Skip to main content

The 10 Sets Method: "Old-School" Style

I talked to my Uncle Kirk tonight.

He lives in Texas.

He stands about an inch taller than me—he's 5'7". He weighs about 10 pounds heavier than I do—he's 200 lbs or so.

He's also 58 years old, and built like the proverbial brick shit-house.

He also trains in a barn—squat rack, a bench press, a few barbells, lots of dumbbells, and a whole crap-load of weights—with a few guys who are probably 30 years younger than him.

He's been training since his teens, can bench press in the mid-300s, and can deadlift around 500 pounds—not as strong as he once was, but all-in-all still a pretty strong S.O.B.


He calls me to talk training, and we just like to keep each other updated as to the kind of progress we're making and the kind of workouts we're performing.

"What'd you do tonight?" I asked.

"A 10 sets workout," he replied. I know that my Uncle doesn't use a "split" routine—never has—so I was interested in just what this workout might look like.

"Oh yeah. What exactly did you do in it?"

"10 sets of 10 on squats, 10 sets of 10 on bench presses, 10 sets of 10 on deadlifts, and then a few sets of 25 reps on some push-ups—you know, just for a finisher."

I laughed a little. I doubt most guys half my Uncle's age could even make it through half that workout.

Kirk once told me that when he was at his biggest and his strongest—sometime in his mid 30s—he would perform 10 sets of 10 on squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and barbell curls 3 times per week. The workouts would last 2 and a 1/2 to 3 hours. Nowadays, guys call that overtraining. My Uncle calls it hard work.

Which reminds me of an old Iron Man article I once read by the aging-but-still-great George Turner. For putting on muscle mass, he recommended a regimen of barbell curls, bench presses, and squats for 10 sets of 10 reps performed Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Once you had plenty of size, then you could start using multiple exercises.

High-intensity pundits and other briefer-is-better lifters in our era would call those kind of workouts performed by Turner and my uncle "crazy." Perhaps, however, there's a little more to it. Perhaps they know something a lot of others don't realize: frequent training, plus hard work, plus full-body workouts equals big-time results.

It's just a thought.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Classic Bodybuilding: Don Howorth's Massive Delt Training

Before we get started on this "Classic Bodybuilding" piece, one word of note:  If you really  pay attention to this blog, then you will notice that in the "sub-header" at the top of the page, I have added "Ageless Bodybuilding" as one of the subjects that will be discussed.  This is for a decided reason... I have been developing a system of training that I have been using on myself and a few "older" lifters that occasionally train with me, but still follow my training program that I have them using even when they are training at a commercial gym instead of my "garage gym".  This system is for those of you who are 40+ such as myself, but it may be even more effective for those of you 50 and older.  In fact, of my two occasional training partners, one of them is 51, and the other is 55. I wouldn't be so arrogant as to call this ageless bodybuilding system  revolutionary, but I can say that it is radically different from most syste

Old School Arm Training Secrets: John McWilliams's Arm Training Routine

Old-School Arm Training Secrets: John McWilliams’s Arm Routine      My most popular posts here at Integral Strength typically fall into two categories: old-school bodybuilding programs or serious strength and power routines.      With that in mind, I thought I would do a series of articles on various old-school lifters and bodybuilders (the two overlapped once-upon-a-time), and on various old-school methods for training different bodyparts or lifts.   Thus, this first entry is on old-school arm training, but others will be on old-school chest, shoulders, back, legs, squats, bench presses, overhead presses, power cleans, etc.   And for this first entry, I decided upon an old-school bodybuilder cum powerlifter that many of you may never have heard of: John McWilliams. McWilliams's back double-biceps pose.  He was impressive even in his 40s.      When I first came across an article about McWilliams (written by Gene Mozee) in the early ‘90s, I had certainly neve

Old Time Mass Tactics: One-Exercise-Per-Bodypart Training

     Starting with the current post, I thought I would do a mini-series on how the "old-time" bodybuilders used to train.  In doing so, I also thought I would start with what I consider the greatest of the old-time mass tactics:  one-exercise-per-bodypart training.      When I first began to lift weights seriously (which was sometime in my high-school years; I'm 35 now, so you do the math), the bodybuilders that I loved were the ones that—even then—were considered the "old-timers."  I remember seeing pictures of Freddy Ortiz, Don Howorth (above), and Marvin Eder; I was amazed by their look.  For one, they definitely looked strong (which they were), but they also had excellent size, shape, and symmetry—small waists, large calves, boulder-sized shoulders; the whole "x-frame" look.  But—and I think this is what I still love about them—they didn't appear to be cardboard cutouts of one another.  They all had different "looks."  They were