C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Building the Behemoth

2011-07-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine here in Tuscaloosa - Jared Smith - has a new blog. It looks like it'll be pretty cool (especially if you're into super-high-intensity training).

Here's a link:

http://buildingthebehemoth.blogspot.com/

Overtraining Your Movement Pattern

2011-07-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

First, I want to apologize for my long delay between blog posts. I have been more than a little busy as of late. Between work (I do have a regular “9 to 5” job), moving into a new house (and all that entails), and writing quite a bit of articles, my blog just took a back seat. (Speaking of writing articles, I now have an article in almost every issue of Planet Muscle, so that’s where you can find all of my latest stuff. And I now only write occasionally for Iron Man.)

With that out of the way, let’s get on with this blog post:

As regular readers of my material know, I believe that fairly high-volume, frequent training is the best (the quickest, the most result-producing) route to bigger, stronger, more (dare I say?) functional muscles. (It must be noted that this wasn’t always my opinion. If you read a lot of my early stuff in Iron Man – mid ‘90s to very early ‘00s – you’ll find that my training programs tended to be based around infrequent training. But all of that changed when I actually started performing high-volume workouts, and began to achieve fantastic results.)

So, basically, I think the whole “overtraining” thing is overdone. Here’s something from Christian Thibaudeau (which you can find in a previous post from last July):

One of the reasons why these people fail to train hard enough to stimulate gains is out fear of overtraining (which is often just a justification for laziness).

Well, let me tell you this: True overtraining is exceptionally rare. In all my life as an athlete and coach, I've only seen two real cases of overtraining, and in both the guys were Olympians training over 30 hours per week under tremendous psychological stress.

In reality, most elite athletes train over 20 hours per week, with some even hitting the 40-hour mark. Not all of this is strength training; speed and agility work, conditioning, and skill practices are also on the menu.

Before you throw the doping argument in my face, I've seen a ton of young athletes who were obviously not on drugs follow that type of schedule. I've worked as the head strength coach of a sports academy where kids ranging from 12 to 18 would go to school from 8:30 am to 12:00 pm, then train or practice from 1:00 to 5:00 pm every day. Their programs included daily strength work, agility training, and practices cumulating over 20 hours per week. None of them were overtraining; all of them progressed quite well.

Having said that, I think there are a couple of reasons why lifters often believe they’re overtrained. The first – and I’ve mentioned this elsewhere – is that they have a low work capacity. They’re simply not capable of frequent, intense, voluminous training because they have never placed demands on their bodies that would (eventually) allow them to perform such workouts. In more simplistic terms, the reason you get so sore from training everything once per week is, well, you only train everything once per week.

But there’s also another reason.

While it’s relatively difficult to actually overtrain, it’s relatively easy to overtrain your movement pattern. I believe this is the reason that the methods of Louie Simmons have been so successful. Westside Barbell understands this, and they make good use of it. This is also the reason why you can’t continually train heavy on the same exercise and make good progress. Your body grows too accustomed too quickly to the exercise, and another exercise needs to take its place. If you have attempted to train your bench press heavy (and by heavy, I mean sets of triples, doubles, or singles) on successive weeks, then you probably know this. The first week, everything goes well. The second week – especially if you’re new to these almost maximal loads – things go even better; you’re stronger. By the third week, however, you’re often back to your week one poundages. And if you attempt it for a 4th week, then you’re even weaker than week one. Well, technically you’re not weaker, but you are slower from training the specific movement pattern just too damn often.

Here’s another thing: depending on the exercise, certain movement patterns become more quickly overtrained than others. Let’s take powerlifting as an example. You can train the squat frequently for long periods of time. This is the reason that Olympic lifters can max out on this exercise every damn day (although I don’t advise training that extreme). But you can’t train the bench press and the deadlift to anything approximating the same frequency. You can train the bench press more frequently than the deadlift, but I still wouldn’t advise more than one all-out bench press session more than once per week. As for the deadlift: about one all-out session every two to three weeks seems to work well for most people.

But all of this is not to say that you shouldn’t train the muscles that you deadlift and bench press with frequently.

To make all of this very simple to understand, here’s the “in-the-gym” version of how to apply what you (may have) learned here:

• Build up your work capacity to the point that you can train with a fairly large amount of volume 4 to 6 days per week.
• Train your squat frequently. I think that 2 days per week will do fine.
• Train the muscles that you squat and deadlift with even more frequently. I think 3 to 4 days per week is ideal. Not all of this has to be weighted workouts – I love sled dragging, tire flipping, and farmer’s walks.
• On average, I believe that you should train your upper body three to four times weekly. Just make sure that the movement pattern is different at each workout. At every session, put the emphasis on a vertical push or pull movement and a horizontal push or pull movement. That’s 4 different movement patterns for each workout.

Around the Web

2011-03-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

Here are some collections of articles that I discovered on the web recently, thought I'd share them with you. Some are new; some aren't. But they're new to me, so they might be new to some of y'all, as well.

If you haven't been to it, a great site is www.theironsamurai.com. It's an Olympic lifting site run by strength coach Nick Horton. I don't know the guy—never heard of him until I came across the site—but he has some great stuff for all lifters, not just Olympic lifters. (Oh, and he has a touch of Zen here and there, as well, which might also interest some of you.)

Here's a really good post from his site: http://www.theironsamurai.com/2011/02/09/happy-birthday-to-me-reflections-on-lifting-coaching-and-the-pre-masters-class/. It has his thoughts on lifting and coaching, including a good bit on Bulgarian style training. For those of you who are fans of high-volume training (or would like to give it a shot), Nick has some insights that can help you.

For those of you who powerlift, here's an article on the great Latvian lifter Konstantin Konstantinovs: http://www.ampedtraining.com/2009/strength/konstantinovs-is-a-badass

The article contains some footage of his lifts, and then a discussion (albeit brief) at the end about his form. I always deadlifted with a similar form, and found that it greatly aided in my pull. Beware, however, you do need a really strong lower back.

Over at Mike Mahler's website: www.mikemahler.com, Mike has re-printed my article "The Mass-Building, Split-Training Ultimate." http://www.mikemahler.com/articles/massbuilding.html

It's an article that's pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. Seriously, though, Mike Mahler seems like that rare combination of great strength coach and all around good guy. Even if you don't read my article, visit his website and check out a lot of the other great stuff he has to offer.

Finally—for all lifters—here's a terrific article from the always-good Dan John entitled "Can it Really be That Simple?" : http://www.dragondoor.com/can_it_really_be_that_simple/

Good stuff.

Q&A

2011-03-23T20:17:00.001-07:00

If anyone has e-mailed me in the last couple of months, and not gotten a response, please feel free to write me again.

It appears that quite a lot of the mail I was receiving was going to "junk," and I'm afraid that I probably deleted a good deal of my mail without ever responding.

Ultimate At-Home Workouts

2011-03-07T18:50:00.000-08:00

Ultimate At-Home Workouts

Volume One: The One with the Session from the Night of March 7th

The Intro

Recently, I’ve been forced to do almost all of my training at home. At first, this might not sound like that big of a deal to you. If you have read my posts—or my articles—for any length of time, then you know that I trained at home for years. But that was different. At one time, I had over 1,300 pounds of weights in my garage. (I counted the total amount of weight one point, but I don’t remember what it was—and I probably accumulated even more stuff after I counted it.) My entire garage was a gym. This included a squat rack, a bench press (Forza, good stuff), and a deadlift platform.

When my wife and I separated a couple of years ago, I trained with minimum equipment. At the time, I really didn’t know how to train using minimal equipment, since I hadn’t done it since I was a teenager and my father bought me one of those old, concrete DP sets for my 15^th birthday. (On a note unrelated to the rest of this post, I want to say that a lot of lifters around my age owe a great debt to DP for getting us started in the iron game. I digress…) Anyway, I experimented with minimal-equipment training and I got some good results. (Which you can read on past entries here on the blog.)

But that didn’t last too long. After a couple months of at home workouts, I moved all of my weights to a friend’s garage/wrecker pen. And I’ve been training consistently there for the last year and a half (or so).

That changed recently. I had to move my weights. So I called up my training partner Puddin’ (or, rather, he called me) and we moved all of those weights to a mini-storage. I’m sure that before long I will once again find a place to store my weights (such as a new house), but until that time arrives I am going to make the most of my situation. (Puddin’—also known as “The Ox” and “Big Perm”; occasionally known by his given name, Richard—will have none of this bodyweight and limited equipment training. He needs his heavy iron—or so he says—and so he plans on joining a local gym for the time being.)

And so, I go it alone.

I’m kind of looking forward to it. I’ve wanted to write a bodyweight-training article for some time, so I’m going to experiment with several training strategies that I believe to be effective—strategies that I didn’t use during my last stint with this sort of training. So far, I’m enjoying the workouts, and the results that I’m getting.

I’m limiting my weights even more than my situation requires. I have space where I currently live for more equipment, but for the time being I’m going to stick with a few pair of dumbbells.

The Advice

Before we go any further, I want to give you some advice about at-home workouts. Much of this advice applies to workouts in your garage gym or your average commercial gym, but I think that it would do some good to discuss it. (By the way, some of this advice is not the typical stuff you’ll hear from the “experts” in a lot of the muscle magazines or—God forbid—the internet forums.) But I think it’s sound advice none-the-less:

· Train hard. True, I don’t always recommend training to “failure”. But you still need to push yourself. The harder you push yourself—always striving to move more and more weight; always striving for a few more repetitions—the better the results.

· Stick with basic exercises. One of the beauties of at-home training is that it forces you to work hard on basic exercises. You could do worse than a hard session of bodyweight squats, push-ups (in whatever variety you choose to use), overhead dumbbell presses, dumbbell rows, and farmer’s walks.

· Don’t be afraid to train long. I know that it’s popular these days to workout for 45 minutes, then call it quits. But I want to go on record right now and say that some of the best results I’ve ever gotten are with hard workouts that lasted 1 and a half to 2 hours long. When I was powerlifting, I broke all my personal bests with Russian-style training that typically lasted 2 hours. And in the past year, I put on a lot of muscle mass—not to mention strength—when I trained 4 to 5 days per week, with sessions lasting at least one and a half hours.

· Overtraining is for pussies! Okay, maybe I went slightly overboard with this one. But, seriously, the whole overtraining thing has been way overdone. Guys from the past that were massively big and strong ( such as Anthony Ditillo) and guys currently (think Christian Thibaudeau, Charles Staley, Chad Waterbury, and myself) always recommend that the more frequently you can train, the better. Of course, the frequent training has to be tempered with wisdom and insight, but it’s still the best way to go as long as you know what you’re doing.

The Workout

To give you a good idea of what an “ultimate at-home workout” might look like, here is the workout that I performed this evening:

· After a couple sets of hill sprints to get the blood flowing, I started the workout with dumbbell deadlifts for speed. Using 80-pound dumbbells, I performed 5 set of 10 reps. The goal on each repetition was to explode as fast as possible, then lower the weight under control.

· Next up was one of the best exercises you can ever do with a pair of dumbbells in your hands: the farmer’s walk. For these, I walked back and forth in my back yard until I felt fairly fatigued. (Yeah, I know, you think that’s kind of vague.) Using the 80 pound dumbbells again, I walked until I felt as if I was about to drop the weight, rested a couple of minutes, then repeated this for 8 more sets.

· The third exercise was one-arm overhead presses. Once again, it was the 80s. I didn’t push these as hard (since I did a whole shite-load of push-ups the night before), but I still did 5 sets of 5 reps.

· The “heavy” stuff out of the way, I grabbed my 30 pound dumbbells and cranked out 5 sets of 20 reps of dumbbell overhead presses. I moved fast here; resting just long enough to catch my breath.

· For the final “weighted” exercise of the session, I did 100 reps of dumbbell curls with the 30s. For these, I did a set of 20, rested very briefly, did a set of 20, rested very briefly again, and then repeated for another 3 sets.

· Last, but definitely not least, I did sets of 50-rep bodyweight squats for 30 minutes. I’m not sure how many sets I did here. I did a set, rested long enough to get my strength back, did another set, and repeated in like manner until the 30-minutes were over.

· All told, the workout took around an hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours. Of course, half of the workout was comprised of farmer’s walks and bodyweight squats.

The key to making this training effective is to string several of these kinds of workouts together during a week. And then to string the weeks together into months, and the months into years, and then… well, you get it.

Jack Lalanne videos

2011-01-24T20:03:00.001-08:00

I hope that everyone who reads my blog—and even those of you who have just stumbled upon it—will take the time to view some of the videos below. They are some of my favorites.

Although Jack Lalanne is gone, it's nice to know that we can still watch and listen to him as he tells it like it is.

Jack Lalanne - Worry

2011-01-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

Jack Lalanne - Body and Mind Connection

2011-01-24T19:59:00.000-08:00

Jack Lalanne - The effect of bad habits

2011-01-24T19:55:00.000-08:00

Jack Lalanne - Life is a battlefield

2011-01-24T19:52:00.000-08:00

Jack Lalanne - Unhappy people

2011-01-24T18:07:00.000-08:00

Jack Lalanne: Strength and Endurance

2011-01-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

One of my all-time heroes, Jack Lalanne, died yesterday.

I'm not sure if—as popular as he was—Lalanne ever got his just due. Modern "fitness" experts (and I use that term rather loosely considering a lot of the current crop of "experts") couldn't hold a candle to old Jack. If you don't believe me, then ponder this: What current "expert" could do a 1,000 push-ups and a 1,000 pull-ups in just over one hour? The answer: not one. But Lalanne could.

He's due more respect among bodybuilders, as well. (And if you don't believe that, just look at the picture above.) His physique in the '40s was as good as anyone (though, admittedly, not as large as others.)

In honor of him, I thought I would post the article below. It's from 1949, but it's words ring as true now as they did back then. (Maybe even more true, considering the fact that so few lifters want to work hard these days.)

Strength and Endurance

by Jack Lalanne

The question of strength versus endurance is a question asked of me hundreds of times. Some fellows will train for just strength, others train strictly for endurance. It is impossible to develop maximum strength AND endurance. If you are trained for strength alone, your endurance will suffer. If your objective is weight lifting alone, your interest in developing a lot of endurance may be negligible, but on the other hand, if you are interested in attaining close to a perfect body developed for efficiency’s sake, you will be surely be interested in strength PLUS endurance.

Our bodies are called upon to perform numerous tasks and duties. Some require strength, some endurance. Therefore, the sensible thing for the average trainer to do is to hit upon a happy medium and strive to develop both.

You might say, “Why develop all this endurance, I’m not a distance runner or swimmer?” No, you might not be, but do you realize the tremendous amount of energy it takes to work eight hours on your job, then train several nights a week? If you haven’t the proper endurance, your job and your training will be very unpleasant tasks. For example, we’ll say your job requires 100 units of energy and you have 150 units of energy in your body. At the end of the day you haven’t much reserve left for your workouts or even the ordinary pursuit of life. The greatest complaint of Americans is, “I’m always tired.” Sure they’re tired. They have no reserve to fall back on. If you have only 150 units of energy in your body, why not build the 150 units to 300, 400 or even 500 by the correct exercise and diet? If you develop this endurance your job will be much easier than before, and at the day’s end instead of feeling depleted you will have an adequate reserve from which to draw when you are training or enjoying yourself in other ways. The whole idea may be summer up thusly: If you have a heavy load to haul that requires 75 horsepower to move, and your truck has only 80 horsepower your motor hasn’t much reserve and the strain on it would be enormous. Wouldn’t it be better to get a 150 horsepower motor with which to pull the load? There would be far less strain on the engine and it would work more efficiently and last longer. That body of yours is exactly like the truck engine. If you put too much stress on your body it will wear out quicker and function less efficiently. It would be wise to develop this strength and endurance to the utmost so the things we like and want to do will place no great strain on us. Then we can finish a full day’s work and still have a reservoir of energy stored away ready to use.

Strength and endurance can be developed. Anyone beginner can double the strength and endurance he possesses. The only thing it takes is proper guidance and persistence.

Another thing I would like to dwell on for a moment is the effect age has on one’s endurance. It has been my observation that, among my own students, the older fellows develop more endurance than do the younger ones. By older fellows I mean men in their 40’s or early 50’s. This holds especially true in the fields of marathon running and swimming. The winner of the Boston A.A.U. 26-mile marathon this year was a man in his forties, and the greatest distance swimmer in the world today is Frenchman in his 50’s.

The reason more of the older fellows haven’t strength and endurance is due to the fact that they never make use of them. Inactivity plays no part in the development of either. The more you use the body properly, the better it becomes. If you put demands on your body what happens? All the internal organs are stimulated, the heart is called on to pump more blood through the body, the lungs are called on to rid the body of waste products and to furnish it with plenty of fresh oxygen to work with, all the other organs and glands are called upon to do their part in the functions of the body, the elimination is sped up to take care of the increased manufacture of poisons and waste, your assimilation becomes more efficient, in fact you become so efficient that all of the nourishment in your food is utilized to a fuller extent. The harder you work the stronger you get and the more endurance you develop.

Remember this: It is extremely hard for a healthy, well-trained person can overwork his body! The ability to handle more work than you ever imagined was possible can be attained.

Now you want to know how to develop all of this strength and endurance. First, you have to lay out a program for yourself. Developing strength and endurance together takes a lot of self-discipline. When you think you are tired you can always do more. In fact, you’ll be surprised at how much you are capable of doing after you think you have reached your limit. To start a program for yourself, though, you have to start out quite gradually.

Keep doing your regular training, but instead of resting say, 3 minutes between sets, rest only 2½ minutes. Do this for a couple of workouts, then, for a couple more rest only 2 minutes between sets. Reduce the rest periods by 15 seconds each week until you are doing 1 set every minute including rest. In other words, you will be doing 10 sets in 10 minutes.

You may have to drop some of your poundages slightly at first, but the whole idea behind this is to be able to use heavy weights and not rest much. You will no doubt say, “I can’t lift decent weights unless I rest more.” We are strictly creatures of habit and adaptation. Why not get into the habit of shorter rests during workouts? You will be amazed to see, with hard work and persistence, how fast you can work and how much weight you can handle after a couple of months of training this way. Some of the numerous advantages of this approach are listed below:

1.) Keeping the blood in strong circulation.
2.) Building up nerve force.
3.) Accomplishing more work less time.
4.) If you are planning to, or already do participate in a sport, your condition will improve immensely.
5.) The quality of strength and musculature will be much better.
6.) The stimulation you get from a fast workout is far greater than from a prolonged one.

After you have mastered doing a hard set a minute, try doing a set, resting 10 seconds, then doing the next set. A program this intense should not be followed for more than three consecutive weeks. After the three weeks train for a week with lighter weights, longer rests and fewer total sets. Then return to the more intense work for another three weeks.

Everything we do is judged to be difficult or easy by comparison with some other movement or exercise we perform. For example, if you are lifting 100 pounds, but you are capable of lifting 200 pounds in the same exercise, the 100 pound weight will never seem really seem easy until you have lifted the 200 pound one. If, after lifting the 200 pound weight, you again try the 100 pounder, it will seem ridiculously easy. This applies to everything we do, including the length of time we choose to rest between sets. Always make new and harder demands on the body and the results will be most gratifying.

Best Article of 2010

2011-01-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

Now that 2010 is come and gone—and now that a whole slew of people (some of you reading this) are in the midst of attempting to succeed at their New Year's resolution—I thought I would post my pick for the "Best Article of 2010."

If you know me—or at least my writings—then you won't be surprised by my pick.

I've selected Bill Starr's article that appeared in the March '10 issue of Iron Man magazine entitled "Make it Harder: There are No Shortcuts on the Road to Building Strength."

And if you are truly interested in succeeding at your resolutions, then this article is a must read.

Enjoy.

(And maybe in the near future, I'll post my "honorable mentions" for 2010.)

Make it Harder

There are No Shortcuts on the Road to Building Strength

Bill Starr

The current trend in strength training and the fitness world is to come up with some new piece of equipmentor a training system that isn’t demanding but that enables a person to get stronger or become more fit. Easy is in; difficult is out. Modern fitness facilities reflect the trend. They’re no longer places where die-hard lifters and bodybuilders sweat buckets of water and sometimes blood in their quest for greater strength and finer physiques. They’ve become social clubs where attire is more important than how much effort you put into a routine. Using heavy weights is frowned on, as are sweating and making noise while working out.

Which is why you rarely see anyone in those state-of-the-art facilities who’s strong or in great shape. People prefer the word toning to training and believe in short, condensed sessions, as they’re very busy.

Even if you do join a gym for the purpose of packing on muscular bodyweight or increasing your strength by a large margin, your task is going to be difficult due to the lack of equipment. Ever see any power racks or lifting platforms in the newer gyms? I doubt it. There are probably a dozen training centers in the county I live in, and not one of them has a power rack or a lifting platform. So athletes who would like to get stronger in order to be more proficient in their chosen sport or are aspiring Olympic lifters are out of luck in Harford County, Maryland. As they are almost everywhere else in the country.

The last thing an owner of a gym wants is a group of men and women who are serious about getting stronger. They stay way too long, taking up space that five others could be using. Of course, the reason the proprietors give for not having any equipment for heavy training is that doing the Olympic and power lifts is risky and light weights are much safer and not as stressful to the body. Plus, the machines are a great deal easier than having to learn how to do a movement with a free weight.

