C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

When training with full-body workouts, a couple of options are best when designing your workout program. First, you can use a "heavy-light-medium" system of training—a lot of the full-body workouts here at Integral Strength reflect this option. Or, second, you can use a system of training where none of the workouts are "all-out"—rather, each workout is more of a "practice session" for the various exercises. In this second option, the workout sessions aren't necessarily not hard, but they are not "intense" either. You stop each set a couple reps shy of failure, and you never do so much work that you can't train the muscle group—or the lift—48 hours later.
Bradley Steiner's Tips
Years ago in IronMan magazine, sandwiched between all of the glossy pictures of steroid-bloated bodybuilders and the various pics of semi-nude (though admittedly beautiful) women, there was real training advice. Bill Starr had monthly columns that, once you read a few dozen of them, allowed you to become a semi-expert in the field of real training. Stuart McRobert had articles that were all pretty darn good—the advice was practical, no-nonsense stuff. I had articles that, not to be too self-promotional, weren't half-bad. And, of course, there were also plenty of articles on full-body, basic workouts from a number of other writers/trainers who peddled such practical wisdom as what was found once-upon-a-time in the "golden age" of bodybuilding yore. Amidst all of this, Bradley Steiner wrote a column—not to mention quite a few additional articles—for decades in the magazine. And his advice was as bare bones as it came: nothing but the basics, full-body workouts only, limited amount of sets and reps, keep it simple—that sort of stuff.
Steiner's workouts would fit in the second category of full-body workouts discussed above. In one of his articles in the mid '90s, he had this to say about the "indicators" that reveal whether or not one is training correctly:

You feel comfortably and pleasantly tired when your workout session is done. You feel as if your mind and body have been renewed.
You feel energetic—not as if you have the strength to train again, but as if you'd do it again if you could.
You feel positive about your training. You're deeply satisfied with the session you've just finished.
You're buoyant, almost high, about an hour later.
You're relaxed when it's time to go to bed. You sleep deeply and well, and you feel good when you wake the next morning.
You feel absolutely super on the day following a good workout.
When you train right, you enjoy it.
When you train correctly, you find that you make steady progress.
And, finally, you feel exhilarated, not exhausted—and that's a good way to feel.

Steiner's advice, obviously, is still sound as ever today.

The Squat Nemesis Training Journal, Part 3

by Jared Smith

I am in day two of week three, and my body is definitely feeling it. I’ve never felt such an insane amount of delayed onset muscle soreness in all my days on this scorched earth! (Okay, that may be stretching it just slightly, but you get the point.) My numbers have gone up but not a tremendous amount. The most remarkable thing is my confidence level as it pertains to max effort lifts. The level of fear and anxiety over maximum poundage seems to have diminished for the most part.

There are some things that don’t happen often, and one of those things is me being distracted or so flustered by life that my training suffers. This week, however, my mettle was tested a little. Life will put obstacles in our way sometimes, and it is up to us to overcome them. It is difficult to put problems aside and do what needs to be done, but the work has to be done! (Sloan’s note: As my other friend, Puddin’, used to say: “Time to worship at the altar of the bench press, and forget all of that trifling crap that we call our lives for just a wee li’l bit!”) While some use the gym to forget about things that happened during the day or week, I like to use them as fuel. I will think about whatever it is that is plaguing my mind as I approach the bar and put in my earphones. I feel the weight atop my back as Chimaira plays in my ears. On this day, their song “Down Again” was my anthem and would aid the weights in setting me free from the worries of the day. The world may get me down, but in the dungeonous gym I am in control! It wasn’t the greatest session ever, but I felt as if I had not only beaten the weight, but also the challenges the world presented me with.

My legs are aching and mid/lower trapezius muscles are sore from the static contraction required to maintain the proper position when I squat. I have never felt too battered from a program, but as I near the end of these three weeks of hell, I feel a sense of pride. I’ve found that this program is geared far less for changing numbers or stimulating muscle, but far more about making one tougher mentally. I used to feel miserable when I had a day off from training. I’d sit at home and think of nothing but getting back to the gym. Don’t get me wrong, I still think about it, but I have learned that I should train so hard that my off days are appreciated, and it also allows me to appreciate the time spent with my “better half”.

Surviving the Grind

Since I’ve adopted a closer stance and grip on the bar, I’ve found that after multiple sessions, my triceps tendons are destroyed from the stretch overload throughout the week. To circumvent this problem, I’ve begun performing three sets of twenty reps for any variation of a triceps pressdown—this flushes plenty of blood into the muscle. Though not working wonders, this has seemed to aid in the recovery process. As for my legs, I have started doing low intensity cardio on a stationary bike post-workout to put some blood in my legs without causing any more muscular damage. Again, this is done to facilitate recovery.

The Home Stretch

As these three weeks wind to a close, I still attack the weights with tenacity. There is no time to slow down and no reason! I can see the finish line and I will attack it as hard as I can. If I never look at something and think “This probably won’t end well”, I’m probably not going after it hard enough! Onward I push with no apprehension or fears. I am ready to dominate the day in the gym, as well as anything else life is willing to throw at me—the weightlifting gods be damned!

The Total Annihilation Program

Classic Training Meets Modern Bodybuilding Tactics

By Jared Smith

Old School Influence

I can remember sitting in the living room as a kid watching Conan the Barbarian, and watching Arnold being transformed into a behemoth-of-a-man through suffering. Once he became huge then he became deadly as he was forged in the fires of combat, along with being trained by warriors from the East. In addition to this, my father was a very large man who spoke very little and—to this day—is the very essence of the strong silent type. I grew up with a clear vision of what a man should be: big and strong!

When I was about eighteen, I decided that I needed to “live up” to the vision that I had grown up with. In my high school library, I was lucky enough to find Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding. This was my first education in terms of training. This inspired me to go to the local Books-A-Million and raid the magazine rack for bodybuilding magazines. While I thought the modern bodybuilders looked cool, I was really into the “throwback look” that I saw in the old black and white photos of guys like Reg Park, Bill Pearl, and Larry Scott. After reading for a while, I realized a glaring difference between the way today’s bodybuilders train and the lifters of yesteryear is the fact that many of the old-school guys performed full body workouts with much lower rep ranges. One of the popular routines was Reg Park’s 5x5 program, which centered on major lifts like the squat, overhead press, front squat, deadlift, and bench press. Needless to say it is much different than your FST-7’s and German Volume Training-styles that involve countless reps and many times include several isolation lifts.

Reg Park doing some dumbbell overhead presses

Rise of the Machines

After several years of training, I was turned on to “High-Intensity Training” by the owner of a gym where I trained. I began delving into the writings of Mike Mentzer, Dorian Yates, and Arthur Jones. My own training had never been insanely high in volume but these guys were talking about minimal sets with through-the-roof intensity. While the “pump-lover” in me was somewhat turned off by the notion of only doing a handful of sets, the nerd in me was intrigued by the idea of constant progression and how recovery was related to strength and hypertrophy.

H.I.T. seemed to employ way more machines than I’d ever used in my own training, and I was a traditionalist, believing that isolation lifts translated into being a sissy. However, as I continued to learn, I realized that this type of guided resistance could put more stress on a target muscle without incorporating as many stabilizing muscles, thus overloading it and leaving something “in the tank” so that I could then use a multi-joint movement to push that muscle deeper into failure without having to tax the hell out of my joints. This—combined with a much slower rep tempo—would prevent trauma to my joints, and keep my training balls out for a much longer period of time.

Mike Mentzer, the originator of the "Heavy Duty" form of HIT

Brief Brutality

Upon the decision to embark on a more High Intensity mission, I knew that my workouts would need to be short due to the intensity level. Some would argue that this is laziness, although they’ve never trained to muscular failure, much less beyond even that. Once a set is taken to the point of momentary muscular failure, and then beyond, one will be physically unable to continue. I once believed that volume was the sole reason for muscular growth, and while I still go through voluminous phases of training, I realize that only the most difficult set of any program—or of any training style—will actually elicit the growth response that I—or anyone else—would need. If one were to never push past the previous limits or level of performance, then the body has no reason to adapt. Why would the body adapt when it is not being presented with anything that challenges it? It will not! Seeing as building muscle is the body’s adaptation to stress you must place the body under enough stress to cause this adaptation! As Dorian Yates and his old training partner Leroy Davis would so eloquently put it: “No fucking about!” Let’s get nasty!

Combine and Conquer

Many times, I have been asked which is superior: free weights or machines. The answer is that, rather paradoxically, there is no answer. Both have their places. Free weights will stimulate systemic growth via taxing, not only the target muscle, but all the supporting groups required to maintain proper technique throughout each lift, as well as give you a hormonal “up tick” from utilizing compounds lifts. Machines tax the target muscle, and exhaust it without as much interference from supporting muscle groups. I firmly believe that you can combine the two and thus ignite growth on a larger scale than with split training.

Mentzer hitting some "highly intense" dumbbell curls!

The Meat and Potatoes

Now for the meat and potatoes of it all: THE PROGRAM! These workouts are to be performed on three nonconsecutive days per week, and each set taken to the point of momentary muscular failure with only one set of each exercise. If you have a partner, or the movement permits you to go beyond failure, then do so! The optimal rep range is 6-12, six being the basement, and twelve being the ceiling. However, if you can complete more than that number, continue until you fail and increase the resistance the next time you perform that exercise! Each rep should be done with a very controlled tempo to prevent momentum from coming into play thus insuring that the muscle are moving the weight and contracting optimally. Shooting for a 4/0/4 tempo will usually do the trick. If the movement provides ample resistance in the contracted position—such as leg curls, leg extensions, or pulldowns—then you should hold the contraction momentarily, making the tempo 4/0/4/1. Rest as little as possible between sets, which will keep the intensity level high. Do not alter the order of exercises, as this will compromise the effectiveness of the program. Muscles are pre-exhausted to make sure that each is pushed deeper into failure and taxed to the max!

Workout 1

Leg extensions

Leg presses

Standing calf Raises

Dumbbell fly

Barbell Bench Presses

Straight Arm Pulldowns

Barbell Rows

Barbell Shoulder Presses

Preacher Curls

Close Grip Palms-in Pulldowns

Dips

Decline Sit-ups

Workout 2

Toe Presses on Leg press Machine

Lying leg curls

Squats

Pec Deck flies

Incline Dumbbell Presses

Bent Arm Barbell Pullover

T-bar Rows

Lateral raises

Bent Lateral Raises

Reverse Grip barbell curls

Barbell curls

Overhead Cable Extensions

Hanging leg raises

Workout 3

Repeat workout 1, but stop each set about 2 reps shy of all out failure to facilitate recovery of your central nervous system, as it will have taken a beating from the previous days.

The Annihilation Concludes

So there you have it, a program both brief and brutal. This type of training will require a mental focus that few of us possess, and will test you both mentally and physically. Your mind will be trying to convince you to stop, but your muscles are still capable of much more than your puny brain wants to admit! As C.S. has said before on this very blog: HOW YOU FEEL IS A LIE! Good luck and train hard!

Gene Mozee's Advice and Tips for Building a Massive, Deep, Chiseled Chest!

Gene Mozee in his younger days, and in more recent years

When I was much younger—14 or 15—and just starting on my career in bodybuilding, strength training, and physique transformation, there were several writers who made a deep impression on my young, impressionable mind. When it came to basic, barbell training, it was the likes of Mike Mentzer, Steve Holman, Bradley Steiner, and a few other "briefer and harder is better" writers who made the largest impression on me. But when it came to volume training—which I eventually succumbed to—there were really only two writers who influenced me the most: Greg Zulak and Gene Mozee. Zulak had the longer, more lasting influence. But it was Mozee who influenced me first. And, I must admit, he still holds a very special place in my bodybuilding heart.

Gene wrote many articles for many years in Iron Man magazine throughout the late '80s and early '90s. I read that magazine the most during those years—with MuscleMag International coming in a very close 2nd—and so it was only natural that he had an influence. But there were other writers of that era who had just as many articles and even more published, so it wasn't simply his output, since others were more voluminous in their scribblings. No, it was the fact that Mozee had a wealth of experience at his fingertips, and he didn't hold any of that knowledge back in the stuff he wrote. He had trained with many of the greatest "golden era" bodybuilders of the '60s, '70s, and '80s, and so he had tons of tips and tricks up his sleeves that the other writers lacked.

I always loved training chest during these aforementioned years, and it was Mozee's chest training advice that probably influenced me the most, although he also had great advice and sound tips for building huge arms and wide lats, as well.

Once again, I think it was the knowledge that he attained from so many past champions that informed his chest training articles with their unique style. Here is what Mozee had to say about his chest-training knowledge in his own words: "I have trained with many champion bodybuilders who had great pectoral development, such as Joe Baratta, Dominic Juliano, Don Howorth, Charlie Fautz, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger when he first came to the United States. Not only did I learn from each of these champions, but we mostly agreed on the best way to work the chest. In addition, I have trained thousands of individuals at my own gym and at the other gyms where I have worked during my 50-plus years in the iron game."

Structural Alteration of the Chest Muscles

As with many other "old-time" bodybuilders, Mozee believe that the skeletal structure of the areas of the body surrounding the chest—in particular the rib cage—could actually be altered. In the '80s and '90s, rib cage expansion was considered a "myth" by most bodybuilding writers, but Mozee always stuck to his guns. I happen to agree with the old-timers—there is simply something different about the chest/rib cage structure of the Golden Age bodybuilder.

Arnold—and other "old-time" bodybuilders—seemed to have more "expansive" chests

"The chest is unique among bodyparts in that it alone has the capability of undergoing a radical structural alteration," Mozee says. "While it is true that bone growth just about ceases after the age of 21, the structure of the chest, with its cartilage and attachments, can continue to enlarge for many years. The rib cage deepens, widens, and thickens when properly trained, giving the pectorals a larger framework to build on. You can add layer after layer of massive muscle that would not be possible on a bodypart that has less skeletal development.

