Post by Oracle on Jul 22, 2005 4:58:31 GMT -5
written by Doggcrapp, aka Dante
for more info check out www.animalkits.be and check out the post "cycles on pennies"
enjoy...
It is so tough to talk about training when I am not in front of someone. In real life or at my gym people will see me or someone I train and be convinced that my system works very well. And in person I can explain how it all fits together. But for some
reason giving an opinion on training online offends a lot of bodybuilders. It is like a blow to their ego as if your putting them down or telling them they don’t know how to train. And then you get every HIT, periodization, and brainwashed Wieder principle
disciple arguing with me why their method is the best and I am wrong. People get pissed if they think what they might be doing training wise is wrong or not the most productive. It's human nature.
I can continually turn 170lb guys (who go along with me 100%) into 260lb plus monsters over and over but I cannot help guys who are 190-230lbs who are stuck in their ways. Those guys can continue to take the long road or never get there. In the past months since I’ve put my methods out there to view, I continue to hear different arguments against my way of training. Hey it’s radically different than the norm and like I said people can’t stand to think what they are presently doing training wise isn't the best! So far I’ve heard the usual gamut (overtraining, undertraining, undervolume, CNS saturation). One guy who said "not enough stimulation per workout"-sadly he has confused volume to equal gains.
WRONG!!! If volume = gains go head and do 100 hard setper bodypart and do each bodypart once every 3 weeks. Please tell me what incredible gains you get.
To me all this is an egotistical way to debunk a radically different method because you don’t want to believe what your presently doing is incorrect or 'slower gaining'. No one is overtraining or undertraining that I train. Every bodybuilder that I have trained has gained at least 47lbs! This sport is full of fragile egos, pseudo-experts, armchair bicep curlers. I am a very advanced bodybuilder but the only thing I am conceited about is I truly believe I could take anybody reading this and turn them int
a 4.0lbs per inch bodybuilder. I love taking a humble bodybuilder who doubts his genetics and making him the largest guy in his gym. That is so fun for me.
I love the people who whisper in the corners that "he must be loaded to the hilt" yet he is on the same things they are. I love hearing the petty jealousy and anger that comes over other bodybuilders now that the guy I trained is the big boy on the block. I’m not pushing my methods on anyone. I want you to decide for yourself with deductive reasoning, but if you have been lifting for 4-5 years and people aren't commenting, stating or asking questions about you being a bodybuilder on a daily basis-I think that’s embarrassing and you might want to question if what you are doing training wise has merit.
I only train hardcore bodybuilders (and some fitness girls) down here in So Cal. (its not my main job--I turn down about 90% of people due to my own personal reasons--which are mostly after interviewing them I feel they wont do what I say 100%) I am
very, very good at turning normal people into the biggest bodybuilders in their area. I’ve trained 7 people bodybuilding wise in the last 4 years (5 used super supplements 2 were clean). Every one of those people gained at least 47lbs on their bodyweigh
at roughly the same or less bodyfat.
1)188 to 260(2.5 years)
2)172 to 254 (3 years)
3)208 to 261(clean! genetic mesomorph 1 year)
4)218 to 275 (cut his juice in half, doubled his protein, showed him how to train correctly-2 years)
I don’t like to comment on others training philosophies directly because they get so offended if you don’t agree with them. I believe when you make something too complicated or hard people don’t want to follow it. I believe the baseline training protocol for bodybuilding is "progression" and whatever training is needed to get stronger (and therefore bigger). Here is my personal opinion on volume training...it’s a way for people who cannot generate inhuman intensity during a set to make gains. If that seems like a "putdown" so be it, I am sorry. Volume training to me is the long way to achieve trauma whereas there are shorter more productive ways of going about it.
If you were a world class sprinter with a time a couple tenths off the world record what would you do to break the mark? Would you run 5k races and repeated sprints at 60% intensity for hours at a time? Would that make you any faster? Or would you push
intensity limits with a wind bearing running parachute and do explosive sprints as hard as you can? You tell me.
I say 60% intensity with volume training because I know this: You cannot do 20 sets for a bodypart at a balls to the wall all out intensity-it’s impossible. I know this about myself, if I truly squat with everything I have (where its rep or death), with an extremely heavy weight and at 12reps I want to quit.....but somehow, someway I make myself do 13, then the 14th, the 15th--my face is now beet red and I’m breathing like a locomotive yet I 'will' myself to do another rep, another, another---with two more reps to go till 20, I feel faint but I am going to ****ing do it because "I am not driving my car home thinking how I pussed out and didn’t make it"....19.....and 20 goes up agonizing slow and I am thinking to myself "oh please, please go up"----done!
ten minutes later I couldn’t even attempt to try to duplicate that. Not even close. I bet I would make it to maybe 14 reps tops. If you could duplicate that same set you are a robot.