I can determine the true nature of any gym just by checking out its squatting stations. If there are power racks or staircase squat racks, I give the place a B rating. Should it, by some miracle, have a platform, it gets an A. If I see a row of Smith machines instead of squat racks, though, I know that this is the home of mullets: trainees who seldom miss workouts yet never make any appreciable gains in either size or strength. They come to these ultramodern fitness centers to visit, ogle the female members in skintight leotards and maybe get lucky and score an invitation to a party. Trying to improve his strength on some exercise is the last thing on a mullet’s mind.

The current attitude of the majority of Americans is that fast is better than prolonged, whether you’re talking about making money, getting promotions, gaining salvation or staying in shape. Writing a letter is old-fashioned, and sending a fax is slowly but steadily falling into the same category. No one wants to put forth much effort anymore.

When I come across one of the programs on TV selling some new gadget, I stay with it because I’m fascinated by the ideas they come up with to try and get viewers to believe what they’re saying is true and buy their product. Some are downright silly. My favorite lately is the apparatus designed to let someone do crunches. That is, instead of not buying the flimsy piece of junk and doing crunches on the floor. The selling point is that the apparatus will let you perform crunches and be completely comfortable while doing it. One happy customer, a real person, proclaimed that he loved the apparatus because he could now do crunches without any aches in his neck. Right—nothing should ache or give you discomfort while you train. That would simply be ridiculous.

After my hip surgery the only ab exercise I could do for some time was crunches. Because I was still weak, I managed only a couple of dozen the first time I did them, and my neck gave out before my abs. Someone in tune with the times would have immediately ordered one of those crunch machines, but I chose another approach. I did some dynamic-tension exercises to strengthen my neck, and I slowly increased my reps. Within two months I was doing 600 crunches, and only the last 50 bothered my neck—but nothing to the degree of grinding out of the bottom of a max squat or bringing a heavy deadlift through the sticking point. Getting stronger always involves discomfort. It’s the only way to move your body to a higher level. Yet that’s not what the masses want to hear.

The preference for the quick and easy over the long and difficult is the primary reason we see so many grossly fat people waddling around malls and supermarkets—everywhere in fact. Sure, they’re overeating, but that’s been going on for quite some time. The recent spurt of obesity in nearly all age groups is a direct result of inactivity. Moreover, if changes aren’t soon made for youngsters growing up in our do-less environment, a great many parents are going to be burying their offspring.

But enough about mullets and the lazy part of our population. No matter what they’re told, they aren’t going to change. My message is for those who are seriously trying to alter their physiques for the better or want to get considerably stronger, and it’s for those who profess a genuine desire to gain strength and build a more balanced physique but still take the easy way out when it comes to doing the hard stuff.

Working the lower back is a prime example of what I’m talking about. The single best exercise for strengthening the lumbars is the good morning. It also happens to be one of the most demanding exercises in all of strength training. Good mornings, which are often called tomorrow mornings by my athletes due to the lingering soreness they cause, are an integral part of my athletes’ programs—females as well as males. As soon as they’ve learned the basic exercises and established a firm enough foundation, I insert good mornings into their routines. That’s because without the specific lower-back work, they won’t make nearly the gains on the pulling exercises or squats as when they do good mornings religiously and with weight that’s in proportion to their squats.

Although athlete hate good mornings with a passion, they do them because I’m in charge. Plus, they feel the results right away and know they’re beneficial. As soon as they complete their sports eligibility, of course, the majority of them drop the exercise, contending that they’re no longer interested in getting stronger. They just want to maintain a fit body. What they fail to understand is that strong lumbars are critical for success in any physical activity and that if they want to continue to play recreational sports and stay reasonably strong, they must work their lower backs directly and diligently. As they grow older, keeping the lumbars strong becomes essential to leading a healthy life.

Then there are those who keep good mornings in their routines but use such puny poundages that it becomes an almost useless exercise. When the hyperextension machines came on the scene, they became instant substitutes for good mornings in nearly every collegiate program in the country. The machines looked sharp, and both athletes and coaches loved them—athletes because anything was better than good mornings and coaches because they no longer had to listen to complaints about the dreaded exercise.

I like the hyper machines, yet they’re not as demanding as good mornings, and there’s the rub. Take a step back in the difficulty department, and you’ll soon find that many of your lifts are regressing rather than progressing.

I also use almost-straight-legged deadlifts in my routine, but only as an alternative for my advanced athletes to give them more variety. At first the athletes think they caught a break. Then I inform them how much weight they’re going to be using: three quarters of their best squat for 10 reps. Plus, they’re not allowed to skip the good mornings. Rather, they do them twice as often as the deads. So there’s no moving from difficult to easy. It’s difficult to difficult, and that’s how it must be if someone wants to get stronger or even maintain existing strength. Shift to an easier movement, and strength will be lost, guaranteed. It’s just how the body functions.

Many trainees do partial squats rather than going deep. They contend that full squats hurt their knees while partials do not. That’s bullshit. Half and quarter squats put a much greater amount of stress on the knee joints than the full movement. It’s been proven in a great many studies. The best exercise for stabilizing the knees is the squat, done in a full-range movement. The real reason so many prefer partial squats is that they’re easier, pure and simple.

Cheating on an exercise is another example of how so many take the easier course. It’s easier to accomplish a higher number on the bench press much more readily and with less effort if you rebound the bar off your chest followed by an exaggerated bridge to get it through the sticking point. To use strict, correct form is much tougher and brings about slower gains—in the beginning, that is. Over the long haul using perfect technique will result in a much higher lift with the added bonus of lowering the risk of injury to the elbows and shoulders.

Taking the less demanding route is why so many prefer to do seated presses with the bar or dumbbells rather than cleaning them and pressing from a standing position. It’s also why some do shrugs with dumbbellsrather than loading up a bar with a score of plates in the power rack. Heavy shrugs are very hard; dumbbellsare not. It’s evident when athletes want to do flat-bench dumbbell presses and have teammates hand them the weights. That’s the easy way. The hard way is to learn to clean the dumbbell, then lie back and do the presses. To really test athletes’ determination, have them sit up with the weights when they’ve finished the set and place them on the floor. That’s what I mean by making a movement more difficult. Rest assured, however: The athlete who did the exercise without any assistance is going to get a great deal more out of it than someone who asks for help.

Even when rubber bumper plates are available, I have my athletes lower the bar to the floor under control rather than dropping it. Why? It’s not to keep from damaging the bar or plates but to do a bit of extra work by lowering the bar. Before the bumps came along in the late ’60s, lifters had to lower the weights back to the platform, even after a heavy clean, press, snatch or jerk. If a bar was dropped during competition, the lift was disqualified. Platforms, unless engineered to handle a huge amount of stress, couldn’t handle heavy chunks of iron being rained down on them repeatedly. Gym owners would go berserk when someone lost control and dumped a weight. I’ve trained at a number of gyms that were on the second floor and was told that if I dropped even one attempt, my workout was over. A small thing, perhaps, to lower a bar under control, but that additional bit of effort adds up in the long run. It builds a different kind of strength from what you use to elevate a weight.

Having a wide range of machines and all the other usual equipment in a gym isn’t always the blessing many believe it to be. A gym with only the bare essentials may seem to be a handicap, yet it can be a positive if you’re willing to go the extra mile. When I started weight training, the first three weight rooms I trained in had no squat rack. I believed squats were necessary if I wanted to grow and get stronger, so I cleaned the weight, flipped it over to my back, squatted and then flipped it back to my shoulders and lowered it to the floor—certainly harder than taking a weight off a rack and squatting it. The combo exercise did a great deal in helping me build a solid foundation so that when I did finally find a well-equipped gym, I was much better prepared.

Steve Stanko told me that he had to do the same thing, then did me one better. There was only a flat bench in the small room where he trained in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, before moving to York, Pennsylvania. So in order to do bench presses, he had to lie on the bench and pull the bar from the floor up over his head and place it on his chest. After he finished his set, he would lower the bar as carefully as he could back to the floor. He credited that movement with his exceptional upper-body strength. If you know the history of physical culture, you know that Steve was one of the greatest Olympic lifters and bodybuilders America ever produced. He was the first athlete in the world to total 1,000 on the three Olympic lifts—the press, snatch and clean and jerk—as well as a Mr. America winner.

Those who train alone have a tendency, over time, to opt for doing an easier exercise for some body part. They might substitute hang cleans for full power cleans. While I also use hang cleans in some of my athletes’ routines, it’s mostly for variety, and I never have them do the shorter version exclusively. Hang cleans serve a purpose but aren’t nearly as beneficial as the full-range movement. Full power cleans require a higher degree of coordination, timing, and overall quickness than hang cleans, which means they have more relevance to an athlete in any sport.

If you’re training alone, you have to constantly monitor your program to make sure you’re not cutting corners on some of the more demanding exercises. Or you might still be doing all the hard stuff but less of it so that your overall workload numbers are slowly becoming lower and lower.

The reason anyone trying to gain size and strength needs to constantly be making workouts harder and harder is that the human body is always seeking a state of complacency. The mind, however, is in charge, and dedicated athletes won’t let the physical self succumb to the ever-present urge to take it easy.

Back to the chubby segment of our population. The reason so many are in the sad state they are is simply that they lack willpower. To stay fit and healthy requires a resolve that cannot be shaken no matter what obstacles are placed in your path.

To read the article in its entirety, go here.

Two New Articles

2011-01-11T16:13:00.000-08:00

For those of you who still read articles in print—and not just stare at a computer screen for all of your bodybuilding, powerlifting, mass-building info—I have two new articles out in magazines this month.

First, in the February '11 issue of Planet Muscle, I have an article entitled "400 Pound Bench and 50" Chest." What makes this one unique is that it's actually a re-print of one that I already had in PM about a year ago. However, they said that it was "hands down, their most popular article of the last two years." Their words, not mine. Pretty cool.

And, in the February '11 issue of Iron Man, I have an article entitled "X-Factor Arm Workouts." I don't usually write "body part training" articles, so if I did, then you know it's going to be different.

The Mass-Building, Split-Training Ultimate!

2010-11-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

The Mass-Building, Split Training Ultimate!

Creating the Ultimate “Split” Workout Program

Within the last few weeks I’ve been receiving e-mails that go something like this: “Okay, Sloan, I get it! Full-body workouts are perfectly capable of building muscle mass—hell, they might even be the best muscle building workouts!—but the problem is this: I don’t enjoy full-body workouts. So... if you were to design a split workout program for someone, what would it look like?”

Before we go any further, let me say this: I am not “opposed” to split training programs. I just think for the average lifter/bodybuilder who has limited time to lift weights—and also doesn’t mind a little something called effort—full-body workouts are the best way to go.

However, I also understand that there are a lot of serious lifters who love following split workout programs. And—since you’re not going to stick with a workout program that you don’t enjoy doing (not for long, at least)—I almost always recommend that these guys (or gals) follow a split workout.

And just what kind of split program do I recommend? Usually something that looks a heck of a lot like the following regimen.

(Note: This workout is primarily aimed at gaining muscle mass—not strength. Yes, you will gain strength with it, but that’s not its primary goal—despite some of the low reps that are utilized. In other words, this is meant for bodybuilders; powerlifters, don’t complain.)

The Science of Gaining Massive Muscles

Before we get to the actual workout, you’re going to have to allow me to do a little explaining on just why I think this workout is so effective. (And allow me to unleash my inner bodybuilding geek.)

For years, powerlifters, Olympic lifters, and strength coaches in the Western world thought the best way to build mass was with something called linear periodization. Basically, this involved focusing on different aspects of strength training throughout the year. In other words, an athlete would work on building muscular endurance for a couple of months (one phase). For the second phase, the lifter would then focus on hypertrophy training. The third phase would focus on power. And, finally, in the fourth phase, the lifter would concentrate on building maximal strength. All of us in the West said, “Hey, this linear periodization is really damn good.”

Then came the Russians. Russian strength coaches and researchers were determined to find the fastest, most sure-fire way to produce rapid strength gains. They tried several different systems of training. And they decided that linear periodization, for all intents and purposes, sucked. With a capital S! Big Time!

The Russians saw no reason to focus on different aspects of training throughout the year. Instead, they thought that all the different methods should be trained each and every week. This system is called conjugate periodization.

One thing they did discover about conjugate periodization, however, was that lifters shouldn’t try to combine different methods during the same workout. In other words, one day should be devoted toward developing maximal strength, one day should be devoted toward building speed and power, and so forth. When methods were combined in the same workout, results were lessened.

Too bad it took us so long to finally listen! But then—thank the bodybuilding gods—along came Louie Simmons to save us from our linear ways.

The Powerlifting Factor

Conjugate periodization became popular in powerlifting due to Louie Simmons and the Westside Barbell Club. Westside training involves maxing out on an exercise for a week or two and then switching to another exercise. The important factor is that they hit a one or three rep max every week. This method of training is done once each week for upper body and once for the lower body. Another day of the week is devoted toward training for speed—9-12 sets of 2-3 reps using 50-60% of the lifter’s one-rep maximum.

At this point, you may be wondering what all this talk of commies and powerlifting has to do with our mass-building, split workout program. It just happens to be that the Westside template is really good for building muscle mass—not just strength—as long as a few adjustments are made.

The first adjustment is that instead of a “speed” day, you will use a “pump” day. Usually, if a muscle is capable of a good pump, muscle growth will be a result.

The second adjustment is that on the “maximal strength” day, you will limit your maxes to either a 7 rep max, a 5 rep max, or (at most) a 3 rep max.

This program is a four days per week routine. You will be training your upper body on two days per week and your lower body on the other two.

The Split Training Ultimate Workout Program

Day One—Upper Body Pump Day

1. Bench presses, dumbbell bench presses, parallel bar dips, or incline bench presses: 8 sets of 10 reps. Pick a weight where you can get about twenty reps before reaching failure. Use this weight for all 8 sets. Take only about two minutes of rest between each set. Once you have been training on the same exercise for a few weeks, change to one of the others.

2. Wide grip chins, bent-over rows, or wide grip lat pulldowns: 8 sets of 10 reps. Use the same technique as the first exercise.

3. Barbell curls or dumbbell curls supersetted with skullcrushers or triceps pushdowns: 5 sets of 10 reps (each exercise). Take each set one or two reps shy of failure. Take about a one-minute rest between each superset.

4. Lateral raises, dumbbell presses (seated or standing), or military presses (barbell): 4 sets of 10 reps. Your shoulders should be pretty pumped from all of the other exercises. This is the reason you are only going to do 4 sets.

Day Two—Lower Body Maximal Strength

1. Squats, Olympic-style squats, box squats, bottom-position squats, or deadlifts (sumo or conventional style): Work up to a max set of 7, 5, or 3 repetitions. Pick one of these exercises and work up over at least 5 sets until you reach your maximum weight for your repetition range. In other words, if you chose squats, and your max set was 375 for 3 reps, your set/rep sequence would look like this: 135x5, 225x3, 275x3, 315x3, 350x3, 375x3, 405x2 (lifter reached failure on third rep with 405). Stick with the same exercise for two to three weeks, attempting to break your record each week, and then rotate to another exercise.

2. Lunges: 5 sets of 5 reps. Perform all 5 sets with the same weight. Only the last two sets should be really taxing.

3. Incline sit-ups: 3 sets of 20 reps. Perform these on a steep incline bench.

Day Three—Off

Day Four—Upper Body Maximal Strength

1. Flat bench presses, close-grip bench presses, bottom-position bench presses, close-grip bottom position bench presses, rack lockouts, board presses, or incline bench presses: Work up to a max set of 7, 5, or 3 repetitions. Pick one of these exercises and work up over at least 5 sets until you reach your maximum weight for the chosen repetition range. Your flat bench press workout might look like this: 135x5, 175x5, 225x5, 245x3, 265x3, 280x3, 300x2 (missed the 3^rd rep with 300). Stick with the same exercise for at least two to three weeks before rotating to one of the other exercises.

2. Wide grip chins, close grip chins, bent-over rows, or t-bar rows: Work up to a max set of 7, 5, or 3 repetitions. Use the same format as the first exercise.

3. Barbell curls, e-z bar curls, reverse curls, or dumbbell curls: Work up to a max set of 7, 5, or 3 repetitions. Use the same set/rep format as the first two exercises.

Day Five—Off

Day Six—Lower Body Pump Day

1. Squats, front squats, leg presses, or hack squats: 8 sets of 10 reps. Use a weight that allows you about 20 reps before reaching failure. Use this weight for all 8 sets. Take about two minutes rest in between sets. Rotate exercises every few weeks.

2. Leg extensions: 6 sets of 20 reps. Perform these with a weight that will allow you about 30 reps before you would normally reach failure.

3. Leg Curls: 2 sets of 25 reps. You simply won’t need very much hamstring work due to the first exercise in this workout and your lower body maximal strength day.

4. Hanging Leg Raises: 3 sets of 20 reps.

Day Seven—Off

Some Words of Advice

This program actually looks pretty simple, doesn’t it? But don’t be fooled by its simplicity. It’s actually quite tough. The pump days are harder than they look, and you’ll have to really push yourself on the maximal strength days.

If you need work on them, then don’t be afraid to add some calf work on each training day. Standing calf raises, seated raises, and donkey calf raises would all do the trick. Use higher reps on these exercises.

If you want to gain as much mass as possible, then make sure you’re eating enough calories and protein each and every day. This isn’t a pre-contest regimen, so don’t be afraid to eat bread and plenty of red meat, not to mention drink a lot of milk while you’re on this program. Make sure you get enough calories every day, as well. Eat at least 12 times your bodyweight in calories each day. 15 times your bodyweight would be even better.

Final Thoughts

Is this the “ultimate” split workout program? You won’t know until you actually try it.

Alien Mass: The "Director's Cut"

2010-11-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

What follows is the unedited version of my last article that was in Planet Muscle magazine. I love PM—it looks great, Everson includes plenty of articles with varying opinions—but when my "Alien Mass" article appeared in it, I was a little disappointed (and not just because Josh Bryant's name was attached it to). PM had changed some of the content to make it more "bodybuilding magazine friendly." What follows is the original draft that I wrote.

Enjoy.

Alien Mass

9 Keys for Out-of-this-World Muscle Growth

The movie “Plan 9 From Outer Space” is generally considered the worst movie of all time. That’s saying something when you consider just how many bad movies have come out even in the past year. Well, while “Plan 9” might be a disaster of epic proportions, in this article I’m prepared to unleash my own “Plan 9” alien mass attack—to allow you to grow epic proportions of muscle mass.

Here are 9 keys for outrageous, out-of-this-world muscle growth.

Key #1: Train as Frequently as Possible While Being as Fresh as Possible.

The bottom line (no matter what “style” of training that you adhere to) is that you need to train frequently. You also need to be “as fresh as possible” each time that you train.

Every time that you pump iron a whole slew of good things happens to your muscle cells—especially when you apply proper peri-workout nutrition (but we’ll get around to that in a little bit). A properly executed workout raises testosterone levels, enhances GH levels, and makes your muscle highly susceptible to the proper anabolic environment.

Do you enjoy full-body workouts? Then train 3 days per week using an H-L-M system of training. And if you’re advanced and enjoy full-body workouts, start using an H-L-L-M system, training 4 days per week. (You don’t know what the hell an H-L-L-M system even looks like? Then go immerse your ass in a study of Bill Starr.)

Or perhaps you rather enjoy training each muscle group once per week, obliterating each muscle group with lots of sets, reps, and plenty of intensity techniques? Then train every day, using a one-bodypart-per-day split. This is much better than training 3 days per week, hitting several different muscle groups at each session.

Enjoy splitting your muscle groups but training with less intensity than the above scenario? No problem. Use a 3-on/ 1-off split. Keep your “work” sets limited to 9-10 per muscle group.

Lastly, don’t forget this tidbit: No great bodybuilder ever became great by working out only once or twice per week.

Key #2: Use C.A.T. for the Ultimate Repetition

It was Fred Hatfield—also known as “Dr. Squat”—who coined the term compensatory acceleration training (C.A.T. for short) for a repetition where you move the weight as fast as possible through the concentric range of motion. This doesn’t mean, of course, that the weight necessarily moves fast (though it certainly might with certain styles of training). The point is for you to accelerate the weight as fast as humanly possible (even if you’re going for a one-rep maximum). This kind of training, I believe, is the most effective for long-term muscle growth.

Key #3: Train Heavy and Hard for Your Body Type

The heavier and harder that you train, the better off your muscles are for it. Using C.A.T., pick a weight that has you approaching failure somewhere between the 6^th and the 12^th repetition. Why the discrepancy in rep ranges? It all depends on your body type. I believe that most training—at least as far as hypertrophy is concerned—should be done with weights that are approximately 80-85% of your one-rep maximum. If you have a lot of fast-twitch muscle fibers, this means you will hit failure somewhere around your 6^th repetition. If you’re more of a slow-twitch type, you should be approaching 12 reps or so with the same percentage. And, if you have a mix of muscle fibers, it should be somewhere in between.

Now, I’m not suggesting that all of your training should be performed in your particular repetition zone, but I would advise to do so about 75% of the time.

Key #4: Use a Relatively High-Volume of Training

The amount of volume will obviously depend on just how frequently you plan to train. Just make sure that you use as many sets as your work capacity—and your bodypart split—can handle. Don’t cut yourself short.

And learn to build up your work capacity. Obviously, you shouldn’t start out by performing 15 to 20 sets per bodypart. But you do want to work up to the point where your work capacity can handle that sort of training.

Key #5: Stop Most of Your Sets Shy of Momentary Muscular Failure

For the most part, you don’t want to take your work sets to the point of failure. (There are exceptions, of course. If you’re using a one-bodypart-per-day routine, for instance, then you can afford to throw in a few intensity techniques. Just don’t overdo it.)

