German Volume Training is a method that has been around for quite a while.

It’s one of the most famous and most brutal protocols for gaining muscle.

I remember doing it in my early 20’s. It was quite painful, but it worked big time for adding mass. It was 17 or 18 years ago and I don’t have exact records, but I recall gaining a solid five pounds, at least, in about six weeks.

Here’s how it traditionally works:

— You split up your body parts and hit different muscle groups on different days – chest/back, legs, arms/shoulders for example
— Each workout has two main compound exercises in a superset
— The main exercises are performed with ten sets of ten at 60 percent of your 1-rep max, with ninety seconds between sets: exercise one, rest 90 seconds, exercise two, rest 90 seconds, repeat a ten times

Now we are going to use German Volume Kettlebell Training as the theme for our next Challenge, starting next Monday the 19th.

And the application period will be open tomorrow, so stay tuned.

But we are going to make some small tweaks to the original program to make it work for kettlebells, and also to give you a *bit* more work on strength.

Without giving the whole program away, one of the big ones is this: we are bumping the reps on each exercise to five to start.

So here’s what your shoulders and back day on week one might look like:

— Double KB Press – 5 reps
— Rest 90 seconds
— Chin Ups – 5 reps
— Rest 90 seconds

Repeat for a total of 10 sets each.

We’ll also add a warm up, and some accessory work at the end for similar muscle groups, and maybe some core or conditioning work to finish off.

And we will have two other training days – for legs, and for chest and arms – to compliment this as well.

But this gives you an idea.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, applications for the coming Challenge will open tomorrow, so stay tuned.

It’s going to be a lot of fun.

– Forest