In a recent post, we looked at an old-school 1940s bulk-gaining routine from former Mr America Alan Stephan, which serves as a great introduction to full-body training and building a classic physique the natural way.

But like any abbreviated beginner’s workout, such a schedule can only take you so far, and before long progress will stall.

Well, what the buggery bollocks do I do now?

What happened to all those beautiful gains?

Maybe it’s time to hang up your gym vest for good, take up ping pong, and start quoting Hamlet’s “What a piece of work is a man” monologue to girls on Tinder?

Fuck it, it’s not all about massive muscles, chicks are equally impressed by sublime carpal dexterity and existential rhetoric, right?

Just slow down, put the Battenberg cake down, and don’t throw in the towel just yet.

At a fundamental level, to keep progressing, you need to, as Greg Nuckols points out in this excellent article, simply train your body to be able to handle and adapt to more stress (work capacity).

This will enable you to train harder and for longer, which means better results

When graduating from a novice routine, a simple way of achieving greater work capacity is to increase volume as well as variety of movement.

Moving on from Alan Stephan’s routine, or any other beginner size and strength workout, a more comprehensive routine should be pursued, and in this post we are going to look at an excellent ‘next step’ full-body programme from one of bodybuilding’s true superstars.

Larry Scott, “The Legend”, was an American bodybuilder and back-to-back winner of the first two Mr Olympia titles in 1965 and 1966.

Combining a charming and friendly demeanor with 20-inch biceps, colossal deltoids and a huge beer-barrel chest, Scott was an extremely popular figure who helped elevate the sport of bodybuilding from a cultish activity to a worldwide phenomenon.

After retiring unbeaten from the sport after his second Mr Olympia title, he continued to popularise bodybuilding around the globe, working as an in-demand trainer and amassing an impressive catalogue of books, interviews and magazine articles.

Despite his later success, Scott was a notorious hardgainer; when he started training in the mid-1950s he was a 5’9″ waif with very narrow shoulders.

As the man himself reflects:

Muscle did not come to me naturally, I was one of those 98-pound weaklings who was motivated to use bodybuilding training to get bigger.

One of Larry’s favourite routines for building mass when he started out was the following routine, a full-body workout which comprises one major exercise for each muscle group and a considerable amount of volume (around six sets of eight reps for each exercise).

Despite Scott being a ‘first generation’ steroid user in the 60s, this routine is still firmly rooted in the tried-and-tested principles of the pre-steroid era, and is perfect for the intermediate bodybuilder who wants pile on muscle mass and bodyweight naturally.

It is important to remember that although Scott moved to a split routine model later in his career when he stared using steroids, he built his foundation naturally, just like Arnold Schwarzenegger, by using full-body routines three times per week.