When do you want to stop the set? Try stopping when you begin to slow down. If you’re using C.A.T.—and moving the weight as fast as possible throughout the concentric portion of the rep, and you’re training heavy—then stop the set when your repetitions become slow.

Key #6: Do Less Early On in Your Workout So You Can Do More Later

A lot of bodybuilders make the mistake of training too hard at the beginning of their workouts, then burning out too quickly. (This is one of the main problems with typical H.I.T. workouts.) If you enjoy training to failure or doing stuff like forced reps, drop sets, or another of the various intensity techniques, save that for the last 1/4 of your workout.

A typical chest workout using this principle might look something like this:

· Bench presses: 5 sets of 6 to 12 reps (using C.A.T.)

· Incline dumbbell bench presses: 4 sets of 6 to 12 reps (using C.A.T.)

· Weighted Dips: 3 sets of 6 to 12 reps (using C.A.T.)

· Flat Dumbbell Bench Presses: 6 “strip” sets of 10 reps each set, going down the rack.

Key #7: Get Plenty of Rest

When not lifting weights, make sure that you’re getting plenty of rest and recuperation. This means sleeping plenty each night—7 to 9 hours of sleep are good numbers to shoot for. It also means “slowing down.” If your life is too hectic outside of the gym, chances are that you are diminishing the results you will get from your efforts inside of the gym.

Eat your meals slowly. Eat while sitting down at a table, not while on the go. Read a book instead of watching television. And relax. (On a personal note, I’m very keen on meditation—there’s nothing more restorative to your body, mind, and Spirit.)

Key #8: Add “Extra” Workouts

Despite how it sounds, this is not contradictory to key #7. Extra workouts should be “active recovery” sessions. They should be relatively light, should increase your GPP (general physical preparedness), and should make you feel better after you do them compared to when you got started.

Extra workouts of this sort increase your work capacity and aid in recovery between your intense sessions.

Key #9: Take Advantage of Peri-Workout Nutrition

Peri-workout nutrition refers to what you eat or drink prior, during, and after your workout. If utilized properly, peri-workout nutrition can be the key to massive muscle growth.

Here’s what I recommend so that you can ensure that your workouts become nothing more than massive muscle-building stimulators:

· Eat a meal consisting of about 40 to 45 grams of complex carbohydrates and about 30 grams of protein one hour prior to your training session. This meal can be whole food, a protein/carb drink, or a meal replacement bar. (My personal favorite choice here is one of the Met-rx “Big 100” meal replacement bars—just saying.)

· At the onset of your workout session, drink a protein/carb drink that contains at least 30 grams of protein. Sip on this slowly throughout your training session. (You might want to carry a bottle of water with you, as well. I drink both during my workouts.)

· When you are finished training, consume a post-workout meal that is nearly identical to your pre-workout meal. The only thing you might want to change would be the addition of more carbohydrates to this meal—60 to 70 grams of carbs would not be a bad idea in order to replenish lost glycogen stores.

Conclusion

There you have it: 9 out-of-this-world keys for growing gargantuan mounds of muscle. While “Plan 9 from Outer Space” might be the worst movie ever made, these 9 keys might just be the best this world—or any other—has ever tried when it comes to gaining alien amounts of mass.

Morphing from Blobby Bodybuilder to Bad Ass

2010-10-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

Every so often I come across an article that I wholeheartedly agree with. The following article, from T-Nation, is one such piece. This one's written by a guy named Jackson Yee—who I've never heard of—but if this article is any indication of his training philosophy, then I'm sure I will enjoy other stuff that he writes.

What he says about full-body workouts is especially true. Although it's been many years ago—as in back in the mid '90s for me—I went through something similar when I switched from one-bodypart-per-week training to full body sessions.

Check it out:

Morphing From Blobby Bodybuilder to Bad Ass
by Jackson Yee

For 20 years I was obsessed with getting big.
I was a bag of bones when I graduated from high school and didn't even break 100 pounds. I was tired of looking like a skeleton, so I put all my effort into developing as much muscle mass as possible. I was fully dedicated to transferring my skinny five-foot-four frame into a meathead.
With hard work, I was able to gain seventy-five pounds by my mid-twenties. My success was due in part to training at World Gym and Gold's Gym in the early 80's, where I was inspired daily by watching the routines of bodybuilders like Arnold, Franco, Tom Platz, and other greats.
My 20 years of training at these great gyms enabled me to try every bodybuilding technique and method ever invented, even though I never thought of actually entering a bodybuilding competition. I was horrified at the thought of wearing Speedos on stage. Still, bodybuilding training and packing on muscle was my passion.
I continued to do single-body part training into my 30's with some major changes. I pretty much stopped squatting, doing deadlifts, or picking up anything heavy from the ground. My only leg and back work was on machines. Also, I rarely trained my abs. In my mind I was still that skinny runt that couldn't break 100 pounds, so being chiseled wasn't first and foremost in my mind.
Biceps work and lots of benching dominated my workouts. Having big arms and a huge chest was pretty much my focus for a whole decade Having big arms and a huge chest was my identity.
By the time I turned 40, my training had stagnated. I wasn't bored; I still loved going to the gym, but I'd reached a plateau. I stopped getting big and the only thing that was growing was my gut.
I was fat, soft, terribly out of shape and suddenly on hypertension medication. When I finally was ready to face my denial, I knew I had to change. Bodybuilding was my life, but now I knew I'd run my course with this type of training.
I didn't jump into strength and conditioning work immediately. I was too afraid and skeptical of anything other than the old-fashioned bodybuilding split routines. Over time, I experimented and tried out different training protocols. I struggled, but I persevered. The new methods I discovered now define who I am.
The transition from bodybuilder to a conditioning athlete was never easy. I wrote the following tips because I know how isolated your journey is going to be, IF you decide to make the switch.
I made the transformation and can't conceive of ever going back to the way I used to train. With the growing popularity of MMA, the shift is changing from wanting to look big like Arnold to training to look like Georges St. Pierre. For those of you ready to make the great leap or if you're just conditioning-curious, here are some ideas to help you make the change.

1. Change your aesthetic goals
Accept the fact you'll never win the Mr. Olympia competition. Be grateful for all those years of bodybuilding and that you got as huge as you possibly could. Be realistic with yourself and possibly assess that you're overweight, a little flabby, and probably might have some heath issues to address.
You need a change. Pick an ideal physique that you want to attain. So instead of looking like Arnold, pick an athlete that looks like a bad ass, such as GSP. And most importantly, remember that chicks dig guys with abs. You can get in the best shape of your life if you work your ass for it. It won't be easy, but it's definitely attainable with hard work and a different training regimen. Being open-minded is a must.

2. Full body workouts
After reading about the alternative to single-body part workouts, I wasn't convinced. For 20 years, single-body part training was the belief system that I never, ever, questioned or doubted. I stubbornly refused to believe that full-body workouts would be effective in packing on massive muscles.
There are many arguments to train the whole body in one session, but what convinced me to give it a shot was my need to learn how to move my body as one unit. Not only was I out of shape, but I also wasn't athletic.
I don't want to use overplayed words like 'non-functional,' but I was definitely borderline clumsy. Playing a softball game with friends at the park on a Sunday afternoon had the potential to be a very embarrassing situation for me. Going on a hike with one of my Matchmaker.com dates was never a good idea, unless my date had an oxygen tank in her picnic basket.
But reality finally hit me when I had to help a neighbor move a heavy sofa and I struggled until it landed on my foot. For a guy with a lot of muscle, I sure wasn't very strong.
For twenty years I'd hid behind my muscles, posing as an "athlete," but now I'd been exposed. Too many years of isolation muscle work and not working my muscles together as one powerful kinetic chain had finally caught up with me. My big muscle groups, like my back and glutes, were dormant.
As result, I was weak as shit.
So the change of pace to a full-body strength program now seemed more appealing to me. I focused on compound movements and for the first month I didn't know if I was getting much out of the workouts. I hadn't done any deadlifts, squats, or heavy rows in years, so I wasn't sure how my form was or, for that matter, what the hell central nervous system training was all about.
However, I persisted and the once in a blue moon full-body workout turned into a twice a week workout and eventually a three times a week workout. I was soon motivated by how much weight I was able to move. The quick improvements fascinated me.
I went from trying to build bulky muscles to learning how to get my CNS to recruit as much muscle as possible during each lift. I was getting stronger and my body composition started to change. To my surprise, I was getting bigger overall.
For those of you who want to incorporate a strength training protocol to your regimen, I suggest you pick basic compound movements like a deadlift, a front or back squat, military press, barbell row, barbell hip thrusts, pull-ups, pushups, or good mornings. Stick to the basic multi-joint movements.
Remember you're now on a strength program so you've got to go heavy. A simple protocol is to pick 4 movements, do 5 sets for each movement, and keep the reps low from 4 to 6 reps (except for pull ups and pushups which you train until near failure).
Notice I said near failure and not to complete exhaustion. When I was bodybuilding it just seemed logical to lift until I couldn't budge the load for even an inch. With this new plan, you want to hold back some and learn to leave some extra fuel in your reserve tank.
How do you train hard when you can't go all out? It's a fine line, I know. So I did my research and found that all the C & S coaches that I respected were vehemently against training to failure. It's the direct opposite to what I used to do with my bodybuilding training where I usually extended the exhaustion with half reps and drop sets.
I just felt I wasn't doing enough unless I trained to complete failure. It was a hard concept to give up until I started to see my PR's go up. Once you see your strength numbers going through the roof, you'll understand how training to failure is a detriment to your strength development.
It took a while, but I finally saw the correlation between getting strong and building muscle. Even now I could kick myself in the head for all those thousands of training sessions using relatively light weights for high reps or screaming in pain while doing concentration curls.

To read the rest of the article, go here.

New Planet Muscle Article: "Alien Mass"

2010-10-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

First off, the good news: I have an article in the latest issue of Planet Muscle magazine entitled "9 Keys for Alien Mass."

The bad news: Josh Bryant is listed as the author, and not me.

Oh, well; it was an honest mistake by Everson and crew.

Anyway, check out the article; it's more "bodybuilding" than some of my other articles, which means that you will probably enjoy it either more or less than the others.

High Frequency Training That Works

2010-09-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

First off —for those of you who enjoy reading my blog—forgive me for my lack of posts. I have been inundated as of late with work (I have a regular job, and have had to rotate shifts recently—which really blows!) and with family obligations (both of my sons play football, so I have multiple practices—and games—to attend). So, when I have had time to write, I have been working on articles. On top of that, add in the fact that I try to fit in 3 to 4 workouts per week, and, well, this blog just kind of took a back seat. Hopefully, however, I can fit in at least 3 or 4 posts per month from now. So—with that out of the way—on with this latest post...

High Frequency Training That Works

Most of you know that I have long been a proponent of high-frequency training. While I don't think that it has to be performed all the time—and there are certainly other ways to train—I do think that it's one of the more effective forms of training. For instance, I would say that a properly designed high-frequency training program is more effective than a properly designed one-bodypart-per-week routine—at least, for most lifters.

The key words here are properly designed. What follows are some keys—in no certain order—to allow you to properly design your own workout program based on your needs, goals, and your level of strength/fitness:

You cannot combine high-volume with high-frequency... at least, at first. If you want to embark on a high-frequency training program, keep your sets per bodypart relatively low until you are able to build up your work capacity.
At first, stick with a whole-body program. You can't go wrong with a Bill Starr-style heavy-light-medium program to start things off right.
Perform between 30 and 50 reps per bodypart three times per week.
If you are solely interested in gaining muscle mass, then 5 sets of 10 reps is a good set/rep combination.
If you are interested in a combination of size and strength, perform multiple sets of low reps. 10 sets of 3 is a standby that cannot be beat.
If you decide upon a 10 sets of 3 program, use a weight where you reach failure on the 6th repetition.
As you get more advanced, you can start adding back-off sets for more volume. For instance, you could start off with 10 sets of 3, then add 2 back-off sets of 8 reps with a lower weight.
Once you adapt to high-frequency training, incorporate heavy singles into your program. These are a must if you want to get as strong as possible.
As you get more advanced, you can also begin to add extra sessions. These should be light—nothing too taxing— and can be performed on your "off" days.
Once you become advanced, you can start splitting your bodyparts, training half of them on one day, and half on the next. This, of course, also means training 5 to 6 days per week, but if you have the time, it can be highly effective.
And, finally, the best piece of advice I (or anyone else) can give you: be creative and have fun. Training should be enjoyable—even when it's hard. If you're not enjoying your workouts, then something's wrong. (And this goes for all kinds of training.)

If anyone has a question about HFT, don't be afraid to shoot me an e-mail.

The Tao Athlete

2010-07-23T14:32:00.000-07:00

Only recently—as in the past six months or so—have I started paying attention to the bodybuilding coach Scott Abel. He's been around for a long time—I first became familiar with his name some 15 years ago when he had some articles about him (probably articles written by Greg Zulak) in MuscleMag International. And although I was somewhat familiar with his training concepts—I seem to recall that his "innervation training" was the first thing I heard about—I never really thought that he had anything revolutionary.

As with a lot of things in life, it turns out that I was dead wrong about him. Abel might just be the best bodybuilding coach out there. Now, when you first read his training programs, you probably won't think that—not until you understand all of the nuances and details that his programs entail; nuances and details that I am really just starting to grasp.

So, by all means, I would encourage anyone interested in bodybuilding to immerse yourself in studying—and then applying—his theories. (If you're into powerlifting, strongman, or other strength sports, then Abel might not necessarily be your cup of tea, but you should still study his techniques so that you can use the things of his that do apply to your strength sport.)

With all of that being said, the reasons above are not the reasons that I am doing this post. The reason is this: Abel is a very integral-minded bodybuilder—whether or not he even knows this himself. He seems to have a firm grasp of psychology—including some of the problematic psychological issues you will find among a large segment of bodybuilders—and philosophy. In the post below, he shows his grasp of that ever-illusive eastern philosophical idea known as the Tao.

I hope you enjoy what follows. I certainly did.

The Tao Athlete

by Scott Abel

I’ve taken some time out from writing my new book to address this months Blog topic about the Tao Athlete and the Tao in general. To give some background I will use myself as an example. I realized very early on in my bodybuilding pursuits that I was somehow different in the way I looked at bodybuilding than almost anyone I had come in contact with at that young age. For years I could never put my finger on it but I just knew that when I interacted with other bodybuilders, I just didn’t pursue bodybuilding in the same way or for the same reasons as my fellow competitors. That realization would follow me my whole career. It wasn’t until the last few years that I even became acquainted with the concept of the Tao athlete; and of course the Tao itself.

At one of my very first seminars I answered a question that would be most revealing over the next 20+ years. I was still in my 20’s and I was asked about motivation for a contest. I really had no prepared answer because I had been an athlete, even mentally my whole life, so the idea of being unmotivated or not motivated never actually occurred to me till that very moment. But my answer had some people shaking their heads. I said what motivates me is that my body is the house where my true self will reside for the rest of my life. Like any house, the more I like the surroundings and lack of clutter and the more clean and organized that environment, than the more likely I am to think more clearly and “be” a better me. That was my answer even way back then about motivation.

And the thing was, it was the truth.

Early on that is exactly how I felt about my training and workouts. Even then I had connected my spirit self with my athlete self. The Tao nature of that would become obvious over time. I was never comfortable identifying myself as a bodybuilder. My whole career, instead I saw myself as an athlete, who did bodybuilding. It was a difference that still exists today.

The Tao and the Tao nature is about the path, the fulfillment or filling you up from being on the path. It’s about YOUR path. It is unique. The Tao is about balance. It is beautiful in its context that it can be about pure devotion and commitment but at the same time not be about obsessive compulsive preoccupation with outcomes, or results or externals that take us off its path and away from balance. It is said even to discuss the Tao is to lose it. It’s kind of like trying to hold on to running water. It is a natural truth that you know only when you know it. Seek it and it cannot be found, live it, and you become just like that flowing water. There is no need to hold what you are part of, and what is part of you.

This is Tao, and at the same time, not Tao.

To read the entire post, go here.

Training Volume And Frequency.m4v

2010-07-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Best of the Web: 4 Hot Topics from the Beast

2010-07-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

For the latest "Best of the Web" entry, I've selected an article from Christian Thibaudeau. Thibaudeau is a strength/bodybuilding coach who has written a ton of article for T-Nation. A lot of his articles are really good—as far as methods for building muscles mass goes, I would say that he's the most integral of all bodybuilding writers; he selects from various methods and incorporates them into a syncretic whole without just coming up with some wild mish-mash of training protocols that simply don't work. This article—"4 Hot Topics from the Beast"—is my favorite of his T-Nation articles.

4 Hot Topics from The Beast

by Christian Thibaudeau

I've said it time and time again: The more you train without exceeding your capacity to recover, the more you'll grow and the stronger you'll get.

I'll go one step further and say that most people don't train hard enough to progress past the beginning of the intermediate stage. When they first start, they gain because any training represents a drastic increase compared to the hole they were wearing through the couch. But as soon as they get past the beginner stage, gains become exceedingly rare because now that their body is used to physical stress, it takes a lot more of it to force adaptation.

One of the reasons why these people fail to train hard enough to stimulate gains is out fear of overtraining (which is often just a justification for laziness).

Similarly, most high-level Olympic lifters train for three hours per day spread over two or three daily sessions. Heck, Canadian National team member Marilou Dozois-Prévost engaged in two sessions daily, each lasting two hours, and would often extend these to do additional jumping or gymnastic work... when she was 14!

The benefits of youth? Maybe.

But how do you explain the case of Marcel Perron, who at 68, would lift for two hours in the morning, sprint for 30 minutes before lunch, and train for two more hours in the evening? His partner, Emery Chevrier, who power cleaned 285 and power snatched 225 pounds at a bodyweight of 170 when he was 70, would do the same minus the sprints.

And on the practical side, I've known quite a few farmers who chugged along for eight hours straight day after day, doing work that'd bury the most hardcore gym enthusiasts, without overtraining.

The problem is that most people lack the recovery capacity and don't take the necessary means to recover properly.

The Barbarian Brothers, two of the hardest training bodybuilders mankind has ever known, said that there was no such thing as overtraining, only undereating.

While not 100% accurate, they have the gist of it. Most people who think they're overtraining are simply under-recovering. While you can't make your body invincible to overtraining by pigging out, undereating, and especially undernourishment, can drastically reduce your capacity to recover.

Here are some things you can do to increase your recovery capacity:

To read the rest of the article, go here.

Best of the Web: Heavy-Light-Medium System for Strength and Power

2010-07-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

For my second entry in this "best of the web" series, I've selected one of my own articles. I wrote this one for the Dragon Door website.

I have chosen this entry not necessarily because it's the best of all of my articles, but because it's probably the one article that more lifters need to read. And they need to read it because they need to give its suggestions a try.

If you're not squatting and deadlifting at least double your bodyweight, and bench pressing at least 1 & 1/2 times your bodyweight; and if you're not comparably strong on a lot of other lifts, then you have no business using multiple-split training, or using bands and chains, or using steroids, or—well, let's just say you have no business doing any of the nonsense a lot of (so-called) lifters do. You save all of that stuff until after you've laid a very good foundation of basic training. And I have no doubt that the workout in this article is the best foundation that you can lay for future—and immediate—success.

Here it is:

The Heavy-Light-Medium System for Strength and Power

For many years now, I've felt that the best all-around system of training is the heavy/light/medium system. It's great for beginning strength athletes since it teaches them how to properly regulate intensity and volume (and how to handle 3 full-body workouts in a training week). It's also great for anyone interested in not just developing strength and power, but also developing the muscle mass to go along with it. Add in the fact that it's capable of getting lifters in great condition, and I think it's hard to argue against its effectiveness.

The best-known advocate for this style of training is probably Bill Starr, who made the system popular through his classic book "The Strongest Shall Survive" (published in the '70s), and in many subsequent articles for Iron Man Magazine. Of course, Starr didn't invent the program. Before his book was published, many bodybuilders and powerlifters from the '60s and '70s used it. (Some of these lifters did prefer a medium/light/heavy system of training, however, thinking it best to save the heavy stuff for the last training day of the week.)

The purpose of the article is to show how to properly use a heavy/light/medium system. Although many people advocate this program as a good means for gaining both size and strength (a search of the many internet forums should attest to this fact), I have found that many lifters don't understand how to utilize it correctly. Since I have trained many others and myself—usually either powerlifters or football players—using the system, I believe I understand its nuances better than most. I have also used this system for extended periods of time (as long as six months), which is something that needs to be done in order to really understand any training methodology.

What follows is a week of workouts designed for anyone that's new to this style of training. Pay close attention to all of the details, and read the training plan several times before you attempt the program. After I have finished going over the program in detail, I will offer a few pointers so that you can properly tweak the system based on your goals and your level of strength fitness.
To read the full article, go here.

Best of the Web: Christian Mysticism of the Future

2010-07-05T18:41:00.000-07:00

For a while now, I've been wanting to do a "best of" series where I post links to what I consider to be some of the best web posts/articles that you can find on the internet.

Lately, I've been very busy writing articles, and so my posts here on my blog have taken a bit of a back seat to the rest of my writing. But since I've found time tonight to sit down and actually do something here, I thought it would be a good time to start this "best of" series.