Ninety percent of people in gyms around the world are doing some form of volume training but besides the rare genetically elite and heavy steroid users, why does everyone stay the same size year after year? (With volume training you see a lot of overtraining, joint injuries and people who are burning up all their energy stores) If you can't train at above normal intensity levels I feel volume training is beneficial to cause trauma (hey it works for genetic freaks like Flex Wheeler and Paul Dillett--two half-ass 60% trainers if that). Too bad with their incredible genetics that they don’t have the hardcore mindset of a Yates or Coleman who bypass them by force of willpower and effort. Personally I like the shortest route at the shortest time possible to
the someplace. Do I think my way of training is the best? For myself and the people I train-yes. I have no way to gauge others intensity levels online. Someone training at 90% intensity for 6 sets is going to get more out of it than Joe Blow who is doing
sets per bodypart at forty percent. In the simplest terms, no matter what way you train-if you are way stronger than last year, 6 months ago, 3 months ago, last month, last week you are getting continually bigger no doubt about it. A lot of modern day
aining has been evolved pretty much from what Arnold and bodybuilders of the 60's did---and Arnold just winged it--there was no thought provoking science there. I want people to think their training out.
1)If you train a bodypart every day you will overtrain and not get larger
2)If you train a bodypart once a month you will not overtrain but you will only be growing 12 times a year besides the atrophy between workouts (pretty much a snails pace)
3)If you train with 30 sets a bodypart it will take you a great deal of time to recover from that besides using up a great deal of energy and protein resources doing it (and maybe even muscle catabolism will take place)
4)If you train one set for a very easy 8 reps per bodypart you could train that bodypart more often but you didn’t tax yourself to get larger.
So what is the answer? I’ll tell you the answer! The answer is doing the least amount of heavy intense training that makes you dramatically stronger (bigger) so you can recover and train that bodypart the most times in a year (frequency). If you can train
/recover/GROW,train /recover/GROW,train/recover/ GROW as many times as possible in a years time--you will be essentially gaining twice as fast as the bodybuilders around you.
Ok back to my training concepts—I’ve stated how my whole goal is to continually get stronger on key exercises which equals getting continually bigger. I will state this, the method I am about to describe to you is what I have found that makes people gro
at the absolutely fastest rate possible and why I am being inundated down in this area to train people. It’s going to go against the grain but I'm making people grow about 2 times as fast the normal rate so bear with me.
A typical workout for the masses is (lets use chest for an example) doing a bodypart once every 7 days and sometimes even once every 9 days or more. This concept came to the front due to recovery reasoning and I agree with most typical workouts your going
to need a great deal of recovery. Here’s the problem, lets say you train chest once a week for a year and you hypothetically gain 1/64 of an inch in pectoral thickness from each workout. At the end of the year you should be at 52/64 (or 13/16 ). Almost an inch of thickness (pretty good).
To build muscle we are trying to lift at a high enough intensity and load to grow muscle but with enough recovery so the muscle remodels and grows. The problem is everyone is loading up on the volume end of training and its taking away from the recovery
art of it. Incredible strength GAINS will equal incredible size GAINS. And you sure as hell don’t need to do 3-5 exercises and 10-20 sets per bodypart to do that! In actuality you really don’t need to do much to grow. As long as your training weights continue to rocket upward you will always be gaining muscle. If you go in and do squats using your ultimate effort with 405lbs for 20 reps are you going to say you’re not going to grow from that? If you went all out on that effort, I'm sorry but throwing half ass, leg press, leg extensions and lunges into that same workout is going to do nothing but royally lengthen your recovery process when you were already going to grow in the first place.
You can train in a way so you can train a bodypart 3 times every nine to fourteen days and you will recover and grow faster than ever before. If you train chest 3 times in 9-14 days you are now doing chest roughly 91-136 times a year! So instead of 40-52
growth phases with regular once a week training you are now getting 91-136 growth phases a year. I personally would rather grow 91-136 times a year than 40-52 times a year. At a hypothetical 1/64th of an inch per workout you are now at 136/64 (or roughly 2.1 inches of thickness). So now you’re growing at roughly two times as fast as normal people who are doing modern day workouts are. Most people train chest with 3 to 4 exercises and wait the 7-9 days to recover and that is one growth phase. I use the same three exercises in that same 9-14 days but do chest 3 times during that (instead of once) and get 3 growth phases. How? Super heavy weights for low low volume so you can recover and train that bodypart again as quickly as possible.
Everyone knows a muscle either contracts or doesn’t, you cannot isolate a certain part of it (you can get into positions that present better mechanical advantages though that puts a focus on certain deep muscle fibers)--for example incline presses vs flat presses. One huge mistake beginning bodybuilders make is they have a "must" principle instilled in them. They feel they "must" do this exercise and that exercise or they won’t grow.
This is how I set bodybuilders workouts up. I have them pick either their 3 favorite exercises for each bodypart or better yet the exercises they feel will bring up their weaknesses the most. For me my chest exercises are high incline smith machine press,
hammer seated flat press and slight incline smith press with hands very, very wide----this is because I look at my physique and I feel my problem area is upper and outer pecs---that is my focus. What you do is take these three exercises and rotate them
using only one per chest workout. I would do high incline smith on my first chest day, then 3-4 days later I would do hammer seated flat press on my second chest day. Three to four days after that wide grip slight incline smith press would be done and then the whole cycle is repeated again in 3-4 days.
Whenever I train someone new I have them do the following --4 times training in 8 days---with straight sets. Sometimes with rest pause sets but we have to gauge the recovery ability first.
Day one would be Monday and would be:
Chest
shoulders
triceps
back width
back thickness
Day two would be Wednesday and would be
biceps
forearms
calves
hams
quads
Day three would be Friday and would be the same as day one but with different exercises
chest
shoulders
triceps
back width
back thickness
(sat+sun off)
Day four would be the following Monday and would be the same as day two but with different exercises
biceps
forearms
calves
hams
quads
and so on Wenesday, Friday, Monday, Wenesday etc.
