Hey Tony, great thread and Ihave a question about Sonny, who I feel was so underated it is not funny.
Anyways I remember reading a chest artic for sonny in Flex I believe many years ago and he talked about doing quite the volume of work, I think it was something like 30-40 sets for chest as part of split where the body was worked over 3 days(old school split) and reps startn with 20 pyramiding down to 8.
My question is how close was that to the real deal training wise and as well as any other ancedotes about other pros and their styles of training?
Thanks
Great question.
I trained with Sonny for many years.
Our typical split was:
Mon - Chest and back
Tues - Shoulders and arms
Wed - Legs
Thurs - Chest and back
Fri - Shoulders and arms
Sat - Legs
Sun - Off
Typically we would do something like this:
Chest.
Flat DB press 5 sets 15-12-10-8-8
Smith machine Incline press 5 sets 12-10-10-6-15
Decline press 5 sets 12-10-8-8-15
DB flies 5 sets 12-10-10-10-15
Cable cross over 5 sets of 10
Then maybe close grip bench or pec deck to finish of 5 sets of 12
Back.
Latt pulldown behind neck 5 sets 12
Latt pulldown to chest 5 sets 12-10-10-8-8
Seated Row 5 sets 15-12-10-8-8
DB Row 5 sets of 10
Close grip pulldown 5 sets of 15
Nautilus or DB pullover to finish of 5 sets of 12
We did a lot of quantity, high volume with very little rest. I still train like this to this day, however as I've got older I will typically do higher reps, 15-25 regularly.