarters onto your trap bar
05:08what you're going to do you're going to get into your deadlift position and you're going to explode
05:11upwards as high as you possibly can you're doing four sets of three to five reps here now again not
05:17necessarily going to feel a pump you're not going to feel out of breath but what you want to do
05:21is make each rep feel like its own rep like you're being super powerful and almost on every single
05:26jump try to get better with the jump and try to jump a little bit higher i don't need a
05:31ton of
05:31resistance the resistance is just giving you a little bit of feedback so you can hit the right
05:35position and just so that you're jumping with a little bit more load than you would have from body
05:38weight after you get done with that we're going to go to a dumbbell reverse lunge with knee drive
05:42you're going to do three sets on each side you're going to do six to eight reps on each set
05:47the key with
05:48this is again we're thinking velocity and we're thinking power so what i want you doing is when
05:53you get into that reverse lunge position and you drive into that high knee position you're trying
05:57to get to that high knee position as fast as possible that's going to very much simulate a
06:02little bit of what happens when we go into any running stride or when we're jumping on a basketball
06:06court this is that chance to be explosive because remember this is a full explosive workout and we're
06:11just thinking about creating power in this session after you've done three sets of that on each side
06:16then we're going to a dumbbell or barbell push press i don't care which one of these you do
06:21but again one you can get a little bit heavier with this but overall you want to think about
06:26moving powerfully and moving explosively and driving from this position at your shoulders to the
06:31overhead position as quickly and as explosively as you possibly can you're going to do three sets
06:37of eight on this after each set we need a vertical pull in our overall program so after each set
06:43you're going to get in chin-ups you're going to go to a technical failure on these if you don't
06:46have
06:46access to a pull-up bar you can easily do pull downs or you can do dumbbell rows but ideally
06:51you're
06:51going to do chin-ups and again we want to push that to the limit if you're doing pull downs
06:54or you're
06:55doing dumbbell rows think about doing sets of eight on that and then we'll finish this workout off with
07:00one more move we're going to go to a kettlebell dead clean and again this is another chance to be
07:04very very explosive i want you to eventually work up to the biggest kettlebell they have in your gym
07:09you're going to start from a very good kettlebell deadlift position and then you're all you're going
07:14to do is you're going to stand explosively think about getting onto your toes and kind of hitting
07:17a level of triple extension and then pull the kettlebell up to your chest after you do three
07:21sets of six days on that you will be wiped out this is also not the day by the way
07:26that i would
07:26think about putting in cardio although you can put in cardio but after this you should be wiped out and
07:31you've hit all of the explosive functions that you need after that we go on to day two now we're
07:35going
07:36upper body strength and hypertrophy and when i say strength here i'm thinking strength in that
07:41absolute way that we do want to lift a little bit heavy and we do want to push ourselves so
07:45that's one
07:45thing to keep in mind on this upper body day we're also going to again we want to think about
07:49when we
07:50think about longevity and we also think about building the body that we want visually we do want
07:53to layer some muscle on so there is a hypertrophy component in this workout we're covering a lot of
07:58territory how we're going to warm up for this one we're going to go to a two-way open book
08:01stretch
08:02you're going to do this for 60 seconds on each side you'll get two rounds this is a really really
08:06good way to open up your thoracic think about spreading your chest toward the ceiling as much
08:11as you can on every single one of these reps after you get done with the two-way open book
08:15stretch
08:15then we're going to go to a little bit of a power move and a move that's going to let
08:19you move load and
08:20let you go heavy and this is a move where i want you going heavy we're going to go to
08:23a dumbbell dead
08:24stop row biggest difference between a traditional dumbbell row and a dumbbell dead stop row is you get to rest
08:29for a split second between reps and because you get to rest and you get to pull that dumbbell off
08:33the ground you get to be a little bit more explosive so even though this isn't a power day
08:37we do get a little bit of a power component in there you're gonna do four sets of six to
08:41eight
08:41reps on that and then we're going to the incline dumbbell press i want you training this heavy we're
08:45going to do three sets of six to ten reps think about on those first two sets yeah you can
08:50get into
08:51that eight to ten rep range but on the last set i want you going heavy enough that you're pushing
08:55for six
08:55reps and even if you fall a little bit short on that that's just fine because that's
