A Heavy Duty routine calls for as little as 1 or 2 sets per exercise and only a few exercises per muscle. Every set must be done to failure and possibly even beyond it with forced rep and other high intensity techniques. With the set count so low, only major compound exercises should be done.

  To do a Heavy Duty weight training routine effectively you really need to know your body and have the ability to get a lot out of each and every set you do. It’s not a good idea for a beginner to try Heavy Duty since they are still trying to learn proper exercise form and how their body reacts to weight training. A good time to try Heavy Duty would be when you feel you’ve been overtraining for a while. If your body feels beat up and you weight train almost every day for hours at a time you could give Heavy Duty a try to get more recovery and allow your body to “catch up” and build more muscle and strength.

  The best exercises for building upper back thickness are rows. They can be done many different ways - with barbells, dumbbells, cables, or machines. The good old bent over barbell row is great for thickening the upper back. When you do them you should have your body at around a 45 degree angle to the floor with your lower back arched rather than having your upper body parellel to the floor with your back bent. Focus on contracting the muscles of the upper back for a second or 2 when you pull the barbell to your abdomen area. Another great trick to use on barbell rows is to do them with an underhand grip. This will help you build thicker lats (former Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates used this exercise and he had some of the thickest lat muscles ever seen).

  Another great way to use a barbell for rowing is to do t-bar rows. To do them put a barbell on the floor and load weights on only one end of it, then bend over and put both hands close to the end where the weight is and pull it to your chest/abdomen area. Try it to work the upper back muscles from  different angle.

  Dumbbell rows will allow you to train one side of your upper back at a time. Use a bench to support the side that isn’t lifting and pull the dumbbell from the floor up to the side of your body.

  While free weight rowing is superior for building more upper back thickness, cable rows certainly have their place. You can do them towards the end of an upper back workouts or even use them as your primary rowing exercise if you’ve lifted for a while and have already built up a lot of muscle in your upper back. Rowing on a cable machine will allow you to try different grip ranges to hit the upper back from different angles.

  The best weight training exercise to strengthen the lower back muscles is the deadlift. You should always start a lower back workout with them. Good mornings are a rarely used exercise for the lower back but is a good one to do after deadlifting. Hyperextensions should be done for high reps with no or little weight and are a great finisher to a lower back workout.

  Try a workout like this to build muscle and strength in your lower back:

Deadlifts (1 or 2 sets of 12-15 reps on light day, 2 or 3 sets of 8-12 reps on medium day, 3 or 4 sets of 3-8 reps on heavy day)

Good mornings (1 or 2 sets of 15-20 reps on light day, 2 sets of 10-15 reps on medium day, 2 or 3 sets of 5-10 reps on heavy day)

Hyperextensions (1 or 2 sets of 20-30 reps during each lower back workout to finish off with).

  This workout should allow you to strengthen your lower back without overtraining as long as you get enough rest between workouts. You may want to try your deadlift one rep max every now and then on your heavy day to test your strength.

  One way to increase your upper body width is to build the latissmus dorsi muscles of the upper back. The lats are the large wing-shaped muscles of the upper back and building them will help make you look wider.

  The best exercises for building wider lats are pull-ups and cable pulldowns. Pull-ups are a superior exercise to cable pulldowns because you’re moving your body through space when you do them, but many weight trainers may not be able to do enough pull-ups for an effective set if they weigh too much or haven’t built up enough strength so the pulldowns are a great alternative to building a wider upper back. If you want to do pull-ups but can’t do too many reps, there are alot of gyms that have assisted pull-up machines that will allow you to get enough reps to build the lats.

  Whether you do pull-ups or cable pulldowns you should vary your grip to get the most muscle growth possible. Close grip pull-ups and pulldowns with an underhand grip will give you a nice contraction when the bar is at your chest, while wide grip pull-ups and pulldowns with an overhand grip will give your lats a nice stretch to start off a rep. To get the best overall upper back development you should include both close grip and wide grip pull-up and cable pulldowns. You can also experiment with other grip ranges if you’d like.

  When you do pull-up and pulldowns exercises you should always do them to your chest or neck. Pull-ups and pulldowns to behind the neck put your shoulders in a precarious position which may cause an injury.

  To build muscle for any part of the body it’s very important to do full reps during your weight training exercises. Part of a full rep is getting a nice stretch at the beginning of a repitition and a good muscle contraction at the end of it. While you can get the hard contraction you need at the end of a crunch rep on a flat bench, you won’t be getting much of a stretch because the bench won’t allow you to go any further back at the beginning of a crunch rep.

  To get that stretch to start a crunch rep you should do them on a core ball. When you do abdominal exercises on a core ball you’ll be able to stretch your midsection to start the rep which should result in an even better contraction at the end of it. Training your abs on a core ball will also allow you a lot of variety. You can add a twist to your core ball crunches to help buiild and strengthen the ab - oblique area on each side of your midsection. You can also start a set of an ab exercise on a core ball with your lower back on the ball to get a better stretch and make the reps harder. Then, as you get closer to failure you can move your body forward so the ball is higher up under your back so you can crank out a few more reps. A weighted medicine can also be used at the beginning of a set of crunches on a core ball and dropped as you get to failure so you get some more reps with just your body weight.

  Beyond the fact that you’ll get a better stretch in the abs when you train on a core ball is that you’ll also be strengthening many small stabilizing muscles and improving your balance. Try doing your abdominal training on a core ball get the most out of your workouts.

