Phil Heath is one of the most prominent bodybuilders of the current era. If youโve ever seen him compete, youโd be forgiven for thinking heโs some kind of being born from the primordial pit of glistening perfect muscles.
Heโs one of the strongest-looking people on the planet, heโs been able to carefully craft his body in ways that have won him several bodybuilding first place slots in a row, and heโs one of the best workout role models out there.
If you want to craft your body into a perfect machine that bystanders would be in awe of or if you just want to redirect your diet and figure out a workout routine that works for you, then looking at how Phil Heath conducts himself before and during training season is going to work wonders for you.
In case youโre not familiar, Phil Heath is a seven-time Mr. Olympia winner and one of the greatest bodybuilders out there right now. Between 2011 and 2017 he won every single competition he entered. This feat ties him with Arnold Schwarzenegger for the second-highest number of Mr. Olympia wins.
The two of them have only been outdone by two other bodybuilders, Lee Heney and Ronnie Coleman, both of which have eight wins to their names. These arenโt his only wins though. Heโs been competing in bodybuilding since 2002. His first win came after three short years when he won the overall title at the National Physique Committee United States Champions.
This early win opened the doors for him, allowing him to compete in the International Federation of BodyBuilding and Fitness pro events in 2006. From there he just kept on climbing the ranks until he debuted in the Mr. Olympia contests where he became the second novice ever to place top three in their first time out.
This achievement was only matched by Flex Wheeler in โ93. He placed in the top five in 2009 and 2010 until 2011 where he made first place and fended off challengers for six years in a row until he was eventually unseated by Shawn Rhoden. Even then he was still in second place overall. You donโt achieve those kinds of results by half-assing your workouts, obviously.
So what was Phil Heath up to? His secret wasnโt so secret. Itโs just a mixture of dedication, a careful diet, and creative use of his time while training. His workout, once itโs broken down for you, really isnโt something that youโre not capable of doing yourself. The only real difference is the amount of time heโs able to dedicate solely to his training.
One of the most important aspects of Phil Heathโs regular workouts is that there are two distinct workouts he would stick to. Phil Heath wasnโt training for gold medals every single day of this life, of course. Just like any other professional athlete he had an on-season and an off-season.
If you think that his on-season workout is way too much for you to handle, then weโd suggest trying for his off-season routine since itโs still the kind of workout routine that a practically unmatched champion used to maintain his already exceptional physique.
Wednesday:ย
Rest Day
Thursday:ย Back and Biceps
๏ปฟ
Saturday:ย Cardio
Phil Heath knew the importance of cardio in a well-rounded workout routine. His cardio days were never set in stone, so he would just do whatever cardio suited his fancy. As long as youโre getting your heart rate up and strengthening your cardiovascular system, youโre on the right track.
Cardio is one of the best ways to make your workout routine work for you. Itโs the way your body learns to transport energy to the far reaches of your extremities, making you more effective at your workouts.
Even though youโre not spending most of your time on cardio, itโs the lynchpin of your fitness routine. Youโre less likely to plateau when your heart health is high, your ability to last longer during your high-intensity exercise is going to skyrocket.
Sunday:ย Rest Day
Phil โThe Giftโ Heath worked with his physical trainer Hany Rambod. Rambod came up with a special training technique called Fascia Stretch Training, more commonly called FST-7. Fascia Stretch Training focuses specifically on stretching your muscle fibers as much as possible. FST-7s are one of the workout plans that bodybuilders swear by.
Itโs an intense attempt at pushing your muscles in a way that encourages the maximum amount of hypertrophy. FST-7 is a pretty simple plan. Each of your workouts is compacted down into low rep sets (6-12 reps) that are performed seven times with some pretty short breaks in between (around 45 seconds).
The goal here is to get your heart rate up and increase the metabolic demands of your body while encouraging the production of anabolic hormones. All of this together is designed to give your muscles a thorough pump. Itโs intense though, so you need to come mentally prepared if youโre going to take this on.
The off-season workout and the on-season workouts are basically the same, but the on-season workouts are all FST-7 workouts. Just take the off-season workout, and jack up the number of sets youโre doing, and make sure youโre sticking to the short 45-second intervals.