You’re hitting every bodypart twice in 8 days. The volume on everything is simply as many warmup sets as you need to do- to be ready for your ONE work set. That can be two warmup sets for a small muscle group or five warmup sets for a large muscle group
n heavy exercise like rack deadlifts. The ONE work set is either a straight set or a rest pause set (depending on your recovery abilities again). For people on the lowest scale of recovery its just that one straight set---next up is a straight set with statics for people with slightly better than that recovery----next up is rest pausing (on many of the of movements) with statics for people with middle of the road recovery on up.
As you progress as a bodybuilder you need to take even more rest time and recovery time.
READ THAT AGAIN PLEASE AS YOU PROGRESS AS A BODYBUILDER IN SIZE AND STRENGTH YOU NEED TO TAKE EVEN MORE REST AND RECOVERY TIME. EXAMPLE:
My recovery ability is probally slightly better now than when I started lifting 13 years ago but only slightly...but back then I was benching 135lbs and squatting 155lbs in my first months of lifting. Now I am far and away the strongest person in my gym using poundages three to six times greater than when I first started lifting. With my recovery ability being what it is both then and now, do you think I need more time to recover from a 155lb squat for 8 reps or a 500LB squat for 8 reps? Obviously the answer is NOW! Yet remember this -the more times you can train a bodypart in a years time and recover will mean the fastest growth possible! I’ve done the training a bodypart every 10 days system in the past and while recovering from that--the gains were so slow over time I got frustrated and realized the frequency of growth phases(for me)was to low. I want to gain upwards of 104 times a year instead of 52--the fastest rate that I can accumulate muscle (YET AGAIN WITHIN ONES RECOVERY ABILITY-I CANT SAY THAT ENOUGH)
I have been slowly changing my philosophies of training over the past 13 years to where I am now. I’ve been gaining so fast the last couple of years it’s been pretty amazing. I’ve got my training down to extremely low volume (a rest pause set or ONE straight set) with extreme stretching, and with recovery issues always in the back of my mind.
I realize the number one problem in this sport that will make or break a bodybuilder is overtraining. Simply as this--you overtrain your done as a bodybuilder gainwise. Kaput. Zip. A waste of valuable time. But I also think there is a problem with underfrequency (only if you can train hardcore enough with extremely low volume to recover). I skirt right along the line of overtraining--I am right there...I’ve done everything in my power (Stretching, glutamine, "super supplements", sleep)to keep me on this side of the line and its worked for me. I believe everyone has different recovery abilities--the job of a bodybuilder is to find out what their individual recovery ability is and do the least amount of hardcore training to grow so they can train that bodypart as frequently as possible. For anyone who wants to follow my lead that would mean starting out with straight sets training 4 times in 8 days and strictly gauging yourself recovery wise with every step up you take (statics, rest pauses)--I would rather you wait until my next article comes out to go over the details of this kind of training before you attempt it--as its important to me that everyone who wants to do this does it correctly.
Bodybuilding as a whole is extreme and you must go to extreme lengths to be an out of the ordinary bodybuilder in this activity. The human body in no way wants to be 270 to 330 lbs of extreme muscularity. It wants to be a comfortable 155 to 180 lbs and it'll do a lot to keep a person at that homeostasis level. Jon Parillo was on the right track years ago when he was trying to make bodybuilders into food processing factories. It takes extreme amounts of food (protein), extremely heavy weights, sometimes extreme supplementation, (the choice) of extreme drugs, and other extreme situations to take a person who by evolution and genetics should be 180 pounds and make him into a hardcore 3 hundred pounds. OK first I have to go over some principles I believe in regarding training and I’ll hit more on training details later on.
a) I believe he who makes the greatest strength gains (in a controlled fashion) as a bodybuilder, makes the greatest muscle gains. Note: I said strength gains--everyone knows someone naturally strong who can bench 400 yet isn't that big. Going from a beginning 375 bench to 400 isn't that great of a strength gain and won’t result in much of a muscle gain. But if I show you someone who went from 150 to 400 on a bench press, that guy will have about 2.5 inches more of muscle thickness on his pecs. That is
incredible strength gain and will equal out into an incredible muscle gain. Ninety-nine percent of bodybuilders are brainwashed that they must go for a blood pump and are striving for that effect--(go up and down on your calves 500 times and tell me if
our calves got any bigger). And those same 99% in a gym stay the same year after year. It's because they have no plan, they go in, get a pump and leave. They give the body no reason to change. Powerbodybuilders and powerlifters plan to continually get stronger and stronger on key movements. The body protects itself from ever increasing loads by getting muscularly bigger=adaption. I’M going to repeat this and hammer it home because of its importance:
THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THE GREATEST STRENGTH GAINS OVER TIME WILL MAKE THE GREATEST SIZE GAINS OVER TIME ACCORDING TO THEIR GENETIC POTENTIAL.