"The bigger and stronger your pecs become, the greater their capacity to hold the inner-chest latticework firmly in position, thus establishing a continual growth pattern. The inner and outer chest areas encourage each other to reach maximum development."

Gene once gave the example of a training partner named Richard Kee as evidence for his argument: "Richard, when he first began training, weighed about 140 pounds and had a very flat, shallow chest. After he gained 50 pounds of muscle, he still found that his chest was lagging behind the rest of his physique. Kee decided to do 5 sets of stiff-arm pullovers before every workout, and he did this 6 days a week. After a few years, he developed one of the most massive chests I have ever seen, with tremendous pecs. He also bench pressed 550 lbs when the world record was less than 500. His chest measurement at the time was 56 inches."

All of Mozee's chest workouts took this structural alteration seriously.

The Beginner's Chest Program

Gene believed the beginner needed about 6 months of steady, result-producing training before he was ready for any chest specialization. However, he did believe the beginner should include the following exercises in their basic workout program:

Barbell Bench Presses. "This great exercise thickens and adds mass to the pecs," Mozee said. He believed in 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps.

Straight-arm Pullovers. As part of a full-body workout program, he believed in alternating this exercise with squats in order to take advantage of the heavy breathing produced by the latter. "The pullover stretches your rib cage and helps add shape to your torso by working the pecs, lats, serratus, and intercostals."

Elevated Pushups. "This is an excellent exercise for the pecs, front delts, and triceps." Mozee believed in using this to finish off the workout with 2 sets of as many reps as possible before hitting the shower.

Here is the beginner program that Mozee recommended:

Bent-knee situps: 1x20
Barbell bench presses: 3x8-10
Barbell squats: 3x10 alternated with Straight-arm pullovers: 3x15
Lat machine pulldowns: 3x10
Upright rows: 3x8-10
Barbell curls: 3x8-10
Dumbbell triceps extensions: 3x10
Elevated pushups: 2x max reps

Intermediate Pec Pounding

After 6 months of steady, result-producing training, Mozee recommended moving on to the following workout:

Dumbbell incline presses: 4 sets of 8 reps, resting about 90 seconds between sets.
Bent-arm flyes: 3 sets of 10 reps, resting 90 seconds between sets
Bent-arm pullovers: 3 sets of 10 reps, once again resting 90 seconds approximately between sets

Advanced, All-Out Chest Assault

Here was Gene's favorite multi-angular chest assault for the advanced bodybuilder (he almost always recommended supersets for the advanced 'builders):

Bench Presses: 5x10,8,6,5, and 15
Incline flyes: 3x10, supersetted w/
Weighted parallel bar dips: 3x8-10
Pulley crossovers: 4x10, supersetted w/
Stiff-arm dumbbell pullovers: 4x15

Mozee's Special Training Tips!

Gene Mozee had several tips that he shared with much of his chest training programs. Here are several of them:

"Work all intermediate and advanced programs 3 times per week."
"On the advanced program, rest as long as you need between sets of bench presses because of the heavy poundages you should be using."
"Warm up by using a lighter weight on the first set of each exercise to prevent injuries."
"Keep a positive mental attitude and set sensible goals."
"Beginners should stay with the basic exercises for at least 6 months."
"Intermediate trainees can vary the program after 8 weeks, but stick to about 10 total sets."

Vince Gironda—the famed "Iron Guru"—had some of the wildest tips and techniques for building muscle than any bodybuilding trainer who ever lived. Not only that, but he was solely responsible for some of the best training programs ever invented.
A little lesson from the past: Sometime in the late '90s (I can't remember the exact year), Charles Poliquin published his "German Volume Training" in the pages of the now defunct, but on the whole outstanding publication Muscle Media 2000. (This was before MM2K became just plain ol' Muscle Media, and from then on just plain ol' sucked!) German Volume training was decidedly effective, true, but Poliquin marketed it as some kind of new, "revolutionary" program, which it, sorry to say, clearly wasn't. It was the old standby "10 sets of 10" regimen that I had written about in IronMan magazine as early as '94, and the very program that Vince Gironda created at least 30 years before that. (If you want an even crazier program, try finding Gironda's original 8x8 program, which is way harder than just doing 8 sets of 8 reps on an exercise.)
As sound as Gironda's training advice was, his dieting advice was just as good, and probably even more revolutionary. This was a man who, in the 1950s, didn't win the Mr. America contest because he was too ripped! You did NOT read that wrong. The judges, at the time, actually deducted points from his score card because of his extremely low bodyfat levels. They found it too unnatural. (The picture at the top of this article was taken sometime in the '50s, during his competitive days.)
Gironda was, obviously, way ahead of his time. When competitive bodybuilders were actually expected to get that ripped for competitions, they came to Vince for advice.
He also had very sound advice, tips, techniques, and programs for bodybuilders needing to gain weight. Below are a few of his tips taken straight from the Iron Guru's mouth:

Drink water during your workout. Drink at least one pint after each muscle group worked, but dont' drink out of a fountain, because you swallow air.
It's a necessity to eat three good, generous meals a day. Even more beneficial, if time permits, is six small meals per day. Include a lot of broiled meats, baked potatoes, stewed fruits, eggs, brown rice, thick soups, stews, nuts, and natural grains. Be sure also to include lots of green and yellow vegetables.
Drink a pint of certified raw milk in addition to your regular meals at 10am, 2pm, 4pm, and one hour before bedtime.
Give your food a chance to digest thoroughly by lying or sitting with your feet propped up on a high footstool after each meal.
If you take your lunch to work, be aware that the best sandwiches for gaining weight are made with 100 percent whole wheat, pumpernickel, or rye breads. Ground beef patties, tuna with mayonnaise, turkey, meat loaf, avocado and bacon, peanut butter and bacon, and cream cheese all make excellent high-protein, high-calorie sandwiches.
Don't miss a workout unless you're ill or it's absolutely imperative. Remember, your whole bodybuilding program is based on regular habits
It's essential to get sufficient rest and sleep in order to fully recuperate from your workouts and for muscle growth to occur. I recommend eight to nine hours of sleep each night.

Gironda's advice still holds to this day.

Matthew Sloan does real bodybuilding workouts at 16 years old, and it shows!

The other day I received an email from a reader who stumbled across my article on "Increasing Work Capacity." Apparently, this particular gentleman had come across it while perusing some forum-or-another—in one of the many "hardcore bodybuilding forums"—that was discussing the article. Basically, to sum it up, he took me to task for "daring" to suggest that drug-free bodybuilders could possibly perform such hard work as I suggested for the advanced lifters in my post.
I, politely as I could, explained my reasonings. I explained how drug-free bodybuilders could certainly work up to the amount of work I suggested and, not only survive it, but actually thrive on it. When I was finished with my reply, I hit the "send" button, and then began to lament inwardly, thinking to myself, "Where have all the real bodybuilders gone?"
I thought of the "old-time" bodybuilders—largely "drug free" guys—who built awesome physiques by doing far more work than I recommended in "Increasing Work Capacity". I thought about the great bodybuilding writer George Turner, and wondered what he would think if he were still alive?
Turner had this to say 20 years ago: "What the hell is going on in American bodybuilding? Where have all the big guys gone? I don't mean the steroid types who are big and strong periodically (while they're on the drugs) and then after the show stop training, and then get fat (or skinny) and try to relocate their training drive—and their nuts. I'm talking about the real bodybuilders, the ones who are in the gym month in and month out, year after year, and who give hard, serious training all they've got. The ones who can't imagine doing without the deep satisfaction that goes with a great, gut-busting three-hour workout. I'm talking about the real bodybuilders who do it because they love it."

Marvin Eder - a "classic" bodybuilder who thrived on an immense amount of work

But maybe not all is lost. When Turner wrote those words in an IronMan magazine in 1995, Mentzer-style H.I.T. training—and its various offshoots, crap like "Power Factor Training", for instance—was all the rage. Maybe, bodybuilders such as the one who wrote me not withstanding, there are guys nowadays who are ready for the kind of real training that Turner and other old-timers thrived on.
What kind of workouts am I talking about? Here are the kind of workouts that Turner said top bodybuilders used back in the '40s and '50s when, contrary to what many these days may think, bodybuilders trained much harder than the ones nowadays:
"Consider Roy Ledas and Buddy Pryor doing endless seated presses with 125-pound dumbbells when neither one of them weighed more than 170, or Doug Strahl and George Sheffield working out for 5 hours a day, 6 days a week. I remember the New Yorkers Lou Degni, Marvin Eder, and my buddy Dominic Juliani training Monday through Friday in the gym and on Sunday doing chins and dips on the beach for endless sets of up to 50 reps (that's right, 50 reps) and Chuck Ahrens training arms and shoulders for 4 hours, 3 times a week, and doing standing triceps French presses for 5 or 6 reps with a 315-pound Olympic bar.
"At the time, I trained everything from the abs down for 54 sets on one day and my entire upper body for 90 sets the following day, often working out 10 or 11 days in a row before instinctively taking a day off. It was nothing out of the ordinary. I was training at about the same level as every other real bodybuilder. We were used to it, as we worked up to it for years. We didn't have to take something to make us want to train. We loved it! Now, I hear about people hitting one bodypart per day, taking a week to work the entire body. What kind of bullshit is that? Get in condition for crying out loud; don't get everything out of a syringe."

The aforementioned "buddy" of George Turner—Domini Juliani

For those of you wondering what it might take to get in the sort of condition Turner was talking about, you could begin by following my advice in the "Increasing Work Capacity" article. Here are my recommendations from that post:

The best form of full-body, three-days-per-week training for the beginner, is the Heavy-Light-Medium program. I’m not going to go into all of the details here, as there are plenty of posts and/or articles on this blog where I highlight what a good full-body, H-L-M workout should look like. What I do want to touch upon, however, is how you increase workload using the H-L-M system. At first, the most obvious thing that needs to occur is you need to get stronger. Strength should readily increase using H-L-M when you are doing it properly. You should not add sets, add extra exercises, or increase the time of your workout in any other fashion if you have not increased your strength. However, once you have been on the program for several months – and are noticeably stronger – at this point you do want to increase sets and/or add extra exercises. Begin by adding sets. After that, you can add exercises. And then, finally, you can even add an extra day of training by adding another “light” day.

Now, let’s look at what an H-L-M program should look like as you increase your workload over a year or two of training. Here is what a typical beginning program should look like:

Heavy Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps

Bench presses – 5 sets of 5 reps

Deadlifts – 5 sets of 5 reps

Barbell Curls – 3 sets of 8 reps

Ab work

Light Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps

Overhead Presses – 5 sets of 5 reps

Good Mornings – 5 sets of 5 reps

Ab Work

Medium Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps

Incline Bench Presses – 5 sets of 5 reps

Power Cleans – 5 sets of 5 reps

Dumbbell Curls – 3 sets of 12 reps

Ab work

After a few months of training, and assuming significant gains in strength have occurred, the program should look something like this:

Heavy Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Bench presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Deadlifts – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Barbell Curls – 5 sets of 8 reps

Ab work

Light Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps

Overhead Presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Good Mornings – 5 sets of 5 reps

Ab Work

Medium Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Incline Bench Presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Power Cleans – 8 sets of 5 reps

Dumbbell Curls – 5 sets of 12 reps

Ab work

After a few more months of training, the template should look something like this:

Heavy Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Walking lunges – 4 sets of 10 reps

Bench presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Weighted Dips – 4 sets of 8 reps

Deadlifts – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Barbell Curls – 5 sets of 8 reps

Ab work

Light Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Overhead Presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Good Mornings – 5 sets of 5 reps

Ab Work

Medium Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Front Squats – 4 sets of 10 reps

Incline Bench Presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Flat Dumbbell Bench Presses – 4 sets of 8 reps

Power Cleans – 8 sets of 5 reps

Dumbbell Curls – 5 sets of 12 reps

Ab work

And, once again, after a few more months of training, the lifting template should look something like this:

Heavy Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Walking lunges – 4 sets of 10 reps

Bench presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Weighted Dips – 4 sets of 8 reps

Deadlifts – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Weighted Chins – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of max reps

Barbell Curls – 5 sets of 8 reps

Skullcrushers – 5 sets of 8 reps

Ab work

Light Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Bulgarian “split” squats – 4 sets of 12 reps (each leg)

Overhead Presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Seated behind-the-neck presses – 4 sets of 8 reps

Power Snatches – 5 sets of 3 reps

Good Mornings – 5 sets of 5 reps

Ab Work

Medium Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Front Squats – 4 sets of 10 reps

Incline Bench Presses – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Flat Dumbbell Bench Presses – 4 sets of 8 reps

Deficit deadlifts – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Power Cleans – 8 sets of 5 reps

Dumbbell Curls – 5 sets of 12 reps

Ab work

And, finally, after a few more months, you will once again need to increase the amount of work you’re performing. At this point, your workout should look something like this:

Heavy Day:

Squats – 8 sets of 5 reps, 4 sets of 8 reps

Walking lunges – 4 sets of 10 reps

Bench presses – 8 sets of 5 reps, 4 sets of 8 reps

Weighted Dips – 4 sets of 8 reps

Deadlifts – 8 sets of 5 reps, 4 sets of 8 reps

Weighted Chins – 7 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of max reps

Barbell Curls – 5 sets of 8 reps

Skullcrushers – 5 sets of 8 reps

Ab work

Light Day:

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Bulgarian “split” squats – 6 sets of 12 reps (each leg)

Overhead Presses – 8 sets of 5 reps, 2 sets of 8 reps

Seated behind-the-neck presses – 4 sets of 8 reps

Power Snatches – 8 sets of 3 reps

Good Mornings – 5 sets of 5 reps

Ab Work

Medium Day:

Squats – 8 sets of 5 reps, 4 sets of 8 reps

Front Squats – 4 sets of 10 reps

Incline Bench Presses – 8 sets of 5 reps, 4 sets of 8 reps

Flat Dumbbell Bench Presses – 4 sets of 8 reps

Deficit deadlifts – 8 sets of 5 reps, 4 sets of 8 reps

Power Cleans – 8 sets of 5 reps

Dumbbell Curls – 7 sets of 12 reps

Ab work

Arm Specialization Training for Massive Guns
by Jared Smith

Arnold showing off his "guns" in this early '70s pic

It Begins with an Epiphany

Many of the greatest things in the world were born out of necessity. In my case, I am not speaking of an invention, but rather a method of training that would allow me to bring up a lagging muscle group by forcing me to train it more often.

