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Showing posts with the label mass building tips

A Well-Defined Goal

What it Takes to Actually Achieve Your New Year’s Resolution(s)       I rolled out of bed this morning, went to the coffee maker to brew my morning cup of Joe, and then put on the local morning news while I listened to the spewing and sputtering sounds made by my generic Keurig.  I don’t usually watch the news in the morning.  I typically get out of bed and, as my coffee is brewing, begin lacing up my shoes for a morning walk while my dog Kenji paces back and forth in anxious anticipation of our almost daily exercise.  But it was so cold this morning, and with slight snow flurries coming down, I thought it would be good to take the day off from my usual walk (much, it must be said, to my dog’s chagrin).  So I turned on the news to see what the weather had in store this week in my adopted home state of Alabama.      But, don’t worry, it’s not the weather in the Deep South that I want to discuss for this essay....

Forgotten Secrets of Muscle Building

  Hypertrophy Training that WORKS for the Natural Lifter      In my recent essay “ The Game Changers ,” I wrote this about high-frequency training: “Although it (HFT) is more mainstream now, I suppose, it’s still the kind of lesser-known of training methods, at least among the general population.  And even among lifters who do know about it, it’s still often dismissed because it’s not how competitive bodybuilders train.  It’s also certainly not how pro bodybuilders—i.e. drug users—train.  But that’s the thing.  It’s dismissed because it’s not attempted by enough drug-free bodybuilders.  Something tells me that if anabolic steroids never existed, it might be the #1 method of lifting among everyone—powerlifters, Olympic lifters, and bodybuilders.”  For some reason today, I thought about that sentence—there are always thoughts about my training and writing swirling around in my head; it can be a bit annoying—and then it made me ...

Mass-Building Variety

    Variety for Gains in Size and Strength      I knew a super-heavyweight powerlifter at one time who never changed his training program.  And I mean never .  On top of that, he had been a highly competitive powerlifter since the ‘70s.  When I got to know him around 15 years ago, he told me that he had been doing, essentially, the exact same program for at least the previous 35 years.  He was also incredibly strong (even though he was older then than I am now).  And incredibly massive.      His program worked.  It might work for you, too, but I doubt it.  Most lifters—bodybuilders, powerlifters, Crossfitters, and everyone in between—need more variety.  And even if your body responds well to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to training, your mind, at the very least, needs a bit more variegation.  I have a feeling, however, that the majority of lifters do need variety...