New Planet Muscle Article: "Big Bench, Big Body"

I have a new article out in the latest issue of Planet Muscle magazine (March/April '10) entitled "Build a Big Bench and Get a Big Body: Training Methods for Bench Press Power and Upper Body Size." If you're into powerlifting—or just increasing your bench press—then you should find it interesting. It covers most of the current methods for increasing bench press strength—Westside, traditional powerlifting cycles, eastern bloc methods, plus a few more.

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The Big and Strong Series - Overhead Training

The High-Set, Low-Rep Training Manifesto Part 3: Overhead Press Training Part 1 - Legs and Back Part 2 - Chest and Lats It’s now time to turn our attention toward overhead training. If you want to get as big, strong, and as jacked as humanly possible, you need to place overhead training in your lifting arsenal. There are several reasons for its importance. Before we get into those reasons, and then some different workout programs that are great for overhead work, I want to discuss something slightly tangential, but it also needs to be considered, especially if you’re going to get the results you want out of this series. Assuming you have read parts 1 and 2—if you haven’t, you may be at a slight loss as to exactly what is being chewed over here, so please do so—you will know, by now, that this training methodology of high-sets (sometimes a lot of ...

Q&A: Powerlifting for Muscle Growth? - Over-60 Hypertrophy Training - Big and Strong Series for High Reps?

This is my 2nd Q&A article. If you want to read the first one, click HERE . Here are some random questions that I received of late. Question: Can I use the 3 powerlifts as the only exercises in my program but do them for higher reps in order to build muscle? Answer: Maybe. (I know readers don’t care much for it, but as I pointed out in our 1st Q&A piece, the answer to a lot of questions is “maybe” or “it depends.”) So, also, it depends. I think the squat and the bench press should be mainstays of all hypertrophy programs, or at least the squat and the bench along with some iterations. Ultimately, you wouldn’t want to just do squats for your legs or bench presses for your chests. But squats along with front squats and lunges would be about all you need. Bench presses along with dumbbell benches and incline bench presses, both the barbell and dumbbell version, would also be...

On Goals and Workout Programs

In Part 3 of my “Big and Strong” series of on-going articles that I’m writing at the moment, I mentioned how that series isn’t for the average gym-goer. If you’re going to follow the high-set, low-rep (and really high volume) regimens that the series recommends, you really can’t do much else. Hell, you probably can’t do anything else. I’m taking a break from that series briefly so that I can focus on some essays and articles that tackle different workout programs and just different subjects in general. I have several articles and essays that I’m working on at the moment, and it made me realize something. Since this blog has quite an array of different workout programs, many lifters might be unsure as to the one they should be doing. So, I thought it might be good to look at training goals and the workout programs you should be following for your goals. Because, if you have been reading that series and you decide to ac...

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