If you reading this never get anywhere close to your ultimate strength levels (AT WHATEVER REP RANGE) you will never get to your utmost level of potential size.
b) I haven't seen a guy who can squat 500 for 20 reps, bench press 500 for 15 and deadlift 500 for 15 who was small yet ---but I have seen a lot and I mean a lot of people in the gym and on these Internet forums that are a buck 65 or two and change, shouting that you don't have to lift heavy to get big (in rare cases you will see a naturally strong powerlifter who has to curb calories to stay in a weight class and that is the reason he doesn't get bigger).
c) Training is all about adaption. In simple terms you lift a weight and your muscle has one of 2 choices, either tear completely under the load (which is incredibly rare and what we don't want) or the muscle lifts the weight and protects itself by remodeling and getting bigger to protect itself against the load(next time). If the weight gets heavier, the muscle has to again remodel and get bigger again to handle it. You can superset, superslow, giant set, pre exhaust all day long but the infinite adaption is load---meaning heavier and heavier weights is the only infinite thing you can do in your training. Intensity is finite. Volume is finite (or infinite if you want to do 9000 sets per bodypart)...everything else is finite. The Load is infinite and heavier and heavier weights used (I DON'T GIVE A CRAP WHAT SCHMUK 58 POUND WRITER FROM FLEX MAGAZINE SAYS) will make the biggest bodybuilder (add high protein, glutamine and drugs to the mix and you have one large person).
d) The largest pro bodybuilders in the last 10 years (outside of Paul Dillett who is a genetic alien and I think could grow off of mowing lawns) are also the very strongest (Kovacs, Prince, Coleman, Yates, Francois, Nasser (although he trains lighter now). For anyone who argues that they have seen so and so pro bodybuilder and he trains light-well I will bet you he isn't gaining rapid size anymore and that his greatest size increases were when he was training nuts heavy going for his pro card. Of course he will convince himself and others that he is "making the best gains of his career" though because no one likes to think what they are presently doing isn't working and they are running in place.
Sadly heavy drug use can make up for a lot of training fallacies and leave people still uninformed on how they became massive. Ronnie Coleman is definitely in an elite class of muscle building genetically yet do you see him doing isolation exercises with light weights to be the most massive bodybuilder on this planet? NOPE! Ever see his video? 805 deadlifts for 2 reps, 765 for 6 reps deads, front s
ats with 600LBS for 6, 200LB dumbbells being thrown all over the place for chest, military presses 315 for 12 and a double with 405. I believe Coleman was clean or close to it when he was powerlifting and when he was an amateur bodybuilder. He won the Natural Team Universe and got his pro card at roughly 220-230LBS shredded to the bone and if that was natural or close to it--that's about 270LBS offseason and would be a huge natural bodybuilder. Since that time he has hooked up with Chad Nichols and blasted (with juice) up to his current 265LBS contest weight and 320LBS offseason. He trains heavier now than he ever did! The man has used extremely heavy weights and powerlifting fundamentals (even with his superior genetics for muscle size) to become the most impressive bodybuilder walking the globe. Well, if the man with some of the best genetics to build muscle out there is using back breaking weights trying to get bigger isn't that more of a reason the mere mortals of genetics in this sport should maybe take note? There are other pros out there with genetics on par with Coleman and using the same amount of drugs yet aren't pushing the limits with poundage's in training as does Coleman. You figure it out then, why is he absolutely crushing everyone onstage by outmuscling them if all things besides training are equal?
e) Who is the last incredibly massive bodybuilder you have seen (juice or not) who couldn't incline 405, squat 550, deadlift 550. I am talking freak-massive ALA Dorian, Kovacs, Francois, etc...there are slew of guys in gyms using mega amounts of steroids on par with pros who are no where close to a pro's size, some with mediocre genetics, yet some with superb genetics. But the pro's using weights that are up there in the stratosphere are by and large the most freakish. These are pros we are talking about, who all have superior genetics for muscle accumulation. Do you think Yates, Francois, Cormier etc all just had natural genetics for incredible strength, not ever having to work for it? Je Paul Guilliame is the only clean professional bodybuilder I ever trusted to be truly natural. The man is a smaller pro training without the juice yet trains incredibly heavy for his size--405LB squats rock bottom for up to 20 reps and his wheels are incredible. Flex Wheeler and Cris Cormier are the same height, the drugs are equal, Flex trains light, Cormier trains heavy. Cormier outweighs Wheeler onstage by 30LBS! Genetically, Wheeler is unsurpassed in pro bodybuilding, I think you already know the answer to this one--case closed. I usually don't like to use pro bodybuilders for examples but in these cases, my points are proven.
For those training clean-if you got guys doing massive amounts of steroids in gyms around America, who are not putting on appreciable size because they train with light weights, what in your right mind could make you think you will gain appreciable amounts of muscle mass as a natural training light?!?! One million people in the United States have admitted to using steroids--1 million!!! That is one out of every 300 people walking around. How many big people do you see out there? Not many. It sure isn't close to 1 million---- because 98% of bodybuilders have no clue what needs to be done training and eating wise to become elite.
f) Please think of the times when you made the best size gains---the first time is in the first 2 years of lifting WHEN YOU MAKE YOUR BEST STRENGTH GAINS TOO! Then things start to slow down.. What's the next time?--You start using steroids and boom what happens? YOUR TRAINING WEIGHTS GO FLYING UP. And you get dramatically bigger! (I’M taking into effect protein assimilation, recovery etc also). The greatest strength gains you make will result in also the most rapid size gains (if you’re taking in the protein requirements of a 12 year old girl scout then you can discount yourself from the above group).
for more info check out www.animalkits.be and check out the post "cycles on pennies"
enjoy...