My first pick comes from Carl McColman's delightful mystical Christian blog Anamchara: The Website of Unknowing. The post is entitled "Christian Mysticism of the Future" and its my favorite of all of Carl's posts. (And he's written quite a lot.)

By the way, after you've read this, be sure to check out the rest of his site. His last few blog posts alone are wonderful reading.

Christian Mysticism of the Future

One of my gripes with Phyllis Tickle’s book The Great Emergence is that she provides little or no insight into where she thinks the church is headed during this period of emergence. I think everyone kind of gets it that post-modernity is a hinge time, where we’re after something that no longer works (modernity) and we don’t really know yet what it is we’re before. (as an aside, I figure it’s either going to be a new renaissance that will make the 15th century look like a dress rehearsal, or else it could involve environmental devastation and resultant trauma on a scale never before imagined. And it all really boils down to how effectively we can curb our appetites!).

Okay, well, I can hardly whine about Tickle’s lack of forecasting, if I don’t do a bit of my own. So I’m working on a chapter in my book that will explore my conjectures about the future of Christian mysticism. This is utterly un-scientific: I am only basing my thoughts on what I have seen and read and intuited. So feel free to disagree — but if you do, please post a comment as to why. I’d be curious to hear what other contemplatives sense about where the Holy Spirit is leading us.

But for now, here are the seven characteristics that I (currently) believe will shape the future of Christian mysticism:

Christian mysticism in the future will be increasingly Trinitarian. I believe the success of William Paul Young’s The Shack is at least partially due to its lovely presentation of the trinitarian nature of God. Obviously, the Blessed Trinity has always been central to Christian theology, but I believe its importance will only increase, as a healthy alternative to monism and dualism — both of which have dogged Christian spirituality for too long.

To read the full article, go here.

Some (Very Random) Thoughts on Bodyweight Strength Training

2010-06-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

I haven't lifted weights in almost a week. My sons and I took a trip to the mountains of Tennessee for a few days. We arrived back this afternoon.

After taking it easy at my house for a spell, we decided it was time they return to their mother—she was missing them, after all.

And I was DYING to hit the weights again.

Once my children were safely returned, and their mother and I said our cordial goodbyes, I headed over to the "wrecking gym" where I train. Only to find, much to my chagrin, that the garage was more than just a little bit infested with... fleas. Must be this sweltering Alabama heat—I know summer has just arrived, but it seems like every day for the last month the heat index has been over 110 degrees. Could be all the dogs that hang out around the gym. Well, whatever it is, tomorrow it will be time to spray the pesky critters. (Yes, yes, I'm aware that the fleas are—technically speaking—a "sentient being", but I'm afraid they're still getting sprayed.) But, until the spraying can commence, I decided it was time to head back to the house.

And do some bodyweight-only strength training.

I'm pretty keen on bodyweight strength training (read some of my early posts on the blog), and tonight I really had a hell of a workout by doing nothing more than squats (about 500 of them), some push-ups (150), and some sit-ups (don't know how many—a lot).

All of which got me to thinking. And so here are some (quite) random thoughts on bodyweight-only strength training:

This kind of training should be done frequently. There's no reason that—if bodyweight training is going to be your only form of resistance training—you shouldn't train six-days-per-week for 1 (beginners) to 2 hours (intermediate to advanced) per session.
You recover fast from this sort of training. This is good—and bad, I suppose. Not only should you train more frequently, you really need to train more frequently.
This stuff is great for conditioning—and getting you in shape fast. As Paul Chek has said, the key to being in great shape is to perform anaerobic exercise until it becomes aerobic. Bodyweight training can easily fit the bill here.
Bodyweight-only training is excellent for the athlete who wants to be ageless. You want to live to a ripe old age, and be able to look half your age, have sex like you were half your age, and out train guys half your age? Then these kind of workouts should be the staple of your training.
This kind of training is great for mixed martial artists. If you are into MMA, I would advise that you lift weights 2 days per week (HEAVY) and the other 4 days a week should be comprised of bodyweight-only strength training.
When performing bodyweight squats, don't count reps during a set, count the time of your sets. You should work up to 5 to 10 minute sets of squats. Then you will be in very good shape.
This kind of training teaches you to eat well. You can't do these workouts and eat like a super-heavyweight powerlifting competitor—you'd be winded within 5 minutes of starting your workout. You need lots of lean protein, and plenty of complex and fibrous carbohydrates.
Everyone should do this kind of training at least once per week. (Yes, that even goes for your super-heavy powerlifters I was talking about.)
These workouts are great as "extra workouts" in your powerlifting arsenal, especially if your workouts in the gym are mainly comprised of "maximal effort" training and "dynamic effort" training.
You will not lose your muscle mass if you switch over from typical bodybuilding training to bodyweight-only training. Don't believe me? Try doing 100 push-ups, 50 chins, and 500 bodyweight squats six days per week for the next month. You'll be absolutely friggin' sold.

To Fail or Not to Fail

2010-06-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

To fail or not to fail... that is the question.

We're talking training to failure, of course.

On one side of the spectrum, you have strength coaches such as Chad Waterbury and Charles Staley (and I suppose myself in recent years) who seem to never recommend training to failure. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the great strength coach Charles Poliquin, and bodybuilding writers/trainers such as Steve Holman, Eric Broser (and whoever the hell invented that Doggcrapp—yes, that's the actual name of the training system for those of you who don't know— crap) who seem to always recommend training to failure.

The million dollar question: Who's right? I think the answer is both—as long as certain criteria are adhered to for the most part.

I haven't always felt that way.

If you read my early writing for Iron Man magazine and MuscleMag International—I used to write quite a bit for those magazines 10 to 15 years ago—then you would have assumed I was a training to failure sort of guy. And I was.

I began writing for Iron Man and MuscleMag when I was 19 years old. I had devoured those magazines for years—ever since I first picked up a weight at the age of 15, an old DP set. My early training inspirations were writers such as Stuart McRobert, Bradley Steiner, Steve Holman, and then not long after that guys such as Greg Zulak and Gene Mozee. The first set of writers recommended brief, ultra-intense workouts. Zulak and Mozee tended to recommend a lot of volume. By the time I was 19—and at the time when I first put pen to paper for Iron Man—I had come to use an amalgam of the various writers above. I trained using a lot of intensity—almost every set to failure—but I also did plenty of volume, and generally trained my muscles about once every 5 to 7 days. (At the time, such infrequent training was just becoming popular—it now seems to be the norm.)

Being young, I thrived on such training. I also had the perfect lifestyle to allow such training to work. I worked as a personal trainer and taught some weight training classes at a local college—which means that the only really stressful stuff I did all week were my actual workouts. I also had enough to time to eat 6 to 8 meals a day, consuming somewhere between 1 to 2 grams of protein per bodypart, and between 3,500 to 4,000 calories per day. I was lean and pretty big—only 5'6" but my weight fluctuated between 205 to 215 pounds.

I thought my style of training at the time was the ultimate. I trained so hard that very few people wanted to be my workout partner. That fact kind of made me proud.

But was such ultra-intense training really the best way to train?

Around 1997, I discovered the writings of two important people—Brooks Kubrik (he of the "Dinosaur Training" fame) and (even more importantly) Bill Starr. Starr had always written stuff for Iron Man, but for some reason I had ignored him until then. Like a lot of readers of that magazine back then (and now), I thought that Starr was too "old-school", that his methods were outdated.

I also discovered powerlifting around this time, and fell head-over-heels in love with the sport. Long story short: I switched over to more frequent workouts, lost a lot of weight to compete in the 181 pound division in powerlifting, stopped training to failure, started experimenting with workouts that were essentially a combination of Bill Starr, Kubrik, and Louie Simmons' methods, and got a hell of a lot stronger than I had ever been before.

I also started to write even more articles for Iron Man—sometime during the late '90s it was not uncommon for me to have an article in each issue for almost a year straight. Because of my exposure to Simmons, Staley, and Bill Starr, I rarely ever recommended training to failure—instead I relied on volume and frequency to illicit gains in both myself and my readers.

But things change—that is the nature of life, after all.

Recently, I have once again started recommended training to failure. Not all the time, but I now know that it does have its place in a properly designed workout program.

What happened? For one, I started to have a lot of injuries (including surgery for some herniated cervical disks), and I also hung up the powerlifting singlet. I have no intention of ever stepping on a platform again—or a bodybuilding stage, even though I'll always be somewhat of a bodybuilder at heart.

Yet I love to train. I now probably train harder than ever.

I'm bigger than I've been in a long time: I weigh somewhere around 200 pounds. I'm gaining muscle mass, but I'm also training for strength.

And I've discovered that it's best to train to failure, but only toward the end of the workout. (At least, it's best to do this kind of training if a combination of strength and muscle size is what you're after—and I'm assuming that fits the bill for most readers of my articles.)

Never—or at least very rarely—should you train to failure at the beginning of the workout. Train easier at the beginning of a workout so that you can train harder at the end. (For a more in depth explanation of this line of reasoning, I recommend this article by Chad Waterbury.)

As an example, here is what I did at my workout today (which was a chest and lat workout):

Flat bench presses: 135 x 2 sets x 15 reps (these sets were very easy), 225x10 (nowhere near failure), 275x6 (strong, fast reps; nowhere near failure), 295x4 (fast and explosive as possible), 315x2 (another explosive set)

Keep in mind on the bench presses, I was trying to use compensatory acceleration on all my sets.

Flat bench presses (225 x 4 sets x 12 reps) alternated with wide-grip chins (bodyweight x 4 sets x 6 to 8 reps). Each one of these sets was stopped as soon as I felt myself slowing down. I was actually surprised I stayed fast on all of my bench press sets.

Incline dumbbell bench presses (80s x 4 sets x 10 to 12 reps) alternated with close-grip chins (bodyweight x 4 sets x 6 to 8 reps). Once again, all of these reps were performed as fast as possible—nothing slow.

At this point, I switched over to some failure training:

Wide-grip dips (bodyweight x 4 sets x absolute momentary muscular failure—usually around the 8th to 10th repetition; I was a little fatigued from all the flat and inclines) alternated with machine pulldowns (140 pounds x 4 sets x momentary muscular failure—somewhere between 30 to 15 reps; 30 toward the beginning of the sets, 15 toward the end).

If I would have performed so much failure training at the beginning of the workout, there's no way I would have been able to perform that much total work—which would not have been a good thing.

To fail or not to fail... I guess it's still one of THE questions even after all these years.

Timed Squats

2010-06-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

For those of you looking for a torturous workout—or for those of you just looking for something new—the following squat program from Bill Starr definitely fits the bill. Hardest workout ever? I'm not sure about that, but it's probably not far off base.

Couple words of advice: Don't try this unless you're in shape. And, two, I would add this to the end of your typical workout the first time you try it. That way, you don't have to do anything but lie on the floor in agony, attempting to recover.

Time to Squat
By: Bill Starr
Most readers of this magazine want to make continuous progress and move their top-end numbers up on a regular basis. Change is an excellent method of achieving those goals. Changing a routine, even slightly, can instill enthusiasm for your workouts. Anything that helps you look forward to your next session in the weight room is a positive thing.
Some people get along just fine doing the same routine for a long time. Jerry Hardy and I coached together at the University of Hawaii. When he returned to California, he installed a gym in his garage and asked me for a program. He wanted to train six days a week. I sent him a routine, and he followed it exactly for nearly 20 years and was more than content to do so. There's something comforting in doing the familiar exercises in the same order, sort of like spending time with an old friend.
Now, Jerry's goal was to maintain a reasonably high level of strength fitness. He also ran two miles every morning after he completed his weight training. He wasn't lifting to prepare himself for any sport, and he wasn't interested in testing himself with max attempts. So the consistent routine fit his needs.
Most of the inquiries I receive deal with the squat. The writers tell me either that they're bogged down and not making any progress or that they have lost their zest for doing squats. My reply is always the same'try something different for a time. Quite often a variation in squatting technique or a change in sets and reps or the time spent doing the exercise is just what the doctor ordered. In many instances the trainees write back to tell me they're using the suggested changes on a permanent basis because they brought the desired results.
I've found that it's also helpful, motivationwise, to change from the conventional set-and-rep sequence every so often, even if you're doing well with your current routine. Subtle changes enable you to establish a more solid foundation and help you strengthen a weaker area that may have gone unnoticed, such as the adductors.
One variation is the 20-rep squat routine. Since that program has been discussed in many articles and books, I won't spend time going over it, other than to say that it does get the job done, primarily because 20-rep squats are extremely demanding. As Iron Man founder Peary Rader aptly pointed out many decades ago, they can trigger growth in people who have difficulty adding functional bodyweight and overall strength.
A few years ago I received a request to write a chapter for a book that has yet to be published. My topic was 'The Hardest Routine I Ever Did.' The thought that immediately crossed my mind was timed squats. They were, without question, the most physically and mentally demanding routine I ever got involved in, and they came about as an experiment. The competitive season was over, and Tommy Suggs and I were trying to improve our aerobic base, since that was an important attribute to have during long, drawn-out lifting contests. We played racquetball, volleyball and some soccer but got the notion that we could accomplish something on the same order in the weight room. In 1967 all the authorities on the subject said it wasn't possible. We believed differently.
We chose the squat because it was the most taxing on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems and because we could still do high reps, even if we were fatigued. At that time we were both capable of a 500-pound back squat and were handling in the mid-400s for five reps. Our form was good, which is an important consideration. I never put trainees on this grueling regimen unless they have perfect technique. The reason will soon become obvious.
The routine consisted of five sets of 10. The kicker was that on each subsequent workout we increased the weights on the five sets. We went through a trial workout, moving fast but not full-bore, and decided that we should be able to finish with 275 and do the sets in 12 minutes.

We did these at our noon session, and it was all we did at that time. Later, at four o'clock, we would do our other work. After taking ample time to make sure we were thoroughly warmed up, we started in, keeping track of how long it took us to do a set from the moment we took the bar out of the rack to the moment we reracked it, as well as our resting time and weight on the bar. Our sets for that first session were 135, 175, 205, 255 and 275 for 10 reps each. That may not seem like much for mid-400 squatters, but we rarely did more than five reps. Ten-rep sets were very high for us. Plus, we were conservative to make sure we made it through.
We completed all our sets in 10 minutes, then collapsed to the floor. Our plan was to check our pulse rates, but we were unable to do that until about 15 seconds had passed. Both were over 180, which was all right for our age group. When we finally recovered, we concluded that we were on the right track and would continue with the timed squats. We did agree that twice a week was enough for them. Any more and they'd hurt our other training'and having to consider doing them more than twice a week was too much for us to handle, as they weren't fun. In addition, we only planned to do them for a month. After that we would have to start handling heavier poundages in preparation for the upcoming season.
At the eighth session, our last, we used 355x10 on our final set and completed all five sets in seven minutes. It was an increase of 80 pounds on the bar, but, more important, we had cut three minutes off our time. We felt that was as far as we could go, as there was only so much time we could eliminate due to the necessity of reloading the bar after the sets, coming out of the rack, doing the reps and replacing the bar. Of course, as the weights got heavier and we became increasingly fatigued, it took longer to do a set.
While I'm sure the timed squats had a positive influence on our aerobic conditioning, the unexpected plus from doing the routine was the way it affected our mental states. Prior to embarking on this program, we always took five or more minutes between our heavy sets. Timed squats taught us that we didn't need much rest. On those final two heavier sets of timed squats I was unable to feel my legs, and tiny spots would appear in front of my eyes, yet I still went up and down'as did Tommy. At the conclusion we flopped to the floor, elevated our feet on a bench and gulped in air, marveling at our insanity. Even so, we agreed that we hadn't tapped into our reservoir of strength like that before, and that understanding of what the body can withstand under dire stress gave us a tremendous boost of confidence on the lifting platform. If we got rushed between attempts, it no longer mattered. It also helped us move through our regular sessions at a much faster pace, which enabled us to do more work in less time.
I've put a number of athletes on this routine, and it's proven to be especially useful to those engaged in endurance activities, such as long-distance runners, triathletes and mountain bikers. Very few pure-strength athletes I've put on timed squats could handle them, regardless of the amount of weight on the bar. They've simply given out or tightened up. Anyone who's using any tissue-building substance cannot do them either. When Tommy and I used this program, we were off steroids. This was during the infancy of drug use in weightlifting, and we took long periods of abstinence, got liver-function tests and were checked by a physician.
One strength athlete who was able to do timed squats really blew my mind because he far surpassed anyone I'd ever trained before'or since. Werner Krueger of Columbia, Maryland, was an All-American lacrosse midfielder at Johns Hopkins and one of my favorites. Unlike many of the other lacrosse players he never shirked the hard stuff I gave him. In fact, he invited it. Just before the season started, he asked if I had anything in my repertoire to help him improve his aerobic base. What else but timed squats? He breezed through the first session and wasn't all that winded when he finished. Werner, whom I nicknamed 'Possum,' for no reason other than my warped mind came up with it, only weighed 170, but I started squeezing the time and loading more weight on his final sets. To my utter amazement, he used 295x10 at his last session and did all his sets in less than six minutes. I really didn't think it was possible to do five sets that quickly. In addition, he ran four miles before coming to the weight room. It's a good idea to have someone around to do the loading and unloading. That will save you valuable time and energy. No more than two people can do timed squats at the same time. Otherwise, you'll have too much of a delay between sets. I wouldn't even think about doing these unless you're very fit and can endure pain. In short, they're not for the timid. On the other hand, if you've been doing the 20-rep program for a while and would like a change, these might fit into your schedule very nicely for a month or more.
A variation on the conventional squat that I use with a great deal of success is the pause squat. It's especially useful for people who have trouble going low or exploding out of the bottom position. There's nothing complicated about them. You simply pause at the lowest position in your squat and stay there for a three- or four-second count before recovering. Don't do the counting yourself unless you train alone because you'll always cheat. Have someone else do it and give you a clap when it's time to recover. Do pause squats with relatively light weights for high reps, say 10s and 12s, or heavier poundages for fives.
For them to be helpful, you must go below parallel and concentrate on using your power pack to drive the bar upward, rather than recoiling out of the hole. Paused squats force you to stay extremely tight, which is critical when you're attempting heavy weights, and they also help you learn to maintain the correct posture throughout the lift.
I generally incorporate them into athletes' programs in the form of one or more back-off sets of 10. One is usually enough for most people. Six-hundred-pound squatters have crumpled to the floor after handling 315x10 on pauses. As with timed squats they teach you that you can still make those final reps even though you're exhausted and all feeling has left your body. If I see lifters who are having lots of difficulty going deep, I have them do all their sets with a pause for five reps until they improve.
Wide-stance squats are great for a change and are particularly beneficial for people who display a weakness in their adductors. If your knees turn in during a heavy squat or a heavy pull off the floor, your adductors are relatively weak and need some direct attention. Wide-stance squats involve the adductors to a large extent and are the very best way to strengthen that group if you don't have an adductor machine available.
How wide should they be? At first just move your feet out a bit to make sure that the wider stance doesn't aggravate your hips or knees. If it doesn't, gradually move them out as far as you can while still being able to go below parallel and maintain your balance.
Even if athletes don't show any signs of adductor weakness, I still include some wide-stance squats in their program. On the light squat day I have them do two warmup sets, then three sets with the same weight. For example, 135, 225 and then three sets with 275, all for five reps. They do the first set with 275 using their normal stance but move to a wide stance on the second set and a narrow stance on the third. Eventually, most are able to do the last set with their heels touching. It takes some time to master the balance. The slight variation in stance helps build a firmer base and ensures proportionate strength. It also makes the otherwise uninteresting light day more challenging and fun.
A program that many bodybuilders used to do, usually just before a big contest, was nonstop squats performed without lockout out at the top. They were screamers because your legs definitely let you know that they didn't approve of your foolishness'but they were effective at eliminating unwanted fatty tissue in your legs and helping you achieve more cuts. Most bodybuilders who used them kept the reps high'15s and 20s'and constantly pushed for higher weights. You can only do them for a short time, since they start wearing on your brain even more than your body.
Nonstop squats are excellent for someone who's getting ready for ski season. Do them for three or four weeks, and you'll be able to handle the toughest slopes. When you do them, just remember that if you stop, the set is over. The same goes for locking out. Find a number that you can perform correctly, and then build on it. These also work well as back-off sets. If you do them right, you should be spent when you finish.
Like everyone, I sometimes find myself in a situation where I have very little in the way of equipment and have to improvise. On one occasion all I had was 100 pounds of plastic weights. So I did ultra-high reps of squats, two sets of 80. They got the job done. I've also used dumbbells for very high reps, and they were most effective. True, the tendons and ligaments aren't involved to any great extent, which means that pure strength is not enhanced, but the basic lower-body conditioning is. In some cases taking a break from pounding the attachments is a smart move. One thing I like about using dumbbells for high-rep squats is that once I'm exhausted, I can drop them. That isn't an option when you have a bar on your back'at least not a good one.
You can use dumbbell squats in addition to regular squats and do them on the days when you don't go to the gym. Vary your stance and work them hard enough, and you'll find that they get your entire leg sore.
There's a truism in strength training that the best program for you is the one that brings results. At the same time change is also helpful, so if you feel as if you're ready for a break from what you've been doing, try one or more of the ideas I've presented. Somewhere down the line you'll have the opportunity to teach someone else how to do one of these variations.
Editor's note: Bill Starr was a strength and conditioning coach at Johns Hopkins University from 1989 to 2000. He's the author of The Strongest Shall Survive and Defying Gravity.