08:59going to cover us lifting heavy and us getting that heavy push in our workout after that we're
09:04going to get into a little bit of hypertrophy work and pump work we're going to go to a super
09:09set
09:09you're going to lead off this super set with eight to ten reps of a cable fly if you can
09:15i'd like you
09:15to do this as a chest supported cable fly that way you can really focus on the chest contraction
09:19if you can't you can just do this as a standard cable fly ideally you're going to do that if
09:24you don't
09:25have access to that we can also do a two second pause dumbbell fly with the lightweight be careful
09:30on that and focus on the chest stretch don't focus on trying to hit a range of motion that's going
09:34to
09:34bother your shoulder either way after you're done with that you get off the fly and we go right into
09:3925 reps of push-ups do not rush these push-ups though but take your time so it should be
09:44a one
09:44second pause on the bottom a one second pause on top if you can't get those push-up reps all
09:49consecutively we're going to do what's called a rest pause because you're doing 25 one way or another what you're
09:54going to do is you'll hit as many reps as you can without moving your hands you'll shift out
09:58of the push-up position and give yourself three deep breaths then you're going to go right back to
10:03work and you're going to repeat that pattern until you get to your 25 push-up reps three sets of
10:09that
10:09should totally max out your chest and then to be honest you can be done with your training and
10:14you can be largely done with this workout but if you have time a really good move to throw into
10:18this
10:18is going to be a dumbbell pullover this is going to help stretch you out it's going to help open
10:23up
10:23your thoracic spine it's going to help you learn to arch your back that's all really really important
10:27and good stuff from a mobility standpoint in the long term and it's also going to work your laps in
10:31a really good way so it's a little bit of extra work and it's a little bit of extra pull
10:35work in
10:35this workout think about doing that for two sets of eight reps my biggest tip to you on a dumbbell
10:41pullover pause for a split second when you're in that stretch position and appreciate that stretch
10:45because that's what's giving you the really good overall total body stretch that's what's going to
10:49create a lot of spinal mobility for you and that's what's going to set you up for success in the
10:53long
10:53term this is a really good day to throw in a little bit conditioning at the end so i would
10:58suggest
10:58getting in at least a tabata again it's only four minutes it's over before it starts after that we go
11:03on to day three now we're on lower body strength and hypertrophy and we're going to start this off with
11:08my favorite total body stretch you're going to go to the spider-man lunge we're going to go two sets
11:12for 60 seconds on take about a minute off focus on your hips on this stretch the biggest tip i
11:18would give
11:18you when you're doing the spider-man lunge think about flexing your quad on the straight leg and
11:23that will allow you to then drop a little bit lower into your front hip that's going to give you
11:29the
11:29maximum hip stretch to set us up for success during our leg workout once again i'm going to want you
11:34lifting heavy on your first exercise this is about pure strength so we're going to do four sets of four
11:41to eight reps on a traditional trap bar deadlift now on the first three sets think of those of being
11:47in
11:47as being in the six to eight range on that last set get down to four reps and make sure
11:52that it's
11:53heavy enough that those four reps are very challenging if you don't have access to a trap
11:57bar we can also do this as a heavy dumbbell or barbell romanian deadlift and you can do that at
12:03home
12:03but again if you do have access to a trap bar and have access to load make sure you're pushing
12:07yourself
12:07on this exercise to get things started after that we go to a front foot heel elevated bulgarian split
12:13squat you're going to do three sets of eight to ten reps on this per side the heel elevation on
12:18this
12:18is going to help us focus a little bit more on our quad because we can get our knee out
12:21over our toe
12:22a little bit more so it's a really really good modification that i like doing for bulgarians
12:26the key on this is make sure that as you're doing this your thigh is getting at least parallel to
12:31the
12:31ground don't be cheap with these bulgarians but we want to get some range of motion on this
12:34again you're doing three sets of eight to ten per side and i would suggest using dumbbells but you could
12:39use a barbell if you wanted and then we'll finish off this leg day with half full goblet squats so
12:44now we're hitting our classic squat pattern we're going to go three sets of 10 to 12 reps on this
12:48you can do this as a goblet squat or if you the kettlebells and dumbbells in your gym are not
12:52challenging you you can also do this from a front rack so you can get a little bit more load
12:56but you
12:56want this to be horrible you want this to feel really really hard so make sure that you're going heavy
13:01and you're really trying to get depth on these squats and then that is leg day again this is a
