An Old-School Technique for Breaking a Mass-Building Plateau I can remember rather vividly my first plateau in muscle-building. It was 1991, and I was only seventeen years old, but I had also been training hard for a couple of years prior to this. (I started training at the age of 15, when my father bought me my first weight training set—a DP bench, and about 120 pounds of weight from the local Sears. By the time I was 16, I started training at a commercial gym. It was located adjacent to the dojo where I practiced Karate-Do consistently 4 to 5 days per week.) At the time, I used a full-body routine, where I would train 2 or 3 days per week, focusing on the basics such as squats, bench presses, chins, barbell curls, and whatnot. (To be honest—as ashamed as I am to admit it—I didn't discover the efficacy of deadlifts and the "quick lifts"—power cleans, power snatches, et al—until several years later.) For the...
Essays on Old-School Strength Training, Classic Bodybuilding, Traditional Martial Arts, and Budo Philosophy