It is so tough to talk about training when I am not in front of someone. In real life or at my gym people will see me or someone I train and be convinced that my system works very well. And in person I can explain how it all fits together. But for some
reason giving an opinion on training online offends a lot of bodybuilders. It is like a blow to their ego as if your putting them down or telling them they don’t know how to train. And then you get every HIT, periodization, and brainwashed Wieder principle
disciple arguing with me why their method is the best and I am wrong. People get pissed if they think what they might be doing training wise is wrong or not the most productive. It's human nature.
I can continually turn 170lb guys (who go along with me 100%) into 260lb plus monsters over and over but I cannot help guys who are 190-230lbs who are stuck in their ways. Those guys can continue to take the long road or never get there. In the past months since I’ve put my methods out there to view, I continue to hear different arguments against my way of training. Hey it’s radically different than the norm and like I said people can’t stand to think what they are presently doing training wise isn't the best! So far I’ve heard the usual gamut (overtraining, undertraining, undervolume, CNS saturation). One guy who said "not enough stimulation per workout"-sadly he has confused volume to equal gains.
WRONG!!! If volume = gains go head and do 100 hard setper bodypart and do each bodypart once every 3 weeks. Please tell me what incredible gains you get.
To me all this is an egotistical way to debunk a radically different method because you don’t want to believe what your presently doing is incorrect or 'slower gaining'. No one is overtraining or undertraining that I train. Every bodybuilder that I have trained has gained at least 47lbs! This sport is full of fragile egos, pseudo-experts, armchair bicep curlers. I am a very advanced bodybuilder but the only thing I am conceited about is I truly believe I could take anybody reading this and turn them int
a 4.0lbs per inch bodybuilder. I love taking a humble bodybuilder who doubts his genetics and making him the largest guy in his gym. That is so fun for me.
I love the people who whisper in the corners that "he must be loaded to the hilt" yet he is on the same things they are. I love hearing the petty jealousy and anger that comes over other bodybuilders now that the guy I trained is the big boy on the block. I’m not pushing my methods on anyone. I want you to decide for yourself with deductive reasoning, but if you have been lifting for 4-5 years and people aren't commenting, stating or asking questions about you being a bodybuilder on a daily basis-I think that’s embarrassing and you might want to question if what you are doing training wise has merit.
I only train hardcore bodybuilders (and some fitness girls) down here in So Cal. (its not my main job--I turn down about 90% of people due to my own personal reasons--which are mostly after interviewing them I feel they wont do what I say 100%) I am
very, very good at turning normal people into the biggest bodybuilders in their area. I’ve trained 7 people bodybuilding wise in the last 4 years (5 used super supplements 2 were clean). Every one of those people gained at least 47lbs on their bodyweigh
at roughly the same or less bodyfat.
1)188 to 260(2.5 years)
2)172 to 254 (3 years)
3)208 to 261(clean! genetic mesomorph 1 year)
4)218 to 275 (cut his juice in half, doubled his protein, showed him how to train correctly-2 years)
I don’t like to comment on others training philosophies directly because they get so offended if you don’t agree with them. I believe when you make something too complicated or hard people don’t want to follow it. I believe the baseline training protocol for bodybuilding is "progression" and whatever training is needed to get stronger (and therefore bigger). Here is my personal opinion on volume training...it’s a way for people who cannot generate inhuman intensity during a set to make gains. If that seems like a "putdown" so be it, I am sorry. Volume training to me is the long way to achieve trauma whereas there are shorter more productive ways of going about it.
If you were a world class sprinter with a time a couple tenths off the world record what would you do to break the mark? Would you run 5k races and repeated sprints at 60% intensity for hours at a time? Would that make you any faster? Or would you push
intensity limits with a wind bearing running parachute and do explosive sprints as hard as you can? You tell me.
I say 60% intensity with volume training because I know this: You cannot do 20 sets for a bodypart at a balls to the wall all out intensity-it’s impossible. I know this about myself, if I truly squat with everything I have (where its rep or death), with an extremely heavy weight and at 12reps I want to quit.....but somehow, someway I make myself do 13, then the 14th, the 15th--my face is now beet red and I’m breathing like a locomotive yet I 'will' myself to do another rep, another, another---with two more reps to go till 20, I feel faint but I am going to ****ing do it because "I am not driving my car home thinking how I pussed out and didn’t make it"....19.....and 20 goes up agonizing slow and I am thinking to myself "oh please, please go up"----done!
ten minutes later I couldn’t even attempt to try to duplicate that. Not even close. I bet I would make it to maybe 14 reps tops. If you could duplicate that same set you are a robot.