I have always been of the mindset that the major lifts need to be trained often. Squats, bench presses, overhead presses, and deadlifts in all their various forms should be done as often as possible to stimulate growth throughout the entire body. One day I was squatting, as I had done a thousand times before, only this time my body decided it had done enough. A pain that felt like a rusty knife scraping across my kneecap hit me all at once. I rested and backed down the weight, thinking that perhaps it was just “wear and tear” and that a little light weight set or two may ease the pain. Upon descending with the weights, the pain rushed right back. I called it a day, and for hours my knee throbbed like an infected wisdom tooth. Soon thereafter, an MRI would reveal a partially torn quad tendon. Needless to say, I was more than a little upset. Someone telling me that it would be months before I could squat and deadlift again was something that I wasn’t fully prepared to hear. After it sank in that I was going to have to put my well being ahead of doing the things I love, I decided that if I couldn’t squat and deadlift, I was at least going to focus on something.

I had always had problems with arm development—or lack there of. My chest, back, shoulders, and legs were plenty big, but, of course, I trained them way more frequently, and I admittedly never really liked arm training. If I wasn’t moving some serious iron, I was bored. I decided that in my down time I would train my arms 3 times a week, with a different protocol each time. I sat in my room one evening and mapped out a plan to put some size on my arms and to give me my training fix until I was rehabilitated.

Putting it all Together

Although I believe that overtraining is a myth perpetuated by people with a fear of working hard on a consistent basis, there is some merit to the idea that doing the same thing too often will lead to stagnation and boredom for many. To circumvent this issue, I decided to either alternate the movements or the rep range for which they were performed. Much like the old Heavy/Light/Medium system of training, but aimed at making my arms swell to a ridiculous degree. The first day of training I would rely on heavier compound lifts such as close grip bench presses, barbell curls, skull crushers, and alternating dumbbell curls. The second day was a day consisting of mostly isolation type lifts focusing on the stretch, or semi-stretch, portion along with the contracted position. The third day was my favorite. This day called for just enough compound work to cause muscle damage, then I would engorge the muscles with blood.

The Workouts

Heavy Day: Four sets of 6-10 per exercise with a three count on the negative and an explosive positive. Rest about 2 minutes between sets.

Close Grip bench Presses

Barbell Curls

Skull Crushers

Hammer Curls

Light Day: Four sets of 12-15 per exercise with a “piston-like” tempo. Don’t get sloppy, but keep it moving. One-minute rest between sets.

Incline Dumbbell curls

Bench Dips

Concentration Curls

Overhead Dumbbell Extensions (Unli-lateral)

Medium Day:

Barbell Curls: 3x6-10 in the same style as on day one. One-minute rest between sets.

Cross-Body Hammer Curls: 3x12-15, one arm at a time. Do not rest, go from one arm to the other until all sets are completed. Use the same tempo as with day two.

Lying Overhead Cable Curls: 3x15-20. Put a flat bench in the cable station, grasp a straight (or cambered) bar overhead and curl to the crown of the skull. (The contraction from these is awesome!) 30 seconds rest between each set. Same tempo as day two.

Close Grip Bench Presses: 3x6-10 in the same style as day one.

Dumbbell Skull Crushers: 3x12-15. Keep your head near the end of the bench and really emphasize the stretch on each rep. Same tempo as with day two, with thirty seconds rest between each set.

Overhead Cable Rope Extensions: 3x15-20. Pretend you are literally trying to rip the rope apart at the top, and squeeze those tris. I prefer using the low cable to maximize the stretch. 30 seconds rest between sets, with a one second pause in the contraction and stretch positions.

Note: Two sets of wrist curls, for 20 reps, follow each workout!

On any two days between arm sessions, you will perform full body workouts. Since I was battling an injury during this time, this is what it looked like:

Leg extensions with Blood Flow restriction: 4x 30,15,15,15

Leg curls with blood flow restriction: 4x30,15,15,15

Standing calf raises: 3x8-12

Bench presses: 3x8-12

Chins: 3x max reps

Lateral Raises: 3x12-15

This is the program that got me through a tough time, and allowed me to retain the small amount of sanity I possessed from the get-go. Thankfully, I’m now squatting and deadlifting frequently again, but for anyone out there who perhaps is de-loading from a hard squat program (or if you just want your arms to swell up like friggin’ balloons) give this a try.

Finally, ask yourself this question: Why in the hell are you still sitting there, staring at this computer screen? Let’s get to the gym, and kick some ass!

The Legendary Mass-Building Methods and Workouts of "The Myth"—and the Story Behind Them

Sergio Oliva in the '80s

I’ve often written on this blog, and elsewhere, that I believe the greatest strength athlete/bodybuilder of all time was Marvin Eder. Of the truly “old-time” bodybuilders there were other greats, as well, but none that could match Eder for both sheer muscle and the most impressive strength feats of the age.

What I’m not sure of, however, is if I’ve ever mentioned who I think the greatest pure bodybuilder of all time was/is. By the title of this article, you’ve probably already guessed the answer: Sergio Oliva. At the time of his emergence, I think he had the greatest physique the bodybuilding world had ever seen—shapely muscles, huge legs (compared to other bodybuilders of the era), and definitely more mass than anyone else. His is a physique that still stands the test of time almost 50 years later.

History of “The Myth”

Oliva first won the Mr. Olympia contest in 1967, and then followed that up with two more consecutive wins in ’68 and ’69. In the ’69 contest, he narrowly defeated Arnold Schwarzenegger, but then went on to lose both the ’70 and ’72 contest to Arnold. In my mind, the two wins by Arnold over Oliva were total and complete bull. In ’70, Oliva looked just as good as he did the year before, and in ’72, he was absolutelymassive. The ’72 Olympia was probably the biggest debacle that contest has ever seen—and it’s seen more than its fair share, so that’s saying something. To make matters even worse, Oliva wasn’t allowed to compete in the ’71 Olympia (by Joe Weider, who clearly wanted Shwarzenegger to win all these contests—he switched the ’72 judges at the last minute). The reasoning, according to Weider, was because Oliva had competed in the 1971 NABBA Mr. Universe. The only problem is that Arnold had competed in the very same contest the year before, and no one banned him. So, in my mind, that means Sergio Oliva should have been the rightful champion of 6 straight Mr. Olympia contests. Hell, there’s no telling how many he could have actually won if it wasn’t for the contrived politics (and blatant racism) of Weider’s organization.

For Oliva, unfortunately, the Mr. Olympia politics, and the racism he faced, were nothing new. He first really emerged on the scene at the 1965 AAU Mr. America contest, held in Los Angeles at the famed Embassy Auditorium. John Grimek—at the time probably the world’s most famous bodybuilder—said he should have won that contest, but instead he lost to a far inferior Jerry Daniels (who, of course, no one reading this piece has heard of). In 1966, Sergio returned to the Mr. America with hopes of actually winning, but, unfortunately, he lost to his mentor Bob Gajda. He was thrilled for Gajda, who was his good friend, but even Gajda thought his own victory was a disgrace. Oliva switched over to the IFBB at the time, believing it was the only organization where he could get a fair shake, but even that only lasted so long.

Pre-judging at the '72 Mr. Olympia

Early Career

Sergio was born and raised in Cuba, and he got his start in Olympic weightlifting where he totaled almost 1,000 pounds in the Middle Heavyweight division (198 lbs) in (what were then) the 3 competitive lifts: the press, the snatch, and the clean and jerk. He spent his first 4 years of training using solely a weightlifting program.

In order to avoid the Communist regime that had taken over the country, Sergio defected from Cuba in 1962, where he settled in Chicago, and began working out at the Duncan YMCA, a legendary training facility for weightlifters and bodybuilders. There, he met the aforementioned Bob Gajda, who told him that he had the genetics to make it in the sport of bodybuilding. Apparently, he was skeptical at first—Olympic weightlifters didn’t think much of bodybuilding at the time; I doubt they still do—but Gajda ultimately convinced him. Under Gajda’s tutelage, he switched from building strength to building muscle. It was a decision that bodybuilding history should always be grateful for!

Sergio in his weightlifting days

Full-Body Workouts with PHA

Gajda was well known at the time for a full-body training system he had invented: Peripheral Heart Action training, or PHA for short. PHA was a system of what we might now call “circuit training” where the trainee picked as many as 6 exercises—one for each bodypart—and, without resting, performed 1 set of all exercises in succession. As the trainee advanced, he added more circuits, so that he would typically perform 10 circuits on any given training day.

Sergio actually thrived on this unconventional form of training, and continued with it for the first year and a half of his bodybuilding career. It stopped working at this time, and Sergio’s bodyweight stalled at 200 pounds.

It was time for something new.

Sergio’s Advanced Mass-Building Methods

Oliva studied the many and varied training methods of that era’s bodybuilding stars. According to Gene Mozee, he was most influenced by the workouts and techniques of Dave Draper, Larry Scott, and Harold Poole, but he eventually settled upon his own unique methods that incorporated limited exercises per bodypart per workout combined with different rep ranges and, at times, some very heavy poundages.

Sergio’s methods allowed him to reach a massive “in-contest-shape” 230 pounds by 1968. By then, he sported 21-inch arms, a 53-inch chest, 28-inch thighs, and 19-inch calves, all combined together with a 29-inch waist.

During this time, there were no big, lucrative money contracts for bodybuilding stars. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, he labored in a foundry all day, lifted for 2 and a half to 3 hour on training days, and would often take his wife out dancing once the training for the night was over. The man had obviously developed a massive work capacity in addition to massive muscles.

Showing off his massive arms!

Sergio Loved the Pump

Sergio loved incorporating a limited amount of exercises per bodypart, but sometimes performed up to 20 sets per exercise—he was definitely a bodybuilder who believed in “chasing the pump”, to use a term favored by many classic bodybuilders, and doing so with just one, or at the most two, exercises for whatever bodypart he was working.

Here is what I had to say about him in a ’97 issue of IronMan magazine entitled “Monster Pump”:

Oliva’s favorite way to work out was with high sets and lots of reps. He often employed a form of rest/pause training, in which, for example, if he was working his chest, he’d do a set of bench presses for 6 to 8 reps, pause for a few breaths, perform another set, pause for a few more breaths, crank out another set and so on. That type of fast, localized training gave Oliva a tremendous pump and helped him build one of the most amazing physiques ever.

Segio wouldn’t finish any bodypart workout until he believed it was pumped to its absolute limit. Here, for instance, is what Greg Zulak had to say in an issue of MuscleMag International around the same time as my IronMan article:

After a particularly long and grueling workout that consisted of many sets of weighted dips, Sergio went to the change room to take off his sweat-soaked gym clothes and to take a shower. After someone helped him remove his sweatshirt (his arms were so pumped he could barely get them over his head), Sergio decided to do one more set of dips, so he headed back out to the gym floor to do them. After the set, he returned to the change room, removed his shoes and socks, and then went back out to the gym for one more set of dips. Then it was back to the change room. After removing his sweat pants, and wrapping a towel around his waist, he returned once again for one more set of dips. After this, he hit the showers, but a couple of times during the shower he put the towel back on and went back to the gym floor for more dips. After the shower, he dressed, but before leaving the gym to go home he performed yet another set of dips. Finally satisfied that his triceps and pecs were as pumped as they could be, only then did he go home.

From what Zulak had to say, it’s also obvious that he was a fan of “instinctive” training. If he felt the necessity, then he did more, or less, than what he intended when planning his workout session.

Sergio posing in the early '70s

The Myth’s Mr. Olympia Program

Here is the program that Sergio used to win his first Mr. Olympia in 1967. He trained 5 days per week, Monday through Friday, and then took the weekends off. This was actually less training days than what a lot of the champions of his era performed, but his workouts were so demanding that he needed the two days’ rest.

Monday and Thursday:

Bench Presses: 135x10, 225x5, 315x5, 350x3, 375x3, 400x1, 380x max reps, 360x max reps. After this, he would perform “down-the-rack sets”, dropping the weight by 20 pounds on each set, and performing the max number of reps he could until he got back down to 135.
Behind-the-Neck Chins: 6x10 (performed between bench press sets as he worked up to 400 pounds)
Front Chins: 14x10 (performed between bench press sets as he worked his way back down to 135 pounds)
Upright Rows: 180x5x10
Bent-Over Rows: 150x5x10

Tuesday and Friday:

Situps: 5x20
Calf-machine Raises: 200x5x50
Dumbbell Curls: 70x5x15 (each arm) supersetted with:
Standing Barbell Curls: 150x5x15
Barbell Triceps Extensions: 150x5x10 supersetted with:
One-arm Triceps Pressdowns: 90x5x15 (each arm)
Barbell Preacher Curls: 100x5x10 supersetted with:
Seated Triceps Presses: 100x5x10

Wednesday:

Situps: 25x15 supersetted with:
Twists x 2 minutes
Leg Raises: 15x25
Squats: Sergio performed these for 20 sets, using the same technique as the bench presses on Monday and Thursday.
One-Leg Calf Raises: 200x20x15

Long Live The Myth

Sergio passed from this world into the next on November 12, 2012. Although he is no longer with us, his legend will live on, and for good reason—in my book, he was the best bodybuilder this world has ever seen.

