Workout Program to Get Jacked: 4 Day Bodybuilding Routine

Are you ready to get huge and ripped?  Get your weightlifting straps, belt, and mix up your pre-workout, because that’s exactly what you’re about to do!

In this post, I’m going to give you a full bodybuilding workout program to get jacked.  Your goal is simple – to gain ripped muscle.

To ‘get jacked’ requires a specific type of training. You’ll get all of those details, but first I want to help you with the mindset that it takes for this goal…

What Does ‘Get Jacked’ Really Mean?

Lol…I love bodybuilding terms. They’re so cheesy but they’re also extremely powerful!

‘Get jacked’ simply means gaining ripped muscle. It’s a combination of muscle size and definition or well-defined muscle mass. 

Here’s the easiest way to look at it:

• You have muscle size and mass, but you’re not fat
• You have muscle definition and visible striations, but you’re not skinny

This means you’re growing but you can clearly see your muscles. Getting jacked is the essence of bodybuilding. 

The Bodybuilding Mindset

To truly get jacked you have to develop a strong mental tolerance for 3 things:

1. Pain
2. Consistency
3. Patience

Pain: Your workouts are not going to be easy. They’re going to be brutal, and oftentimes you’ll be pushing yourself beyond your limits.  

This effort takes mental energy and extreme focus. 

Consistency: You can’t just do this workout program for 2 weeks and then start slacking. You must program your mind that this is part of your life; it’s part of who you are.

Take yourself to that place where you’re living bodybuilding day in and day out.

Patience: No great physique is built overnight. And even the bodybuilders with the greatest genetics took years, some even decades, to develop their superior physiques.

Tap into to your mental power and make that commitment to yourself that you’re going to continue pushing through everyday, no matter what. 

The Get Jacked Workout

This is one of my ‘go-to’ workout plans for building ripped muscle. The workouts are 4-days a week. But to be successful, the lifestyle is every day. 

This workout is great for people at any stage, whether you want to build more muscle size or cut up. Because you’ll essentially be doing both. 

• The exercises in this plan are kept to basic exercises
• You’ll be doing plenty of compound exercises to build and continue building your foundation
• And you’ll be doing certain techniques to ramp up the intensity of your workouts

I recommend staying on this program for at least 8 weeks. You can also substitute the exercises and alter the plan to your own preference. 

Highlights and notes for the Get Jacked Workout:

• Combination of compound exercises with techniques to increase intensity
• 4 weight training days per week
• You DO need a ‘real gym’ for this program
• For best results, do cardio 4-5 days per week for at least 30 minutes per session
• Eat big, but eat healthy
• Make sure you’re getting plenty of rest to recover from your workouts
• Warmup sets are not included in this program so make sure you warm up thoroughly before starting your working sets

Your Workout Schedule

There are a few different ways you can set up the Get Jacked workout schedule. 

However you decide, here are the 2 rules I want you to follow:

1. Take at least 1 rest day between 2 consecutive workouts
2. Don’t take more than 2 rest days in a row

Here’s my personal workout schedule on the Get Jacked routine:

• Monday: Workout 1 – Back and Quads
• Tuesday: Workout 2 – Chest and Biceps
• Wednesday: rest
• Thursday: Workout 3: Leg Day
• Friday: Workout 4 – Shoulders and Triceps
• Saturday: rest
• Sunday: rest

Workout 1 – Back and Quads

Want to know how to build a massive and ripped back? A combination of heavyweights mixed with a lot of sets and reps. You’ll also use a few techniques for back to increase intensity, forcing you to train to failure.

Oh, and you’ll end your back workout with 1 exercise for quads. This is based on the German Volume method, or better known as 10×10 (10 sets of 10 reps).

Of course, this is not your main leg workout. But I’m a HUGE (pun intended!) believer in hitting legs twice a week.

There’s a great article that goes into detail about twice-a-week leg training in this post: Training Legs Twice a Week: How to Build Bigger Legs

* Drop set on final set

**Rest-pause set on final set

Workout 2 – Chest and Biceps

You’ll notice you’re doing the ‘4 sets x 8, 8, 6, 6 reps’ again for the first 2 exercises. I personally love this formula because you’re pushing some serious weight but also getting enough reps to stimulate your muscles. 

**The technique used on the 3rd exercise may be new to you. Unilateral dumbbell press. This is where you hold both dumbbells up and bring one arm at a time down while holding the other up.

Wanna talk about getting a massive chest pump? This will do it! 

The bicep exercises are basic, as they should be. Basic exercise with added intensity is key to building ripped muscle. 

