Diamond Cut

A diamond cutter brings out a stone facet by facet, with many short, precise passes. “Diamond Cut” makes four such passes a week: short full-body workouts, 90 seconds of rest, and sets that finish close to failure toward the end of each stage. Set aside four days and start with the intro week.

For experienced lifters who want to get leaner and can train in the gym four times a week. 4 workouts a week, 6 exercises each, 16 sets a week for chest and 15 each for back and legs. Three 4-week stages: in Base the load rises week by week, in Build it moves in a wave with a step back in week 3, and in Peak it drops in week 4 before the next round. The exercises stay the same across all three stages.

Each of the four workouts trains the whole body: chest, back and legs work in every session, so they are loaded four times a week. Rest between sets is 90 seconds. In Base, compound lifts are done for 12 reps and isolation exercises for 15; in Build and Peak, for 10 and 13; abs for 20. Toward the end of each stage, sets finish close to failure.

Method: Keeping the load up in a calorie deficit.
Four full-body workouts load chest, back and legs four times a week, and the weekly volume is split into short sessions. Rest is 90 seconds, and toward the end of each stage sets finish close to failure.

What studies found:

• In a calorie deficit, muscle gain slows down while strength holds (Murphy et al., 2022)
• Training a muscle twice a week produces more growth than once a week (Schoenfeld et al., 2016)
• The closer a set ends to failure, the more muscle growth; the link with strength is weak (Robinson et al., 2024)
• Resting longer than a minute between sets gives a small edge in muscle growth (Singer et al., 2024)

The studies tested the principles; the program itself has not been tested in this form.

Body fat is set by your diet; the program sets the training load.