Ninety percent of people in gyms around the world are doing some form of volume training but besides the rare genetically elite and heavy steroid users, why does everyone stay the same size year after year? (With volume training you see a lot of overtraining, joint injuries and people who are burning up all their energy stores) If you can't train at above normal intensity levels I feel volume training is beneficial to cause trauma (hey it works for genetic freaks like Flex Wheeler and Paul Dillett--two half-ass 60% trainers if that). Too bad with their incredible genetics that they don’t have the hardcore mindset of a Yates or Coleman who bypass them by force of willpower and effort. Personally I like the shortest route at the shortest time possible to
the someplace. Do I think my way of training is the best? For myself and the people I train-yes. I have no way to gauge others intensity levels online. Someone training at 90% intensity for 6 sets is going to get more out of it than Joe Blow who is doing
sets per bodypart at forty percent. In the simplest terms, no matter what way you train-if you are way stronger than last year, 6 months ago, 3 months ago, last month, last week you are getting continually bigger no doubt about it. A lot of modern day
aining has been evolved pretty much from what Arnold and bodybuilders of the 60's did---and Arnold just winged it--there was no thought provoking science there. I want people to think their training out.
1)If you train a bodypart every day you will overtrain and not get larger
2)If you train a bodypart once a month you will not overtrain but you will only be growing 12 times a year besides the atrophy between workouts (pretty much a snails pace)
3)If you train with 30 sets a bodypart it will take you a great deal of time to recover from that besides using up a great deal of energy and protein resources doing it (and maybe even muscle catabolism will take place)
4)If you train one set for a very easy 8 reps per bodypart you could train that bodypart more often but you didn’t tax yourself to get larger.
So what is the answer? I’ll tell you the answer! The answer is doing the least amount of heavy intense training that makes you dramatically stronger (bigger) so you can recover and train that bodypart the most times in a year (frequency). If you can train
/recover/GROW,train /recover/GROW,train/recover/ GROW as many times as possible in a years time--you will be essentially gaining twice as fast as the bodybuilders around you.
Ok back to my training concepts—I’ve stated how my whole goal is to continually get stronger on key exercises which equals getting continually bigger. I will state this, the method I am about to describe to you is what I have found that makes people gro
at the absolutely fastest rate possible and why I am being inundated down in this area to train people. It’s going to go against the grain but I'm making people grow about 2 times as fast the normal rate so bear with me.
A typical workout for the masses is (lets use chest for an example) doing a bodypart once every 7 days and sometimes even once every 9 days or more. This concept came to the front due to recovery reasoning and I agree with most typical workouts your going
to need a great deal of recovery. Here’s the problem, lets say you train chest once a week for a year and you hypothetically gain 1/64 of an inch in pectoral thickness from each workout. At the end of the year you should be at 52/64 (or 13/16 ). Almost an inch of thickness (pretty good).
To build muscle we are trying to lift at a high enough intensity and load to grow muscle but with enough recovery so the muscle remodels and grows. The problem is everyone is loading up on the volume end of training and its taking away from the recovery
art of it. Incredible strength GAINS will equal incredible size GAINS. And you sure as hell don’t need to do 3-5 exercises and 10-20 sets per bodypart to do that! In actuality you really don’t need to do much to grow. As long as your training weights continue to rocket upward you will always be gaining muscle. If you go in and do squats using your ultimate effort with 405lbs for 20 reps are you going to say you’re not going to grow from that? If you went all out on that effort, I'm sorry but throwing half ass, leg press, leg extensions and lunges into that same workout is going to do nothing but royally lengthen your recovery process when you were already going to grow in the first place.
You can train in a way so you can train a bodypart 3 times every nine to fourteen days and you will recover and grow faster than ever before. If you train chest 3 times in 9-14 days you are now doing chest roughly 91-136 times a year! So instead of 40-52
growth phases with regular once a week training you are now getting 91-136 growth phases a year. I personally would rather grow 91-136 times a year than 40-52 times a year. At a hypothetical 1/64th of an inch per workout you are now at 136/64 (or roughly 2.1 inches of thickness). So now you’re growing at roughly two times as fast as normal people who are doing modern day workouts are. Most people train chest with 3 to 4 exercises and wait the 7-9 days to recover and that is one growth phase. I use the same three exercises in that same 9-14 days but do chest 3 times during that (instead of once) and get 3 growth phases. How? Super heavy weights for low low volume so you can recover and train that bodypart again as quickly as possible.
Everyone knows a muscle either contracts or doesn’t, you cannot isolate a certain part of it (you can get into positions that present better mechanical advantages though that puts a focus on certain deep muscle fibers)--for example incline presses vs flat presses. One huge mistake beginning bodybuilders make is they have a "must" principle instilled in them. They feel they "must" do this exercise and that exercise or they won’t grow.
This is how I set bodybuilders workouts up. I have them pick either their 3 favorite exercises for each bodypart or better yet the exercises they feel will bring up their weaknesses the most. For me my chest exercises are high incline smith machine press,
hammer seated flat press and slight incline smith press with hands very, very wide----this is because I look at my physique and I feel my problem area is upper and outer pecs---that is my focus. What you do is take these three exercises and rotate them
using only one per chest workout. I would do high incline smith on my first chest day, then 3-4 days later I would do hammer seated flat press on my second chest day. Three to four days after that wide grip slight incline smith press would be done and then the whole cycle is repeated again in 3-4 days.
Whenever I train someone new I have them do the following --4 times training in 8 days---with straight sets. Sometimes with rest pause sets but we have to gauge the recovery ability first.
Day one would be Monday and would be:
Chest
shoulders
triceps
back width
back thickness
Day two would be Wednesday and would be
biceps
forearms
calves
hams
quads
Day three would be Friday and would be the same as day one but with different exercises
chest
shoulders
triceps
back width
back thickness
(sat+sun off)
Day four would be the following Monday and would be the same as day two but with different exercises
biceps
forearms
calves
hams
quads
and so on Wenesday, Friday, Monday, Wenesday etc.
