Heavy and High

 An Essay for the Natural Lifter or Bodybuilder

Read on and Discover One of the Secrets to Massive Muscles

     Over the years, it has often been debated—on gym floors, discussion forums, and among bodybuilding trainers and strength coaches—whether hypertrophy is built via heavy weights or through high reps.  The debate was there when I first picked up a barbell almost 40 years ago and it’s still debated to this very day.  Now, we’re not talking about strength or performance here—heavy weight and low reps has, and always will, reign supreme in that domain—but, rather, strictly muscle growth.  Both camps have their proponents and their detractors.  On the “heavy side” of the camp, you have bodybuilders like “Brutal” Bertil Fox*, who built some of the thickest, most herculean mass possible and whose favorite method of training consisted of doing 3 exercises for each muscle group for 3 sets of 3 reps each.  And on the opposite side you had the likes of Serge Nubret who favored high sets done in the, largely, 20-30 rep range.  Most of your successful bodybuilders, truth be told, have always been in between both of those extremes.

     The key to building absolutely massive muscles—and I’m definitely not the first to say it; this sentiment has been written about by other writers such as Scott Abel, Jeff Everson**, Dan John, and Ken Leistner—is to be able to utilize heavy weights along with high reps.  When you reach the point that your training consists of both, you will have built an impressive, well-muscled physique, the kind few men will ever possess.

     Off the top of my head, the bodybuilder who most exemplified this, I believe, is Tom Platz.  Platz built legs the likes of which had never been seen before, and still haven’t to this very day.  (Okay, yes, I realize that there are pro bodybuilders the last decade or so who have built legs equally as massive, but that’s largely due to the prodigious intake of anabolic steroids that are so prevalent in today’s unhealthy bodybuilding scene—hell, as large as these bodybuilders’ quads are, their guts are even bigger.  Back to the legend…)  Platz was capable of doing squats with over 500 pounds for more than 20 reps.  He is said to have also squatted 405 pounds for 50 reps, and would sometimes do 225 pounds for 10 minutes straight!  That, my friends, is heavy and high.

     When most natural bodybuilders, even ones who are really strong, try to train with heavy weights and high reps, however, they run into some problems.  And these problems prevent them from building muscle with the method.  For example, when I was at my strongest, and could squat 600 pounds in competition, I once did a set of 20-rep breathing squats with 405 as a challenge.  That one set wiped me out so much that I couldn’t walk for several days—not well, at least—and couldn’t train my legs again for over a week.  Other strong bodybuilders have discovered the same thing.  A couple of heavy, high-rep sets, sometimes just 1, causes too much fatigue.  (Part of the secret to successful hypertrophy programs is being able to manage fatigue.)  Because of the fatigue this sort of training produces, natural bodybuilders—steroids change the game completely—end up both overtraining and undertraining.  The workout itself overtrains them (by producing too much soreness) and then the 7 (or more) days off undertrains them.

     Here’s the question, then: Is there a way for the natural bodybuilder to get around these issues and take advantage of the muscle growth this form of training produces?  The answer: Yes, there is!  What follows are some of my thoughts on the subject and some tips to make this work for you.

     First, the reason Platz—and other bodybuilders with a great work capacity—could do this is because, due to his conditioning, he could get a lot of work in with heavy weights in a single session.  It’s not necessarily heavy weights and high reps but, rather, it’s heavy weights and high workload (total work in a session).  So, you could start by training with heavy weights and utilizing a fairly high workload—just how high, at first, will depend upon your personal work capacity.  Select 1 or 2 big, compound movements per session.  On each lift, use a heavy weight for multiple sets and, to start with, use some fairly low reps.  You might start with 10 sets of 3 or 8 sets of 5 reps or even ladders done with heavy weights.  On the ladders, start with 1 rep and add a rep with each set.  Once you reach a rep range that’s tough, repeat the ladders again.  Then, and how many of these you do will depend on your work capacity, repeat yet again.  So, you might do 1,2,3,4,5 and then 6 is really tough.  Start back over at 1 rep and work up to 5 reps.  Then start back over once again and work up to 4 reps.  So on and so forth.  Here’s the trick: As the weeks, and workouts, go by, don't increase the weight on the movements.  At least, at first.  Instead, increase the reps.  (And maybe the sets, especially if you choose ladders).  8 sets of 5 becomes 8 sets of 6.  Then 4 sets of 6 and 4 sets of 7.  Then 8 sets of 7.  Then 4 sets of 7 and 4 sets of 8.  Something like that.  You get the drift.  Eventually, you’ll be doing 8 sets of 12 to 15 reps on a lift.  At that point, you’d probably want to increase the weight or you could switch to some new movements.  Unlike other programs I recommend, you probably need to stick with the same exercises, however, for as many as 12 weeks.  If you're progressing, anyway, there’s no reason to change.  Although I believe variety is important, especially on more “traditional” programs, this kind of training calls for something a bit different.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it sort of thing.  That applies here.  Change just for the sake of change isn’t always good.