Sources:

Mozee, Gene. “Sergio Oliva’s Myth-Building Training Secrets”. IronMan Magazine, June 1994

Sloan, C.S. “Monster Pump: Tips for Outrageous Muscle Growth”. IronMan Magazine, January 1997

Zulak, Greg. “Dips and Pushups for Big Pecs, Delts, and Triceps”. MuscleMag International, November 1995

Lamble, Mike. “Respect Sergio Oliva”. MuscleMag International, October 1998

Lean Mass Made Simple and Fast!

The Ultimate 9-Week Program for Lean Muscle Growth

By Matthew Sloan

The author, Matthew Sloan, before embarking on his 9-week program for Lean Muscle Mass

Muscle growth. We all want it. And we want it fast! Any serious lifter knows that there is a limit to how much muscle one can put on in a short period of time, but a well-designed program—combined with a nutritious diet and effective supplementation—can ensure optimal results. So before I get to the program, and why it’s effective, lets go over nutrition and supplementation.

For nutrition, there are only a few "must-dos":

-You must be in a caloric surplus. By this, I mean you must be consuming more calories than you are burning daily. In order for your muscles to grow, you need the extra calories, but since this program is about " lean muscle growth", I would recommend a caloric surplus of 300-500 calories. Example: If you are burning 2500 calories daily, consume 2800-3000 calories. This caloric surplus is a slight one to ensure little to no fat gains.

-Consume 1 gram of protein per pound of lean muscle mass. Example: If you weigh 200lbs at 10% bodyfat, then get at least 180g protein daily. Many eating regimens recommend too much protein when 1 gram per bodyweight is more than enough to build muscle. Studies have shown this[1].

-At least 40% of calories should come from carbohydrates. Too many people are scared of carbs due to insulin reasons. But carbs are very important in having plenty of energy for successful workouts, and for sufficient amounts of glycogen stored in the muscle cells. Trust me, carbs are not the enemy. For me, I even have 65% of my calories from carbs, and I have no problem with staying lean (and I am in no way one of those people who can just eat whatever and stay lean year round[2]).

For supplementation, just keep it simple. Here are the few supplements I would recommend for this program:

-Creatine: This is one of the most proven to be effective supplements. Multiple studies have been done on creatine to show that it is safe for all ages. Creatine can help with your strength and power in the gym, resulting in a better workout, which eventually results in more gains.

-Branch Chain Amino Acids(BCAA'S): BCAAs make up protein, and are important in the preservation of muscle. I take 1-2 scoops intraworkout.

-Multivitamin: This can help ensure that you get sufficient amounts of micronutrients daily.

These are the only supplements that I would consider necessary. Other supplements that you might want to consider could be a pre workout and/or a recovery supplement such as glutamine.

So these are the main key points for your nutrition and supplementation during this program. Now to the fun stuff: the training! This program was inspired by the “German Volume Training” articles of Charles Poliquin[3]. It revolves around a 10x10 routine, but with a few key variations to prevent plateaus—and to aid in maximizing hypertrophy. Here is the training split for this program:

Monday: Back and Biceps

Tuesday: Legs

Wednesday: Chest and Triceps

Thursday:Cardio and Abs

Friday: Shoulders

Saturday: Back and Biceps

Sunday: Legs

There are always 4 rest days between each training session for a particular muscle group. This ensures that your muscles have recovered enough to be trained again, and that they have plenty of time to grow.

Cardio is not necessary on this program since this is not a fat loss regimen, but there is no harm in doing it if you so like. There have even been studies regarding the benefits cardio has for building muscle.

So here is the layout for a training session:

Example Leg Day:

Squats 10x10

Leg extensions 2x25

Lying Hamstring Curls 2x25

Calf Raises 2x25

Matthew performing a set of barbell curls—always a good 10x10 exercise on "back and biceps" day

You will always choose one compound movement for the muscle groups, and do your 10x10 routine. This is to get in that high volume—and, yes, it is difficult. You should choose a weight that you could get about 15 reps with. If you hit failure before 10 on a set, then just strip the weight by 5-10 lbs. So after you do your 10x10, you will throw in 2 to 3 isolation exercises for the bodypart. And do 2 to 3 sets of each exercise for high reps. This is done in order to pump the muscles full of blood. Make sure on the isolation exercises to get maximum stretches and contraction on the muscles throughout each set.

Arnold used to say that the muscles needed to be "shocked", never knowing what was "coming at them". Although that was a weird way of putting it, he really just meant to implement some variation in your training. Variation can help prevent plateaus, and in the case of this program, result in the growth of all types of muscle fibers (the slow and the fast twitch fibers). To achieve this during this 9-week program, your training will have slight rep range changes in three-week increments. So for the first 3 weeks you will stick with the traditional 10x10 for your compound movement. And then the next three weeks (week 4-6), your compound movement will be with heavier weights, but for 10x5. And then for your last three weeks (week 7-9), your compound movement will be with lighter weights, but for 10x15. These changes will help to ensure that you don't plateau, and will ensure the growth of all muscle fibers. Here is one more example of a training day:

Chest and Triceps:

Incline Dumbbell presses 10x10

Incline flyes 3x20

Wide grip push-ups 3x20

Weighted Triceps Dips 10x10

Overhead triceps extensions 3x20

Cable triceps extension 3x20

Matthew performing a set of chins—another good 10x10 exercise

Hopefully now you understand the layout of the program, and are able to design it with effective movements. As long as you stick with the basic guidelines of the program, you can manipulate the variables and find what works best for you! So keep your nutrition and supplementation on point and train with intensity and watch those muscles grow!

(Matthew’s Note: Follow us on Instagram at SLOAN.STRENGTH for updates on the Integral Strength blog and to help us grow! Be on the lookout for new articles weekly!)

[1] Just “Google” it!

[2] C.S.’s note: Before this year, my son was always described politely as “husky” or “thick boned” by family members. Losing bodyfat for him was not something that happened overnight.

[3] C.S.’s note: Apparently my son is one of those still under the impression that Poliquin’s so-called “German Volume Training” was something revolutionary. Please see my post entitled “Vince Gironda’s Weight Gaining Tips”.

A Hard-as-Hell, Tough-as-Nails Workout Program for Constructing Monstrous Back Width and Thickness!

by Jared Smith

The massive back of Dorian Yates!

Some things in this world are a dime a dozen. The lifting world is no different. I can’t tell you how many times I have been in the gym and watched guys prance around with a half decent chest, but their shoulders protrude forward and their backs are narrow—not to mention completely lacking in thickness. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that chest development is not impressive. However, one can have a much stronger and larger chest if the foundation from which they press is carrying a considerable amount of beef!

The back has always appealed to me more than any other muscle group. As a kid, I associated a wide, thick back with power and strength, though at the time I had no clue why. Louie Simmons—one of the greatest powerlifting coaches to ever load a barbell—said that he could tell who the strongest guys in any gym were based upon how much muscle their backs carried. In addition to adding that “powerful” look, the back has always been my favorite body part from a visual perspective. The way each muscle is pieced together, resembling a mountain range or a road atlas, has always been in my eyes something awesome to behold.

The Tools for Back MASS Construction

To build any muscle, one must learn how to contract it optimally. To ensure a muscle is stimulated to the max, you must train it through the entire contractile range. You may be aware of what some call the “all or none” principle, and I am not disagreeing with it. Yes, a muscle will contract regardless of which exercise you choose for it. What this principle fails to cover is the fact that the muscle is actually never going through the entirety of its range of motion in a single exercise, thus never being taxed from the mid-range, stretch, and contracted position. While it is very true that you can put a significant amount of mass on your back by performing just the basics, once you’ve attained a base of mass, the more complex work begins. The back can handle insane amounts of volume compared to any other muscle of the upper body. This presents us with a great opportunity to stimulate growth on a systemic level. Back day is just as important as Leg day! The tools you will use to build your back will include at least one exercise to cover each portion of the muscles contractile range:

Mid-range: Rows, Palms-in Pulldowns

Contracted: Straight-Arm Pulldowns

Stretch: Pullovers (Dumbbell, Barbell, or Machine)

What about the Deads? Deadlifts will be done on this day as well, but only after the upper back has been taxed to the max! You will be amazed at how hard each and every muscle in your upper back will contract by doing deadlifts at the end of the workout!

Go Mental!

Any time you train, it is as much mental as it is physical, but this is more important on back day than any other. You cannot see your back, so you must put your mind there instead. You must think of stretching and contracting the entire time, and never losing the much-needed tension on the muscle. A great way to maintain tension on the muscle is through a technique I learned from the work of IFBB pro Ben Pakulski called “intension”. This is a practice of applying force in certain directions, depending upon the muscle being trained, which will keep that muscle under tension and screaming for mercy! As I lay out the program, I will explain how to apply intension to each exercise, allowing you to really connect your mind to the muscle, and get the most out of each and every rep. Remember, exercise is movement, and movement is physics, so let’s make each movement count!

Let’s Hit It!

We start off with a midrange exercise where we can move some weight. We will begin with bent-over barbell rows. After you’ve warmed up, you will perform four sets of 8-12 reps. Keep everything tight with no swaying of your back. On this exercise, you will use inward intent, which means you will attempt to “shorten” the bar with your hands. As you perform the row, push as if you are trying to put your hands together, thus bringing the ends of the bar together. If you can’t hold the contraction for a two count, the weight you selected is too heavy, so check the ego at the door and let’s contract some muscles! This will keep your elbows glued to your sides, and your lats will contract like crazy! Shoot for a three count on the negative.

Arnold—in his heyday—performing a set of barbell rows.

Next up, we will perform a superset of straight-arm pulldowns and close-grip, palms-in pulldowns. What I love about this combo is that the contracted position movement really makes you aware of the lats and how they feel, thus making the subsequent movement more effective. To apply intentto the first exercise in the superset, think about bending the bar into a horse-shoe shape, which will keep your elbows traveling close to your sides, making sure your lats are “firing”.

On the close-grip, palms-in pulldowns, practice inward intent as with the barbell rows above. As always, make sure to hold each contraction for a two count. Once you are unable to hold the contraction at all, the set is done. Perform this superset three times for 8-12 reps per exercise! Make sure to get a three count on the negative phase of each rep.

Next, we will go to the stretch position exercise—the pullover. The reason for doing this movement last in the sequence for upper back training, is because I believe it is dangerous to put a cold muscle in a stretched position. Once there is blood in the muscle, the tissue is more pliable. No matter the variation of pullover you choose, practice inward intent by attempting to get your elbows as close as you can. Notice how all versions of intension for lats keeps your elbows traveling close to your body? The idea by practicing intension is to keep your form locked in, and to keep the tension where you want—and need—it! Perform 4 sets of 8-12 reps, and keep the tempo slow.

Mike Mentzer was a big fan of Nautilus machine pullovers for the lats.

Finally, we come to the end. Deadlifts. The man maker! Before I even get into this exercise, let me say that if back development is your primary concern, use straps! I couldn’t care less how bad-ass you believe yourself to be; your grip WILL give way before your back does! As for form: Strap in, lock down your upper body as upright as you can get it, drop your ass, drive your feet through the floor, and try your damnedest to squeeze your shoulder blades together at the top of the movement. Keep the tempo controlled, with around three seconds on the decent, and perform four sets of 6-8 reps!

There you have it: Your formula for widening your wings, and thickening all of your back muscles. It’s time to stop reading, and get to the gym. Let your mind fill with a controlled rage, and let the rage consume your entire workout! Go forth, conquer, and destroy your back!!

Simplify Your Training, Your Diet, and Your Life to Receive Your Best Results Ever!

Okay, perhaps the title of this article is slightly over the top. After all, some of you probably have achieved some pretty good results in your days spent pulling, pushing, and battling the barbell. But, for a great majority, it could be pretty close to the truth. If you have spent weeks, months, or, possibly, even years toiling away at ineffective—and often too damn complicated—diets and training programs, it could be that you've never really seen the results you want, much less what you're actually capable of achieving.
After training and working with many bodybuilders, lifters, and average men and women (my favorite people to train were always just average women who wanted to get in shape—they always trained hard, never complained, always did what I asked of them) over the years, the largest culprit for lack of gains—hands down—was lack of simplicity.
Women try too many off-the-wall diets and pills, and too many over-complicated, but ineffective, cardio programs, and men use too many advanced training programs, splits, and bodypart workouts of "the champs" to ever see any measurable progress.
Training should be simple.
Eating should be simple.
Life should—for the most part—be simple. (Please note here that "simple" does not mean lazy, easy, or that you shouldn't think. It means none of these things. In fact, one of the best mottos you could have for training and life is "simple but hard".)
Simplicity Simplified
Some of the largest, strongest, most muscular men in the history of bodybuilding and strength sports have followed simple programs. Really, how hard is it to train with the basic barbell exercises, follow a diet with lots of healthy carbs, protein, and fat sources, and get enough rest to grow on, but not so much that you atrophy? (Apparently, the answer to this is "complicated," based on the number of emails I receive on a weekly basis.)
Here are the basics to creating a simple, result-producing program:
Follow the "Big 5". I've written about the Big 5 elsewhere. It's really pretty easy. Just do the following each and every week, week in and week out:

Squat heavy weights
Put heavy weights over your head
Pick heavy weights off the floor
Drag or carry heavy weights for a distance
Consume a lot of calorie dense foods

Even after writing this article, I can almost guarantee you that some genius will write me, asking, "What do you mean by 'squat heavy weights'?" What I mean is that you need to use the good ol' fashioned back squat, and get on a heavy squatting regimen. Sure, you can do some variations—front squats, bottom-position squats, for instance—but the main exercise should be the regular barbell back squat. Perform 5 sets of 5 reps, or 5 sets of 5/4/3/2/1, or perform ramps with either sets of 5, sets of 3, or sets of 1. Heck, if you want, perform ramps with all three—5, 3, and 1. Get on the "Squat Nemesis" program, and see what you're actually made of. Or follow the classic 20-rep breathing squat routine. (I always liked the way Brooks Kubrik referred to these as "death sets".) Or, what-the-hell, just get on a plain, regular, boring 3 sets of 10 program. The point is simple: squat heavy stuff.

