I know you may feel overwhelmed by your first week of training, but I want to encourage you to develop a sense of urgency about your training on my 8-Week Muscle-Building Trainer. You only have 7 more workouts left to change each part of your body.

You should feel a bit recovered from last week’s training from your active-rest/double-cardio days from the weekend. As well, the higher-fat meals and16-hour fast should have helped restore your body. And I do hope that you’re following my supplement and lifestyle recommendations to support recovery.

In today’s workout, we’ll be smashing back and soleus again. This week I’ll be emphasizing the Drop Set Principle rather than the Rest-Pause Principle from Week One. Drop sets are a natural intensity technique, wherein you perform as many reps as you can with your initial weight, and then you reduce weight and complete several more reps. You include two drops after your initial set. I explain this in more detail in the video.

I took my PRE-KAGED 40 minutes before, and now I’m going to have my IN-KAGED as I begin my workout.

The back exercises I’ve selected for this workout will help improve thickness in the latissimus dorsi muscles (lats) in your back. To emphasize this, I begin this workout with bent-over EZ bar rows with a reverse grip—the grip that Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates relied on as his favorite mass builder.

Drop sets work particularly well with this move as you can transition quickly to each drop. Set up your weights so you only need to strip off weight rather than take off weight and then add it back on. This will shorten the rest period between drops.

Keep in mind that you can rest longer when needed between each full set—you can go with rests of 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets, but keep the rest between drops as short as possible.

Reverse-Grip Bent-Over Row Sets: 3 Reps: 8–10 initial 18–26 total Strategy: Drop sets (2) 5–8 more reps per drop
Lat Pulldown Sets: 3 Reps: 8–10 initial 18–26 total Strategy: Drop sets (2) 5–8 more reps per drop
Single-Arm Row Sets: 3 Reps: 8–10 initial 18–26 total Strategy: Drop sets (2) 5–8 more reps per drop
Seated Cable Row Sets: 3 Reps: 8–10 initial 18–26 total Strategy: Drop sets (2) 5–8 more reps per drop
Seated Calf Raise Sets: 3 Reps: 8–10 initial 30 total Strategy: Drop sets (2) 10 more reps per drop
HIIT Sets: 1 Reps: 3 Strategy: 4 minutes easy/1 minute full intensity for a total of 15 minutes

POST WORKOUT

You needed the weekend for active recovery. Now that you’ve performed another workout, you need immediate fuel to help facilitate recovery from this weight-training workout. Get in a serving of RE-KAGED immediately after training, and add fermented BCAAs and Creatine HCl based on your bodyweight and which of these amino acids and compounds work best with your body. And don’t forget to hydrate and get a good night’s sleep to push through the cortisol released from this intense workout.