Skip to main content

Old-Time Bodybuilding Methods: Train Through the Soreness

Old-Time Bodybuilding Methods:
Train Through the Soreness

I know this method's going to be a bit controversial, given all the emphasis in muscle magazines the past few years on giving your muscles enough time to "recuperate" and "repair." But, let me explain, and maybe I'll have a few converts (especially once you put the method to proper use).

I think it's mistakenly believed that bodybuilders of the past trained so frequently (usually 3x weekly for each bodypart) because they simply didn't know any better. But, if you were to ask the great Bill Pearl if he would change the way he used to train considering all the new "knowledge" about recovery, he would flatly tell you, "no." The same goes for longtime Iron Man contributor George Turner. He's seen it all, and done it all, and still believes frequent, volume-oriented training is better.

One of the reasons bodybuilders who train each bodypart once-per-week get so sore is because, well, they train everything once-per-week. This never allows you to increase your rate of recovery, because the demands are never placed on your body to do so. Sure, if you start training everything two, or even three, times a week you're going to be sore, but after a couple of weeks the soreness will subside. Then, look out, because it's growth time.

Strength coach Bill Starr has trained a lot of lifters over the years, and he still believes three-times-a-week training is best for each bodypart. Even if his lifters could get the same strength gains from once-a-week training that they get from 3x training, he wouldn't let them do it. Why? With once-a-week training an athlete simply never gets in good condition. Old time bodybuilders knew this.

Now, I'm not suggesting you rush to the gym and start performing the same "heavy," all-out workout you've been doing once-a-week and increase it to twice-per-week. Start off by adding an extra "light" workout 72 hours after your "heavy" session (no matter how sore you are). After about a month, increase the frequency to three times-per-week, using a heavy/light/medium rotation. The longer you train this way, the harder you will be able to start training at each session. And remember, it does take years of training to reach up to the type of regimen Bill Pearl used.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave us some feedback on the article or any topics you would like us to cover in the future! Much Appreciated!

Popular posts from this blog

2-Way Training Splits for Mass & Power

The Best Two-Way Training Splits for Inducing Hypertrophy and Unleashing Impressive Gains in Strength      I’m fond of full-body workouts.   In fact, if you’re new to training, and you stumbled upon this essay as you scoured the internet looking for the best split program to make you massive—not to mention massively strong—then understand that you’re better off utilizing full-body workouts.   At least at the start.   Eventually, you will want to move on to a split program of some sort, however.   Now, please don’t get me wrong (I mean, really, don’t), you could spend your entire training life doing nothing other than full-body workouts —whether they’re high-frequency “easy strength” programs, or heavy/light/medium programs, or just “basic” 3 day a week programs where all of the training is “ moderate ”—and never need anything else.   But eventually you’ll want to use some split programs, even if it’s just occasionally, and even if it’s don...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bill Starr’s Midlife Muscle Builder

Advice from Bill Starr (and Myself) for the Midlife Bodybuilders and Lifters      Last week, I overdid it.  I should know better.  Actually, I do know better.  But, like all former elite athletes I’ve ever met with decades of training under their lifting belts, there are workouts and weeks when I decide to do a little too much—train too heavy, do cardio that is  way too intense—if nothing than to see if I can still handle it.  Kinda stupid, I know.  But I still do it.  And every time that I do this, reality comes crashing back down to earth and I know I need to settle into a kinder, gentler training routine.  How do I know I overdid it?  Because I hurt like hell in my joints and pretty much want to take a nap all day long instead of staring at this computer screen and writing the very thing that you’re now reading.      If you’re in your 40s and 50s, and have trained for a considerable amo...
4 comments
Read more

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

  The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan  magazine.      In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.”  I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time .  In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...
Post a Comment
Read more