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PwrLftnBear
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About 2 years ago I came to powerlifting from bodybuilding. I weighed 200 lbs due to a 40lb weight crash due to going natural. This article is one of the first ones I read and it was well worth the time. This routine changed my outlook on lifting for good. It was written by GForce and re-posted by PowerLifterJay. Well, I am reposting it in hopes of helping someone else the way these 2 guys have helped me. Thanx a lot guys!! By the way, I am now benching 500 and my Squat and Deadlift is holding strong at 600 lbs. all natural. Not too aweful bad for a 22 year old, in my opinion. So here it is, completely quoted from GForce. Enjoy!
"THE BASICS OF BIGNESS
If you regularly read the plethora of mainstream muscle magazines that are currently available then you will no doubt be aware of the publishers dislike of anything that is not "new". Whether it be the latest top pro's routine, the shiniest new fangled machine, or the greatest ever exercise for increasing the delineation between your teres major and your infraspinatus, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will find its way into the pages of one of these rags. Just so long as it's "new". Why is that? Well, the logic goes something like this: new is interesting and interesting sells magazines. Note that it doesnt go "new is interesting and interesting builds big muscles!! Oh no, far from it. What builds big muscles is boring. Theres no escaping it. In theory, at least, building a huge physique is mind numbingly simple. It is in the actual practice of building that physique that the interest lies.
So here is my challenge to you. For 3 months from the moment you finish this article, dont try to learn anything else about building muscles. Dont read any books, dont ask anyones advice and dont buy any more magazines. Spend the money on food instead. All I want you to do is read this article, understand it fully, and then put all of your available energies in to applying its wisdom, every day, for 3 months. At the end of this time you will find that you already know everything that you need to know in order to get very big and very, very strong indeed. It wont be fun. Your buddies in the gym will think you have gone mad. But in 3 months time they will all be training just like you, so hang in there and ignore the inevitable criticism that will flow in your direction. It is part of the British mentality to mock and belittle the success's of others, usually in an attempt to draw attention away from the protagonists own failures, so expect it from the off. Ignore the stares, ignore the comments, look atthe ground, grit your teeth and get on with it. You will succeed and they will continue to fail.
What I will ask you to do would not have in the past been considered at all unusual. In fact, 40 years ago it was the only way anyone ever got big and strong. It was only with the advent of drugs that there became ony choice about how to train for growth. The mistake the majority of of trainees make is that they train like the pros, but without the drug intake of the pros. Funnily enough, the dont seem to grow much. In fact many of them dont grow at all. These are the victims of the fallacy perpetrated by muscle magazines journalists everywhere. These are the guys who believe in the power of whatever is "new", while completely ignoring that which has been proven effective thousands of times over. Dont be one of them. Follow this program, in all its simplicity. Dont add exercises, dont try to get by on less sleep and dont cut corners with the nutritional component of the program and you will grow. How much will you grow. Well, I cant make guarantees but I personally have gained 22 kilos in the past 13 weeks, going from 94 to 116 kilos whilst doubling my strength at the same time. Want similar results? Then do similar things. Stick with what follows, believe in its efficacy, and you will grow like the proverbial weed.
FREQUENCY AND RECUPERATION
This routine is dead simple. It relies in the massive muscle stimulation and hormone production effects of the "big" exercises, while incorprating sufficient recuperation and nutritious calories to allow you to recover from the equally massive stress that these exercises place on both your musclo-skeletal and your nervous systems. These routines also allow for extra rest and recuperation, at your discretion, whenever you feel it is required. This isnt an excuse to get lazy, just an allowance for individual differences and a recognition that certain bodyparts (lower back particularly) tend to take a hammering with the bigger exercises, and hence may need an occasional extra dose of rest and recovery once in a while. You will work every 2 to 3 days, dependant upon your own ability to recover, and your other days will be spent off. This may be a dramatic reduction in frequency, depending on what you've been used to, but when you see the exercises you'll be doing, and the intensity I will ask you to apply, then you'll understand why it has to be this way.