13:06day
13:06that we can easily finish out with conditioning so it's a good time to get a little bit of that
13:10cardio in for our fourth training day we're going to cover a couple of our bases so we have hit
13:14our upper body and lower body from our classic strength standpoints and hypertrophy and we've
13:19hit some power the thing we haven't done is we haven't gotten what they call functional with our
13:24strength and we haven't changed plans we haven't moved in some of those real world ways so we're going
13:28to cover that on this day four this day four should be hard but it's also a little bit more
13:33relaxing
13:34coming off of those two days where i want you thinking heavy and i want you thinking of pushing
13:38as much weight and making every single rep super hard so we're going to lead off this multi-planet
13:43day by opening up our hips as much as we can because your hips are key to changing direction
13:48we're going to go to a hip 90 90 stretch with a reach the reach is going to help loosen
13:53up your back
13:53it's going to help also open up your psoas we're going to go 60 seconds per side of this we're
13:57going to
13:57do two rounds of this and that will set you up for the rest of this workout we're going to
14:01lead
14:01things off with one of my favorite exercises the walking lunge and don't be afraid to take this
14:06heavy you also don't need to crush yourself i would like you breathing hard because one of
14:10the benefits of doing the walking lunge when it's done properly is it is going to be a very long
14:16set
14:16a walking lunge set if done correctly could last for 60 75 90 seconds so yes that is starting to
14:21touch
14:22into that cardio area in each of our sets we want to get eight to ten reps per side and
14:27we want to do
14:27three sets of that take about 90 seconds to two minutes between each of these sets after you get
14:32done with that now we're going to get very functional we're going to get very just movement
14:36quality overall and we're going to go to a half kneeling windmill to press so this is going to get
14:41you twisting and then from there we're going to go into another move so there's also some cognitive
14:45stuff in this you're going to do three sets of six to eight per side your abs are going to
14:50feel this
14:51your shoulders are also going to get a lot of work here and again we're working from that half kneeling
14:55stance which is nice and friendly for our lower back following that we've got to get a little
15:00bit lateral so we twisted now i want to get you moving side to side we're going to go to
15:05a fixed
15:05position lateral lunge and i want you doing six to eight reps of this per side we're going to hold
15:10a dumbbell or a kettlebell in a goblet position as we're doing this i don't so much care about the
15:16load
15:16on this lateral lunge what i am more interested in is how deep can we dive into that working leg
15:23can you
15:24get your hip below your knee if you can that's great you're going to get a really really good
15:29stretch on your adductor on the other side and we're also working the quad on the working side
15:33leg after we get done with our reps there we're going to go into a stagger stance kettlebell swing
15:38and i'd like you to pick up a little bit of rhythm on the stagger stance kettlebell swing so what
15:42you
15:42can do you have two options either a you can do 15 seconds on each side for the stagger stance
15:48kettlebell
15:48swing and then you can take a 30 second rest and you can do three sets of that or b
15:52we can go for
15:5430 seconds of stagger stance kettlebell swings and you can do two reps to a side and then every two
15:59reps you can switch your stance that's going to require a little bit more rhythm a little bit more
16:03athleticism which is not a bad thing and a little bit more mental challenge but if you can do that
16:08get those 30 seconds then take 30 seconds off we're going to do three sets of that super set that
16:13should burn out your legs and your lungs just enough and then we want to finish with a little bit
16:17of ab work and we always want to get a little bit of hanging into our training if we can
16:21so i'm going to
16:22have you do hanging leg raises for three sets of eight good reps the key on these hanging leg raises
16:28is we are not crossfitters so we don't need to go all over the place on this you don't need
16:31to swing
16:32what i really really want you to do is try to keep your legs in front of your body in
16:37that bottom
16:37position and when you're driving up into the top of your hanging leg raise try to touch your knees to
16:43your elbows and then lower with control on every single rep i'd rather see you do honestly even six reps
16:49of
16:49that then get 10 to 12 reps swinging your abs will get a lot more benefit from that too also
16:54make
16:54sure you're breaking the bar when you're in that hang position if you don't have a bar you're
16:58substituting on that we can easily do v-ups you can go 30 seconds on 30 off for three rounds
17:03you're not
17:03going to get quite the same benefit we're still working our core that winds up being your overall
17:08multi-plan or functional day that is the core of the workout but then we also have this day five
17:13which is an optional day that's going to cover our accessory motions this is the day that i'm thinking about
