Church's Male Physique - Parts A & B

Program Description

This program is split out into different mesocycles of training, of which the first two (A & B) are 7 weeks long each, the third (C) is 5 weeks long, and the last (D) is 3 weeks long. That’s right, it’s 22 weeks of training for the whole program. And the best news, you can re-use the whole sequence of mesocycles (or any one of them individually) for several years of training. The first mesocycle(A - Basic Hypertrophy) has enough volume (amount of training) to get you to grow muscle effectively, but it starts out nice and easy so that you can get the most while doing the least you have to. It gets harder as you go, and by the end it will be a real challenge. But when you’ve finished it, you’ll be that much stronger and that much better at doing sets and sets of each exercise. You’ll need to increase the stimulus in order to continue putting on muscle or sparing it from loss during a fat loss diet, and that’s just where mesocycle 2 comes in. After the 7th week deload is done, you’ll move onto the second mesocycle (B - Basic Hypertrophy). This increases the starting weight by 5% from the previous mesocycle. Just surviving the training will be a fun challenge, so you better be ready to work! The set numbers for both mesos A and B are the same, and the program relies on your having gotten stronger over meso A to present the increased challenge. After the second mesocycle is complete and you’ve done 14 weeks of training, your body will be quite resistant to muscle growth and we’ll need to pull out all the stops for you to keep progressing. In the third mesocycle (C - Metabolite Training), your reps per set will go up considerably as the weights will be intentionally lighter. In addition, the rest time will shorten to just enough time for you to barely catch your breath. This kind of training raises your level of lactic acid and other muscle metabolic byproducts; it’s these byproducts that might play a big role in stimulating your muscles to grow. How do you know the metabolites are summing up in your muscles during the training? Because of the high reps and short rests, you’ll literally feel a “burn” in your muscles like you might not have felt before. This is exactly what we want, so if you’re feeling it, you’re on the right track! When you’ve completed the metabolite mesocycle, your physique will have changed for the better. But now your body will be very resistant to any further growth in the short term. The process of getting your muscles ready for growth again requires lower volumes (set numbers and rep numbers) of training, so that’s just what this mesocycle (D - Resensitization) will program for you. The training will be heavier than you’re used to (heavy weight keeps your gains much better during periods of lower volume), but it will be fewer sets and way fewer reps. The next time you train with high volumes again your body will be ripe and ready to respond with steady growth!

Program Overview