STRETCHING
On each working day you will warm up on the atationary cycle for 5 to 10 minutes before stretching for a further 10 minutes or so...you do remember how to stretch, dont you? Its just that it seems to be one of those things that everyone knows prevents injuries, and yet hardly anyone bothers. Be bothered! It will dramatically increase your training life span and greatly reduce your liklihood of developing joint and tendon problems later on in training life. Warm up abd stretch before every workout. Not just the bodypart you intent to work, but your whole body. Protect yourself!!!
THE WARMUPS
Once you have warmed up you will proceed to thr real work of the day. The first day will consist of Squats and assistance work. The second day will consist of bench presses and assistance work. The third day will consist of deadlifts and assistance work. On each day you will start with the main lift and then proceed to the assistance work. Before the work sets of each exercise you will follow a system of progressive lift specific that will serve to futher protect you from injury, whilst not taxing your recovery abilities too much or taking away strength from the work sets. I will use the deadlift to illustrate the warm up system. Say your planned work sets for deadlifts will be 2 sets of 5 with 180 kilos. Start with a set of 20 with the empty bar, then a set of 10 with one plate a side. Follow this with 5 reps with 2 plates a side, then a set of 3 with 3 plates a side, and finally a single with 3 and a half plates a side. At this point your ready for the work sets of five reps with 4 plates a side. Follow a similar procedure for the other days major lifts. Start with 10% of the work weight for 20, then 30% for 10, 60% for 5, 80% for 3, then finish with about 90-95% for one rep before moving on to the work sets. Between each warmup you should take about a minute to a minute and a half rest, though in reality this will probably only be long enough to add the plates in preperation for your next set. This system gets the working muscles, tendons and ligaments thoroughly warmed up, while you close enough to the working weight to allow you to get a feel for the poundage you will be lifting. This is inportant as it allows you to get your technique perfect with a heavy weight before you do the actual work. Far too many trainees warm up with a set or 2 woth 50% of the working weight and then move on to the work sets. This is foolish not only because the actual working structure will not be warm enough (hence encouraging injury) but also because the nervous system will not be adequately prepared for the level of effort required to lift the work set poundage, hence depriving the trainee of his or her ability to generate maximal efforts in the work sets. The described system of warming up should not take away from your work set strength, but as a safegaurd leave at least 2 minutes between the 90% single and the first work set, maybe more of you feel you need it. Just rest long enough to focus yourself on the work set ahead, but not so long that you cool down substantially and lose the benefits of the warmup.
THE EXERCISES
Once youre all warmed up and ready to go you can move on to the work sets outlined below. As stated above, day one consists of squats and asst., so lets start here. Your exercises on day 1 will be as follows.
1. Squats
2. Front Squats or Leg Ext.
3. Stiff legged Deadlifts or Leg Curls
Day 2 is Bench Presses and Asst. Your exercises for day 2 are as follows.
1. Bench Presses
2. Clean and Jerk or Standing Push Press or Military press
Day 3 is Deadlifts and Asst. work. Exercise selection is as follows.
1. Deadlifts
2. Barbell Rows or Cable Rows
3. Chins or pulldowns to the chest
As for rep ranges and sets, perform 3 sets of 6 for the "Big 3" and 2 sets of 12 for the Asst. work. The exeption to this is the Clean and Jerk. This exercise relies in such high levels of whole body ccordination that I recommend you perfrom 5 sets of 2 reps. This will ensure a maximum level of concentration can be applied to each rep without the fatigue increasing the chances of a missed rep or other mistake.