What kind of heavy crap do you need to put over your head? How about the basic barbell overhead press? But feel free to do dumbbell overhead presses, one-arm overhead presses, power snatches, or even something slightly more esoteric such as sandbag overhead presses. And for all of you bodybuilders out there, you still can't beat the behind-the-neck press or the Bradford press.

Need to understand what I mean by picking heavy stuff off the floor? Any variation of deadlift will do the trick, as will any variation of clean. I don't care if it's a beer keg or a heavy barrel (actually, both of those are pretty darned good).

And there's no end to the amount of heavy stuff that you can drag or carry. Dumbbells, sandbags, kegs, barrels, rocks, you name it, and it works as long as it fits the bill as "heavy." Carry all of that for either a distance or for a "timed" carry.

CS performs some farmer's walks

And as for consuming a lot of calorie-dense food, I'm surprised how many people still don't seem to understand, in this day and age, exactly what this means. It means to consume a lot of good, healthy proteins: steak, chicken (bone or no-bone, skin on or off; it doesn't matter), pork (same rules as chicken applies) and fish. Cook all of this baked, boiled, grilled, or broiled, just as long as it's not fried. It means to consume a lot of good, healthy carbs: rice (any kind), oatmeal, whole-wheat pasta, whole-wheat breads, potatoes (any kind), and any and all fruits and vegetables should do the trick. As for fats: Just make sure that you don't eat fried food, grease, and limit the trans-fats. As for the rest of it, feel free to lather on as much real butter as you want on your food.

Follow the "two-barbell rule". The "rule" for this one is pretty simple: start each workout off with at least two barbell exercises before doing anything else. Preferably, these two exercises should be one of the first 3 of the Big 5. Squats and deadlifts do the trick. As do overhead presses and power cleans. Try my "best leg workout you've never tried" by starting off with bottom-positions squats followed with sumo deficit deadlifts.

The great Bill Starr does some heavy clean and presses in competition

If you started off the workout with bottom-position squats and sumo deads, then finish it with one-arm dumbbell overhead presses, followed by a couple of farmer's walks until you feel as if your hands are numb, your traps are burning with a searing pain, and your shoulders are about to fall out of their sockets. That's one hell of a workout, in my opinion. Nothing new under the bodybuilding/strength-building sun would ever be capable of beating it.
Focus on Specific, Performance-Oriented Goals. Sometimes when you have goals such as "getting big,""looking good," or "getting ripped", what you really have is nothing specific, but just same vague, wishy-washy want that you desire, but don't really know how to go about getting. Yes, simplifying things as in my above two tips will help you attain one or two of the above goals, but it's better to pick a specific goal, and then train—and eat in the appropriate manner—in order to reach said goals.
And here's the thing that a lot of people don't seem to get: set performance-oriented goals in order to achieve your appearance goals. If you want to be really big and massive—a common goal for most of you who feel like the proverbial 98-pound weakling who's constantly having sand kicked in his face—then learn to set a couple of easy-to-achieve goals related to both diet and training.
For diet, let's assume that you've been averaging 2,500 calories per day of rather crappy food. First, eat the kind of food I discussed earlier. Second, increase your calories by 200 every day until you reach a daily caloric intake of around 4,000 calories.
For training, pick 3 exercises and focus on increasing your 3-rep max on each of these exercises. You can't go wrong with squats, power cleans, and overhead presses as your 3 choices, but any 3 similar exercises will do the trick.
Don't look in the mirror constantly, or lament over the fact that there's no separation between your pectoralis major and minor, or any other crap such as that. Just eat more food until you reach your caloric goal, and get stronger on your 3 exercises-of-choice. The results in your appearance will quickly follow.
Life or Something Like It
Time for a little philosophy.
Even when lifters or bodybuilders simplify their training and diets, they often fail for one other reason, a reason that may be something of a surprise to them since they never really thought of it as a goal-killer: They don't simplify their lives.
An overcomplicated, stressful, and/or chaotic life can cause all of your hard, worked-for gains to flush down the toilet.
Keep life simple. Here are a couple of pointers:

Don't worry about what others are doing. Too many people spend their lives consumed or worried about the lives of other people. Now, I don't mean that you shouldn't care for other people, or that you shouldn't have compassion for others—that's the opposite of what I'm talking about. Just don't focus on the lifestyle of other people, or the results others are getting out of their training, or their businesses, or anything else that those other people may be succeeding at. That stuff is not your business, and causes needless stress that only prevents you from achieving your goals in life.
Only worry about what you can control. The things that are under your control are the only things that you need to concern yourself with. All of the other stuff needs to leave your mind as soon as it enters. You control what you put in your body, how hard you train, how hard you work, etc. You don't control how much muscle you gain from your training and eating, whether it's 5 pounds or 20 pounds—that kind of thing is controlled by your genetics, and your genetics are not under your control. You don't control how other people treat you; you only control how you treat others and yourself. You don't control what others are doing in their training, nor should you be concerned in correcting anyone else on how they should, or should not, be training and eating. You only control how you train, and how you eat, and how you think.

Getting good results from your training and from your diets really shouldn't be that complicated. Apply my simplicity tips to your workouts and your life, and the sky really might be the only limit.

High-Voltage Shock Therapy Training for Stubborn Delts!

by Jared Smith

Arnold and his massive shoulders!

Few things will make one stand out in a crowd quite like a super-wide, capped set of deltoids. Shoulders have always been the symbol of strength, and give a bodybuilder a comic book-character look.

While it is true that the delts get trained, to a certain degree, when training the chest, that doesn’t mean you can skimp on training them or simply press your heart out in order to earn them. Pressing will stimulate all three heads of the deltoids, but the anterior—or front deltoid—will get the brunt of the work. The best way to add width and dimension to the shoulders is to add a significant amount of beef to the medial and posterior delts.

Delts to be Inspired By

I must admit that for a long time my shoulders were lagging far behind my back and chest. Though I trained them with the same volume as the aforementioned groups, they seemed to stay far behind. I was sitting on the porcelain throne one day, thumbing through an old issue of FLEX magazine, and I saw a picture of Kevin Levrone. His Deltoids were some of the most monstrous of all time! I was immediately inspired, and decided that I was going to make it my mission to make my delts swell to match my back and chest.

Kevin Levrone - Jared's inspiration for his insane delt training

On my way to the gym, I kept thinking of different ways to up the intensity of my training but, by the same token, I wanted to increase volume as well. I knew that muscle damage would cause some fiber remodeling, but I also recognized that cell swelling and hyperemia were closely correlated with hypertrophy. As I sipped on my naNO Vapor—shameless plug for a Muscletech product which, by the way, I find to work very well—I formulated a game plan. I decided that I would perform a set of 10 reps on lateral raises between every set of my first two exercises, which would be two different pressing variations. Next up, I would do the same with seated bent laterals and reverse peck deck flies.

Double-Duty Shock-Therapy Training

To this day, Don Howorth still has some of the best delts of the bodybuilding world

For starters, I would perform seated smith-machine presses, and chase them with laterals. As soon as my set of presses was done, I went immediately into lateral raises. Each set of presses was done with a six-count negative to cause plenty of mechanical trauma to the deltoids, and the laterals help to pump the muscle. The goal with the presses is to actually train to positive failure. I made sure that I would get all ten reps on all sets of lateral raises, concentrating on contracting the muscles and keeping that pump going. After four sets of smith-machine presses, it was time to move on. (We are at eight sets thus far but we are just getting started.)

Next up, I opted for seated Arnold Presses and, again, I would perform a set of lateral raises between each set of presses. As soon as I put down the dumbbells I was pressing, I did a set of laterals. Back and forth until four sets of presses were completed, bringing the total number of sets to sixteen.

From there, I began attacking the rear deltoids. I started the assault with seated bent laterals. I keep my palms facing down on this movement, which seems to keep my trapezius from coming into play too much, and allows for a better contraction of the posterior delts. Yet again, I tack on a set of laterals to polish off each set of bent laterals, and by now my delts are really starting to ache! I was now twenty-four sets deep and I was in the home stretch!

Finally, I made my way to the peck deck machine and simply performed a static hold. I contracted my rear delts against the resistance, and kept them in there until the weight literally forced my arms all the way down. The goal here is one minute but if you can go longer, then do so! Immediately grab a set of dumbbells and raise them until they are parallel to the floor, and hold them there. The weights here will seem tiny and insignificant, but I promise you it will feel like a thousand pounds!

Here’s what all that looks like:

Smith machine Shoulder Press 4x8-12 6/0/1 Tempo

Lateral raises 4x10 1/0/1 Tempo

Seated Arnold Press 4x8-12 2/0/1 Tempo

Lateral Raises 4x10 1/0/1 Tempo

Seated Bent Laterals 4x8-12 1/0/1 Tempo

Reverse peck Deck 1xStatic Contraction

Lateral Raise 1xStatic Contraction

I know it seems like an absurd amount of volume, but I guarantee this will make those shoulders expand. Give this an honest try once a week for four weeks, and you will notice that you are casting a shadow so scary the Boogie Man will be checking his closet for youat night!

"If You're Not Tracking, You're Simply Slacking"

by Matthew Sloan

The author, Matthew Sloan

Many people assume that tracking your food is difficult and time consuming, and that's just plain wrong. Tracking your food can be very simple, easy, and beneficial. Here are the two main reasons why tracking what you eat is so important.

1. Breaking fat loss plateaus. Many people who begin "fat loss journeys", see progress in the beginning—they lose 5-10 lbs or so, but then it stops. The primary reason for this fat loss plateau is a problem with their diet (I will go into the exact detailed reasons for this in another article). People will try everything to break through this plateau—everything from crash diets to extreme amounts of cardio. But eventually these people will just give up, end up binge eating, and gaining all the weight they loss back—I know from experience; this is how it started for me on my fat-loss journey. However, it would be very simple to break through this plateau if you were tracking your food. For example, let’s say I had a client who had seen some progress and had lost 5 lbs, but then hit a plateau. Since I would have had him tracking his food, he could do a few things: he could take away 25 grams of carbs from his daily diet, he could switch up his macronutrient ratio, he could add in some carb cycling, or he could even add in some cardio(100 calories worth). Any of these methods would let him break through his plateau, and continue to reach his goals. But to do any of these things, the person must know what they are consuming daily. If you aren't tracking what you eat, then you will be unable to use any of these methods, and will just get frustrated with these plateaus.

In his heyday, Arnold got extremely ripped by tracking all of his caloric intake

2. Performance. Whether you are a strength athlete, a bodybuilder, or even a fighter, your performance will be crucial for success, and nutrition will be the key factor to performing well. So again, tracking what you eat is going to allow you to manipulate your diet for your specific needs. For example, if a bodybuilder is noticing a lack of a good "pump" in the gym, then, if he was tracking his food, he could add in some simple carbs before his workout—50 grams or so. Another reason for a bodybuilder to track what he eats, could be to make sure he is refilling his glycogen stores after an intense workout. He can make sure that he gets 50-100 grams of carbs post-workout.

If you are a powerlifter, and you start noticing that one of your major lifts is not going up, then you may need to change something. Now, of course, you could change up your workout, but you could also do something like add an extra few hundred calories to your diet. The increase in calories will help your overall strength gains, and if you aren't tracking your food, you will be unable to know whether or not you are getting these extra calories.

If you are a fighter, then your energy levels will be crucial for your performance. If you know what you are consuming, then you will be able to add in carbs/fats for an increase in energy if that is needed.

There are many more benefits to tracking what you eat and there are not any negatives to it, aside from the few minutes a day it takes to look at the nutrition facts of your food. For me personally, I use a basic nutrition app to track my food (for convenience), but you can always go “old-school” and use a pen and paper.

a.k.a.: Antagonist Agony

A Teeth-Grinding, Blood-Curdling Superset-Based Program!

By Jared Smith

Freddy Ortiz and Larry Scott - lovers of the superset!

We’ve all seen the images of bodybuilders from the golden age of training when there was far less—how should I put it?—“douche baggery” and far more camaraderie. The days when high-volume ruled the muscle-building world, and a 3 hour workout wasn't unusual. Much of what those guys did seemed deceptively simple. However, there is much you can learn from the bodybuilders of yesteryear. I absolutely love the antagonistic superset-based programs many old-school guys used. (Most people don't realize that optimal performance from one muscle is dependant upon how quickly its antagonistic muscle can elongate.)

Supersets are awesome in general; they decrease the amount of time it takes for a certain amount of work to be done, which increases the intensity level of the session. This is key for reaching your goal, whether that goal is to lose fat or to build muscle. The following program is one that I put together that you may enjoy if you love the old-school style of training, but also love pushing sets to—and beyond—momentary muscular failure. The volume is lower than guys like Arnold did “back in the day”, but the intensity level is off the charts! With this program, you will superset each muscle with its antagonist, and each set will be driven to a level of extremity! The pain will be excruciating—and you'll more than likely lose your lunch during some of the workouts—but the results will be worth all the pain and suffering you'll be forced to endure. With that said, here we go:

Workout 1: Chest/Back  

Superset 1: Incline Barbell or Dumbbell Presses – 2x6-10 and T-Bar Rows – 2x6-10. Intensifier- Upon reaching failure, have your partner assist you with two or three forced reps.