  While most biceps exercises will hit the brachialis indirectly, there are some exercises that you can do that will target it more specifically. Hammer curls are the best exercise for building the brachialis. To do them you take a dumbbell in each hand with the palms facing you and your thumbs forward like you were going to do normal dumbbell curls, but instead of rotating your wrists on the way up you keep your hands in a fixed position as you do the reps. At the end of a repitition your hands should be in a position like if you were using a hammer. Some gyms have curls bars with grips that allow you to do hammer curls with both arms at the same time. Do some sets of hammer curls during your biceps workout to target the brachialis.

  Another exercise that will hit the brachialis is the reverse grip barbell curl. You basically do a normal barbell curl but with an overhand grip rather than an underhand one. You won’t be able to use near as much weight while doing reverse curls as you would for normal ones. This exercise will also hit the back of the forearms.

  Make sure to do some exercises targeting the brachialis as part of your weight training routine and you will gain a thicker look in your upper arms.

  The calves are a very fast recovering muscle group (you use them constantly while walking or running) so you can train them more often than other muscles. This means that while you may do your calf training routine on your leg day, you may also want to train them during another workout as well. Depending how your weight training routine is split up you can do some calf exercises every other day or once every 3 days.

  Another key to building bigger calf muscles is to do high reps on your calf exercises while using as much weight as possible. Since you are always using your calves you need to train them with as much intensity as possible to get an effect. When you start a calf exercise do 15-20 reps with good, full reps where you stretch them at the bottom of a rep and get as high on your toes as possible to finish a rep. Once you get to a point where you can no longer do any more full reps do as many “bouncing” reps as you can stand before finishing your set.

  To gain calf muscle size you need to do both standing and seated calf raises. The standing calf raises will build the gastrocnemius muscle, while seated calf raises will build the soleus muscle. If you want you can throw in some sets of calf raises on the leg press machine. If you focus on training both of major muscles of the lower legs during your calf workouts you’ll get more of muscle size you’ll be on your way to building bigger calves.

  The shoulders are made up of 3 separate muscle attachments, or heads. These are the front, side, and rear heads of the deltoids. To build wider shoulders you need to build the side deltoid head. Most overhead press exercises target the front deltoids more than the side delts. If you use dumbbells to do your overhead presses you’ll involve your side deltoids more because you can lower the weights to the sides of your head. To really isolate the side deltoid heads you need to do side lateral raises. To do them you simply stand, or sit, with a dumbbell in each hand with the palms facing you and raise the weights away from your body in an arcing motion until you arms are parellel to the floor. It sound easy enough, but there are a few things you can do to make them more effective. One is that you should keep the front of your hands tilted downward a bit like if you were pouring from a pitcher. ou should also keep a slight bend in the elbows. ou can do side lateral raises with dumbbells, cables, or machines.

  To really add some intensity to your shoulder workouts you should try some supersets of side lateral raises followed immediately by dumbbell presses. This pre exhaust technique will give you that pump that you need for more muscle growth.

  Since you may get enough work for your front delts from chest exercises you’ll probably want do more sets for your side delts during your workouts. Give it a little time and you’ll build that shoulder width.

  The 10 sets of 10 workout sounds simple enough - you do 10 sets of 10 reps. Waht makes it interesting is that you take a major compound exercise for the muscle group you’re training that day and do 10 sets of 10 reps with one minute of rest between sets using a weight that you can normally do for 20 reps to failure. For example, if you’re doing a chest workout and can usually do 175 lbs. for 20 reps on the bench press you take that 175 lbs. and do 10 sets of it for 10 repititions each set with one minute of rest between sets. It’s much harder to do than you would think. While the first 3 or 4 sets should be relatively easy and shouldn’t bring you very close to failure, you’ll be struggling by the middle sets and may not even be able to get the 10 reps by the last couple of sets if you’ve never tried this before. No matter what, the 7th through 10th sets will be very intense.

  If you’re going to try the 10 sets of 10 reps workout you should use a major exercise for whatever muscle you’re working. This means bench presses for chest, deadlifts for lower back, rows or pulldowns/pull-ups for the upper back, military or dumbbell presses for the shoulders, squats or leg presses for the quadriceps, leg curls for the hamstrings, curls for the biceps, or tricep extensions for the triceps. If you decide to try this workout you will only need to do one exercise for the muscle you’re training - you won’t need to do any more exercises or sets. Because of this you shouldn’t be trying the 10 sets of 10 workout with isolation exercises.

  Even though you’re only using one exercise per muscle when you try the 10 X 10 workout you will feel it the next day, and probably for a couple of days after that. The intensity of the 10 X 10 workout is no joke. This workout is something you should only do for 2 or 3 weeks at a time to kick your weight training workouts back into gear before going back to your normal routine.

  To avoid injury and get the most out of them, it’s important to learn proper squat form. You’ll want the barbell you’re squatting to be placed on your trapezius muscles - not on the back of your neck. It may take some experimentation to find the best spot to place the barbell when you squat and when you do you may not even need to put a pad on the bar - especially if you have developed traps.

  When it comes to squatting you need to arch your lower back, not bend it, as you lower into a squat rep. Get your behind as far behind you as possible and stop when your upper thighs are parellel to the floor. Then use the muscles of the quadriceps, hamstrings, and hips to squat the weight up. You can squat deeper if you want, but this depends a lot on how flexible your ankles and other lower body joints are.

  Where you place your feet when you squat depends on how tall you are and whether you’re weight training in more of a bodybuilding style or more of a powerlifting style. Either way, you need to concentrate on using your hips and not your knees as you lower into a squat rep. Putting to much stress on your knees when you squat isn’t good for them.

  Once you get your squat form down you should be able to build a lot of size and power from it and get the gains in overall muscularity you’re looking for.