AVOIDING OVERTRAING
The reasoning behind giving you choices in what asst. work you do on each day is to allow you to give your lower back and other hardowrking muscles more rest if they need it. Everyone recovers differently and you must make allowances for your own personal recovery abilities. The asst. exercises listed first on each day is the most taxing, the second least so and the third the least taxing of all. On day 2, for example, the clean and jerk is the most taxing. It works your whole body, and puts lots of stress on your hip structure, thighs, arms and lower back as well as your shoulders. The standing push press stresses the deltoid structure equally heavy, but places less stress on your lower back and hips than the clean and jerk. The seated military press places virtually no stress on the lower back and hips but will still allow you to severly punish your deltoid complex. Can you see what Im getting at? Each day you can decide for yourself how fatigued you are (especially in the hips and back) and make your choice of asst. exercise selection dependant upon that, hence avoiding overworking the lower back and hips which could easily take away from your performance in the squat and deadlift. On days when you feel fully rested and raring to go, do the biggest exercises and get the most muscle stimulation possible. If you feel a little less than perfect then go ahead and do the smaller exercise. You'll still get some of the nessasary muscle stimuation of the relevant bodypart, but your wont tax your recovery abilities quite as much as you would with the bigger exercise. Its exactly the same deal with the fron squat and leg ext. The both stress the front thigh very heavily but the leg ext. takes your hips, lower back, and grip out of the equation. Lower back, hips and grip play a big part in the deadlift, so if progress slows in this lift then you should drop the front squat in favor of the leg ext. and drop the stiff-legged deadlift in favor of the leg curl. Always keep in mind that the primary aim of this program is to give you a strength base in the 3 big lifts that will carry over to any other work you might do in the future. You must deduce for yourself how much asst. work work you can recover from. How do you know what you can recover from? Simply start out with a fixed workout frequency and do the most taxing exercises on the list. I suggest a shedule of 1 on-1 off, 1 on-2off, 1 on-1off. From this starting point you can take measures to reduce your workload if neccasary. Simply put, if progress slwos or stops on the lifts, then change the asst. work to the less demanding exercises. This should enable you to recover better and, hence, begin to make progress once again. You must understand that as a muscle grows bigger and stronger it requires more recovery time to heal after a workout, so as you grow stronger you need more recovery time, and less total work per bodypart or area. Dropping the big asst. exercises in favor of the smaller ones will take pressure off of your hips and lower back structure by drastically reducing the total number of sets for these areas and increasing the time off between workouts that stress them. If after time your progress slows again, then feel free to drop all of the asst. work. Im not kidding! If need be, drop it all. If after dropping your asst. work your progress slows again, then decrease your workout frequency. Throw in another rest day, then another if need be. Almost make sure you totally recover before you do the same lift again. In this way you reduce workload and then frequency, hence preventing any insidious overtraining that may be developing and allowing yourself to make more progree on the big lifts. And remember, in this program, thats what it is all about. The BIG 3.
THE VALUE OF BIG FREE WEIGHTS
Let me put it to you this way. Take 2 hypothetical trainees. Trainee 1 spreads all his effort over several exercises in order to "train the muscle from all angles" and spends most of his time seated or lying down on some kind of machine to "isolate the working muscle". Trainee 2 trains very hard on the big free-weight exercises for moderately low reps and sets, and does little in the way of asst. or machine work. He concentrates on a few big exercises and makes sure he adds a little iron to the bar every week. After about 6 months of training, both men will probably have doubled or perhaps even tripled their strength in the movements they perfrom. Trainee 1 will be substantially stronger in the leg ext, leg curl, lateral raise, front raise, pec deck, dumbell flye, biceps curl, triceps cable pushdown, calf raise, some kind of pulldown and perhaps a machine rowing movement as well, assuming he can recover from the high volume necessitated by training so many exercises in 1 routine. Trainee 2 will be substantially stronger in the bench press, deadlift, squat, and military press. Now, say these 2 trainees swap their routines. Have number 1 get under the bar and try to squat the second trainee has built up to. He wont be able to. Have him bend down and try to deadlift our mans training poundage. It wont budge from the floor. Bench press? Not likely. Military press trainee 2's poundage? He will be lucky if he can even clean it to his chest. However, if we have trainee 2 attempt our machine mans poundage and reps, he will complete them with ease ad probably smash the first mans personal record lifts in the process. It is just the simple fact that strength built on machines does not transfer over on to free weights or, in deed, real life. Free weights force you to constanly balance the the load, to use secondary and supporting muscles to a much greater degree than machines allow at the same time generally involving a greater degree of directly affected musclature in the first place. They force you to work hard, and as a result your body adapts. The strength built with free weights tends to transfer over to machines much better than vice versa. For example, in the 4 months since I began training I have worked thighs with squats and front squats almost exclusively. I can now squat 315 for 15 reps, and it goes up by a rep a week. Prior to writing this section of the article I had to go on our gyms leg ext. machine. remember having never done a leg extension before.Most of the regular leg ext. crowd use about 15 to 35 pounds for 10-15 reps. Me? 65 pounds for 20 reps on my first attempt. Do you really think that any of those 30 lb guys could match my 315 for 15 squat? Of course not. Point proven. Free weights will build a greater amount of functional strength in the beginning trainee than machines and in less time too. This is not to say that machines are useless, its just that until you are already big and strong they have little to offer you.