You’re hitting every bodypart twice in 8 days. The volume on everything is simply as many warmup sets as you need to do- to be ready for your ONE work set. That can be two warmup sets for a small muscle group or five warmup sets for a large muscle group
n heavy exercise like rack deadlifts. The ONE work set is either a straight set or a rest pause set (depending on your recovery abilities again). For people on the lowest scale of recovery its just that one straight set---next up is a straight set with statics for people with slightly better than that recovery----next up is rest pausing (on many of the of movements) with statics for people with middle of the road recovery on up.
As you progress as a bodybuilder you need to take even more rest time and recovery time.
READ THAT AGAIN PLEASE AS YOU PROGRESS AS A BODYBUILDER IN SIZE AND STRENGTH YOU NEED TO TAKE EVEN MORE REST AND RECOVERY TIME. EXAMPLE:
My recovery ability is probally slightly better now than when I started lifting 13 years ago but only slightly...but back then I was benching 135lbs and squatting 155lbs in my first months of lifting. Now I am far and away the strongest person in my gym using poundages three to six times greater than when I first started lifting. With my recovery ability being what it is both then and now, do you think I need more time to recover from a 155lb squat for 8 reps or a 500LB squat for 8 reps? Obviously the answer is NOW! Yet remember this -the more times you can train a bodypart in a years time and recover will mean the fastest growth possible! I’ve done the training a bodypart every 10 days system in the past and while recovering from that--the gains were so slow over time I got frustrated and realized the frequency of growth phases(for me)was to low. I want to gain upwards of 104 times a year instead of 52--the fastest rate that I can accumulate muscle (YET AGAIN WITHIN ONES RECOVERY ABILITY-I CANT SAY THAT ENOUGH)
I have been slowly changing my philosophies of training over the past 13 years to where I am now. I’ve been gaining so fast the last couple of years it’s been pretty amazing. I’ve got my training down to extremely low volume (a rest pause set or ONE straight set) with extreme stretching, and with recovery issues always in the back of my mind.
I realize the number one problem in this sport that will make or break a bodybuilder is overtraining. Simply as this--you overtrain your done as a bodybuilder gainwise. Kaput. Zip. A waste of valuable time. But I also think there is a problem with underfrequency (only if you can train hardcore enough with extremely low volume to recover). I skirt right along the line of overtraining--I am right there...I’ve done everything in my power (Stretching, glutamine, "super supplements", sleep)to keep me on this side of the line and its worked for me. I believe everyone has different recovery abilities--the job of a bodybuilder is to find out what their individual recovery ability is and do the least amount of hardcore training to grow so they can train that bodypart as frequently as possible. For anyone who wants to follow my lead that would mean starting out with straight sets training 4 times in 8 days and strictly gauging yourself recovery wise with every step up you take (statics, rest pauses)--I would rather you wait until my next article comes out to go over the details of this kind of training before you attempt it--as its important to me that everyone who wants to do this does it correctly.
Bodybuilding as a whole is extreme and you must go to extreme lengths to be an out of the ordinary bodybuilder in this activity. The human body in no way wants to be 270 to 330 lbs of extreme muscularity. It wants to be a comfortable 155 to 180 lbs and it'll do a lot to keep a person at that homeostasis level. Jon Parillo was on the right track years ago when he was trying to make bodybuilders into food processing factories. It takes extreme amounts of food (protein), extremely heavy weights, sometimes extreme supplementation, (the choice) of extreme drugs, and other extreme situations to take a person who by evolution and genetics should be 180 pounds and make him into a hardcore 3 hundred pounds. OK first I have to go over some principles I believe in regarding training and I’ll hit more on training details later on.
a) I believe he who makes the greatest strength gains (in a controlled fashion) as a bodybuilder, makes the greatest muscle gains. Note: I said strength gains--everyone knows someone naturally strong who can bench 400 yet isn't that big. Going from a beginning 375 bench to 400 isn't that great of a strength gain and won’t result in much of a muscle gain. But if I show you someone who went from 150 to 400 on a bench press, that guy will have about 2.5 inches more of muscle thickness on his pecs. That is
incredible strength gain and will equal out into an incredible muscle gain. Ninety-nine percent of bodybuilders are brainwashed that they must go for a blood pump and are striving for that effect--(go up and down on your calves 500 times and tell me if
our calves got any bigger). And those same 99% in a gym stay the same year after year. It's because they have no plan, they go in, get a pump and leave. They give the body no reason to change. Powerbodybuilders and powerlifters plan to continually get stronger and stronger on key movements. The body protects itself from ever increasing loads by getting muscularly bigger=adaption. I’M going to repeat this and hammer it home because of its importance:
THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THE GREATEST STRENGTH GAINS OVER TIME WILL MAKE THE GREATEST SIZE GAINS OVER TIME ACCORDING TO THEIR GENETIC POTENTIAL.