Superset 2: Flat Barbell or Dumbbell Presses - 2x10-12 and Wide-Grip Pulldowns. - 2x10-12. Intensifier- Negative emphasis (6 seconds on each negative, and with a rep range on these of 10-12 that is a ton of tension time on the muscle—extreme burn and lactic acid surge from hell!)

Superset 3: Cable Flyes - 2x15-20 and Seated Cable Rows - 2x15-20. Intensifier- Drop sets. Upon reaching failure, perform a double drop set before moving on to the next exercise.

Workout 2: Legs

Superset 1: Leg Extensions - 2x12-15 and Lying Leg Curls - 2x12-15. Intensifier- 1 1/2 reps. Go through the full range of the movement, and once you're in the contracted position slowly allow the weight to drift about 1/2 of the way back toward the stretch position, and contract once again.

Superset 2: Leg Presses - 2x8-15(6 second negatives) and Stiff Leg Deadlifts - 2x8-15(3-4 second hold in stretch position before the ascent.) Intensifier- Negative emphasis on the first movement, and fascia stretch on the second.

Superset 3: Hack Squats - 2x12-15 and Seated Leg Curls - 2x12-15. Intensifier- "Matrix Reps". 6/0/6 tempo. That’s six seconds on the positive and the negative! (Looks like slow motion but burns like a motherf#$%er!)

Superset 4: Standing Calf Raises - 2x25-30 and Seated Calf Raises - 2x25-30. Intensifier- Drop Sets. Upon Reaching Failure Perform drop sets until rep range is met.

Workout 3: Shoulders

Delts do not have a true antagonist, however, that won't stop us from making the intensity borderline unbearable!

Superset 1: Lateral Raises 2x12-15 Behind the Neck Barbell Presses 2x12-15. Intensifier- "Matrix reps" as described above.

Superset 2: Dumbbell Bent Laterals - 2x12-15 and Machine Rear Laterals - 2x12-15. Intensifier-Drop Sets. Upon reaching failure, perform drops until rep goal is reached.

Superset 3: Dumbbell Shrugs 1x6(Continue ascending performing sets of six until you cannot complete six) and Cable Upright Row 1x10 (Same as above). Intensifier- Ascending sets. If you aren't familiar with this, it is essentially performing a set with one weight, stopping just shy of failure, then increasing the weight and repeating the exercise until you reach a weight that will not allow you to complete the prescribed number of reps.

Workout 4: Arms  

Superset 1: Close Grip Bench Presses - 1x11-15 and  Barbell Curls - 1x11-15. Intensifier- Rest Pause or “DC style”.

Superset 2: Skull Crushers - 2x6-10(Come up half way then back down then all the way up. That is one rep. No double contraction on this. We're going for the stretch) and Incline Dumbbell Curls - 2x6-10 (Come up half way then back down then all the way up. That is one rep . No double contraction on this. We're going for the stretch). Intensifier- 1 and 1/2 reps.

Superset 3: Machine Preacher Curls - 2x12-15 and Pushdowns - 2x12-15. Intensifier- Drop Sets. Upon reaching failure, continue to perform drops until the prescribed number of reps are completed.

That's all she wrote! Take as many days as you need to recover between workouts. Keep in mind: you will grow when you recover from the savage beating you put your muscles through! Run this program for 6 weeks, then return to a sub-failure, volume-style training program to allow your body to recoup, then you can start it up again!

As of late, I have—for multitudinous reasons—found it hard to write very much. (Please forgive me, in fact, if I have yet to respond to anyone’s email questions—I will as soon as possible.) Not that writing itself, per se, is hard. Once I sit down to my computer, open up Word, or once I sit down on my couch, notebook in hand, I find writing to be—while not the easiest thing—not much of a chore. No, I have been busy with so many other things that, unfortunately, I just haven’t found the time to write much on my blog. And when I have found the time, I have attempted to work on some articles, or some other stuff that actually makes me money writing—or, at least, has the potential to make money.

Despite my inability to write as much as I need to, I would really like to write on this blog more, despite the fact that I don’t know if I always have something very important to write about. (Most of my writing here, in fact, is very much the same stuff said different ways, but, I suppose, that’s how it is with most muscle magazines, power training articles, and the like.)

Until now, I had not found a solution out of my dilemma—my dilemma being how in the world do I post multiple writings each week, as opposed to a few times a month, or maybe just once every month or two?

The solution is what you are currently reading: a “journal” of sorts, where I will write my various thoughts for the day involving workout principles, diet strategies, or—when the mood strikes me—musings of a more philosophical bent.

My goal is write a couple “journals” each week, along with my usual stuff. I hope you will find the result at least somewhat interesting.

Journal of Strength

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my sons walk over to my house from their high school, and we (of course) lift. (They stay with me on the weekends, and we train every Saturday, and Sunday, as well.)

My youngest, Garrett, who is 14, wants to compete in a powerlifting meet soon. He’s small—only weighs 105 lbs—but he bench presses 165 lbs. Not shabby. He alternates between days when he squats, days when he deadlifts, and days when he just bench presses. His goal is to be as strong as possible for his bodyweight, and so far the workouts are paying off.

Typically, when training someone Garrett’s age, I wouldn’t allow him or her to train with such a “split” routine unless the sole goal is strength, so this kind of workout is fine for Garrett. It would also be fine for any teenagers who need strength—but not necessarily more muscle mass—in their chosen sport. An example would be a teenager who wrestles or competes in martial arts.

My oldest son, Matthew, 15, simply wants to be as big as humanly possible for a teenager his age. I would, in fact, say that he’s a bit obsessed with it. Here’s his current program:

Saturday: Upper body “density” day

Sunday: Lower body “density” day

Tuesday: Full body “high rep” day

Thursday: Full body “maximal strength” day

The two density days are performed with multiple exercises, using multiple sets of low to moderate reps. The goal is to get as many reps as possible in a relatively short period of time with relatively heavy—or at least moderate—weights. Typically, for instance, Matthew begins Saturday’s workouts with chins, performing multiple sets of 3 reps with very little rest between sets. He usually gets 20 to 30 reps done in ten to fifteen minutes. He then follows—hypothetically; the exercises change—with something such as bench presses, overhead presses, power cleans, power snatches, and curls.

Sundays it’s more of the same for the lower body.

Tuesday is a full-body workout using such things as squats, benches, overheads, lunges, curls, farmer’s walks, and sled drags. The sets are about 3 to 4 per exercise with relatively high reps in the 15 to 25 rep range.

“Maximal strength” Thursday means that he will pick two—maybe three— exercises and work up to a heavy set of 5 reps (typically). Bench presses and deadlifts are good choices, as are overhead presses and squats.

This program, by the way, is a sound way for any teenager to train—so long as he or she has cut their teeth on full-body workouts. Matthew, for instance, put in his share of full-body workouts centered on nothing but squats, bench presses, and (either) deadlits or heavy overhead presses for a long time before he switched over to this workout. (And, I must admit, I let him perform an even more “bodybuilding-friendly” program before this one.)

The program is, for the most part, still centered on full-body workouts—a “must” for teenage lifters—but, because the weekends are “split” workouts, it also allows the teenage lifter to do stuff that I might not always be that fond of—such as lots and lots of dumbbell curls—but that most teenage boys seem to love.

Journal of Strength

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

My current workout program is a bit haphazard. But it’s also enjoyable and effective for my current goals.

It’s haphazard in the fact that I pretty much do whatever I feel like on whatever days I feel like training. Of course, to be honest, that’s not entirely the case, but it’s close to it. There is some structure—I always begin each workout with high-set singles of one exercise. I rotate between a few different exercises. Deadlifts, power cleans, power snatches, full snatches, clean and presses, or one-arm dumbbell presses are the typical exercises, although occasionally I will do flat bench presses or squats. Also, I sometimes do two exercises for high-set singles instead of just one, and I always finish the workout with two or three additional exercises of whatever I feel as if I should do, for two or three sets each of whatever rep range I feel like doing.

There is structure, true. But there’s also chaos—or what seems to be chaos to someone who witnesses my training on a regular basis. Truth be told, there’s really nothing too chaotic about it, for the structure of the high-set singles—the single-pointedness of such a technique—leads, often, to something akin to flow states, and, so, what seems as if it’s nothing more than chaos is really the flow of what my auto-regulated body-mind knows that it should be doing.

(Typically, I would write this journal entry immediately after training, when the training is fresh on my mind, but I’m rather tired this afternoon, and may be that much more tired once my evening’s session is finished, and I’ve consumed my fair share of grilled salmon and red wine—a pinot, perhaps, or maybe several glasses of a cabernet sauvignon. So, be that as it may, this entry comes before the actual workout. But I digress…)

Tonight I will be doing one-arm dumbbell overhead presses for 15 to 20 sets of 1 repetition—at least, that’s the plan. And since I haven’t done this workout yet, I have no way of knowing exactly what my auxiliary movements will be, although I suspect something along the line of chins, bench presses of one sort or another, a curl of some sort, and maybe some thick-bar dumbbell deadlifts.

Last night I did power cleans with a relatively light weight—only 205 pounds—for 10 singles, and then I followed this with some Bulgarian split squats for 4 sets of 10 to 15 reps (each leg), some walking lunges, and some dips.

My weight was light because I currently have a herniated disk which is pinching a nerve, and causing some pain and numbness in my right arm. Eight or nine years ago, I had surgery to repair two herniated disks in my neck, and I don’t really want to repeat that, which brings me around to the subject of this entry: the benefits of performing high-set singles. (My herniated disk is also one reason that good ol’ barbell squats are not on my list of “regular” high-set single exercises. For everyone else reading this thing, they should be on your list.)

I enjoy workouts of high-set singles, and I have for some time. I also think they are, hands down, one of the most effective ways to train (along with high-set doubles and triples, to be fair).

One of the greatest benefits is that they allow you to get a relatively high amount of work done in a short period of time—without suffering form degradation. In my workout last night, I was able to perform all 10 singles in less than 10 minutes, and every rep was fast and explosive.

When performed with heavy weight—90-95% of your one-rep maximum—this becomes even more evident. For instance, my current max in the deadlift is probably around 500 pounds (I have not done these very heavy lately, due to the pinched nerve, so I’m not entirely sure.) If I was to put 450 pounds on the bar—90% of my max—and perform 2 or 3 rep sets, I would not be able to do many. Fatigue would set in fairly fast. If, however, I elected to perform multiple singles, I would be able to get 8 to 10 reps in without too much of a drop in speed and power with each ensuing set.

But even when not performed with heavy weights, the workouts are still effective. This is especially true when doing the various quick lifts. Cleans and snatches in all of their varieties should not be done for sets of high reps, no matter how many times Crossfit “lifters” do such a thing. Form degradation quickly breaks down when you exceed 3 reps per set on these lifts.

But I don’t think it’s just the quick lifts that multiple sets of singles (or low reps) should apply to—I also like them (obviously) with bench presses, squats, deadlifts, and overhead presses. When you are only doing 1 rep on all of these exercises, technique remains perfect and speed and power quickly escalate over only a few weeks of training.

When I was teaching martial arts, I never let any of my students perform more than 5 consecutive repetitions of a single movement before taking a short (albeit, sometimes a very short) break. After a few reps, speed and power are reduced, and form breaks down—even though it’s only slight in advanced practitioners, I’ll admit—this despite the fact that most people would be able to continue with hundreds of reps of each movement if they so chose to. Obviously, the load is very low when punching air, but form breakdown occurs nonetheless.

Here’s the thing: when practicing karate-do this way, I would still do hundreds upon hundreds of punches and kicks in each session, just not consecutively. If I had tried to do them consecutively, then I simply wouldn’t have been able to do enough in each workout compared to doing them non-consecutively.

Do less early so that you can do more later.

That’s another benefit. High-set singles—and their siblings: multiple sets of doubles and multiple sets of triples—allow you to do a lot of work in each session. If you don’t believe me, then load your bench press barbell with 80% of your one-rep maximum and see how many sets of 5 to 6 reps you can do. At the session after that one, load it with 80% of your max and see how many singles you can perform—you might be a little surprised when you crank out 50 singles, whereas I doubt you could manage 10 sets of 5 reps[1].

Another benefit—and this is one my favorite—is that you can recover quicker from high-set singles than you can with sets of multiple reps. And the quicker you can recover, the quicker you can train again. And the more you can train, the faster are your gains going to be.

If you want to get really strong on just a couple of lifts—the power clean and the bench press, for instance—then perform those exercises almost daily for high-set singles. You may be shocked just how quickly you get really strong.

But you don’t have to only pick a couple of exercises. You can certainly do as I’m currently doing and have a lot of exercises at your disposal. You could even do just one lift per-day using this technique, and train each lift only once-per-week, without adding any auxiliary movements. Here is what 5 days of training may look like:

Monday: Squats

Tuesday: Power Cleans

Wednesday: Bench Presses

Thursday: Power Snatches

Friday: Deadlifts

Saturday and Sunday: Rest a lot. Eat a lot.

Next week: Repeat

[1] This is especially true if you’re a power athlete who is “built” for power, for lack of a better word. If you’re one of those lifters who finds that you can only get about 5 to 6 reps with 80% of your one-rep max before reaching momentary muscular failure, then there’s no way you would be able to manage 10 sets of 5 reps. This is not entirely true for those of you who have more “endurance” fibers, and can manage to crank out 10 reps—or more—with 80% of your max.

While reading Nick Horton’s good blog “The Iron Samurai” the other day[1], I came across this quote by the samurai Yamaoku Tesshu: “In order to learn about the Way, forget about self and awaken to the truth… Exerting self is a mistake… We should not say “myself” — in truth there is no such thing… When there is no thought of self, true Bushido develops.”

the samurai, and Zen master, Yamaoku Tesshu

The essence of Bushido is summed up in the last sentence.