NUTRITION AND REST COMPONENTS
Rest is what makes you stronger. Granted it is the training that prvides stimulus for this growth but without sufficient rest and recuperation you will not grow. Be lazy on your off days, take things very easy indeed. Dont get up if you dont have to. Lie in late in the mornings, take a snooze before dinner, and make sure you sleep all night.
Sleep is a wonderful thing for inducing growth. When you sleep your body naturally produces the neccasary hormones for growth. Sleep is your natural time for tissue repair and growth, so make sure that you take full advantage of it.
As for the eating component of this regimen, I simply reccomend that you eat as much clean food as you can. The program only lasts for 3 months, so you are highly unlikely to get fat. I know it is very old fashioned to reccomend a "see food" diet to athletes but the whole point is to rapidly change your structure and metabolism to one more suited for growth. The easiest way to do this is to ingest a lot of calories every day. Food intake alone is highly anabolic, so make sure and eat plenty. 10 meals a day is often not excessive, with some men needing even more feedings per day. Just eat until you gain 2-3 pounds per week. In total this will give you a 24-36 pound increase over the 3 months. This is a lot more than most guys achieve in a lifetime. At the same time you will put 60-90lbs on your main lifts, which will change your lifting lifting career forever. Just imagine yourself 36 pounds heavier and 160 pounds stronger. Set your goals and get on with it. It is always easier to look for a new way to train than it is to deliver full bore effort on an old routine. Make changes now. Deliver all the effort you can on the big 3 lifts and asst. work outlines abouve. Eat as well as you can, and sleep as much as you can and you will be unable to stop yourself from growing. Once you have experienced the true growth potential of your body, not distorted by overtraining, undereating and undersleeping, you will find it easy to generate a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for your training, which in turn will further speed up your gains. So get up off your arse and get on with it. Train as hard as you can then get out of the gym and eat. The rest will take care of itself."
Thanks again GForce and PowerlifterJay
"THE BASICS OF BIGNESS
If you regularly read the plethora of mainstream muscle magazines that are currently available then you will no doubt be aware of the publishers dislike of anything that is not "new". Whether it be the latest top pro's routine, the shiniest new fangled machine, or the greatest ever exercise for increasing the delineation between your teres major and your infraspinatus, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will find its way into the pages of one of these rags. Just so long as it's "new". Why is that? Well, the logic goes something like this: new is interesting and interesting sells magazines. Note that it doesnt go "new is interesting and interesting builds big muscles!! Oh no, far from it. What builds big muscles is boring. Theres no escaping it. In theory, at least, building a huge physique is mind numbingly simple. It is in the actual practice of building that physique that the interest lies.
So here is my challenge to you. For 3 months from the moment you finish this article, dont try to learn anything else about building muscles. Dont read any books, dont ask anyones advice and dont buy any more magazines. Spend the money on food instead. All I want you to do is read this article, understand it fully, and then put all of your available energies in to applying its wisdom, every day, for 3 months. At the end of this time you will find that you already know everything that you need to know in order to get very big and very, very strong indeed. It wont be fun. Your buddies in the gym will think you have gone mad. But in 3 months time they will all be training just like you, so hang in there and ignore the inevitable criticism that will flow in your direction. It is part of the British mentality to mock and belittle the success's of others, usually in an attempt to draw attention away from the protagonists own failures, so expect it from the off. Ignore the stares, ignore the comments, look atthe ground, grit your teeth and get on with it. You will succeed and they will continue to fail.