If you reading this never get anywhere close to your ultimate strength levels (AT WHATEVER REP RANGE) you will never get to your utmost level of potential size.
b) I haven't seen a guy who can squat 500 for 20 reps, bench press 500 for 15 and deadlift 500 for 15 who was small yet ---but I have seen a lot and I mean a lot of people in the gym and on these Internet forums that are a buck 65 or two and change, shouting that you don't have to lift heavy to get big (in rare cases you will see a naturally strong powerlifter who has to curb calories to stay in a weight class and that is the reason he doesn't get bigger).
c) Training is all about adaption. In simple terms you lift a weight and your muscle has one of 2 choices, either tear completely under the load (which is incredibly rare and what we don't want) or the muscle lifts the weight and protects itself by remodeling and getting bigger to protect itself against the load(next time). If the weight gets heavier, the muscle has to again remodel and get bigger again to handle it. You can superset, superslow, giant set, pre exhaust all day long but the infinite adaption is load---meaning heavier and heavier weights is the only infinite thing you can do in your training. Intensity is finite. Volume is finite (or infinite if you want to do 9000 sets per bodypart)...everything else is finite. The Load is infinite and heavier and heavier weights used (I DON'T GIVE A CRAP WHAT SCHMUK 58 POUND WRITER FROM FLEX MAGAZINE SAYS) will make the biggest bodybuilder (add high protein, glutamine and drugs to the mix and you have one large person).
d) The largest pro bodybuilders in the last 10 years (outside of Paul Dillett who is a genetic alien and I think could grow off of mowing lawns) are also the very strongest (Kovacs, Prince, Coleman, Yates, Francois, Nasser (although he trains lighter now). For anyone who argues that they have seen so and so pro bodybuilder and he trains light-well I will bet you he isn't gaining rapid size anymore and that his greatest size increases were when he was training nuts heavy going for his pro card. Of course he will convince himself and others that he is "making the best gains of his career" though because no one likes to think what they are presently doing isn't working and they are running in place.
Sadly heavy drug use can make up for a lot of training fallacies and leave people still uninformed on how they became massive. Ronnie Coleman is definitely in an elite class of muscle building genetically yet do you see him doing isolation exercises with light weights to be the most massive bodybuilder on this planet? NOPE! Ever see his video? 805 deadlifts for 2 reps, 765 for 6 reps deads, front s
ats with 600LBS for 6, 200LB dumbbells being thrown all over the place for chest, military presses 315 for 12 and a double with 405. I believe Coleman was clean or close to it when he was powerlifting and when he was an amateur bodybuilder. He won the Natural Team Universe and got his pro card at roughly 220-230LBS shredded to the bone and if that was natural or close to it--that's about 270LBS offseason and would be a huge natural bodybuilder. Since that time he has hooked up with Chad Nichols and blasted (with juice) up to his current 265LBS contest weight and 320LBS offseason. He trains heavier now than he ever did! The man has used extremely heavy weights and powerlifting fundamentals (even with his superior genetics for muscle size) to become the most impressive bodybuilder walking the globe. Well, if the man with some of the best genetics to build muscle out there is using back breaking weights trying to get bigger isn't that more of a reason the mere mortals of genetics in this sport should maybe take note? There are other pros out there with genetics on par with Coleman and using the same amount of drugs yet aren't pushing the limits with poundage's in training as does Coleman. You figure it out then, why is he absolutely crushing everyone onstage by outmuscling them if all things besides training are equal?
e) Who is the last incredibly massive bodybuilder you have seen (juice or not) who couldn't incline 405, squat 550, deadlift 550. I am talking freak-massive ALA Dorian, Kovacs, Francois, etc...there are slew of guys in gyms using mega amounts of steroids on par with pros who are no where close to a pro's size, some with mediocre genetics, yet some with superb genetics. But the pro's using weights that are up there in the stratosphere are by and large the most freakish. These are pros we are talking about, who all have superior genetics for muscle accumulation. Do you think Yates, Francois, Cormier etc all just had natural genetics for incredible strength, not ever having to work for it? Je Paul Guilliame is the only clean professional bodybuilder I ever trusted to be truly natural. The man is a smaller pro training without the juice yet trains incredibly heavy for his size--405LB squats rock bottom for up to 20 reps and his wheels are incredible. Flex Wheeler and Cris Cormier are the same height, the drugs are equal, Flex trains light, Cormier trains heavy. Cormier outweighs Wheeler onstage by 30LBS! Genetically, Wheeler is unsurpassed in pro bodybuilding, I think you already know the answer to this one--case closed. I usually don't like to use pro bodybuilders for examples but in these cases, my points are proven.
For those training clean-if you got guys doing massive amounts of steroids in gyms around America, who are not putting on appreciable size because they train with light weights, what in your right mind could make you think you will gain appreciable amounts of muscle mass as a natural training light?!?! One million people in the United States have admitted to using steroids--1 million!!! That is one out of every 300 people walking around. How many big people do you see out there? Not many. It sure isn't close to 1 million---- because 98% of bodybuilders have no clue what needs to be done training and eating wise to become elite.
f) Please think of the times when you made the best size gains---the first time is in the first 2 years of lifting WHEN YOU MAKE YOUR BEST STRENGTH GAINS TOO! Then things start to slow down.. What's the next time?--You start using steroids and boom what happens? YOUR TRAINING WEIGHTS GO FLYING UP. And you get dramatically bigger! (I’M taking into effect protein assimilation, recovery etc also). The greatest strength gains you make will result in also the most rapid size gains (if you’re taking in the protein requirements of a 12 year old girl scout then you can discount yourself from the above group).
