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The Forgotten Secrets to Building Size and Strength

Old-School Workout Methods for Achieving Your Training Goals      I admit that I’m not up on anything new in the world of strength training and bodybuilding.  I couldn’t tell you a single thing about any modern bodybuilder or strength athlete or any new methods of training.  I guess that’s a bit of a personality fault on my part considering the subjects I write about.  However, it’s been my view for as long as I can remember that there really isn’t anything new under the mass-building sun.      To be honest, there isn’t anything new in, well, anything .  There is more stuff that is forgotten than is discovered.  And even when something new is “discovered,” it’s more often than not simply something that had been lost.      I take this view in almost any subject that I love, whether it’s strength training, martial arts, or even philosophy and theology.  I am a classical theist , after ...
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More Heavy Training

The Ultimate Workout Routine for Getting Massively Big and Incredibly Strong?      In my previous essay Go Heavy or Go Home , I discussed some ways to train using Pavel Tsatsouline’s seven “Russian rules” of training.  This article will be, in many ways, just a continuation of that one.  I’d recommend reading it first, but you don’t have to.  That article contained a few workout suggestions using Pavel’s 7 maxims.  In this one, I want to propose a workout that I believe is the ultimate for building a combination of size and strength.  This routine isn’t for beginners.  You need to be at the “intermediate” stage before even attempting this routine.  So, you’ve been warned.  If you attempt this without having the work capacity to handle it, it’ll be too much.  At the very least , spend about 3 months doing one of the workouts in the prior essay before moving on to this one.      This routine u...

Go Heavy or Go Home

Some “Secrets” to Heavy Training and Continued Progress      There are a lot of pithy sayings out there for lifters, strength athletes, and just casual gym-goers.  Almost everyone, even folks who have never picked up a barbell a single day in their lives, has heard (or read) the phrase “no pain, no gain.”  When I started training in the ‘80s, and I’m pretty sure it became even more popular in the ‘90s, a common saying was to “go heavy or go home.”  There’s some truth in these, and other sayings, but also some misinformation.  Pain isn’t always good, for example.  Heck, that phrase—no pain, no gain—has probably caused just as much harm as help.   Maybe not to the same degree, but you could argue that “go heavy or go home” has also caused the derailment of more than a few workouts and routines.      Context is important.  Pain can be good, but it can also be decidedly bad.  You should never train t...