17:18if
17:19you're here for mirror muscles and you want to make sure you preserve the way your muscles look
17:23this day is going to be the key piece of that concept so here's the thing when we think about
17:27our training in general when it comes to building overall strength when it comes to building athleticism
17:32we want all the big motions which we have covered in this workout but what happens as we get older
17:38very often we bias to the muscle groups that work very well for us and we bias towards those larger
17:43muscle groups and our smaller muscle groups don't get that same attention that's why some older guys are
17:48going to wind up seeing changes in their body that they don't love how do we handle that we wind
17:52up
17:52covering our accessory motions and we do a little bit more isolation work and that's all we're doing
17:57in this final workout to be honest you don't need a warm-up for this because this is lighter load
18:02work
18:03and this is a little bit of pump work so you can just jump right into this workout we're going
18:07to do
18:07three supersets and then we're going to be out of the gym so the way this is going to work
18:10you're going
18:11to start off in your first superset we're going biceps triceps you're going to lead off with a spider curl
18:15we're going to do dumbbell spider curls for eight to ten reps as soon as you get done with each
18:19of
18:19those sets you flip right around on your incline bench and you go into an incline skull crusher
18:24for eight to ten reps you can do three sets of that you don't need big rest periods in this
18:29particular
18:29workout you can easily take 60 to 90 seconds and go right back to work that's going to cover our
18:34biceps
18:35and triceps to get things started focus on the squeeze on all of those motions after that we're going
18:40to do a two set superset here we're going to a rest pause hammer curl now this is a little
18:44bit
18:44complicated but it's going to push you in a couple different ways it's going to lead you to a good
18:48pump and i want you to push hard on this superset for the rest pause hammer curl what i want
18:53you to
18:53do is choose a weight where you think you can do like say 10 to 12 reps i want you
18:57to do as many reps
18:58as you can then put the weight down count out five deep breaths pick the weights up again once again
19:05do
19:05as many reps as you can it shouldn't be a lot that second time around if you really went hard
19:10that first time after you do that we're going to go over to a triceps press down you're going to
19:15do
19:1510 to 12 really good reps focusing on a good squeeze we're going to do two sets of that and
19:20that's going to cover all our arm work for this workout then we want to get in a little bit
19:24of
19:24accessory shoulder workout again covering something that as we get older we're not training as aggressively
19:30beyond the overhead press we're going to lead off with lateral raises we're going to do 10 to 12 good
19:35reps of lateral raises i would make sure you get a good pause at the top of every single one
19:39of these
19:39reps and then think about getting letting your arms stretch a little bit at the bottom after you do
19:43those 10 12 reps you're going back to your incline bench now we're going to go to the incline y
19:48raise
19:48so we hit a little bit of rear delt you're going to get eight to ten reps of that we're
19:52going to do
19:52two sets there and then we've covered our shoulders we're going to finish up with one often overlooked
19:57thing we're going to hit abs and we're going to also hit our adductor a little bit what i want
20:01you to
20:01do is do a 30 second copenhagen plank on each side this is a really good way to attack to
20:06attack your
20:06adductors you're also going to get a lot of obliques on this you do 30 seconds on each side
20:10we go three sets and that is the entire accessory day again this is another good day where you can
20:15sneak in that cardio if you choose to do that workout that is the entire program what i want
20:20to see you do over the course of 8 12 weeks every four weeks try to bump up your weight
20:26on your lead
20:27exercise in every single workout just a little bit whether that's five pounds or 10 pounds so we're
20:32going to have a nice gentle progression in this workout that's going to get you familiar with
20:36everything as you go on but you're still also charting your ability to get stronger make sure
20:41that you're charting all of this and make sure that you're pushing yourself the entire program
20:45we're doing covers the entire span of different kinds of strength that your muscles are capable of
20:51and that is key again that is the thing that too many guys wind up leaving out in their training
20:56they go in and they think they're building muscle they think they're building strength and they leave
21:00out these other components and then all of a sudden they're 50 years old and they're going up the
21:03stairs one day and they're out of breath after like 10 stairs you don't want to be that guy you
21:08want to be strong and you want to look the part we've got you covered so get to work and
21:11in 12 weeks
21:12expect to be stronger both inside and outside the gym
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