The interval and number of sets are key to FST-7 workouts. The workout is all about intensity and energy consumption. If youโre trying to build muscle with FST-7s, you need to be ready to sweat and grit your teeth.
Your diet is just as important as your workout. If youโre going to be sinking that kind of time and effort into a workout this intense, you should be stocking your body with quality fuel. Your muscles need protein and you need glucose to keep yourself operating.
Keeping yourself full of good clean good is going to be the key to cresting your plateaus, building muscle quickly, and giving yourself the energy to make it all the way through your workouts.ย Your diet is alsoย particularly important when it comes to bodybuilding.
Your entire goal is to build muscle and give it an environment to show itself off.
If youโre building incredible amounts of muscle day in and day out, but youโre covering it up in a layer of fat you canโt seem to burn away, then youโre cheating yourself out of all of your hard work. Itโs hard to look like a bodybuilder without being able to show off the muscles youโve worked so hard to cultivate.
Meal 1:
Meal 2:
Meal 3:
Meal 4:
Meal 5:
Meal 6:
Meal 7:
His On-season diet is pretty similar to his off-season diet. He streamlines it a little bit more, cutting out some sources of fat and jacking up the protein. This on-season diet helps him trim down some of the weight he might have put on when heโs taking a more leisurely approach to maintaining his physique.
Heโs not slouching by any stretch, but you canย see the difference in nutritional content when youโre looking at what he ate throughout the week. He also aims to cut down on the calories during the on-season. Part of his bodybuilding training requires him to trim down a little bit.
Because bodybuilding is a sport thatโs all aboutย the physique heโs chiseled out, he has to be careful about the weight he puts on during the off-season. He also has to ensure all of the nutrients in his body serve a purpose. Heโs one of the most decorated bodybuilders out there because of how tightly controlled his diet is during the on-season.
He aims for about 400 grams of protein and 600 grams of carbs. During the off-season, he eats about 5000 calories a day and trims a decent amount off ofย that number to keep his intake efficient
Meal 1:
Meal 2:
Meal 3:
Meal 4:
Meal 5:
Meal 6 & 7:
You can see how tightly controlled his diet is. Itโs important to go into this diet with a lot of discipline. This routine lives and dies by the nutritional content of your day-to-day life. Phil Heathโs diet is this extreme because it needs to be.
Competitive bodybuilding is all about pushing your body to the extremes. You donโt claim first place by doing what everybody else does. If youโre trying to get yourself looking anything like Phil Heath, youโre going to have to laser focus your diet.
Phil Heath is an athlete that stands head and shoulders above most of the people on the entire planet. His workout routine is something that most people arenโt going to be able to keep up with a routine like this. We have jobs and lives that take up a lot of our time.
Weโre not all going to be blessed with the natural physique that will accommodate the muscle growth needed to become Mr. Olympia seven years in a row. If you want to set yourself up for success, you need to adapt this workout routine to fit into your lifestyle. If you canโt get two workouts in every day, then youโre still going to be making some pretty amazing progress.
You can compress the workout down into something that fits into your morning workout. A workout routine exists to serve you and your bodyโs needs, you should be bending over backward and tearing your body apart to fit your life around a routine youโre not ready to take on.
Think about your workout routine as a series of sliders. If youโre not able to keep up, then find your weak spots and move the slider down a little bit. You can maintain the overall structure of this routine while adjusting parts that donโt fit into your life. Training is about overcoming your limits one day at a time. If youโre struggling here are a few things to remember:
Phil Heath is one of the most decorated bodybuilders in the world. Heโs like a walking mountain, and he built every single inch of that muscle one day at a time. Donโt get discouraged if youโre not immediately able to keep up with this workout routine, itโs the routine of a man that was once undefeated for nearly a decade.
Itโs going to take a lot of sweat and pain, but if you canย stick with it and build your way up to this standard, youโre going to see a lot of amazing results pretty quickly. Keep up with your diet, dig deep on your final reps, and take your rest days seriously.