When there is no thought of self, true Bushido develops.

Bushido—for those of you who are unaware—is often translated as “the way of the warrior” or, a more literal definition, “the samurai’s way.” It is the way of one who practices Budo. (Budo means “martial path”.)

I have often thought of lifting as a form of Budo, and my gym as the dojo. (This is one reason that I enjoy lifting at home, in my garage dungeon gym. It is not commercial, and, therefore, becomes more of a dojo than anything commercialized. The furthest thing from a dojo, for instance, would be Planet Fitness.)

Lifting as Budo becomes even more true when performing only one or two exercises at each workout for multiple sets each. A lot of lifters who train in both martial arts and Olympic lifting understand this the best—martial arts training (particularly the Japanese martial arts, which I’m partial to) and Olympic lifting allow one to lose thought of self—what my sensei would refer to as “mushin”—and, thus, attain true Bushido.

I don’t think this can really be explained adequately in a blog post—or in any writing, for that matter—so I’m not going to even try to do so. As my sensei was also fond of saying throughout the course of a training session: “Fight without fighting and think without thinking.” He never attempted to explain this to anyone. If you didn’t “get it”, or if it didn’t dawn on you at some point during your Budo practice, I doubt he thought there would be much point.

The only way for any of us to develop true Bushido, and experience this directly, is to train. Training is the path. The path is the goal.

When there is no thought of self, true Bushido develops.

[1] I read his blog once every two weeks or so—I would read it more but, to be honest, I’m afraid I simply don’t peruse the internet enough, which I think is a better trade-off than perusing it too damn much

Journal of Strength

Monday, November 17, 2014

Today I did something that—to some lifters, at least—might seem rather odd. I performed a full-body workout of whatever I felt like doing, for relatively moderate to high reps. I had no idea what I was going to do, with the lone exception of the first exercise, until I actually started training.

This might seem even more odd for those of you who read this blog regularly, which includes me often praising—rather highly, I might add—the benefits of high-frequency training for multiple sets of low reps.

And here’s the thing: I actually think the kind of workout I did today can be highly effective, for a certain segment of the lifting population, at least.

First, a little backtracking is in order.

Last week I mentioned that I have been training using a regular program of high-set singles for the past few weeks. I also mentioned in a previous post that I have been having some pain and numbness in my left hand and arm from a pinched nerve in my neck. Well, the last few days—in addition to being sick—the pain in my arm and neck had increased dramatically, so I knew that it was time for a change[1].

I decided for the next several weeks I would perform a high-frequency, high-volume, low-intensity training program where I will train my entire body every day at each training session. I will work out 5 to 6 days each week, basically just taking a day off whenever I feel as if I need it.

I first discovered how beneficial this program could be about 8 years ago from the strength-training guru—and my mentor, though I have never met him—Bill Starr. At the time, I was coming off of neck surgery for a couple of herniated disks. It was almost six months after the surgery before I could train, and when I did train, I couldn’t resume my ultra-heavy training that I had done for the decade previously. (Now, let me add that, unfortunately, I attempted some very heavy training at first, which only resulted in unnecessary injuries, because I trained too heavy, too quickly.) I was familiar with Starr’s theories on training for the older athlete, which basically involves full-body workouts performed 5 to 6 days each week for fairly high reps, and, so, I thought I would give it a shot. Although not “old” by any stretch of the imagination, my body needed the break until I could recover more fully. (I must add that during this time I first started experimenting with bodyweight-only training during some sessions, as well, and found that it could be quite effective.)

I was surprised with the results I was getting at the time, and it cemented my belief that high-frequency training was the most effective all-around way to train, but that it didn’t have to necessarily be performed for multiple sets of high-reps. It could, in fact, work well with both high-volume and high-frequency.

I must caution something here: this training is probably best done by those who have trained for many years, and have a keen understanding of how training affects their bodies. This is one reason that this kind of training works well for the older athlete—the older athlete understands his body very well.

The fact is that it’s simply harder for novice or intermediate lifters—or even some advanced lifters—to train using high-volume and high-frequency. High-frequency, high-intensity programs (with low volume) and high-volume, high-intensity programs (with low frequency) are simply much easier for the average lifter to understand/control.

I will perform this new program for the next 4 to 6 weeks, at which time I will go back to heavier training—assuming the pain I’m having abates. I am also fully aware that, at some point, I will need to perform this kind of training for the remainder of my life—which may not be for another 10 or even 20 years down the road—because this is the best form of lifting for the older athlete. It’s great for focusing on the muscles without overloading the joints, tendons, and ligaments.

Tonight, here’s the workout I ended up performing:

Deadlifts: 4 sets of 20 to 30 reps with 135 pounds
Bench Presses: 1 set of 50 reps with 110 pounds (warm-up)
Dumbbell Bench Presses: 3 sets of 20 to 25 reps with 50 pounds
Dumbbell Pullovers: 3 sets of 15 reps with 40 pounds
Dumbbell Shrugs (seated): 3 sets of 20 reps with 50 pounds
Barbell Curls: 3 sets of 20 reps with 55 pounds
2 sets of Hanging Leg Raises for 10 reps

One of the keys is to not feel overly tired at the end of each session. This will allow you to train with the frequency you need. You may (or perhaps should) be a little sore the day following each workout, but it should be slight.

The workout I did may not seem as if it was much[2], but the key is to string a lot of workouts such as this one back-to-back-to-back. Tomorrow I will probably perform something along the lines of lunges, overhead presses, dips, forearm curls, and calf raises. The day after that it may be squats, chins, dumbbell rows, pullovers and presses, and push-ups.

When I feel tired, I’ll take the day off.

And when I feel like pushing it “balls-to-the-wall”, I’ll do that, too.

You get the drift. Doing this consistently, day-after-day, not missing a workout, can add up to some nice gains in the course of a couple of months.

Now, about that doing whatever you feel like thing: for guys such as myself who have been training for 20-plus years (and have spent much of that time doing full-body workouts), this kind of training is ideal. I know my body. It tells me what I should—and shouldn’t—do during training. I know when to back-off, and I know when to push it harder. I know when I can do 5 sets of high-rep deadlifts, and when I should only do 1 set, but this isn’t for everyone. Most of you need to be on a specificprogram, knowing exactly what exercises you will do on each training day.

[1] Also, the Nativity Fast has just begun for us “Eastern Christians”, which means that, until Christmas, I will primarily subside on a vegan diet of relatively low calories. This will necessitate some lighter training, as well.

[2] For some lifters—those of you who I have referred to in the past as “low-volume lifters”—this may actually be too much. My ex-training partner—and dear ol’ friend—Puddin’ (search for past blog posts if you would like to read some exploits) would do just fine, for instance, with about half of this volume. In fact, I have a feeling that he would gain muscle rapidly.

For those of you who are regular readers of my blog, forgive my long delay in posts. I have been going through some personal stuff the last couple of months—some of which I may write about at some point—and have found it difficult to write things for this blog. Hopefully this post will be the first in many to come over the next month or two.

High-Volume, Low-Frequency Training for the Ultimate in Mass-Building

Part One

Dennis Du Breuil’s “Ultimate Bulk and Power” Rules

Most of what I write on this blog deals with more of my recent training tactics—and the stuff I’ve written about the most recently revolves around my recent training strategies. One problem I’ve always had as a writer on strength-training and muscle-building is that I’ve always—or almost always—been the kind of writer that has trouble writing about training other than what I was currently doing at the time.

When I first started writing for Iron Man magazine over 20 years ago, I wrote about high-volume, high-intensity, low-frequency training since that is the kind of training that I was doing at the time. In the late ‘90s, early ‘00s, I switched over to all-out power training, and my writing switched to the same stuff. (I must add here that, at the time, no one was writing about serious strength training—ultra-low reps, power training with multiple sets of low reps, 5x5 training, 10x3 training, that sort of stuff—in the major magazines other than Bill Starr and myself (nowadays, it’s much more commonplace). Thus, power training became something of a writing boon for me. I had stuff published almost every month for years in both Iron Man and MuscleMag International—sometimes in both mags in the same month.) But I never really forgot my high-volume, low-frequency beginning—and the serious muscle mass that I put on back then—and I have occasionally returned to articles about that kind of training here at Integral Strength, but, for the most part, the writing on this blog has been decidedly power oriented, with the occasional forays into bodyweight-only workouts.

A couple of weeks ago, when I returned from a funeral in my home state of Texas (I live in my adopted home state of Alabama), my oldest son Matthew—who is 15, and my workout partner these days—suggested to me that we perform what he calls “old-school” (for me, they’re not really “old-school”) bodybuilding routines: ultra-intense, high-volume, relatively low-frequency workouts with the sole intent of packing on as much muscle as possible and “for looking good” (to use his nomenclature). I have almost always had us train with full-body workouts or two-way splits of one sort or another, but he has always listened to me regale him with tales from the early to late ‘90s when I trained one-bodypart-per-day and with the sort of intensity that would have envied the Golden Eagle himself.[1] He has also heard my claims that I once packed on 20 to 25 pounds of mass in 2 to 3 weeks using such a routine, and other tales of yore (for him) that seem well-nigh impossible.

So I relented.

And we have been enjoying some of the best workouts over the last two weeks that we have ever had while training together. And, for me, it has brought back memories of training from years’ past, and it has awakened training knowledge—gleamed from such ‘90s luminaries as Greg Zulak, Don Ross, Gene Mozee, and, hell, even Mike Mentzer—that I haven’t applied in many-a-year.

And I decided it was time to once again write stuff using this dormant knowledge.

I was also quite surprised when I finally got on my blog today—I haven’t looked at it in about 2 months—and found a comment from an occasional commenter, Alexander Nilsson, who asked for something on the very same topic. (Odd how synchronous life can sometimes be.)

One more word of note before we actually get started on the nuts-and-bolts of our mass-building rules: There are some things that I know now that I wish I would have known 20 to 25 years ago—this series of articles will include my acquired knowledge as well as what I learned in the past.

Dennis Du Breuil’s “Ultimate Bulk and Power” Rules

For this article, I’m going to use the mass-building “rules” of Dennis Du Breuil as a springboard for discussing many of my thoughts and theories on high-volume, low-frequency muscle-building. Du Breuil’s “rules” are a good starting point for this series of articles. Du Breuil—for those of you unfamiliar—wrote an article for Iron Manmagazine in 1976 entitled “The Ultimate Bulk and Power Theory” that laid out his thoughts on the best practices to build muscle mass. I have never read that article. Instead, I became familiar with Du Breuil’s theories via the May, 1994 issue of MuscleMag International, in an article written by Greg Zulak that was (aptly) named “Your Way to Ultimate Bulk and Power”. Zulak outlined Du Breuil’s various rules of muscle-building, along with his own thoughts on the matter. I’m going to pretty much do the same here by outlining Du Breuil’s and Zulak’s theories, along with my personal two cents worth.

Rule 1: There is a strong relationship between increased blood circulation and muscle growth. Some of you may be reading this and thinking that it means “the more of a pump you get in a muscle, the more it will grow,” but this isn’t exactlywhat Du Breuil was getting at. This is how Zulak explained it: “The better the blood circulation to a muscle, Du Breuil theorized, and the easier it pumps, the better the muscle will grow. And it will recover better because the blood can carry away fatigue products and bring nutrition in.” In other words, it’s not just the pump, but how easy and quickly a muscle gets a pump that will determine muscle growth. It is also predicated upon how easy and quickly a muscle pumps using traditional training that will determine muscle growth. After all, anyone can get a decent pump with really high-rep training, but this doesn’t mean that ultra-high rep training is the best for muscle growth.

If you have been training for any length of time with more “generic” bodybuilding programs, then you know this rule to be true. Your muscles that pump quickly using a moderate number of sets (6 to 10) combined with a moderate number of reps (8 to 12) grow with relative ease.

Rule 2: Work a small area of the body and then rest for at least 20 minutes. Here is what Zulak had to say about this rule (which is pretty interesting if you have a knowledge of the ‘70s bodybuilding culture): “When Du Breuil wrote his article, Arthur Jones of Nautilus fame was considered the authority on muscle growth. Nautilus machines were the hottest ticket going, and Mike Mentzer, whose heavy-duty system was based on Nautilus principles, was just making a name for himself. Arthur Jones insisted that the whole body must be treated as a unit. He said the best way to build a lot of muscle was to work the whole body in a single workout, and to train very fast, going from one set to the next with very little rest, until the whole body was covered. However, many people discovered that such routines were actually better for conditioning than building size. Endurance was improved, sure, but the muscles were not worked as hard as possible because the cardiovascular system gave out first before the muscles were worked to failure.

“Du Breuil totally disagreed with Jones.”

Now, to be honest, I think that both kind of programs build muscle, but for different reasons. (If you want to read my thoughts on full-body workouts and how theybuild muscle growth, there are plenty of articles here on my blog, or stuff of mine you can find on other sites.) However, you have to use Du Breuil’s method when utilizing high-volume and low-frequency.

Du Breuil, for what it’s worth, advocated training on double, or even triple, split programs in order to achieve the end result. In other words, his trainees would train chest, wait an hour or so, train shoulders, wait at least an hour or longer, and train arms, and so on and so forth.

That is, obviously, impractical for the majority of bodybuilders. (Hell, it’s impractical for me—for the most part—and I have a home gym replete with almost everything a hardcore ‘builder could ask for.)