Myths of Might

2010-05-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

Here's an article that I wrote for Iron Man back in 2003. It's probably been my most "controversial" article (or, at least, it was when I wrote it, which was probably a year or two before it was actually published).

If I was to write this again, there are some things I would change—my training theories have evolved slightly in the seven years since. Nonetheless, it's still a pretty good article (if I do say so myself).

Myths of Might

If you’ve been bodybuilding for a long time, listening to your buddies at the gym and reading the garbage that appears in bodybuilding magazines, and you have not given any serious thought to powerlifting or strength-event training, the warning at right is for you. The fact is, almost all of the trainees at your local health club know virtually zero when it comes to getting truly strong. That doesn’t have to be you.

Read about the following myths, trust in the truth of what is said, and if you’re still not a believer, try the sample workout, I guarantee you’ll become one.
Myth 1: Bodybuilding is a good way to build strength.
Yeah, I know. I just ticked off a whole slew of you. The truth is, though, that bodybuilding training, as it’s done by the average pro in today’s era of going for the pump with high-rep non-free-weight exercises, does not build much strength and power. Sure, you get stronger than if you’d never picked up a weight, but you won’t be anywhere near as strong as you’d be if you followed a truestrength-training program.
Most of your average bodybuilders know absolutely nothing about dynamic, or explosive-rep, training, ultra-low reps or the proper exercises to use for assistance work. They also know very little about how to regulate volume properly. They just train a muscle as hard as they can, thrash it and then give it a week or so to recover if that.
Famed powerlifting coach Louie Simmons once wrote that bodybuilding has ruined strength training in America. He caught a lot of flak for it, but he had a point. And the point was that modern-day bodybuilding is the least effective way to train with weights and build spedd, power, strength and conditioning.
Myth 2: Training for muscle mass is the same as training for strength.
This myth is closely tied in with the first one, and it’s the ultimate reason that bodybuilding training is not very efficient at building strength. It’s perpetuated largely because of the obvious correlation between weight training and strength. If you train for muscle mass, you’ll often gain some strength, and if you train for strength, you’ll often gain some muscle. That last part is not absolute because there are ways to avoid building muscle when you’re in a strength-training program.
The requirements for increasing the size of a muscle cell are flat-out different from those for making a muscle stronger. Bodybuilders favor-among other things-higher reps, slower speed of movement, relatively higher sets, going for the pump and a good deal of recuperative time between workouts, which they need with that kind of training. That doesn’t mean those are the best ways to train for strength, however. I think there are better ways to gain muscle mass too, but that’s an entirely different article. To get results with a strength-training program, you have to include these elements: quick movements, low reps, more-frequent training and fewer sets per muscle group. The Russians did a lot of research into building muscle and strength, and they came up with three distinct ways to train: the dynamic effort method, the repetition method and the maximum effort method. Bodybuilding programs focus on only one of those methods, repetitions, and thus neglect the other two, which happens to be the best for building strength and power.
Myth 3: Nutrition is the most important aspect of building strength.
Pick your jaw off the floor. That’s no misprint. In bodybuilding circles common wisdom holds that nutrition is 75 percent of success in weight training, while the training itself is only 25 percent. The fact is, nutrition has very little to do with your success in moving a lot of heavy iron. How can that be? And if I’m right, why have you been shoveling six meals a day down your throat and counting your protein intake as if your life were at stake?
To begin with, nutrition is more important of bodybuilding purposes than it is for strength building. When it comes to intense strength training, such as that done by powerlifters and strongman competitors, however, nutrition really isn’t that big of a deal.
You don’t believe me? Just check out the powerlifters’ programs, and you’ll find only one or two who actually count calories and protein. At the Westside Barbell Club in Columbus, Ohio, Simmons and his followers don’t even begin to think about following a diet. They simply eat whatever they want. Are they successful? You bet. At the 2003 World Bench Press Championships they swept every single weight class. All from a little gym where the lifters don’t pay attention to what they eat.
The Russian powerlifters have dominated the sport for years, and you know what? Some of them eat little more than bread and potatoes year-round, and they don’t get near the protein the Americans do. Yet they lift more than the rest of the world.
Why isn’t nutrition important? The answer is fairly simple: It’s the training that’s important. Take two lifters of about the same weight, age, training experience and strength. Put one of them on a bodybuilding program and a strict nutritional regimen, and put the other on a proven strength regimen and let him eat-or not eat-whatever he wants. You know who will be the strongest at the end of the program? Without a doubt the second lifter.
A lot of strength programs focus on increasing neural strength and making the motor units fire faster and more efficiently. There’s no secert diet you can follow that will make your body move heavy iron with force more efficiently.
Myth 4: Split routines are the most effective way to make progress.
Once again, I’ve probably upset a lot of people, especially those who follow multiple-split routines. You know, the ones where you train one muscle group a day in order to prioritize it and give it a lot of rest? The most effect way to train is with a whole-body workout, and that goes double for strength athletes who also compete in team sports such as football or basketball. If you’re new to strength training, just give a Bill Starr-style program a go. Stick with it for a couple of months, and I guarantee you’lll be a believer. Starr’s approach is based on training the entire body three times a week using a heavy / light / medium rotation. For advanced athletes he believes in four whole-body program for the very reason that it works your whole body. How many football players go out on the field on Saturday afternoon and just use their quadriceps? Or their biceps? None. If you compete in full-body sports, you need to condition yourself with full-body weight-trainnnig sessions.
What’s more, you’ll never be in good condition-and you’re not necessarily in good condition just because you can see your abs-unless you train your body as a unit. Do you think that training your chest all by itself, without working any other muscle groups, is going to get you in shape to go out on a basketball court several times a week and play effectively? Of course it won’t.
If you do follow a split program, then just split your body in half, using a upper/lower split. Train your upper body on one day and your lower body the next. Rest one day, and then repeat the split. Rest two days, and begin the cycle again. Keep it simple.
If you want to gain strength on a split routine, take a look at the routines of elite powerlifters. All of them stick with a two-day split. You may want to consider, however, that the Russian powerlifters almost always use whole-body workouts, and Olympic lifters never split their programs.
Myth 5: A slow rep speed is just as effective as a faster one.
Had to include this one, although it’s not as prevalent as the others. It’s mainly perpetuated by lifters and writers from the high intensity school of thought. Those same people are quick to point out the importance of specificity in training except where it applies to rep speed. Some of them even take it to the extreme, recommending super slow reps that exceed five seconds.
Keep this in mind: Training slowly will make you slow. If you want to be really powerful not just strong you need to incorporate some type of speed training into your program. For instance, if you always train with really low reps, then your rep speed will of necessity be slow. If you do that consistently over several weeks, then you’ll be teaching your muscle to move the weight slowly, and as a result you’ll get weaker. You need speed work.
As a side note, when you perform speed work, try to keep your repetitions to no more than five. More than that, and you start to slow down, as your reps just don’t have the power that the first ones had.
Myth 6: In order to optimize strength and mass gains, you need to train each muscle group infrequently.
Every time you train and train properly by regulating your volume many good things happen to your muscles thanks to the anabolic environment that occurs in your body for the next 36 hours or so. They include protein synthesis and increased testosterone, IGF-1, prostaglandins and other anticatabolic factors. After three days you’re reduced to what’s at best a semicatabolic state. So, when you allow yourself to recover for a week, you’re not taking advantage of that anabolic environment.
There are better ways to optimize your recovery and, therefore, your strength gains. The best course is to add a light workout or a couple in addition to your heavy session. Once again, I recommend Bill Starr’s programs.
If you’re really serious about strength training, you need to separate your speed workout. In addition, when you use really low reps for both dynamic sessions and maximum effort sessions, you place far less strain on your muscles. You don’t do any traumatic tissue damage, as you do with repetition workouts. You simply don’t get as sore, so you’re ready to lift again after two to three days of rest.
If you have a body part that lags behind the others in strength gains, try adding some extra sessions. For example, say you train your upper body two days a week, using a speed workout on Monday and a heavy, maximum effort workout on Thursday, and your lagging body part is chest. Try adding a light workout on Saturday, something like 30 percent of your maximum weight on the bench press for 12 sets of four reps each. After a few weeks add another light workout on Tuesday, say 10 sets of pushups for five reps each.
If you don’t get anything else out of the busting of this myth, at least understand that there are better ways to recover than just sitting around watching television and claiming that you can’t help around the house because you have to recuperate.
Myth 7: You cannot gain a lot of mass and a lot of strength at the same time.
Despite my previous comments regarding the difference between training for mass and training for strength, a lot of lifters and writers are wrong when they perpetuate this myth. All you have to do is look at he super heavy weight powerlifters or Olympic lifters or any of the World’s Strongest Man competitors.
At the Westside Barbell Club the main complaint from some of the lifters is that they gain to much muscle and have to move up two or three weight classes. And that’s despite their efforts to keep that from happening. The added mass is simply a by product of their training.
Old time lifters like Doug Hepburn and Pat Casey were very good at gaining both strength and muscle. The key was that they performed all their low rep strength work first. Then, when their nervous systems were properly heightened, they did their repetition work.
You can do the same. Whether it’s a heavy session or a speed workout, do your repetition work after your low rep work. Just don’t go overboard with the number of sets. Four to five sets maximum should be optimal.
Now that we’ve busted some of the most basic myths about building strength, let’s design a program that puts your new knowledge to use.
Pure Power Routine
This workout is designed with competitive powerlifters in mind, but it will be equally effective for beginning lifters who need to use a full body workout or for bodybuilders at any level who have only trained with repetition workouts to this point. The bottom line, however, is that it’s a good all around routine for anyone who wants to focus on strength and power alone.
You perform the workout three times a week. The most popular schedule is Monday, Wednsday and Friday.
Workout 1: Dynamic and Repetition
Speed squats 10 x 2
Speed benches 8 x 3
Power cleans 6 x 3
Chinups 4 x 6-8
Parallel bar dips 3 x 8-10
Hanging leg raises 3 x 20
Workout 2: Light and Recovery
Front squats 8 x 3
Explosive rep pushups 8 x 3
Pullovers 3 x 10
Cable Curls 3 x 10
Steep-incline situps 3 x 20
Workout 3: Heavy and Maximum effort
Bottom position squats or sumo deadlifts 5-8 x 1 - 3
Bottom position bench presses, rack lockouts or incline presses 5-8 x 1 - 3
Bent over rows 4 x 6 - 8
Skull crushers 3 x 10
Barbell curls 3 x 10
Hanging leg raises 3 x 20
Summing It Up
Hopefully you come away from this discussion with a better understanding of strength training. Despite the apparent similarities, there are some striking differences between strength training and bodybuilding. The better you understand that, the better you’ll be at either one.

Quote of the Day: Masutatsu Oyama

2010-05-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

"If someone asked me what a human being ought to devote the maximum of his life to, I would answer: training. Train more than you sleep."

—Masutatsu Oyama (founder of Kyokushin Karate-Do)

Quote of the Day: Dan John

2010-05-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

"So the lesson here is, stop separating things out. Stop drawing these artificial lines from the person you are in the gym to the person you are in church. It comes down to one thing: integrity.

Integrity has a meaning in theology and in morality: it means being the person that you say you are. The key to integrity is to keep you one person. Don't be this person in one environment, that person in the next.

I've known many people who would rip you off in a heartbeat, but then tell you that they have to rush off to church. Be one person, one consistent person, so at your funeral they're all talking about the same guy. I think once you do that, the universe seems to conspire to help you out."

—Dan John (strength coach)

Sucker Punch: Dan John

2010-05-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

I enjoy reading T-Muscle. Overall, they have more good articles than most any other bodybuilding magazine or on-line bodybuilding site, but I have to say that the best thing about them is Dan John—if it wasn't for T-Muscle then I would never have been introduced to some of the best training articles (and honest advice) from the pen of Dan John. He ranks right up there with Bill Starr and George Turner. If you don't believe me, then be sure to read T-Muscle's latest interview with him. Just click on the link below:

Sucker Punch: Dan John

Mass Insanity

2010-05-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

Here's my article from the March, '10 issue of Iron Man magazine:

Mass Insanity
March 12, 2010 by C.S. Sloan
Stuck in a rut? Need something different from the run-of-the-mill training program you’ve been doing for the past several months? Sometimes in order to keep the muscle gains coming—or to bust out of the rut you’re stuck in—you have to get a little crazy. Enter mass insanity.
On the following pages, I’m going to outline several training programs that I guarantee you haven’t been doing lately. In fact, it could be that you’ve never attempted—or even thought of attempting—them.
I’m including four different plans. Variety is a crucial component of making continual gains, so you don’t want to perform any of these gems for more than three workouts in a row.
To read the full article, go here.

Tree of Contemplative Practices

2010-05-02T12:39:00.001-07:00

The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society has a wonderful page on their website dealing with what they call the "Tree of Contemplative Practices."

Above is a picture of the tree, which gives you a pretty good idea of what an "integral" path should look like, but I encourage you to visit their website as well. They have some excellent on-line resources no matter what particular contemplative "path" that you follow.

You Don't Know Squat

2010-05-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

Here's some more fantastic wisdom from Bill Starr—this time on the squat. I learned A LOT about the squat by voraciously reading everything that Bill Starr wrote. (My best competition squat was 605 while weighing 173, although I have squatted more than that in the gym—so I think Starr was a pretty damn good teacher.)

One thing that Starr always emphasized—and the one thing that a lot of other so-called "coaches" don't understand— was the need to perform squats below parallel, because deep squats are BETTER on your knees than half-squats. Anyway, you'll learn about that and more if you read the entire article.

Only the Strong Shall Survive: You Don't Know Squat
By: Bill Starr
I get a lot of questions from strength athletes regarding squatting. Some say they're stale after doing the same squat routine for a number of years. Others relate that they're unable to do conventional squats due to an injury or shoulder surgery. Still others want to know how they can build more variety into their squat routines.
While some authorities believe that there's but one way to perform full squats, they're wrong. This basic, core exercise has many variations'many more than most imagine. When I list them all, athletes are often amazed, but they're also happy because it means they have lots of choices. Building variety into your program is always a plus. Doing any new exercise boosts motivation, since the gains come faster, and even changing the way you perform an exercise helps to strengthen some neglected groups.
Here's my list of ways to do squats: Olympic-style, where the bar rests high on your traps; powerlifting-style, where the bar rests much lower on your back; front squats; Smith-machine squats; wide- and narrow-stance squats; jump squats; pause squat; squats performed inside a power rack; and dumbbell squats. They all serve different functions, and anyone seeking a new approach can benefit from using them.
There's one requirement: In all the styles listed, you must squat to below parallel to the ground. That's critical to building balanced strength in your back, hips and legs, and it's also much less stressful to your knees.
High-bar, or Olympic, squats are, in my opinion, the best of the lot because they work the muscles of the hips, legs and back more directly'and therefore more completely'than any other version. If you want to do full cleans or compete in Olympic weightlifting, it's imperative that you do this exercise.
High-bar squats are so named for the simple reason that you place the bar high on your traps, which helps to keep you from leaning forward and so forces the powerful muscles in your hips and legs to provide the power. You move up and down like a piston, and the strict upright stance carries over to racking cleans and recovering from the deep position.
Even so, many strength athletes aren't interested in doing full cleans and find that they can move more weight on squats if they lower the bar down their backs a bit. I've also had cases where athletes were unable to go deep enough with high-bar squats but didn't have that problem when they lowered the bar. How low? It depends on your structure, flexibility and ability to fix the bar firmly in place when you do the lift. You must not let the bar move at all. This powerlifting-style squat places a huge amount of stress on the shoulders, and if you set the bar excessively low and it slips further down, you can be injured in a heartbeat.
When you want to try moving the bar lower on your back, lower it only an inch or two and stay with that position for a couple of months. In other words, be cautious.
The first time you squat with the bar lower than usual, stay with a moderate weight to see how the new stress affects your shoulders. You won't learn that until the next morning'or later'so don't go for a personal record in your first session with the newer style, even if the weights feel really light.
When you position the bar low on your back, you lean forward out of necessity. Some lifters even try to place their chests on their thighs. That's fine, just as long as your lower- and middle-back areas are prepared for the more intense direct work. If you're planning on using the low-bar style, you must spend lots of time strengthening your lumbars and middle back. Otherwise, when the weights get heavy, you'll keep on going forward, and the bar will tumble over your head.
So a low-bar squatter's routine must include plenty of good mornings, almost-straight-legged deadlifts and bent-over rows. What I said above about going low applies here. It's much easier to cut these off than it is the high-bar version, but if you squat deep from the very beginning, you won't have any trouble doing it when the weights get heavy.
If you use this style of squatting, you must make sure your shoulder girdle is thoroughly warmed up before you do your first set. I've had athletes who were using the low-bar style complain of severe shoulder pain during or after their squat workouts. Sure enough, they weren't doing anything to warm up their shoulders before squatting. Once they started spending five to 10 minutes on light presses and dumbbell front and lateral raises, the problem went away.
After you warm up your shoulders, take a moment to stretch them well, and continue to stretch them between sets. I believe it's a good idea for trainees who prefer the low-bar style to do some Olympic-style sets periodically. They hit the squatting muscles differently and have a very positive effect on your low-bar squats as well.
Front squats are the purest form of the exercise. When European Olympic weightlifters want to know someone's leg strength, they always ask, 'How much can you front squat?' Back-squat numbers are inconsequential. Front squats are pure hip and leg strength, and there's no way to alter the form to make them easier. Anyone interested in doing full cleans or competing in Olympic contests must do them. Your ability to recover from a heavy clean is directly dependent on your front-squatting prowess.

To read the entire article, go here.

Training and Diet with George Turner

2010-05-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

George Turner is one of the greatest bodybuilders/trainers/writers who ever lived (and ever put pen to paper). He also knows more about training than just about any writer still writing for the major muscle magazines. Probably a lot of younger lifters who read his stuff think that he's crazy—because of all the high-volume programs he recommends—or that he's too "old-school."

The Q&A below comes from a column he used to do for Iron Man magazine. There's more wisdom in the below piece—dealing with how you should train if you're young and how you should adjust that as you get older—than most folks will ever realize. For those of you who DO realize it, then welcome to the wisdom that is George Turner.

Question: How have you adjusted your training and diet as you’ve gotten older?

Answer: My training has changed a number of times over the years. Back in the 1940s I trained my entire body every time I worked out. When I got out of the service in 1946, I continued training that way and was lucky enough to get a lot of help in planning my workouts from Clancy Ross. In 1948 I got a job running the weight room at the YMCA where I trained, and around that time I began working out four days a week. To my three-hour, Monday, Wednesday and Friday workouts I added a Saturday session. I was still training my entire body each time and actually added a set to each of the dozen or so exercises I did. I was 30 years old, and I thrived on all the work.

In 1950 I opened my first gym and began training five days a week on a two-way bodypart split. One week I worked legs, chest and back on Sunday, Tuesday and Friday, and shoulders and arms on Monday and Thursday. The following week I simply reversed the bodyparts worked, with Wednesday and Saturday always my off days.

I moved to Santa Monica and the Muscle Beach scene in 1957, and managed the famous Dungeon for two years. For the next ten years I did variation on the five-day schedule. By now my workout included many sets and again lasted about three hours.

In 1967 I began separating upper- and lower-body training. I worked my entire upper body on one day, then on the next I ran two miles and trained legs and abs. I’d follow that schedule as many as 12 days in a row before taking a second day off. I continued training that way until late 1968, when I opened another large gym.

I was now 40 years old and had been training very hard for 26 years. I realized that I’d begun to need additional recovery time. I was quite strong but was beginning to experience wear-and-tear problems, tendinitis, muscle pulls and the like – not really injuries but clear warnings. To give my body the recovery time it required, I cut back to three days on/one off and started warming up thoroughly before each session. That way I was training each bodypart seven or eight times a month. I was still separating upper- and lower-body training. It’s a simple principle: You cannot work upper two days in a row, no matter how different you think the bodyparts might be. It just knocks the top off the recovery cycle.

I continued this method very successfully for a number of years, but by the early ‘80s even the three-on/one-off schedule began causing me to experience the overwork syndrome again. I knew quite well what the problem was – it’s called aging.

By 1984 I’d brought down my weight – which had been approximately 230 for 30 years – and settled in at a constant 208 to 210 pounds, even dropping to 185 to enter the Open division at the ’84 Mr. USA. I also started spreading my three workouts over five days, as follows:

Day 1 – chest and arms
Day 2 – cardio, legs, lower back and abs
Day 3 – rest
Day 4 – back and shoulders
Day 5 – rest
Day 6 – start again

I don’t sacrifice any heavy free-weight work with this schedule. I squat and deadlift religiously six times a month, heavy! I always warm up for 10 minutes on upper body days and ride a Lifecycle hard for 12 minutes to start my lower body workout.

My diet is very simple. I take a shitload of vitamins and supplements every day and have for the past 50 years, and because my metabolism has slowed, I eat just three moderate-size meals a day. I also take a meal replacement drink in the afternoon after my workouts. And, by the way, I eat two dozen eggs – including the yolks, of course – a week and about three pounds of meat. My cholesterol is 168 and my blood pressure is normal, as it’s been all my life.

I hope this long-winded answer to your question helps inyour training.

The Two Exercise Program

2010-05-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

I have, for a long time now, been a proponent of one-exercise-per-bodypart routines. I think this kind of training is effective for building muscle, building strength, or just getting in great strength.