What I will ask you to do would not have in the past been considered at all unusual. In fact, 40 years ago it was the only way anyone ever got big and strong. It was only with the advent of drugs that there became ony choice about how to train for growth. The mistake the majority of of trainees make is that they train like the pros, but without the drug intake of the pros. Funnily enough, the dont seem to grow much. In fact many of them dont grow at all. These are the victims of the fallacy perpetrated by muscle magazines journalists everywhere. These are the guys who believe in the power of whatever is "new", while completely ignoring that which has been proven effective thousands of times over. Dont be one of them. Follow this program, in all its simplicity. Dont add exercises, dont try to get by on less sleep and dont cut corners with the nutritional component of the program and you will grow. How much will you grow. Well, I cant make guarantees but I personally have gained 22 kilos in the past 13 weeks, going from 94 to 116 kilos whilst doubling my strength at the same time. Want similar results? Then do similar things. Stick with what follows, believe in its efficacy, and you will grow like the proverbial weed.
FREQUENCY AND RECUPERATION
This routine is dead simple. It relies in the massive muscle stimulation and hormone production effects of the "big" exercises, while incorprating sufficient recuperation and nutritious calories to allow you to recover from the equally massive stress that these exercises place on both your musclo-skeletal and your nervous systems. These routines also allow for extra rest and recuperation, at your discretion, whenever you feel it is required. This isnt an excuse to get lazy, just an allowance for individual differences and a recognition that certain bodyparts (lower back particularly) tend to take a hammering with the bigger exercises, and hence may need an occasional extra dose of rest and recovery once in a while. You will work every 2 to 3 days, dependant upon your own ability to recover, and your other days will be spent off. This may be a dramatic reduction in frequency, depending on what you've been used to, but when you see the exercises you'll be doing, and the intensity I will ask you to apply, then you'll understand why it has to be this way.
STRETCHING
On each working day you will warm up on the atationary cycle for 5 to 10 minutes before stretching for a further 10 minutes or so...you do remember how to stretch, dont you? Its just that it seems to be one of those things that everyone knows prevents injuries, and yet hardly anyone bothers. Be bothered! It will dramatically increase your training life span and greatly reduce your liklihood of developing joint and tendon problems later on in training life. Warm up abd stretch before every workout. Not just the bodypart you intent to work, but your whole body. Protect yourself!!!
THE WARMUPS
Once you have warmed up you will proceed to thr real work of the day. The first day will consist of Squats and assistance work. The second day will consist of bench presses and assistance work. The third day will consist of deadlifts and assistance work. On each day you will start with the main lift and then proceed to the assistance work. Before the work sets of each exercise you will follow a system of progressive lift specific that will serve to futher protect you from injury, whilst not taxing your recovery abilities too much or taking away strength from the work sets. I will use the deadlift to illustrate the warm up system. Say your planned work sets for deadlifts will be 2 sets of 5 with 180 kilos. Start with a set of 20 with the empty bar, then a set of 10 with one plate a side. Follow this with 5 reps with 2 plates a side, then a set of 3 with 3 plates a side, and finally a single with 3 and a half plates a side. At this point your ready for the work sets of five reps with 4 plates a side. Follow a similar procedure for the other days major lifts. Start with 10% of the work weight for 20, then 30% for 10, 60% for 5, 80% for 3, then finish with about 90-95% for one rep before moving on to the work sets. Between each warmup you should take about a minute to a minute and a half rest, though in reality this will probably only be long enough to add the plates in preperation for your next set. This system gets the working muscles, tendons and ligaments thoroughly warmed up, while you close enough to the working weight to allow you to get a feel for the poundage you will be lifting. This is inportant as it allows you to get your technique perfect with a heavy weight before you do the actual work. Far too many trainees warm up with a set or 2 woth 50% of the working weight and then move on to the work sets. This is foolish not only because the actual working structure will not be warm enough (hence encouraging injury) but also because the nervous system will not be adequately prepared for the level of effort required to lift the work set poundage, hence depriving the trainee of his or her ability to generate maximal efforts in the work sets. The described system of warming up should not take away from your work set strength, but as a safegaurd leave at least 2 minutes between the 90% single and the first work set, maybe more of you feel you need it. Just rest long enough to focus yourself on the work set ahead, but not so long that you cool down substantially and lose the benefits of the warmup.
