I Worked Out Like Steve Reeves For 30 Days, and Here’s What Happened (Mr. America Program)

Steve Reeves was a silver-era bodybuilder with arguably the best aesthetics of anyone who has ever entered the iron game. He’s written two books, and I based my workout on his Mr. America and Universe training program found in chapter 5 of his book, dynamic muscle building.

It’s a full-body workout designed to be done 3 times a week with 22 exercises and over 56 sets. As you can imagine, this is a long workout. Steve said it shouldn’t take more than 2.5 hrs, but it takes me 3.

There are things I like about this program. One of them was beginning the session with shoulders. I’ve never started a workout this way. Usually, it’s back or legs as they’re my weakest muscle groups.

My thought was because we use delts when performing chest and back exercises, having them first would negatively affect those lifts, but this didn’t seem to be the case at all.

If you would like help losing excess body fat and building muscle, please email me at 1shark1bite@gmail.com for information on my personal training services.

To purchase the tee shirt and shorts I’m wearing in this video or any Fit and 50 workout wear, click here, https://fit-and-50.creator-spring.com

Check your testosterone levels from home. Just click this link http://trylgc.com/laurence and receive 30% off with code: LAURENCE30 I receive commissions on referrals to LetsGetChecked. I only recommend services I know and trust.

If you would like to purchase a set of Torrobands for yourself, here is my affiliate link so you can receive 50% off on your purchase https://sale.torroband.com/?affId=555B3E5D

Are you in the market for a fun way to get cardio in? If you are here is my affiliate link for 30 dollars off and free shipping on a set of 2 heavy jump ropes http://vip.torroband.com/heavyrope/?ref=codd&affId=555B3E5D

Bells of Steel is a home gym equipment supplier, they have everything from the basics to commercial gym quality products https://www.bellsofsteel.us/#a_aid=FITAND50

Before we get into delts, we have to warm up. Steve would do dumbbell swings as a warm-up. I did 20 repetitions with a lightweight.

He started this workout with upright rows for the lateral and front delts. I did this initially but switched this exercise as my traps would get tight and knotted up. They weren’t recovering fast enough.

I changed it to a 45-degree elbow out row, which works the lateral and rear delts, so not a perfect substitution. My traps were still pretty tight, so I would hit them with my massage gun every morning, then again before I worked out or in the evening, and this was enough to keep me going.

Next up was the behind the neck press And finally, side lateral raises, I bent over when doing these for more rear delt work as this is the weakest part of my shoulder.

Every set is to failure, or the last rep you can do with good form and a full range of motion, keeping within 8 to 12 reps. I didn’t like changing the weight all the time, and I was trying to keep the rests as short as possible, so I increased the rep range to between 6 and 15, picking a weight that had me fail on my first set between 12 and 15 repetitions. On each subsequent set, I was doing fewer repetitions.

Next was chest, as Steve likes to work his muscle groups from the top down. As with most body parts, he did 3 sets of 3 different exercises totalling 9 sets per workout and 27 per body part per week.

The way he did incline presses and flies was a bit different. For presses, he’d turn his arms as he pressed the weight up so that his hands were facing each other at the top.

With flies, he would offset the weight so that there was more weight on the pinky side and have the thumb side right tight to the plate, and instead of having your palms face each other, you would have your thumbs towards each other creating a little more resistance to gravity as you did the fly.

I really liked doing behind-the-neck lat pulldowns and then seated low cable rows.

Steve Reeves did behind-the-neck pull-ups

The last exercise for the lats was a bent-over-one-arm dumbbell row done in the standing position.

For the biceps, he only did 3 sets of one exercise, and that was incline dumbbell curls. He would supinate the dumbbells with the weight offset, this time having the offset to the thumb side, and the weight plate tight to the palm side of the hand, making for an extreme contraction in the top position.

cross-body tricep extension incline tricep extension or even a behind-the-neck dumbbell press.

For legs, he would start with what he called a half squat with you going down until your quads were parallel with the floor, Next was a front squat, and I did a goblet squat. I didn’t go to failure on the leg exercises.

For hamstrings, he did 3 sets of hamstring curls. He would talk about doing this against the resistance of another guy holding your legs

standing calf raises. incline crunches hyperextensions