Bodybuilders of old would use this form of training in the off-season, where they would train one (or at the most, two) exercises for each of their muscle groups. In general, most "old-timers" thought this was the best form of training for growing muscle, not to mention becoming bigger, stronger, thicker lifters. It wasn't until a couple of months from a contest that they would switch over to a multi-angular approach. They (rightfully, I might add) believed that multi-angular training splits were best done for "shaping" and "detailing" the muscles, but NOT for building big muscles in the first place.

Not only, however, is it good to limit the number of exercises performed for each bodypart, but it's also wise to limit the number of exercises per workout.

Enter the "Two Exercise Program."

This program is great for building muscle mass. If you used this program for the majority of the training for the rest of your life, then you would end up with a lifetime of great workouts, and plenty of good training experience.

Don't worry, there's also plenty of variety inherently built into this program.

First, I'm going to outline this program's parameters, then I'll give you an example of an actual training program. Here's the parameters:

1. Use only two exercises at each workout.

2. Pick exercises that use a lot of muscle groups at one time.

3. Use a (fairly) high amount of volume for each muscle group.

4. For the most part, alternate exercises from workout to workout.

5. For the most part, alternate set/rep ranges from workout to workout.

6. Train 3 days per week.

Here's what an example program (one week of training) might look like:

Monday:

squats: 100 reps using the 2, 3, 5, 10 workout plan

dumbbell bench presses: 100 reps using the 2, 3, 5, 10 workout plan

Wednesday:

snatch-grip deadlifts: 10 sets of 3 reps

barbell curls: 10 sets of 3 reps

Friday:

dips: 5 sets of 5 reps

chins: 5 sets of 5 reps

Above all, have fun and be innovative with this program. It looks simple, but it's also highly rewarding.

2-3-5-10 Workout Plan

2010-04-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

I received an e-mail this morning asking me how to set up a 2-3-5-10 workout plan based on my post from a couple days ago (which is itself based on a workout by Dan John). The author of the e-mail wanted to know what kind of split to use and what exercises should be utilized.

This post is my answer. (I decided to post my answer here since I have a feeling there are others interested in this kind of workout who have similar questions.)

First, let's talk exercise selection. Obviously this program is one of those where you need to select "bang-for-your-buck" exercises. Squats, front squats, and hack squats (real hack squats as I performed in my training entry) would all be great lower body pushing movements. Deadlifts, platform deadlifts, snatch-grip deadlifts, high pulls, and power cleans would all be excellent lower body pulling movements. Dumbbell bench presses and barbell bench presses of all sorts, as well as overhead presses and dips would all be great upper body pushing movements. And chins, bent-over rows, dumbbell rows, and machine rows (of all sorts) would be excellent upper body pulling movements. Also, don't forget to do a little direct arm work.

Second, let's look at the layout of the program. I think there are several ways to set it up. I think the three best ways would be with 1) a 3-days-per-week, full body workout plan; 2) an upper body, lower body split; or 3) a 3-way bodypart split.

The Full Body Plan

If you decide to go with the full body plan, then use a full-body "split" program—and, no, I'm not being oxymoronic here. Your 3 day-per-week, full-body split plan would look something like this:

Monday: squats, dumbbell bench presses, barbell curls

Wednesday: snatch-grip deadlifts, close-grip chins

Friday: front squats, dips

On the following Monday, you would select another lower body pulling movement and another upper body movement.

Upper/Lower Split

This one's fairly straightforward. For instance, on Mondays and Thursdays, train your lower body. On Tuesdays and Fridays, train your upper body. This one's a little better for more "advanced" lifters, however, since you can do more total work at each session.

The upper body workout could be comprised of bench presses, standing overhead presses, chins, and barbell curls—trust me, that's a hard workout when using this method.

The lower body workout could be comprised of squats, deadlifts, and hack squats.

One word of caution: don't use workouts this tough until you've built up the necessary work capacity to do them.

3 Way Split Program

This one is only for advanced lifters. Your split should look like this:

Day One: chest and back

Day Two: legs

Day Three: off

Day Four: shoulders and arms

Day Five: off

Day Six: repeat

The reason this is for advanced lifters is because by the time you reach this level you should have the need to do a lot of work in a single workout.

Here's a sample shoulders and arms workout, for instance: behind-the-neck presses, standing dumbbell presses, barbell curls, dips, and reverse curls

A few other points

I want to mention a few other points to make your workouts effective:

Pick a weight for your "work" sets where—if you were to perform only one set—you would reach failure somewhere around the 15th rep.

Move as fast as possible between sets, but not too fast. You should stay strong throughout the workout.

Have as much fun as possible. As I mentioned in my last post, workouts should always be fun. That way, you stick with them.

Training Entry #3: The One with the Dan John Workout

2010-04-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

First off, before you read this entry I would advise that you head on over to T-Muscle and read the latest article by Dan John entitled "The Problem with Hypertrophy Programs." Otherwise, you might just be lost.

With that out of the way, let's get to the post...

Training Entry #3:

The One with the Dan John Workout

Tonight, I had a cold. (Odd thing about these "training entries": When I wrote the first one, that was the last time I had a cold.) I didn't feel too good, but I also wasn't going to miss a workout. I don't miss workouts—period. I might take planned layoffs on occasion; even if the plan pops into my head a day before the workout. But the planned layoff is different—it's only because I know that my body needs a break to recover.

"I got a plan" I told Puddin upon his arrival at the Wreckin' Crew gym. (Okay, it's not really called "The Wreckin' Crew", but to understand you need to read the past entries.)

"You always have plans with our workouts," he replied. "You're like some sort of mad scientist whose twisted mind is locked in primordial battle with the bodybuilding gods. But..." he paused briefly, "there's nothing that you can throw at me that you haven't already done before." After another pause, he went on: "And... you happen to be sick. I'm not. Which means your butt is getting out-trained by yours truly." He had a great big smirk on his face. Trust me: it's a great big smirk. Puddin's head—like the rest of his frame—is enormous.

"Funny," I said. "But this one is different. We're going to perform a workout that we haven't quite done before."

I then explained to him the basics of Dan John's 2-3-5-10 workout.

"Nothing to it," was his reply.

Since I was sick—and Puddin' hates the exercise we chose for our quads, the hack squat (and when I say hack squat, I mean good, old fashioned George Hackenshmidt hack squats, not the crappy machine hack squats you see in most gyms)—we decided to go with an easy 205 pound hack squat.

The first cluster of 20 reps wasn't too bad. The second cluster—oddly enough—was the one that I found myself the most tired on, the third, fourth, and fifth clusters really weren't troublesome at all.

For the 2-3-5 portion, we moved very fast. In fact, I don't think we rested more than 20 to 30 seconds between each one of those sets.

On the sets of 10, we stayed strong throughout the workout. However, 205 really was too light—even though I'm sure my quads will still be sore tomorrow—so I was interested if the strength on the 10 rep sets would hold up when we switched over to a tougher upper body pushing exercise.

For our upper body pushing exercises, Puddin' chose the flat bench press and I chose the flat dumbbell bench press.

Puddin' benches around 400 pounds at the moment—but since he bench pressed 315 for a lot of sets of 3 reps on Monday—I decided that 225 pounds would be a good weight for him.

I used 80 pounds dumbbells.

Both of these weights—the 225 pounds for my partner and the 80s for myself—are good starting points for this kind of workout since they are the weights I would have chosen for us if we were to do a more traditional 10 sets of 10 reps program.

As with the hack squats, we moved very fast on the 2-3-5 portion of the workout. (I like using the dumbbells for this kind of workout—they force you to work more since you have to constantly pick them up, then set them back down.) 30 seconds rest between sets was the norm.

After we finished the sets of 5, we always rested a minute or two before doing our sets of 10.

Sure enough, as the workout progressed, not only did both of us stay strong on the sets of 10, we actually got stronger. I have a feeling this is because this style of workout potentiates your nervous system—which means as the workout progresses, you become stronger due to your nervous system becoming more efficient. (That might not be the exact science behind it, but I have a feeling that it's close.)

Although I never train just to get a pump, both of us had enormously pumped upper bodies by the time the workout was finished. I also have a very good feeling that my chest, shoulders, and triceps are going to be rather sore come the morning.

"Heckuva workout," Puddin' said upon completion. He vaguely reminded me of an odd hybrid of powerlifter/bodybuilder/polar bear/pit bull. Don't know why, but that's what crossed my mind.

"More of a workout than we realize," I said. "We just did 100 reps in no time flat, with more weight than any traditional workout."

It was fun, enjoyable, allowed us to use a high workload even with the lighter weights, and we'll definitely be doing it again.

(On a side note, I want to say this: Make sure that your workouts are always enjoyable. Sure, lifting weights can be hard and tough at times, but a workout should also feel good. It should be a pleasurable experience. It should be an expression of joy.)

Old-Time Bodybuilding Methods: Train Through the Soreness

2010-03-28T17:28:00.001-07:00

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.

The 10 Sets Method: "Old-School" Style

2010-03-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

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.

High Frequency Focus Training

2010-03-20T17:14:00.000-07:00

Over the past year, two of my workout programs seem to be the most popular—at least, I get asked the most questions about these two programs. The first program would be my "Mass Construction" program. The Mass Construction routine is ideal for anyone who needs to pack on as much muscle as possible in a relatively short amount of time. However, I think that the second program—what I call "High-Frequency Focus Training"—has the most potential. It's not just a workout program, but rather it's a system of training with a lot of potential—and by this I mean that it is a template that you follow, but it allows for plenty of variety, hence its potential.

What follows in this post is the basic program—with a beginner routine and an advanced routine. After this post, I'm going to add some others that deal with specialization while on the HFFT system, since that's the area where a lot of questions get asked.

High Frequency Focus Training

Sometimes the most efficient methods of training often seem to be contradictory in nature. For instance, one of the most effective ways to train for strength and power—not to mention thick muscle growth—is by following a whole body program that has you working the muscles of your legs, back, and upper body 3 days a week with heavy, compound movements. Another highly effective method for gaining muscle and strength is to train 4 to 6 days a week, working only one (or, at the most, two) bodypart(s) on each training day. This form of training allows you to really focus on each muscle group, giving you a fantastic pump and hitting the muscle from all angles.

The first training program works by frequently exposing each muscle group to a high level of stress with exercises such as squats, deadlifts, and barbell bench presses. When training in this manner, you want to stay clear of “training to failure,” and instead perform multiple sets of a single exercise, always leaving a little “in the tank,” so to speak. This is the kind of training favored by Russian and East European strength athletes, and it is the reason they dominate most powerlifting and Olympic lifting meets.

The second form of training is the kind favored by most American bodybuilders. It works by “annihilating” a muscle group, then giving it plenty of time to rest and grow big. If muscle growth—and only muscle growth—is your goal, then you could argue that this is the most effective form of training.

On a personal note, I can say that I have used both methods of training and got really good results out of either one. For instance, when I was at my largest and most muscular (weighing between 210 and 220 lbs of —fairly—lean muscle at a height of only 5’6”) I was using a once-a-week bodybuilding regimen, training Monday thru Friday, and then taking the weekends off. However, when I was at my strongest (weighing around 181 lbs and squatting and deadlifting over triple my bodyweight), I was training Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on a heavy/light/medium program. I squatted at each training session, performed some kind of bench work at each workout, and performed heavy back work at each session.

Now, this is the question that remains: is there a way to combine both of these methods into one training program, allowing you to reap the benefits of both? I believe the answer is “yes.” In fact, there are several ways that you could probably go about doing this. This article offers one such way.

I have chosen to call this method High Frequency Focus Training—HFFT for short—because although each muscle group is trained frequently, you will only focus on a couple of muscle groups (at the most) at each training session. Here’s how it works:

Every training session will begin with the high frequency portion of the workout. This is done by training all of the large muscle groups with a few sets, using a moderate to heavy amount of weight and fairly low reps or using a light weight for a high number of reps. When this portion of the workout is finished, you should feel refreshed and invigorated instead of tired and exhausted.

Once the high frequency portion is finished, it’s time for the focus portion of the session. This is done by picking one or (at the most) 2 muscle groups and hitting them with multiple sets of multiple reps—a typical bodybuilding style workout.

If all of this sound a little confusing, it won’t be after you read the two programs below. The first program is for beginners, or anyone who is not used to training their whole body several times each week. The second program is for anyone who has developed a combination of good conditioning and good muscular development—in other words, advanced lifters.

Beginning HFFT Program

This one is a three-days-a-week regimen. The most popular days to train would be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Day One

High Frequency Portion

Squats – 5 sets of 3 reps. Perform two warm-up sets of 5 reps, followed by 3 work sets of 3 reps, using approximately 70-75% of your one-rep maximum.
Deadlifts– 5 sets of 3 reps. Use the same set/rep format as the squats.
Barbell Bench Presses or Incline Bench Presses – 5 sets of 3 reps. Same set/rep format as the squats and deadlifts.

Focus Portion: Chest and Arms

Flat Dumbbell Bench Presses – 4 sets of 10 reps
Incline Dumbbell Flyes – 3 sets of 10 reps
Cable Crossovers – 3 sets of 10 reps
Dumbbell Curls supersetted with Dips – 8 sets of 10 reps on each exercise.

Day Two

High Frequency Portion

Squats – 5 sets of 3 reps. Perform two warm-up sets of 5 reps, followed by 3 work sets of 3 reps, using approximately 70-75% of your one-rep maximum.
Power Cleans – 5 sets of 3 reps. Use the same set/rep format as the squats.
Overhead Presses– 5 sets of 3 reps. Same set/rep format as the squats and power cleans.

Focus Portion: Legs

Leg Presses – 3 sets of 20 reps
Leg Extensions – 3 sets of 20 reps
Lying Leg Curls – 3 sets of 20 reps
Standing Calf Raises (machine or barbell) – 2 sets of 30-50 reps

Day Three

High Frequency Portion

Squats – 5 sets of 3 reps. Perform two warm-up sets of 5 reps, followed by 3 work sets of 3 reps, using approximately 60-65% of your one-rep maximum. Less weight is used on this day because of the heavy leg training on Day Two.
Deadlifts– 5 sets of 3 reps. Use the same set/rep format as the squats.
Barbell Bench Presses or Incline Bench Presses – 5 sets of 3 reps. Same set/rep format as the squats and deadlifts.

Focus Portion: Back and Shoulders

Lat Pulldowns – 4 sets of 10 reps
Bent-Over Rows – 3 sets of 10 reps
Dumbbell Pullovers – 2 sets of 20 reps
Lateral Raises – 3 sets of 10 reps
Front Raises – 3 sets of 10 reps

Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of this program:

Train hard and consistent on this program for 4 weeks. On the 5^th week, take a “down” training week: perform the high frequency portion of all of the workouts but omit all of the “focus” portions. On the 6^th week, resume training hard for another 4 weeks, before taking another down week on the 11^th week of training. On the 12^th week of training, it would be a good idea to switch to another program.
Increase the weight being used whenever possible on all of the “focus” exercises.
Remember, you should always feel refreshed and invigorated after the high frequency sets. At this point of the workout you should be “fired up” for the focus sets.
Train hard on the “focus” sets but still stop one or two reps shy of muscular failure.
Eat big; this program is designed for mass building, not for getting in contest shape.

Advanced HFFT Program

This one has you training 5 consecutive days before taking a day off. The most popular days would be Monday thru Friday, then take the weekends off. The other difference is that you will now use different rep schemes on different days of your high frequency portion.

Day One

High Frequency Portion

Squats – 5 sets of 5 reps. Perform 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps. The last set should be a little tough, but you should still have no problem getting all 5 reps.
Deadlifts – 5 sets of 5 reps. As with the squats, perform 5 progressively heavier sets.

Focus Portion: Chest

Barbell Bench Presses – 5 sets of 10 reps
Wide Grip Dips – 4 sets of maximum reps
Incline Dumbbell Bench Presses – 4 sets of 15 reps

Day Two

High Frequency Portion

Squats – 2 sets of 20-25 reps. These sets should give you a slight pump, but should not be done with enough weight as to be taxing on your body.
Dumbbell Bench Presses – 2 sets of 20-25 reps. Perform these the same as the squats.

Focus Portion: Back

Wide Grip Chins – 3 sets of maximum reps
One-Arm Dumbbell Rows – 4 sets of 12-15 reps (each arm)
Dumbbell Pullovers – 2 sets of 30-40 reps

Day Three

High Frequency Portion

Barbell Bench Presses – 5 sets of 2 reps. Perform 5 progressively heavier sets of 2 reps. The last set should be done with 80-85% of your one-rep maximum.
Dumbbell Deadlifts – 5 sets of 5 reps. Perform 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps. The last set should be with about 70-75% of your one-rep maximum.

Focus Portion: Legs

Leg Presses – 3 sets of 20-30 reps
Leg Extensions – 4 sets of 20-30 reps
Lying Leg Curls – 4 sets of 20-30 reps
Sissy Squats – 2 sets of maximum reps
Standing Calf Raises (machine or barbell) – 2 sets of 30-50 reps
Donkey Calf Raises – 2 sets of maximum reps

Day Four

High Frequency Portion

Bodyweight Squats – 2 sets of 50-100 reps. Your legs will probably be pretty sore on this day, but these 2 sets will help them recover.
Push Ups – 5 sets of 10-20 reps
Close Grip Chins – 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps. None of these reps should be anywhere close to failure. Each repetition should be strong and powerful.

Focus Portion: Shoulders

Military Presses – 5 sets of 10-12 reps
Dumbbell Lateral Raises – 3 sets of 12-15 reps
Seated Dumbbell Presses – 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Day Five

High Frequency Portion

Squats – 10-12 sets of 2 reps. These should be performed with about 50-60% of your one-rep maximum.
Dumbbell Bench Presses – 10-12 sets of 2 reps. Use the same set/rep format as the squats.
Deadlifts – 8 sets of 1 rep. Use approximately 70% of your one-rep maximum on all sets. Work on every single rep being strong and powerful.

Focus Portion: Arms

Barbell Curls supersetted with Skullcrushers – 5 sets of 10-12 reps on each exercise
Seated Dumbbell Curls supersetted with Rope Pushdowns – 4 sets of 15-20 reps on each exercise

Here are some tips to help you get the most out of this advanced program:

This program is strictly for advanced lifters. Do not try it until you are ready.
Remember, you should always feel fresh and invigorated after the high frequency portions of the workouts. On Days 4 and 5, you should feel decidedly better after you finish the high frequency portion than when you started the session.
On the focus portion of the workouts, train increasingly harder for 3 weeks before taking a complete break from the focus portions on the 4^th week. For instance, on Week One stop each set several reps shy of failure. On Week Two, stop each set only one rep shy of muscular failure. And on Week Three, take every single set of all focus portion sets to complete momentary muscular failure. On Week Four, only perform the high frequency portion of all workouts.

Conclusion

Give these workouts an honest try for a few months, and you won’t be disappointed at the results. They might not be what you are used to doing, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Low-Rep Lowdown

2010-03-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

The following is an article from the always-great Bill Starr entitled "Low-Rep Lowdown." Starr, of course, always remains my favorite strength coach and writer—I'm amazed sometimes that he still gets so much attention from the mainstream magazines. But, then again, it could be that Iron Man—never one to shy away from heavy, basic training articles (after all, I have written for them since the early '90s)—knows what they have in Starr, and they don't plan on letting him go.

Anyway, it's always nice to see Starr's byline next to an article—you know it's always going to be good stuff. This one is no exception.

Low-Rep Lowdown

by Bill Starr

Currently there’s a trend in strength and fitness training to shy away from doing lower reps—threes, twos and singles. It’s largely due to the influence of those who are responsible for programs in high schools, colleges and the pro ranks. And, of course, personal trainers. The reason: safety. What those in charge are really worried about, however, is having a player get injured in the weight room. That would lose a personal trainer a client and might cost a coach his or her job.
The contention is that low reps are a great deal riskier than higher reps on any exercise. That isn’t true. In many instances, in fact, higher reps pose a greater degree of risk than lower ones. When athletes attempt to do, say, 10 reps on an exercise and are handling as much weight as possible, they typically tire as they reach the eighth, ninth and 10th reps. When they become fatigued, they begin to use faulty form and can get hurt rather easily if they persist in doing the movement incorrectly. That’s especially true in the early stages of training, before they have built up a solid strength base.
Another reason so many advocate higher reps is that athletes can do them less precisely than the triples, doubles or singles. So coaches and personal trainers can get by with a minimum of instruction—which suits them, as they have no idea how to do some of the more complicated exercises that are so beneficial to anyone seeking a higher level of overall fitness.
While I’m a proponent of lower reps, I do keep the numbers fairly high on exercises that involve the lower back: back hyperextensions, reverse hypers, good mornings and almost-straight-legged deadlifts. I have athletes stay with eight or 10 reps on the last two movements and run the reps way up on the two versions of hyperextensions, keeping the resistance minimal—bodyweight or a small amount of weight. When athletes become advanced, however, it’s okay for them to do heavy threes on the good morning. Powerlifters in particular can benefit a great deal from using lower reps on that specific exercise for the lumbars.
You must include lower reps in a strength program at some point if you’re going to continue to make noteworthy gains. Lower reps involve the attachments—tendons and ligaments—much more than higher reps, and the attachments are the source of strength in the body. The attachments help secure the joints and must be given direct attention. That’s especially true for athletes who engage in sports with a great deal of contact: football, hockey, rugby, soccer—even baseball and basketball. A head-on collision with an opponent can cause serious damage when the structure is not strong.
Many of my athletes who have finished their eligibility have told me that they’re no longer interested in pure strength work. They just want to maintain a certain level of overall fitness and keep a decent build. Bodybuilders tell me the same thing. Keeping the joints protected from injury, however, is critical to everyone, not only to those playing sports. We need strong ankles, knees, hips, shoulders and backs throughout our lives. Bodybuilders need to understand that the process of getting larger muscles is directly linked to strength. High reps are excellent for shaping muscles that are already there, but to obtain them in the first place, they need to make lower reps part of the program.
I should note that I’m directing this to younger men. Should you be getting a senior discount or drawing Social Security, you don’t want to do lower reps—just the opposite, in fact. I’ve gone into detail about that in past articles dealing with older athletes and will comment on it again. For now, I’m aiming at athletes ranging from their teen years to their early 50s. Of course, there are some exceptions—there always are—yet the basic rule of thumb is low reps for the young, high reps for the not-so-young.
On the subject of bodybuilders, let’s say an aspiring bodybuilder wants to pack more muscle on his shoulders and arms, which is always high on anyone’s wish list. So he does a variety of exercises for his biceps, triceps and deltoids using no fewer than 10 reps and sometimes as many as 20. If he works hard, he will indeed achieve a higher degree of definition in those groups, although nothing much in size. The muscles will be better shaped but still small—not what he wants. That’s because the attachments haven’t been brought into the mix.
Our bodybuilder needs to select a few primary movements for his arms and shoulders and attack them with lower reps. That will make those bodyparts considerably stronger. Exercises such as overhead presses, flat benches, incline benches and weighted dips would work well. At the same time he should be gulping downprotein shakes and getting lots of rest to help those abused muscles and corresponding attachments grow. Once the desired size is obtained, he can go back to the higher reps to sculpt the new growth. From there specific exercises—different angles of curls, triceps pushdowns, straight-armed pullovers, lateral and frontal raises—will produce the effect he’s seeking: large, well-defined shoulders and arms. That’s the way it’s always been done and the way it has to be done—that is, unless a person is willing to go on the juice, which is not only foolish but proof positive that he’s too lazy to follow the difficult route to success.