THE EXERCISES
Once youre all warmed up and ready to go you can move on to the work sets outlined below. As stated above, day one consists of squats and asst., so lets start here. Your exercises on day 1 will be as follows.
1. Squats
2. Front Squats or Leg Ext.
3. Stiff legged Deadlifts or Leg Curls
Day 2 is Bench Presses and Asst. Your exercises for day 2 are as follows.
1. Bench Presses
2. Clean and Jerk or Standing Push Press or Military press
Day 3 is Deadlifts and Asst. work. Exercise selection is as follows.
1. Deadlifts
2. Barbell Rows or Cable Rows
3. Chins or pulldowns to the chest
As for rep ranges and sets, perform 3 sets of 6 for the "Big 3" and 2 sets of 12 for the Asst. work. The exeption to this is the Clean and Jerk. This exercise relies in such high levels of whole body ccordination that I recommend you perfrom 5 sets of 2 reps. This will ensure a maximum level of concentration can be applied to each rep without the fatigue increasing the chances of a missed rep or other mistake.
AVOIDING OVERTRAING
The reasoning behind giving you choices in what asst. work you do on each day is to allow you to give your lower back and other hardowrking muscles more rest if they need it. Everyone recovers differently and you must make allowances for your own personal recovery abilities. The asst. exercises listed first on each day is the most taxing, the second least so and the third the least taxing of all. On day 2, for example, the clean and jerk is the most taxing. It works your whole body, and puts lots of stress on your hip structure, thighs, arms and lower back as well as your shoulders. The standing push press stresses the deltoid structure equally heavy, but places less stress on your lower back and hips than the clean and jerk. The seated military press places virtually no stress on the lower back and hips but will still allow you to severly punish your deltoid complex. Can you see what Im getting at? Each day you can decide for yourself how fatigued you are (especially in the hips and back) and make your choice of asst. exercise selection dependant upon that, hence avoiding overworking the lower back and hips which could easily take away from your performance in the squat and deadlift. On days when you feel fully rested and raring to go, do the biggest exercises and get the most muscle stimulation possible. If you feel a little less than perfect then go ahead and do the smaller exercise. You'll still get some of the nessasary muscle stimuation of the relevant bodypart, but your wont tax your recovery abilities quite as much as you would with the bigger exercise. Its exactly the same deal with the fron squat and leg ext. The both stress the front thigh very heavily but the leg ext. takes your hips, lower back, and grip out of the equation. Lower back, hips and grip play a big part in the deadlift, so if progress slows in this lift then you should drop the front squat in favor of the leg ext. and drop the stiff-legged deadlift in favor of the leg curl. Always keep in mind that the primary aim of this program is to give you a strength base in the 3 big lifts that will carry over to any other work you might do in the future. You must deduce for yourself how much asst. work work you can recover from. How do you know what you can recover from? Simply start out with a fixed workout frequency and do the most taxing exercises on the list. I suggest a shedule of 1 on-1 off, 1 on-2off, 1 on-1off. From this starting point you can take measures to reduce your workload if neccasary. Simply put, if progress slwos or stops on the lifts, then change the asst. work to the less demanding exercises. This should enable you to recover better and, hence, begin to make progress once again. You must understand that as a muscle grows bigger and stronger it requires more recovery time to heal after a workout, so as you grow stronger you need more recovery time, and less total work per bodypart or area. Dropping the big asst. exercises in favor of the smaller ones will take pressure off of your hips and lower back structure by drastically reducing the total number of sets for these areas and increasing the time off between workouts that stress them. If after time your progress slows again, then feel free to drop all of the asst. work. Im not kidding! If need be, drop it all. If after dropping your asst. work your progress slows again, then decrease your workout frequency. Throw in another rest day, then another if need be. Almost make sure you totally recover before you do the same lift again. In this way you reduce workload and then frequency, hence preventing any insidious overtraining that may be developing and allowing yourself to make more progree on the big lifts. And remember, in this program, thats what it is all about. The BIG 3.