     Let’s do a little math to see how this works.  Say you want a massive chest, so you started with 225 pounds for 8 sets of 5 reps.  Your workload for the bench press, then, would be a total of 9,000 pounds—225 pounds multiplied by 8 sets multiplied by 5 reps.  But if you reach the point where you are doing 225 for 8 sets of 15, that’s 27,000 pounds!  Trust me, a 3x increase in workload will result in gains.  Big time.

     I’ve written about the following before, but I’ll discuss it again because it applies to our discussion.  I discovered the benefits of heavy weights and high workloads for muscle growth almost by happenstance.  Over 20 years ago, I was an elite powerlifter but I was looking for a program that would take my strength to the next level.  I could already squat and deadlift over 500 pounds (in the 181 pound class) and since I weighed in the low 170s, I already had a triple bodyweight squat and deadlift (and close to a double bodyweight bench press—I was never a good bench presser with my long, ape-like arms).  But I wanted to take my squats and deads to over 600.  For several years, I had heard about some of the Russian styles of training.  They seemed, how should I put it, extreme due to the high amount of frequency and volume that was involved.  But, I thought, what the hell, I’d give it a shot.  Long story short, I started training using the Sheiko methods, which had me squatting and deadlifting twice per week, on separate training days so I was really working my lower body and back 4 times weekly, and bench pressing 4 times per week at each session.  With Sheiko, I was also doing a minimum of 10 sets per lift, usually twice that much or more when you count the ramps I used to get up to my “work” sets.  Sheiko worked.  And, I mean, it worked!  Despite the fact that I felt as if I’d been hit by a mack truck on a weekly basis (so much for “overtraining”) my lifts went through the roof.  But there was a problem.  Even though I was eating as little as possible in an attempt to stay in my weight class, I just couldn’t stop gaining weight.  I had to stop using Sheiko because—and if you’re a bodybuilder who struggles to gain weight despite eating everything in sight, you might find this laughable—I was getting too damn big.  And I believe the muscle growth was caused, looking back on it, because I was using very heavy weights combined with a very high workload.  Multiple sets of squats with weights in the 405 to 550 range will do that.  When I stopped powerlifting a few years later due to multiple back surgeries for herniated discs, I decided to put the same kind of heavy, high-volume training to the test to see how big I could get.  Since I was no longer trying to limit weight gains, I ate anything and everything I wanted.  No drugs.  No fancy supplements.  Just heavy weights, high-volume, and plenty of food.  The results can be seen in this picture, which I used for the cover of my book Ultimate Strength:

Here is another picture taken around the same time.  I obviously carried some fat, but if you're natural and attempting to bulk up, that's almost inevitable.  Natural guys can be really lean or really big, but rarely can they be both.

     If there’s interest in the subject then, in future essays and articles, I’ll write how to go “heavy and high” using a variety of programs other than what I’ve suggested here.  Since you can use heavy weights and high reps or heavy weights and high sets, there’s more than one way to skin this particular muscle-building cat.

     I don’t expect this little essay, or any of my writings in general, to settle the debate over heavy weight or high reps.  People often want to believe what they want to believe, and lifters are no different.  When a method of training works for someone, and especially when it works really well, that person thinks it will work for everyone.  In post-modern philosophy, that’s called the “myth of the given.”  We take our given perception of things to be how they actually are.  But they’re not.  That’s just one given perception.  But I can write this with confidence:  No matter what method of training or workout program you utilize, if you reach the point where you’re utilizing heavy weights coupled with a high workload—whether that workload is through high reps or just high volume in general—you will be bigger.  Much bigger.  Now, maybe it’s time to head to the gym and discover it for yourself.

*Bertil Fox was always a favorite bodybuilder of mine in the ‘80s and early to mid ‘90s.  However, he is also a convicted murderer.  He murdered his ex-fiancee and her mother in ‘97 on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts.  Originally sentenced to death by hanging, it was reduced to life in prison.  In 2022, he was pardoned, for some reason, and now lives somewhere in the U.K.  I stopped writing about him after his conviction.  I don’t plan on starting back but, nonetheless, his training methods were quite unique.

**At some point, I do plan on writing a piece on Everson, may his memory be eternal.  Of all the editors/owners/publishers I worked for, he was the best.  He was also the only one that I would call a friend.  Once I got to know him, I found him to be something of a character.  He deserves a lengthy essay.