Lower reps should not be utilized right away, however. You must first spend time establishing a firm foundation, and that is best accomplished not with high or low reps but something in between. Research has shown that the very best set-and-rep formula for a beginning routine is four to six sets of four to six reps. As most readers know, I advocate the mean—five sets of five—not because they’re superior to fours or sixes but because the math is so much easier when I’m coaching a large number of athletes.
The middle range of sets and reps is ideal if you’re just learning how to do the various exercises in a strength program. Five reps hit the attachments more than higher reps and also provide sufficient volume to enhance the overall workload, both of which are most important in the beginning stage. In addition, fives aren’t that demanding, which means you can perfect your technique as your strength improves.
Once athletes show good form and have steadily expanded their workload, I insert lower reps into their routine: triples first, then later doubles and singles. That has many benefits. It helps break through number barriers, it involves the powerful attachments even more, and it improves technique.
Make no mistake about it: Getting stronger is all about beating the numbers. The even ones cause the most trouble—200, 300, 400 and eventually 500. So when athletes are approaching 400 for five reps, I have them do their last two sets for that day for just three reps. That enables them to skip right over the troublesome number to 410 or 415. Now they’re mentally prepared to handle the 400 for five. If they’d edged up to it without doing any triples, making it for the required reps would have been much more difficult. Plus, they’ve got the added bonus of making their attachments stronger with the heavy triple.
One of the main reasons I put lower reps into routines is that they force athletes to concentrate harder on using correct technique; form has to be more precise than with higher reps. They also require a higher degree of determination. For many athletes it’s the very first time that they’re placed in a position where success or failure depends entirely on them. It’s an individual effort, not a team event. So they’re forced to reach deep into their fortitude department and find out how much grit they really possess. Learning to apply themselves 100 percent to moving a heavy weight through a range of motion without any assistance is a rewarding experience, and while that’s especially true on a max single, it also applies to doing heavy triples and doubles because there is no margin of error. Miss or make: It’s all up to you.
Winning the battle with a new number for a triple, double or single is extremely motivating, and that’s why so many strength athletes become addicted to the discipline. There are few situations in life when people are in complete control of the outcome of what they’re trying to accomplish. Weight training is one of them.
That’s yet another reason I don’t like high-rep routines. You don’t get the same satisfaction in moving an exercise for 10 reps that you get when you break a personal record for a single, double or triple. Saying, “I benched 225 for 10,” doesn’t have the same ring to it as, “I benched 300 for a single.”
I also dislike the common practice of testing athletes with repetitions rather than having them do a single. I understand why coaches like the idea. Testing can be completed a lot faster than having each and every player work up to his limit. Proponents, of course, contend that doing as many reps as possible is a great deal safer than attempting a heavy single. I don’t agree. Earlier I mentioned that beginners doing high reps generally become fatigued on the final reps of the final sets and use sloppy form. Same thing happens on rep-out tests. Since the only thing that matters is rep numbers, form is thrown out the window. I’ve watched players rebound the bar off their chest during a bench press test, then twist and bridge until they looked like a circus act in order to add another rep to their total. All the rebounding and squirming did was leave them open to being injured. With a max single the lift is made or missed. Spotters are present, so where is the risk? Besides, as I mentioned, bragging about how many reps you did just isn’t as impressive as mentioning what you can handle for a single.
As for the interpolation charts, those who use them have announced that they know nothing about training athletes. A coach who uses the goofy chart doesn’t have to teach the correct form that athletes need to be successful with a heavy single yet can still boast of having 15 300-pound benchers on his team. It makes him look good and helps players get recruited. Well, the bird always comes home to roost, and it doesn’t take long for a college coach to recognize that the numbers that were sent in were phony. Which, in turn, makes the college coach wonder what else the recruit has hedged on.
When I begin inserting triples into routines, I continue to use fives and add back-off sets with higher reps. I need the fives and 10s to make sure the athletes are constantly expanding work volume while increasing intensity in the form of lower reps. The triples very much depend on how much total work is being done for that bodypart.
I’ll use the back squat to illustrate how I mix the various elements in a weekly program. Monday is heavy day, so the athletes do five sets of five, working to absolute max, then add a back-off set of 10 with approximately 50 pounds less than the last set of five. Wednesday is the light day, which simply means that less top-end and total work will be done. Some like to use percentages, but in the early stages of training on a program, I have the athletes work up to what they used as their third set on Monday. Our sample lifter did 400×5 on his heavy day, using these increments: 135, 225, 315 and 400, all for fives. So 315 is as high as he goes on his light day. After doing that for a month, I have him do three sets with the selected poundage on his light day to nudge the workload a bit higher.
Friday, medium day, finds the athlete doing this sequence: three sets of five followed by two sets of three, with the final set being five or 10 pounds more than what was used on Monday. That means our lifter will be attempting 405 or 410 for three on Friday, depending on how easy or hard the previous sets were. Another back-off set of 10 is included at the end of the week.
At the next heavy session he will top out with the same amount of weight he used for his final set of three on Friday, but he will do it for five reps. That’s how the numbers climb steadily yet not too fast, which is an important consideration. Progress needs to come slowly to make sure that all the muscle groups, including the smaller ones, are keeping pace. As the top-end numbers climb, so does the volume. When athletes do this consistently and with dedication, they can add 10 pounds a week to the squat for three months straight. I know that because I’ve watched it happen countless times.

To read the entire article, go here.

Train Long, Not Hard

2010-03-09T13:55:00.001-08:00

The following is an article that I wrote a few years ago for T-Nation (now "T-Muscle"—I always thought T-Nation had a better ring to it). If you're into full-body workouts—and if you're not, then you NEED to get into them—the training program presented herein is one of the best.

Train Long, Not Hard
by C.S. Sloan

You hear it all the time. It's one of the favorite sayings from high-intensity pundits and other "briefer is better" trainees. It goes something like this:

You can either train long or you can train hard, but you can't do both.

You know what? It's a pretty damn good quote, one I wouldn't mind using myself when I talk to different lifters seeking advice. The problem is that everyone seems to assume that the answer is to train harder. I don't exactly agree. In fact, I think the better option is to train longer, not harder.

If you've been reading Testosterone for any lengthy period of time, then it's possible that you've come to the same conclusion. It's unfortunate the majority of trainees in the good ol' U.S. of A. just haven't figured it out. Bodybuilders, however, haven't always thought this way. In fact, old-time lifters knew the benefits of training long and not hard. Bill Pearl, for instance, always advised taking all sets one or two reps shy of failure. Why? So he could train longer, of course!

There have been many good writers in the field of strength training and muscle building over the years, but I think one of the greatest would have to be Anthony Ditillo. Unfortunately, the name has been forgotten by many. I have a feeling, however, that if Ditillo were still writing he'd be contributing to Testosterone. And I know one thing: he'd agree whole-heartedly with strength coaches like Chad Waterbury, Charles Staley, and Christian Thibaudeau.

Ditillo believed in training each body part three times per week, performing multiple sets at each session for a low number of reps, never to failure. He also stuck with the basics — squats, benches, deadlifts, barbell curls, behind-the-neck presses. There's something else you should know about him, too: he was freaky big and strong!

When I first tell bodybuilders, powerlifters, and other strength athletes my belief that you should train longer and not harder, they look at me like I'm some type of weird blowfish at the local aquarium. "Ya' gotta be jokin'," they might say. "I've gotten much better results since I started trainin' just an hour each session instead of two." But longer doesn't necessarily have to refer to the length of the workouts, but rather the amount of sets versus the amount of reps.

Most lifters use set/rep schemes like three sets of ten (why the hell is this always the favorite?), two sets of fifteen, four sets of eight, etc, etc. However, I think everyone would get much better results if they flip-flopped their set/rep sequence. In other words, perform ten sets of three, fifteen sets of two, eight sets of four, etc. You get the point. And the point is: the first method (the common one) is theharder method, the second is the longer one.

Even though the workload is the same with both methods, longer is better for a number of reasons:

1) You get the most out of every rep and your form doesn't degrade.
2) Each rep is much more accelerative. Let's say you can bench 225 for ten reps. How much force do you think you're producing on your last few reps? I can guarantee you it's not much. Now, how much force would you be producing on each rep if you did two sets of five? What about five sets of two? The bottom line is, the "longer" method is much better for producing power and maximum strength, not to mention the muscle that goes along with it.

Okay, hopefully, by this point, I've convinced some of you to train longer, not harder. Now, it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty, the good stuff: the workouts.

If you've been performing brief, infrequent, hard workouts, then this first workout is going to be a good introduction to longer training and it'll get you ready for the more advanced sessions I've got in store. Even if you've been training longer (like my Frequent and Furious workout), you still might want to perform this one before moving on to the advanced stuff. It should be a change of pace from almost anything you've been doing.

The workout is very similar to the type of training Anthony Ditillo used to recommend. It's a three-days-a-week program, so I've listed the days as Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, though any three non-consecutive days will work. (Most of the exercises are pretty basic, but if you're not familiar with one of them, just look it up with the T-mag search engine.)

Monday

Squats — 5 to 7 sets of 5 to 7 reps. Each set should be progressive, meaning you add weight each set (without inducing failure.) If you decide to do seven sets of five reps, then that should be seven progressively heavier sets. Whatever rep range you choose, stick with it for all sets.
Weighted Dips — 5 to 7 sets of 5 to 7 reps. Use the same set/rep scheme as the squats, adding weight via a dip belt or a dumbbell held with your feet.
Behind The Neck Presses — 3 to 5 sets of 5 to 7 reps
Barbell Curls — 3 to 5 sets of 5 to 7 reps
Abs — 3 to 5 sets of 30 to 50 reps. Pick an ab exercise you like, one that you don't mind doing for 30 to 50 reps (just stay away from crunches).

Wednesday

Deadlifts — 5 to 7 sets of 3 to 5 reps. Use a conventional stance. Work up over five to seven progressively heavier sets. I want you to use a lower rep range on these to prevent form degradation.
Flat Bench Presses — 5 to 7 sets of 5 to 7 reps. For these, use what I call your "power grip," or whatever grip allows you to use the most weight. For the majority of lifters this will be a medium-wide grip. If you want to start pressing huge poundages, then start taking your grip out wider at each workout, while keeping your elbows tucked to your sides. By the time you work up to your index finger on the power rings, your pressing strength will be greatly improved.
Bent Over Rows — 5 to 7 sets of 5 to 7 reps. Stick with the same poundage for all 5 to 7 work sets.
Lying Dumbbell Extensions (Skull Crushers) — 5 to 7 sets of 5 to 7 reps. Use the same technique as the bent over rows.
Abs — 3 to 5 sets of 30 to 50 reps

Friday

Repeat Monday's workout, using the same set/rep sequence. The next week, you'd switch up the workouts. On Monday and Friday, perform the Wednesday workout. On Wednesday, perform the Monday and Friday workout.

Additional Tips

Remember, don't take anything to failure. On your progressive sets you should work up to a final set where you come one to two reps shy of failure. On an exercise where you use the same weight throughout your sets, stick with a poundage that allows you to make all your reps. Only the last couple of sets should approach failure.

Stick with this workout for four to six weeks, then move to the advanced program below.

This program is also performed three days per week. This time, however, you're going to follow a heavy/light/medium system. Anyone who tried my "Frequent And Furious" program or has tried any of Bill Starr's routines will be familiar with this. The difference with this program is going to be the volume. This is a high volume, fairly low-intensity workout, though if you've been following a typical bodybuilding regimen it might not feel that way — and it'll kick the ass of other hypertrophy programs!

I'm going to present a three week training block. After three weeks on the program, you should understand the parameters and be able to make the changes needed on your own.

Week 1

Monday

Squats — 8 sets of 5 reps. Use a medium-bar placement on the back (not too high, not too low), medium-wide stance. Work up over five progressively heavier sets to a weight which takes you two to three reps shy of failure. Stick with this weight for the last four sets.
Deadlifts — 8 sets of 3 reps. Use the same system as the squats, utilizing three rep sets instead of five. Use a conventional stance to make this a total back exercise.
Flat Bench Presses — 8 sets of 5 reps. Same system as the squats, using the grip you're the most comfortable with.
Lying Extension/Pullovers — 8 sets of 7 reps. For these do three progressively heavier sets. Stick with the same weight for the fourth through eight set. If you're unfamiliar with this exercise, here's the form breakdown: using either an EZ-curl bar or a straight Olympic bar, perform the movement as if you're doing an extension. When the bar reaches your forehead, keep your elbows locked in place and perform a pullover, stretching until the plates touch the ground. The concentric (lifting) portion should follow the same path.

Wednesday

Squats — 6 sets of 5 reps. Two warm-up sets followed by four sets with the same weight, approximately 80% of the max weight used on Monday.
Seated Good Mornings — 5 sets of 5 reps. With the bar in the same placement as the squats, sit down on a bench with your feet out the same as your squat stance. Bend over until your forehead touches the bench. Work up over five progressively heavier sets until you reach your max weight for five reps (one to two reps shy of failure).

Incline Presses — 8 sets of 5 reps. Use the same set/rep sequence as the bench presses on Monday, using 80% on your last four sets compared to what you used for your last four sets of benches. No set should be too hard.
Barbell Curls — 7 sets of 5 reps. Perform two warm-up sets of five, followed by five "work" sets of five reps each. Again, use a weight where you come one or two reps shy of failure on your last couple of sets.

Friday

Squats — 8 sets of 5 reps. Follow the same set/rep sequence as the Monday workout, except work up to only 90% on your last four sets compared to the same sets on Monday.
Power Snatches — 7 sets of 3 reps. These should be seven progressively heavier sets. For information on how to properly execute this exercise, checkout Christian Thibaudeau's article, The Other Kind Of Snatch. Here's the illustration from that article:

Pause Bench Presses — 8 sets of 5 reps. Use the same format as the flat benches on Monday, only take a one second pause at the bottom of the movement where the bar touches your chest. Work up to 90% of Monday's weight.
Wide Grip Chins — 5 sets of 5 reps. Add weight as needed on each set, working up to a max of five reps.
Dumbbell Curls — 5 sets of 5 reps.

Additional Considerations

Do some type of ab work each session in this advanced program. There are plenty of good ab exercises illustrated here at T-mag. Just use the search engine and pick a few. You may want to perform exercises that hit mainly the "upper" abs in one workout, then choose those that train mainly the "lower" abs in the next.

Also, don't be afraid to add some extra calf work and/or high-rep sets on the leg extension and/or leg curl machine. Don't add this extra work, however, if you feel at all drained.

Week 2

Monday

Squats — 10 sets of 3 reps. Use the same foot and bar placement you used on squats for the first week. The first four to five sets should be progressively heavier. The last five or six should be "straight" sets. Nothing should be taken to failure. Use a weight around 80% of your maximum squat.
Flat Bench Presses — 10 sets of 3 reps. Use the same technique as the squats. If you'd like, vary your grip every three sets. For instance, for the first three sets (as you're warming up) use a close grip with your index finger on the smooth part of the bar. For your next three sets use a medium grip, and on your last four sets put your ring finger on the power rings.
Power Cleans — 7 sets of 3 reps. Perform three progressively heavier sets, followed by four sets with your work weight. For form, note illustration below (courtesy of Christian Thibaudeau):

Barbell Curls supersetted w/ Parallel Bar Dips — 8 sets of 3 reps. Warm up with only two sets, followed by six working sets with the same weight. Take no rest in between the two lifts.

Wednesday

Front Squats — 8 sets of 3 reps. Use the same protocol as you did on Monday's squat workout, omitting the last two sets. You shouldn't have to worry about calculating percentages. The nature of this exercise will make it a "light" one.
Upper Chest Bench Presses (feet in the air) — 10 sets of 3 reps. Use only 70% of the work weight you used on Monday, though you may use this weight for as many as nine sets if you'd like. Bring the barbell to your upper chest, almost to your neck, while trying to keep your elbows tucked to your side. Keep your feet in the air throughout the lift.
Rounded Back Good Mornings — 6 sets of 5 reps. Remember, a good morning is like a stiff legged deadlift, only the bar in rested on your back as with a squat. If you have any type of back problems, stick with the arched back version. For the rest of you, get ready to work the hell out of your lower back. Do three progressively heavier warm-up sets followed by three sets of five reps, stopping one or two reps shy of failure on each set.

Friday

Close Stance, High Bar, Pause Squats — 10 sets of 3 reps. Use 85-90% of the weight used on Monday for regular squats. Squat as deep as you can and pause for a count of one second before ascending to lockout.
Incline Bench Presses — 10 sets of 3 reps. Work up to 90% of what you used on Monday for your last five to six sets.
Barbell Shrugs — 8 sets of 3 reps. Work up to three or four sets at your top weight for three reps. (Set the pins in the power rack so you don't have to pick the weight up very far.) Try to touch your traps to your ears and do not roll your shoulders!
Seated Dumbbell Curls supersetted w/ Floor Triceps Extensions — 8 sets of 3 reps. Perform two warm-up sets followed by six work sets. Take each set to just shy of failure and only rest about a minute between each superset. Use an EZ-curl bar for your floor extensions.

Additional Considerations

As with the first week, do some type of ab work at each session. Don't be afraid to include some extra work for your calves and legs if you feel up to it. None of these sets should be taxing, however.

Another option to consider is adding some type of accommodating resistance on your squat and bench work via bands and/or chains. Be careful with the bands, though. They offer better results than the chains, but take more of a toll on your recovery system.

Week 3

Monday

Squats — 3 sets of 3, followed by wave-loading sets of 3,2,1 and 3,2,1. An example of your sets (for a 400 pound squatter) might look like this:
135 x 3
225 x 3
275 x 3
340 x 3
360 x 2
380 x 1
340 x 3
360 x 2
380 x 1
Flat Bench Presses — 9 sets of 3,3,3, followed by 3,2,1, and 3,2,1. Use the same wave pattern as the squats.
Sumo Deadlifts — 7 sets of 5,5,5,4,3,2,1. Sumo deadlifts are performed with a wide stance, arms down between the legs. The first two sets are warm-ups, and the last five are your work sets. If you feel like you need it, add another warm-up set, but your muscles should be sufficiently ready after a couple of sets due to the squats you've already performed.

Cable Curls — 4 sets of 6, 10, 16, and 20. These are "breakdown" sets; drop sets where the reps increase on each subsequent drop. I picked cable curls because the nature of breakdowns requires an exercise where you can quickly change weight. So, you'll perform six reps on your first set, then lower the weight and immediately perform ten reps on your second set and so on.
Triceps Pushdowns — 4 sets of 6, 10, 16, and 20. Use the same "breakdown" technique as the curls.

Wednesday

Squats (varying bar placements and stances) — 7 sets of 3 reps. Work up to a weight (by your third set) that's about 100 pounds less than what you used for your singles on Monday. Vary your stance and bar placement on each set. In other words, do a couple of sets with close stance/high bar placement, a couple with your conventional stance and placement, and a few with a wide stance/low bar placement.
Seated Overhead Presses — 3 sets of 3, followed by wave-loading sets of 3,2,1 and 3,2,1. Use the same system as the bench presses on Monday. The nature of the exercise will automatically make it "light."
Snatch Grip High Pulls — 3 sets of 3, and wave loading sets of 3,2,1 and 3,2,1. If you're experienced with doing this exercise, don't work up to 95% of your max (as you'll have done with the other exercises). Stop at about 80%.