* Drop set on final set

**Rest-pause set on final set

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Workout 3 – Leg Day

You’ll notice you’re doing the ‘4 sets x 8, 8, 6, 6 reps’ again for the first 2 exercises. I personally love this formula because you’re pushing some serious weight but also getting enough reps to stimulate your muscles. 

Legs and back are both large complex muscle groups. And both, especially legs, require more volume than other muscles in order to grow.

At a glance, this leg workout may look a little over the top. 5 sets of 20 on leg press…really? But trust me, this will make your quads and hams huge and ripped!

* Drop set on final set

**Rest-pause set on final set

Workout 4 – Shoulders and Triceps

Shoulders and triceps are the perfect combination of muscles to train together, in my opinion (and from my many years of experience in the gym). The pushing movements with shoulders prime your triceps.

You may look back and ask:

“Jason, I only did 3 sets for each biceps exercise a few days ago, but here you have me doing 4 sets for triceps…what’s the deal?”

The reason is symmetry. Remember, your triceps make up the ‘bulk’ (there’s another bodybuilding pun!) of your arm size. So it makes sense to train them with more volume. 

* Drop set on final set

**Rest-pause set on final set

Cardio Schedule for Getting Jacked

The amount of cardio you do depends on 2 things:

1. What you look like currently
2. What you want to look like

My #1 tip is, to be honest with yourself.  I’m looking at my own physique right now and I know I need to bump up my cardio to shed some fat. 

Here’s a simple cardio schedule you can follow:

• Monday: 30 minutes of moderate cardio
• Tuesday: 20 minutes of moderate-intense cardio
• Wednesday: rest or do something active
• Thursday: 20 minutes of moderate-intense cardio
• Friday: 30 minutes of moderate cardio
• Saturday: rest or do something active
• Sunday: rest or do something active

Now, I’m a firm believer in doing something active every single day of the week. Even if you don’t train at the gym or do cardio, you should still move around some. 

One thing you can do is Yoga, Tai Chi, or some form of stretching. If nothing else, at least take a walk outside. But don’t be stagnant the entire day. 

The Get Jacked Meal Plan

No workout program is complete without a meal plan to gain ripped mass. So I’m going to give you an example of what type of meals I eat on the workout to get jacked.

The greatest meal plan tip I can give is this: 

1. Keep your diet simple; don’t overcomplicate
2. Just eat healthy sources of food and plenty of it

Post Workout Meal

This is THE most important meal of the day (but really, they’re all super important!). Here’s my post-workout shake recipe that I take when I wanna gain chiseled muscle mass.

• 2 scoops of whey protein
• 6 almond milk
• 1 banana
• 1/3 cup of frozen dark berries
• 1/2 serving of natural peanut butter
• Animal Pak vitamins (no, I do not put these in my shake! I just like to take my multivitamins with my post-workout meal)

Whole Food Meal

This next meal is an example of what most of my whole food meals look like. It’s super basic with protein, a little healthy fats, and quality carb sources.

• Protein source
• 1 sweet potato
• 1/2 serving of Jasmine rice
• serving of broccoli (or any green vegetables) 

**If need help with meal planning and prep, check out my posts:

Meal Plans for Mass Gains
Meal Plans for Lean Muscle

Supplements for Getting Jacked

As you know, taking supplements is a big part of gaining ripped mass. But I don’t believe in taking a boatload of them to get results. In fact, I’m just going to share a few key supplements that will help you recover and grow. 

Get Jacked Stack

• Creatine monohydrate (pre and post-workout)
• BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids)
• Pre-workout supplement
• Whey protein powder (for post-workout and between meals)
• Multivitamin

You can read more about supplements for gaining muscle mass and what I recommend in this post: Best Bodybuilding Supplement Stack for Mass

More Tips and Resources to Gain Ripped Muscle

So you probably just gained 5 lbs of ripped muscle mass from reading this post! Now you’re pumped to go hit the gym! 

But before you do, let’s recap a few important notes about my Get Jacked workout plan…

• Get your head in the right space. I give you a blueprint for this in all of my premium workout programs.
• Be ready to lift some heavyweights in the beginning of your workouts.
• Make sure you’re getting enough sleep! There’s an excellent article on how sleep impacts muscle growth (and your hormones) here: 9 Ways to Build Muscle While You Sleep
• In everything you do, be consistent! And don’t skip leg day, ever! 
• Eat, and eat again! Food is imperative to gaining shredded muscle. You can read more about my personal eating story on this post: Eat to Gain Muscle: My Personal Story as a Hardgainer 

Train with Passion,

Jason