THE VALUE OF BIG FREE WEIGHTS
Let me put it to you this way. Take 2 hypothetical trainees. Trainee 1 spreads all his effort over several exercises in order to "train the muscle from all angles" and spends most of his time seated or lying down on some kind of machine to "isolate the working muscle". Trainee 2 trains very hard on the big free-weight exercises for moderately low reps and sets, and does little in the way of asst. or machine work. He concentrates on a few big exercises and makes sure he adds a little iron to the bar every week. After about 6 months of training, both men will probably have doubled or perhaps even tripled their strength in the movements they perfrom. Trainee 1 will be substantially stronger in the leg ext, leg curl, lateral raise, front raise, pec deck, dumbell flye, biceps curl, triceps cable pushdown, calf raise, some kind of pulldown and perhaps a machine rowing movement as well, assuming he can recover from the high volume necessitated by training so many exercises in 1 routine. Trainee 2 will be substantially stronger in the bench press, deadlift, squat, and military press. Now, say these 2 trainees swap their routines. Have number 1 get under the bar and try to squat the second trainee has built up to. He wont be able to. Have him bend down and try to deadlift our mans training poundage. It wont budge from the floor. Bench press? Not likely. Military press trainee 2's poundage? He will be lucky if he can even clean it to his chest. However, if we have trainee 2 attempt our machine mans poundage and reps, he will complete them with ease ad probably smash the first mans personal record lifts in the process. It is just the simple fact that strength built on machines does not transfer over on to free weights or, in deed, real life. Free weights force you to constanly balance the the load, to use secondary and supporting muscles to a much greater degree than machines allow at the same time generally involving a greater degree of directly affected musclature in the first place. They force you to work hard, and as a result your body adapts. The strength built with free weights tends to transfer over to machines much better than vice versa. For example, in the 4 months since I began training I have worked thighs with squats and front squats almost exclusively. I can now squat 315 for 15 reps, and it goes up by a rep a week. Prior to writing this section of the article I had to go on our gyms leg ext. machine. remember having never done a leg extension before.Most of the regular leg ext. crowd use about 15 to 35 pounds for 10-15 reps. Me? 65 pounds for 20 reps on my first attempt. Do you really think that any of those 30 lb guys could match my 315 for 15 squat? Of course not. Point proven. Free weights will build a greater amount of functional strength in the beginning trainee than machines and in less time too. This is not to say that machines are useless, its just that until you are already big and strong they have little to offer you.
NUTRITION AND REST COMPONENTS
Rest is what makes you stronger. Granted it is the training that prvides stimulus for this growth but without sufficient rest and recuperation you will not grow. Be lazy on your off days, take things very easy indeed. Dont get up if you dont have to. Lie in late in the mornings, take a snooze before dinner, and make sure you sleep all night.
Sleep is a wonderful thing for inducing growth. When you sleep your body naturally produces the neccasary hormones for growth. Sleep is your natural time for tissue repair and growth, so make sure that you take full advantage of it.
As for the eating component of this regimen, I simply reccomend that you eat as much clean food as you can. The program only lasts for 3 months, so you are highly unlikely to get fat. I know it is very old fashioned to reccomend a "see food" diet to athletes but the whole point is to rapidly change your structure and metabolism to one more suited for growth. The easiest way to do this is to ingest a lot of calories every day. Food intake alone is highly anabolic, so make sure and eat plenty. 10 meals a day is often not excessive, with some men needing even more feedings per day. Just eat until you gain 2-3 pounds per week. In total this will give you a 24-36 pound increase over the 3 months. This is a lot more than most guys achieve in a lifetime. At the same time you will put 60-90lbs on your main lifts, which will change your lifting lifting career forever. Just imagine yourself 36 pounds heavier and 160 pounds stronger. Set your goals and get on with it. It is always easier to look for a new way to train than it is to deliver full bore effort on an old routine. Make changes now. Deliver all the effort you can on the big 3 lifts and asst. work outlines abouve. Eat as well as you can, and sleep as much as you can and you will be unable to stop yourself from growing. Once you have experienced the true growth potential of your body, not distorted by overtraining, undereating and undersleeping, you will find it easy to generate a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for your training, which in turn will further speed up your gains. So get up off your arse and get on with it. Train as hard as you can then get out of the gym and eat. The rest will take care of itself."
Thanks again GForce and PowerlifterJay