Friday

Squats — 3 sets of 3, followed by 6 singles. Your first three sets should be the same as Monday, followed by six progressively heavier sets, working up to your max (or very close to it). The sets for our hypothetical 400 pound squatter would look like this:
135x3
225x3
275x3
300x1
315x1
350x1
375x1
390x1
400x1
Even though you're using more weight than on Monday, your number of lifts and your workload will be lighter, thus qualifying this workout as a "medium" day.
Flat Bench Presses — 3 sets of 3, followed by 6 singles. Use the same method as the squats.
Rounded Back Deadlifts — 5 sets of 5 reps. Use a conventional stance and keep your back rounded throughout the lift. This means you won't be able to lockout the weight, so raise the weight as high as you can before lowering to the floor. Work up over five progressively heavier sets.
Dumbbell Curls supersetted w/ Bench Dips — 3 sets of 20 reps each. After three weeks of heavy training, your muscles and their attachments could use a little break, the reason for the high reps. Still, I don't want you to reach failure on any sets. Stop two to three reps short.

Additional Considerations

By the third week of this program, you should understand what you can (and can't) handle in terms of extra ab, calf, and leg work. Also, spend some time stretching after each session or on days off. You could also try adding some very light extra workouts on your off days (see Chad Waterbury's 100 Reps To Bigger Muscles).

After following the above program for three weeks, you should comprehend how this type of system works. Once the three weeks are up, you have a couple of options. You can go back to week one and try to beat your poundages from that week, or you can try a different set/rep scheme altogether, combined with some different exercises.

Some other good set/rep combinations include fifteen sets of two, six sets of four, eight sets of eight, etc. What you choose should be a matter of your training experience. If you've been training for less than a year, then repeat the three week training block at least two more times. If you've been training (properly) for longer than that, add a couple more weeks using different combinations of sets/reps before repeating anything.

For years, I toiled with "hard" and brief workouts, wondering why I wasn't making the type of progress I read about in the muscle rags each month. Surely, Arthur Jones knew what he was talking about when he said, "You can either train long or you can train hard, but you can't do both." Too bad it took me so long to discover the answer. You don't have to go through years of trial and error like so many lifters. Give the above workouts a try and you'll discover the answer for yourself.

The "O" Word: Overtraining

2010-03-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

The "O" Word:

The Often Misunderstood, Always Talked About Issue of Overtraining

The Barbarian Brothers—those crazy bastions of strength and muscle mass that I often admired in my teenage years—once said: "There is no such thing as overtraining, only undereating." (Or something along that similar vein; could be that I slightly misquoted.) The Barbarians were often derided for that statement. The argument against their statement would go something like this: "It's easy for them to say such a thing. They are genetically predisposed mutants of muscle-building who are on butt-loads of anabolic steroids, HGH, and no-telling what else."

I don't think the Barbarians were exactly dead on in their assessment—don't get me wrong—but they did have a point. Proper training—hard, heavy training in their cases—and diet are the keys to success. Overtraining, in their minds, was just something that was entirely overdone by the magazines and all of the natural lifters out there in the land of the bodybuilding, strength training Weider-verse.

On the opposite end of the spectrum—and this is the "end" that came to be the prevailing viewpoint, even among a lot of steroid users—was the viewpoint that overtraining is not just important, but it's the most important factor when it comes to hypertrophy success. This line of reasoning says that you absolutely must recover between workouts before training again. If you're sore, don't train. In fact, you probably don't need to train again until a day or two after your soreness has dissipated.

Needless to say—and this shouldn't surprise most of you—I don't exactly agree with the second viewpoint.

It is between these two extremes that success in muscle building lies. Let me explain:

First off, you do need to get enough rest and recovery in order to grow larger, stronger muscles. If you overtrain too much then you risk not growing muscles, but it's also not as if overtraining is going to make you shrivel into some 98-pound weakling who will be getting sand kicked in his face all the time.

The Keys to Growing Bigger And/Or Stronger Muscles and Just Where the Hell Overtraining Fits into the Picture

Quickly, let me outline some of the keys to growing bigger, stronger muscles, and just where overtraining—or undertraining, if that's the case (which it could be)—fits into the entire picture of bodybuilding success.

First and foremost, you need to have a goal in your training. If you're still reading this post, then I would imagine that growing bigger and getting stronger are the two keys you're after.

If strength and mass are your primary goals, then you need to be on a program. You should not (or at least only on very rare occasions) just go into the gym, "blast and bomb" your muscles with a bunch of different exercises, and then rest 5, 6, or 7 days until you train those muscles again. This kind of training is just a really crappy, and ultimately fruitless, way to train, despite the fact that a great number of bodybuilders train this way nowadays.

Before we get to the gist of a good program, let me say this: Your nutrition is very important when it comes to gaining muscle mass. The faster you can recover, the faster your gains will come. And one of the best ways to recover faster is through proper nutrition. I'm not going to get into the nuts and bolts of a great diet for mass-building here, however. (I'll save it for another post.)

A good program should encompass several aspects—and overtraining kind of weaves its way through all of these aspects. A good program should involve (a) workouts that use a lot of muscle groups at each session, (b) fairly frequent training of all the major muscle groups (2 to 3 days per week, for instance), (c) heavy training, and (d) drumroll please... ever-increasing workload.

By increasing your ability to handle more workload, you thereby increase your work capacity. As your strength and size increases, so should your ability to handle more and more work. In essence, not only should you be able to out lift other bodybuilders, you should also be able to out train them.

Here is where the aforementioned statement by the Barbarian Brothers fits into the picture. With their level of development and work capacity, that statement was basically true. The more training that they performed the better... so long as they were getting enough nutrition in the form of calories, protein, and good carbs.

Someone who doesn't have a high work capacity cannot make such a statement. For this kind of lifter, the reality of overtraining is a verifiable fact; if he/she trains too much he/she simply won't grow bigger and stronger.

And (by this point) you might be asking: What do I do to increase my work capacity so that I can reach Barbarian Brother status (or at least something that approximates it)?

The Tao of Work Capacity (and Big, Mutha' Truckin' Muscles)

Here are the Ways that I best think allow you to increase your work capacity—while at the same time making you significantly bigger and stronger:

1: Start off with full-body workouts. Full-body workouts allow you to train your muscles frequently—and therefore start you on the path of increased work capacity from the beginning.

2: When you switch over to "split" workout sessions, resist splitting your body more than two ways. Upper body/lower body splits would be a good starting point.

3: Use workouts that utilize multiple sets of low reps. 5 sets of 2 is always better than 2 sets of 5, for instance, even if it's with the same weight.

4: Slowly—and I mean slowly—increase the number of sets and exercises you do in each workout. And never make these increases unless you are already getting bigger and stronger before increasing sets and exercises.

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

2010-02-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

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.

Loving-Kindness and Prayer

2010-02-11T14:29:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I came home from work, sat down to do some loving-kindness meditation, then decided to open up the book “Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life” by the modern day Zen master Ezra Bayda. Since I had just finished some loving-kindness meditation, I thought I would turn to the chapter entitled—simply enough—“Loving Kindness” and see what Bayda had to say. I was glad I did. As a Christian, the chapter touched me when Bayda discussed prayer, and so I thought I would share with you some of what he had to say:

“We can also access and touch loving-kindness directly. The “Way of the Pilgrim” is the story of a simple pilgrim who walked across nineteenth-century Russia. He carried only dried bread and two books—the Bible, and an early Orthodox Christian text, the Philokalia—to sustain his body and his practice. With a genuine homesickness for God, his only aim was to learn to pray without ceasing.

“Although we’re unlikely to ever be pilgrims in the old-fashioned sense, there is something real in the phrase “pray without ceasing.” What is real is the same quality that makes a genuine loving-kindness practice so powerful. Real prayer is a genuine surrender to the moment, whatever the moment may be. It’s not like the prayer of children, in that we’re asking that our wishes be granted. Real prayer is a deep opening to life itself, a deep listening, a willingness to just be with the moment. In this sense it is no different than the practice of opening into the heart. When we do the loving-kindness meditation, we’re not asking for something. Rather, by entering into the spaciousness of the heart, we’re allowing life to just be.

“What most gets in the way of this kind of prayer is just what the pilgrim experienced: the constant desire to spin off into the comfort and security of thinking—into our plans, fantasies, dramas, and especially our beloved judgements.

“How do we counteract this very human tendency? By doing just what the pilgrim did, we bring awareness to the breath, to the heart, and the words of loving-kindness over and over. This is not easy. The pilgrim started with 30 minutes of prayer each day. Then his teacher told him to recite the prayer two thousand times a day. Then six thousand. Then twelve thousand. After years of practice, with wholehearted devotion and perseverance, the prayer became self-activating, and he could pray without ceasing. He experienced the delight of the heart bubbling over and a gratitude toward all things. He came to understand the words “the Kingdom of God within.”

The Integral Contemplative: Peace of Mind Not Dependent Upon Conditions

2010-02-03T18:20:00.000-08:00

For a brief moment, I thought about not including the word “integral” in this post. Instead, I was just going to discuss how good religion—whatever that religion may be—should lead the practitioner to a peace of mind not dependent upon conditions. This, in essence, would be the Wisdom Tradition’s (the religion’s) “litmus test,” so to speak. If the contemplative practices are not passing this test, then adjustments in the contemplative practices need to be made.

But I decided to keep the word “Integral” because that’s essentially what I am: an Integral contemplative. Now, to be honest, there is a lot in the current “integral world” that I’m not completely fond of. While I enjoy much of Ken Wilber’s writing—One Taste and Grace and Grit being my two favorites—he also has a tendency (as the non-dual psychologist Greg Goode has pointed out) to make the simple things very complex. So, although I enjoy Wilber and appreciate his contributions to philosophy, when I take the time to sit and read something contemplative, I prefer the likes of Pema Chodron, Thomas Keating, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Thomas Merton (to name a few).

What I’m getting at is that recently I’ve come to enjoy a lot of the writers in the Integral movement less and I’ve come to enjoy other writers (not typically associated with it) even more. But I am still very Integral myself—Integral has taught me, for instance, how to properly integrate my contemplative practices and my body practices (my powerlifting, bodybuilding, and strength training) into a cohesive whole. And Integral practices have a lot to offer the world.

But there is an issue with Integral philosophy—a very serious issue, I might add—that needs to be addressed. Many of its philosophers—armchair or otherwise—and practitioners are not experiencing (and apparently not even interested in) and peace of mind not dependent upon conditions. I realized this the other day when I was reading the book “The Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness” by the Theravada monk Bhante Henepola Gunaratana and I came across this passage:

“There are moments of contentment in any life, moments of pleasure and joy. But what about the other side you would rather not think about when things are going well? Tragedy, grief, disappointment, physical pain, melancholy, loneliness, resentment, the nagging feeling that there could be something more. These happen, too, don’t they? Our fragile happiness depends on things happening a certain way. But there is something else: a happiness not dependent upon conditions. The Buddha taught the way to find this perfect happiness.”

A few pages later, Bhante goes on to say this:

“Worldly happiness goes beyond sense indulgence. It includes the joys of reading, of watching a good movie, and other forms of mental stimulation and entertainment. It also includes the wholesome joys of the world such as helping people, maintaining a stable family and raising children, and earning an honest living.

“Most of us, even the most discerning, view these things as the essence of a good life. Why did the Buddha consider them part of the lowest forms of happiness? Because they depend on conditions being right.”

And it was at this point that it hit me: Studying and reading about Integral (even writing about it) is also a “lower form of happiness” if the Integralist is not (a) a contemplative, and (b) a contemplative who is cultivating a peace of mind not dependent upon conditions.

Cultivating True Peace of Mind

For the remainder of this post, I would like to offer a couple of ways that have been helpful to me in cultivating a happiness not dependent upon conditions, what we might call true peace of mind.

I want to make one comment, however, before continuing. Good contemplative practices are subtly good. Think about them and you won’t get them; you won’t catch the essence of what makes them work. But not thinking will not capture their essence, either. You must find that still, small place between thinking and not-thinking for these practices to work.

Contemplative Meditation

I used the words “contemplative meditation” here instead of just the usual “meditation” because “good” meditation should lead us to a deep, abiding experience of what we Really Are. In other words, meditation should be much more than just feeling better, learning to be a better human being, acquiring inner peace, and so forth.

It should lead us home—or at least help in leading us home—to our True Nature. Our True Nature is without boundary, and this abiding place of No Boundary is That which we should be seeking.

Listen to these words of Sister Elaine MacInnes—a Roman Catholic nun and Zen teacher—in her book “Zen Contemplation for Christians” as she explains the depths of Being to which contemplative meditation can lead:

“In the true, clear experience, there is nothing, or better still, no-thing to see. So how can it truly be called “one”? Yamada Roshi used to say it’s not even one. Therefore it’s true to say “not-two,” which denies objectivity. That is the deep truth in mystical experience. Our Christian mystics agree. Eckhart says we can only know God by what God is not.

“For the Buddhist, a deep satori is synonymous with salvation or certainly a large step toward the other shore. Buddhists call IT their own inherent Buddha Nature, or the empty-Infinite, as Yamada Roshi used to say. When we touch that inner Nature, or inner Essence, or whatever tag we want to use, we sink into that sea of Essence or Infinity, which opens us to the Reality that we and the Infinite are not-two. We come to understand that not only are we not-two, we are not even one. “One” is an entity, with a boundary, so to speak. The experience is beyond boundary. At that moment, all boundaries are gone.”

Faith as Deep Abiding

Another way we can cultivate true peace of mind is through faith. Faith gets a bad rap by many current contemplatives, but that is because of confusing faith with belief.

Belief, in many ways, has no place in True Spirituality. The two cornerstones of a good contemplative practice (and, therefore, a good religion) should be faith and knowledge.

Knowledge is not belief. Knowledge involves an understanding of Reality as it truly is. This knowledge is achieved by thought, by study, and by the contemplative practices of meditation and non-dual inquiry.

Faith, the other pillar, involves following a way. It involves surrender and (most importantly) it involves trust in this Reality as it truly is—God in his ever-present Isness which is also transcendent to us.

In this transcendence—the 2^nd face of God, to use Integral speak—is where we put our trust. This trust is what I refer to as faith as deep abiding. You abide deeply in the presence of God—but it’s much more than just “practicing the presence of God”; it’s practicing this presence with trust, with surrender, and with deep faith.

New article in Iron Man: "Mass Insanity"

2010-02-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

I have a new article out in the March, '10 issue of Iron Man magazine. The article is entitled "Mass Insanity: Crazy Training for Insane Muscle Gaining." Catchy title if I do say so myself.

Now, to be honest, the real reason to buy the magazine—besides my article—is because of Bill Starr's piece entitled "Make it Harder: There Are No Shortcuts on the Road to Building Strength." I love Starr, but this particular article—which tackles the health problem in America and how no one wants to train hard anymore—is the best training article I've read in I-can't-remember-when. Starr is at his curmudgeonly best, and the article is long, rambling (but in a good way), and pulls no punches.

Bottom line: Go out and buy the March issue of Iron Man. Starr's article alone is worth the price of admission.

Guest Post: "Commercial Manipulation and the REAL Key to Massive Arms"

2010-01-26T13:43:00.000-08:00

My friend—and fellow iron-pumper—Jared Smith (a big, hulking power-bodybuilder) sent me the following training "mini-article". Jared has some good advice in this piece. And most of you who read this blog for training advice might actually follow it. (Unlike a lot of the so-called bodybuilders who read most of the newsstand mags.)

So... here it is:

Commercial Manipulation and the REAL Key to Massive Arms

Jared Smith

I can't tell you how man times I've picked up a magazine that only glorifies abs and biceps and tells you that the key to bigger arms is simply to curl until your brain goes numb. Before I even get into the meat and potatoes of the program I'll outline, don't get the idea that I am anti-curl, but the curl aint gonna put size on those arms.

What puts size on your arms are the same things that put size on the rest of you: COMPOUND MOVEMENTS. Benches, dips, deadlifts,chins, squats. Now before the vast majority of everyone who reads this get confused, allow me to explain why these are the keys to massive arms and massive everything else.

What muscles are involved in the bench? Sure, your chest is the primary mover but your triceps take a huge amount of the workload no matter how great the mind/muscle connection or the amount of concentration you put into it. Keep in mind that the triceps make up 2/3 of your upper arms thus without them you'll never have a massive set of arms. This brings me to the next exercise, Dips. Not only will dips torch your lower pec line but this is the ultimate compound exercise that will overload the hell out of your triceps, and eventually transform them into something that resembles the hooves of a bull.

Now on to the biceps...the most over-talked-about muscle in the bodybuilding world. First and foremost are deadlifts. This is the mother of all exercises in my opinion. I'm sure you're thinking, "Jared, bro, how am I supposed to grow my arms doin deads?". To that I say this: How much weight can you possibly handle doing any form of curl? I'm sure that number won't reach much over a hundred pounds. Keep in mind that the deadlift is a movement that engages your forearms,biceps,brachialis...every muscle that's required to make your arms swell to grotesque proportions. How much weight and compound force can you put into deadlifts? Uuh Huh...I see the light bulb over your head already. Yes, hundreds upon hundreds of pounds. Up next are chins, the most affective exercise for biceps... period. Make sure to squeeze hard at the top. Now I'm sure alot of people are thinking "Dude, I can only do X amount of chins". Who cares? Do the number of sets outlined in the program for as many as you can and after a few months you'll be repping them out.

Now on to the exercise that'll put hair on your balls. Squats. Ok, I know you're scratching your heads now at why I'd even mention squats. How do you think you'll move monster weight on any other movement if you don't have a strong foundation?Nothing will add to the stability of your torso and lower back like having a strong set of quads and hamstrings. Nothing will make you feel a surge of power like having a ton of weight sitting on your back and cranking out reps. It'll make you tired but yet make you want to pound your chest like a silverback gorilla, and let everyone know that you're as powerful as they come.

Now it's time to get to work.........

Day 1

Squats 5x8-10

Dips(weight added if needed) 5x 8-10

Palms-In Chins(weight added if needed) 5x as many as you can

Decline Situps 3x 10-12

Day 2

Rest

Day 3

Squats 3x10-12

Bench Presses 5x8-10

Deadlifts 5x8-10

Leg Raises 3x10-12

Day 4 and 5 rest and begin the cycle again on day six.

Note: Train calves on any day you choose. Pick one exercise and do 3 sets of 10-12 reps.

Pyramid up in weight on each set, but keep your form tight. Slow on the negative stroke and controlled, not explosive, on the positive. This will insure that you'll stimulate the maximum number of muscle fibers in addition to keeping you injury free. Give this program an honest try and I guarantee that in a few months you'll not only be stronger, but you'll have a much larger set of arms. Don't buy into all the complete crap that is printed in much of the publications you'll find on the shelf at your local supermarket. After all, they want to sell magazines, not help you grow. Once you've added quite a bit of strength with a program like this—which consists of the basics—you'll have enough mass to begin a program that does have some isolation movements involved.

Stay tuned, my next installment will contain a more advanced routine. Listen to your body, stick to the basics and avoid the commercial manipulation.

Is Having a Positive Attitude Overrated?

2010-01-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

Over the last few months, I've written a couple of articles for Mike Mahler that have appeared on his website—www.mikemahler.com—or in his "Aggressive Strength" magazine. In the past, I have enjoyed reading some of Mahler's articles on training—his stuff is not necessarily revolutionary but he is very good at assimilating ideas from great lifters both past and present. However, it was only recently—after reading a lot of his "Aggressive Strength Living" articles—that I came to appreciate just where Mahler's strength lies.

Perhaps it's Mahler's background in Eastern philosophies—Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism—that causes me to like him so much, but I think it's more of the fact that he's not your typical "self-help", "positive thinking" sort of writer (as the article below will clearly show).

I picked out the following article because it resonated with me, but I hope you will use it as a springboard to explore more of Mahler's "Aggressive Strength Living" articles.

Is Having a Positive Attitude Overrated?
By Mike Mahler
There were no self-help groups, personal coaching, cheerleading, or handholding. The philosophy was very basic. You know what you want. You know what you have to do. You know how to do it. Just do it. If you can’t then tough shit!
—Randy Roach, Muscle, Smoke & Mirrors
Self-help gurus often talk about the importance of having a positive attitude, claiming it's fundamental to the success of any and all endeavors. On the contrary: attitude is irrelevant. Couple the brightest of attitudes with a flawed plan and you'll create only failure, while taking that same action with an effective plan--even if your attitude is less than cheerful--will surely succeed. Quoting former Navy SEAL Team Six leader Richard Marcinko, you do not have to like it--you just have to do it. This is the critical factor in success: Doing what needs to be done even when it's the last thing you want to do.
If you're only capable of taking action when you're attitude is positive--then don't bother. If you require extrinsic motivation to make your move, you should just give up, now. If you only perform at a high level when you're feeling your best, then you are the exact opposite of a professional and destined to remain an amateur at life and everything else.
Not only is positive attitude beside the point, it can actually hindermeaningful change...and ensuing success. I'll share a personal example.
Click here to read the rest of the article.

New Article: "3 Keys to Monstrous Muscle and Strength Gains"

2010-01-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

Mike Mahler—over at www.mikemahler.com—puts out an excellent on-line magazine called "Aggressive Strength Magazine". The magazine always has plenty of great information, and best of all... it's free. (Mike, by the way, also seems like a wonderful person. He's one of the few vegan strength coaches/athletes that you'll find. Read over his personal articles and you'll see that he has a very spiritual side to him—we need more guys like that in the business.)

The latest issue of "Aggressive Strength" is out, and I have an article in it entitled "3 Keys to Monstrous Muscle and Strength Gains".

Here's the link to Aggressive Strength Magazine, Issue 176.