Let us now leave the Land of the Squatters and travel on. Let's have a look at some of the other exercise routines which have gained rather wide acceptance since the introduction of the more or less basic squat in the early 1930s.
One of the earliest of these ideas was the "cheating" method of performing movements with more weight than you could handle properly. For example, suppose you could curl 100 pounds while standing erect and without body motion. Then one day you find that you can handle 124 by swaying the body and leaning back as you give a heave to start the barbell upward. You immediately rush out to tell your pals that you can now curl 125 pounds and of course you hesitate to go back to that insignificant 100 pounds which you formerly curled.
You also do this with the press, a heave, a back bend and sundry motions which amount in essence to a jerk without moving your feet. So you can now press 200 pounds. At last you are a MAN!
When you do pullovers you bend the arms and bounce the weight. You are now a strong man, kid. You have discovered the secret. Of course the fact that you have lost your soul is an insignificant by-product. You are no longer honest; you have become a liar.
In America during the 1930s this cheating even crept into official weightlifting. The hunch or jerk presses during that era were sad to behold, and a few still get away with murder because they don't realize they are cheating; and the person they are cheating most is themselves.
Now, weightlifting and bodybuilding are separate things. In the former there are rules, and the good lifter will obey them and profit thereby. If he gets into bad habits through attempts to press more than he can handle he is going to find eagle-eyed judges who slap him down. But here we are primarily concerned with body building and muscle molding, so we will let ethics drop and consider the value of the "cheating" technique.
To accustom your muscles to handle ever increasing weights is a laudable endeavor. In some movements it has value - such and the bouncing pullover (see pic above) and the bouncing squat. Yet let us look at the facts squarely. What you are really doing in most of these cases is supplanting a tried and proven exercise with ANOTHER TOTALLY DIFFERENT MOVEMENT. I suggest that if you insist on trying the cheating exercise that you do it first, then reduce the weight and do the old exercise properly. And this leads us into an exercise technique that has great merit - THE HEAVY AND LIGHT SYSTEM.
Hold on a second . . .
Third Series. That'd be today.
Soon to be . . .
I'm about half way through the book and don't want it to ever end.
Harry? Would you please come back here . . .
In this routine most of the standard exercises are followed but a stimulation to increasing strength is supplied by first doing five repetitions with the curl with a weight quite close to your limit, then taking up immediately a lighter bar and performing ten more reps. This has the great advantage of permitting you to handle more weight when you are fresh, and then as the fatigue toxins accumulate you really have to work to perform ten full repetitions with a lighter weight. Usually the last three or four reps of a movement are the ones which do you the most good, when the tissues start getting clogged. This brings the surge of blood into the area and results in growth. The Bob Hoffman courses have contained this system since 1932. In Britain the new Henry Atkin Multi-Poundage System in which the discs are removed from the bar while you are using it has carried this fine idea even further.
The Atkin Multi-Poundage System by Henry J. Atkin (1949):
About 1940 a number of lavishly muscled supermen appeared on the American scene, following the inception of the Annual Mr. America award which began in 1939.
Bert Goodrich, 1939 Mr. America
We spent a good bit of time backstage with these models, watching them warm up for the contest, and found they had hit upon a new technique for inflating the tissues with blood. They did innumerable sets of curls, bench presses and dumbbell movements, and they had grown some impressive lumps. This cult grew rapidly, and its center was the Pacific Coast. Today the idea of using a group of series (done in multiple sets) exercises is standard in practically every gymnasium catering to muscle builders. It is probably the very best system in the finishing stages of an athlete's training for a well muscled physique. But we have certain reservations which we will take up later.
In some quarters the Rest-Pause System of training with single repetitions with almost limit weights has gained acceptance. This very much resembles the training of an advanced weightlifter in endeavoring to increase his three Olympic lifts. He takes a weight only a few pounds under his limit and does perhaps 10 single lifts with this weight, resting for several minutes between each attempt. The bodybuilder using the Rest-Pause System does about six exercises, the curl, press, squat, pullover, deadlift, and pullup. He takes a weight about 10 pounds under his limit, curls it once, then rests a moment and curls it again, until he has done 10 complete repetitions. He does the same with the other two movements - doing almost a limit poundage each time. That this system should build strength and rugged ligaments is apparent. However, the long time necessary for an exercise period is against it and it is a little doubtful if it would build comparable shape and size.
There are several other systems prevalent, but I think we have covered the main ones. The older school of thought that goes in for a large variety of exercises performed a standard number of repetitions (say 15 for every exercise) is still large. The idea of working the muscles from different angles instead of using a series of identical movements has a great deal to commend it. However, I believe progress will be a little slower this way, although it may be surer and the results more lasting.
My old and good friend, Siegmund Klein, goes through a routine of possibly 18 exercises, 15 reps each, religiously three times a week. You could set your clock by him and I doubt if he has missed a dozen exercise sessions in 25 years.
Note: There's a seventeen part serialized group of articles on this blog titled "My First Quarter Century in the Iron Game" by Sig Klein.
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