The solution lies in training muscle groups that are very close to one another in order to keep blood flow localized. Your split may look something like this:

Day One: chest and shoulders

Day Two: quads, hamstrings, calves

Day Three: back

Day Four: biceps and triceps

Day Five: Off

If you prefer to train more consecutive days in a row, then you could just train one-bodypart-per-day, and rarely, if ever, take a day off. Here’s the example of a split with this kind of training in mind:

Day One: Chest

Day Two: Shoulders

Day Three: Triceps

Day Four: Legs

Day Five: Back

Day Six: Biceps

Day Seven: Repeat (take a day off whenever you feel as if you need one)

Of course, in the above scenario, you do have to train each muscle group with extreme intensity (we’ll get to more of that in a little bit), but I have actually come to believe that the more days you can train in a row, the better. I have often gone 7 or 8 days before taking a day off, and it didn’t matter what kind of training program I was following, whether it was Bulgarian training for extreme strength and power or Du Brueil’s style of blood-volume training.

And I’m not crazy in thinking this—or, at least, not alone. Top trainers such as Scott Abel and Christian Thibaudeau believe the same thing.

Rule 3: Work as hard as possible on every rep. Du Brueil believed that most bodybuilders simply didn’t train hard enough—not just on every set, but on every rep. He believed that the harder that you made every rep of every set, the better the results. Here’s what Du Brueil had to say in his original article: “First, very few bodybuilders work as hard as they should for maximum gains. It takes brutally hard workouts to produce the fast, superior gains we’re talking about. And, second, most bodybuilders have no idea what really hard work is.”

When training relatively infrequently, I agree wholeheartedly with him. Once you are a few sets into a workout, it’s important that each set is pushed to the maximum. You can do this with such intensity techniques as rest-pause training, strip sets (or drop sets, as they are often called), super-sets, tri-sets, and pre-exhaustion training, among others.

Now, I don’t believe, typically, in using any of these intensity techniques in the first exercise of the program. As I’ve said before, elsewhere, “it’s best to do less early, so you can do more later on.” I recommend beginning with one exercise of straight sets, preferably a large, compound movement, then you would move on to the more intense stuff. Here would be an example of a typical chest workout:

Incline Bench Presses: 5 sets of 8 -10 reps (Only the last set should be all-out, where it’s hard, or impossible, to get the final rep. At this point, your chest muscles will be neurally “primed” for the intense sets that follow.)

Incline Dumbbell Flyes: 3 sets of 16 to 20 reps (For these, you will use a rest-pause technique. Perform about 6 to 8 reps, until you almost reach failure, rest a few seconds and crank out a few more reps. Repeat this rest-pause technique until you get somewhere close to 20 reps. The last couple of rest-pause “sets” should be until all-out failure.)

Wide-Grip Dips supersetted with Flat Bench Flyes: 3 supersets of 6 to 8 reps on the dips and 12 to 16 reps on the flyes

Cross-Bench Pullovers: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps—each set taken to momentarily muscular failure

In the next installment, I’ll discuss the remainder of Du Brueil’s rules, and hopefully have some pretty cool input of my own on the topic. Until then, eat big, train big, and, in the case of these workouts, rest big.

[1] If you don’t know who-the-hell the Golden Eagle is, look it up!

It Came from the ‘90s:

The Anabolic Diet

Today, I sat down at my computer to write the second-part in my Denis Du Breuil “rules of bulk-building” when something I was writing (about the benefits of carbohydrates) made me think—for some odd reason—about Mauro Di Pasquale’s “anabolic diet”, a diet I had great success with in the mid ‘90s. One of my training partners had even better success with it—I remember it vividly because it was the first time that I witnessed someone get bigger while staying very lean. (These days, bodybuilders tend to know better. But back then, the over-riding philosophy was that you bulked up as big as possible in the off-season—gaining a combination of fat, water, and muscle—and then got really lean starting 12 to 16 weeks out from a competition—or the summer, if you didn’t compete. Of course, “over-riding philosophy” didn’t mean that everyone did it—there were some bodybuilders sounding the trumpet against such bulking strategies, the staff of the old MM2K magazine being a prime example.)

Then I thought about something else. The most popular post on this blog the past year—by far—was/is my rambling semi-essay on “Big Beyond Belief, HIT, Phil Hernon, and Other Things that Came from the ‘90s.”

The ‘90s were the heyday—for me—of bodybuilding. I liked the training that was popular during those years, I enjoyed many of the bodybuilders—back when all the guys competing for the Mr. Olympia or the NPC Nationals didn’t look as if they were simply pumped-up clones of one another—and I spent the vast amount of the decade trying to put on as much muscle mass as was humanly possible on my frame. (In the late ‘90s, strength and power became my “thing”, but I’ll save the specifics of that for another time.)

And so, I thought if my Big Beyond Belief post was so popular, maybe I should do a series of posts entitled “It Came from the ‘90s!” And why not start with the “anabolic diet”, since it’s what’s currently on my mind.

“Pork Chop Diet” Beginnings

Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale, the creator of the Anabolic Diet, wrote a monthly column for MuscleMag International all throughout the ‘90s. (I think he began writing the column in the ‘80s, but I may be wrong.) It was entitled “The Doctor’s Corner”, and it had a plethora of good information that mainly dealt with overcoming injuries or dealing with minor pains of one sort or another, although it occasionally had information about steroid abuse effects—gyno, anyone?—or answered questions about various supplements from a medical point-of-view. But I didn’t first read about the Anabolic Diet through MuscleMag but rather through an article that appeared in the September, 1992 issue of Iron Man magazine. Greg Zulak wrote the article, and it wasn’t entitled “The Anabolic Diet” but, rather, its title was “The Pork Chop Diet”. (Sometime within the next year or two, Dipasquale must have decided that the Pork Chop Diet wasn’t the best diet-name—it started appearing in bodybuilding publications with the name it’s had ever-since.)

These days, low-carbohydrate diets don’t even cause people to bat an eyelash—with all of the crap like Paleo, Atkins, and South Beach that have been around for some years. At the time, however, reading the article was quite a shock for me. Everyone that I trained with, everyone that I knew, and all of the articles I had been reading for years told me that I needed to eat a high carbohydrate, moderate protein, low fat diet if I wanted to pack on the muscle mass and stay lean at the same time. Now, don’t get me wrong, the book Super Squats taught me that it was a great idea to drink a gallon of milk per day if I wanted to grow massive, and quite a few articles from Zulak over the years before I read his pork chop-touting had espoused diets with plenty of fat in order to help build muscle, but no one was saying that an extremely high fat, high protein, low carb diet was great for getting shredded.

Of course, eventually I realized that Dipasquale wasn’t really coming up with anything new. Vince Gironda, the “Iron Guru”, had touted high-fat, high-protein diets for many, many years. In the 1950s, Gironda got so ripped for bodybuilding competitions that he actually had points deducted by the judges for being too-damn lean. And Gironda got that way by eating little other than whole eggs, steak, butter, and whole cream. His favorite “protein shake”, in fact, was nothing but a dozen raw eggs and several cups of whole cream blended until smooth.

Nonetheless, the “Pork Chop Diet” was a revolution to me in 1992.

Here’s how Zulak described the diet in the ’92 article: “For five days (say, Monday through Friday) you follow a high-fat, high-protein, high-calorie diet, including less than 50 grams of carbs a day. Then on the weekend, you have two days of high-carb, high-protein, low-fat eating. Dipasquale said that a 200-pound man should probably be eating 6,000 to 8,000 calories a day. Because so many high-fat foods are also high in protein, this includes about 350 to 400 grams of protein.”

My Experiment with the Anabolic Diet

The original Pork Chop Diet article fascinated me, but I never gave it a test-drive until a few years later (’94 or ’95, I think). By this time, it had re-invented itself as the Anabolic Diet, since it was supposedly capable of packing on mass, while staying lean, unlike anything else. (It had also made a bit of a name for itself since Dispaquale was the resident doctor for the soon-to-be-defunct World Bodybuilding Federation headed by Vince McMahon. The good doctor thought that the Anabolic Diet would be an excellent choice for the bodybuilders in the WBF, since the federation had issued a strict drug-testing policy. It didn’t go over so well—to say the least—but that’s for another time and another story. Maybe I’ll decide to do an “It Came from the ‘90s WBF special” at some point.)

My training partner, Dusty, and I both experimented with it in stretches of 6 to 8 weeks. Monday through Friday we would eat all we could possibly muster of steak, eggs, whole cream, butter, bacon, ham, sour cream, cheese of any sort, hamburger meat, sausages of all kinds, and, yes, even pork chops. On top of this, we would often “swig” shots of vegetable oil throughout the day to make sure we were consuming the requisite number of calories. And on the weekends, we basically ate whatever-the-heck we felt like eating, as long as we kept the carbs high and the fat relatively low. This even included things such as donuts, ice cream, and beer—we loved beer; I still do.

Did it work? Yeah, I stayed lean, while gaining a few pounds of muscle. For Dusty it worked even better. His abs began to really show, he looked hard as a rock, and I think he gained 10 to 15 pounds of mass—probably a little water, but mainly it was hypertrophy.

But I didn’t continue to do it. I always felt the best while eating a good amount of carbohydrates when trying to gain muscle mass, and this is still the way I feel to this day—I eat vegan for at least half of the year, for God’s sake. But it did work, while I think that diets such as Atkins, Paleo, and South Beach will very decidedly not work, and may even be dangerous, in the long haul.

Fast Forward to 2015

When it comes to building muscle, gaining strength, and staying lean, I would stay away from low-carb diets. Depending on your body-type, a traditional bodybuilding diet of 60% carbs, 30% protein, and 10% fat may be good, or it could be that you function on more of a 40-30-30 ratio of either carbs, fat, protein, or fat, carbs, protein.

But, if I’m honest with myself, then I have to admit that a lot of people would do very well on the Anabolic Diet. It also wouldn’t cause metabolic damage, a real problem on Paleo, South Beach, or other similar crap. (If you doubt me, read this article from Scott Abel. It’s rather enlightening.)

The Anabolic Diet still works because, unlike Atkins, et al, its focus is not low carb, but, rather, it’s high fat. (Read that sentence at least two more times to let it sink in.)

Atkins, Paleo, and the others emphasize low carb, relatively high amounts of protein, and only a moderate amount of fat. These diets will work for a couple of weeks, but then—even if the fat loss doesn’t completely plateau—the diet has the potential to really screw up one’s metabolism. However, when a lot of fat is consumed—70% or more—the dieter’s metabolism stays healthy, and the fat loss is more continuous.

A couple of months ago, Scott Abel wrote an article about real low-carb dieting for his own blog. It was based on the diet of his business partner, and bodybuilding competitor, Kevin Weiss. Here are some excerpts from that article:

World Powerlifting Champ Kevin Weiss and I get together at least once per week for coffee.

At our last get together I could tell Kevin had dropped a couple lbs.

“Back on the high-fat diet” I asked him.

“Yep”, he said.

You see Kevin is just several weeks out from the next World Championships and he wants to make weight for a lighter weight class. And when dieting, Kevin—who is a natural “meat tooth” (in contrast to my “sweet tooth”)—always opts for the extremely high-fat diet approach.

Now with Kevin, I would never ask “So, you back to low carbs diet?”

That would be like an insult to him. Kevin is an astute student of the game. He knows that the term “low carb diet” has no relevance to what he is doing: it’s the extremely high fat diet that is more descriptive of his approach.

And this is the mistake 99% of people out there make. Over coffee, Kevin explained to me why he gave up trying to help people with this diet: “Scott, they just won’t take their fats high enough to make it work long-term.”

Right on top of it as always!

Weight-Loss Competition Diet

Kevin needs to drop some weight but still be able to perform at his best. And if you buy into industry nonsense you would think that since Kevin is a powerlifter his emphasis would be on getting in enough protein.

WRONG!

His emphasis is in getting in a high enough amount of fat.

In fact, the protein macro ratio of his weight-loss competition diet, is just over 12%! That’s right! 12% Protein!!! Read on. This is what the “low carbs diet approach” was supposed to be all along – AN EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY HIGH FAT DIET. So I got Kevin to scribble down his meals for that day for me, but I’ll only show you two. I had a great laugh out loud moment: Check this “weight-loss diet” out:

Breakfast: 3 whole eggs

4 slices bacon

4 tablespoons sour cream 

2 slices cheddar cheese 

2 tablespoons butter 

½ cup heavy cream

Lunch: 2 cups spinach 

1 avocado 

3 oz. regular ground beef 

4 tablespoons olive oil 

1 slice cheddar cheese

Meal Alternative: Sometimes he’ll have this meal option: 

2 teaspoons coconut oil 

4 ounces prime rib 

3 whole eggs 

1 cup spinach 

½ cup feta cheese 

½ cup heavy cream 

4 tablespoons sour cream

OK, so you get the picture: the true essence of a low-carbs approach that can actually work and not negatively impact metabolism is that it is EXTREMELY high in fat.

Kevin and I then discussed how many ladies we know who whine about being “carb resistant” would ever eat a diet high enough in fat to be metabolically constructive.

After reading that, I thought more about why my training partner had such good success with the Anabolic Diet in the ‘90s. And why it would still work for anyone today.

Full Body Training: Exhaustion or Exhilaration?

All Hail the Apocalypse! The End of the Overtraining Myth, Part 3

The Total Annihilation Training Program

Classic Bodybuilding: Gene Mozee's Chest Training

Vince Gironda's Weight Gaining Tips

Classic Bodybuilding: High-Volume, High-Frequency Training

ARMORED: Turning Arms into Meat Hooks!

Classic Bodybuilding: Sergio Oliva's Mass-Building Methods

Lean Mass Made Simple and Fast!

Back Construction!

Training. Simplified.

Shock-Therapy Demolition Deltoid Training

The Importance of Tracking What You Eat

Superset Slaughter!

Journal of Strength: Teenage Muscle-Building

Journal of Strength: Benefits of High-Set Singles

The Lifter's Bushido

Journal of Strength: Training the Ageless Athlete (aka: High-Frequency, High-Volume Lifting)

Dennis Du Breuil’s “Ultimate Bulk and Power” Rules

It Came from the '90s: The Anabolic Diet