Saturday, April 13, 2024

The Time Factor - John Mccallum (1965)

 

                                                                 Taken from this issue: June, 1965. 



There’s a young man down the street from me who trains with weights. He’s been at it for about three years but you’d never know it to look at him. He’s got no build at all. My grandmother’s been dead for twelve years and she probably still looks better than him.

He came over to my house to talk one night. He brought an arm-load of magazines with him. I told him to sit down. He dumped the magazines on the coffee table. He’s a thin jittery type. He sits on a sofa like his back pockets were full of broken glass. I asked him how he was doing with his training.

“Not too good,” he said. “I can’t seem to gain weight.”

I asked him what program he was doing.

He rattled off a jumble of exercises like a tobacco auctioneer milking the crowd. I never even heard of half of them.

“Gee,” I said. “That’s an awful lot of work. How long does it take?”

“About three hours.”

“How often?”

“Six days a week.”

“Man, oh man,” I said. “No wonder you’re not gaining weight. Why don’t you go longshoring? You’d work about half that hard and they’d pay you for it.?

He looked a bit hurt. “I wouldn’t gain weight if I went longshoring.”

“You’re not gaining a heck of a lot training either.”

“No,” he said. “I’m a bit thin.”
I took a good look at him. You could open milk tins on his knee caps. “Yeah,” I said. “You are a bit.”

He squirmed around like he’d been kicked and I began to feel sorry for him.

“Look,” I said. “Where’d you get the idea you had to train that hard?”

He picked up one of the magazines and started thumbing through it. It wasn’t from York. I turned page after page and they looked the same and finally I said, “What in heck is this? A catalogue?”

‘No, no,” he said. “Keep going.”

I kept going and about half-way through the book I came to a story about a guy who was double bumping his pecs or something. I recognized his picture. He built up at Yarick’s and he looked better then than he does now.

I passed another half dozen pages of advertising and came to a story about a guy who said the wonder system produced his “thrilling legs.”

I closed it up at this point. I’ve seen lots of good looking legs but the only ones that thrilled me were on girls.

I handed the book back. “Not bad,” I said. “Slip it under your coat when you’re leaving, will you? The postal authorities may be casing the place.”

He looked a little puzzled. “Don’t you read them?”

“No,” I said. “I read ‘Peanuts.’ It’s not quite as funny but it makes more sense.”

“Well, I dunno,” he said. “There’s lots of stuff in there about gaining weight.”

“Do you follow it?

“Sure.”

“Did you gain any weight?”

“Well, no,” he said. “But I’m gonna stick with it. I got lots of starch in my spine.
“You got lots of rocks in your head. You could put muscles on a lamp post in three years.”

“You think there’s a better way to gain weight?”

“Certainly.”

“How?”

So I told him.

I said, “Gaining weight isn’t that complicated. It’s the easiest thing in the world. But there’s certain principles to follow and you’re not following any of them.

One of the most important items is the amount of time you spend working out.

You don’t need to spend very long at it. If you’re trying to gain weight you’re better off doing too little than too much. Three workouts are fine for an advanced man with nothing else to do but they’re suicide for a guy building up.

Let’s be reasonable about it. Anybody who works for a living and spends three hours a day working out is making a social outcast of himself. Keep that up and the next sound you hear will be your old lady cackling as she runs off with the milkman.

You can gain all the weight you want and still lead a normal life.


Maurice Jones

The heaviest muscled man I ever met is Maurice Jones of Vancouver, B.C. You wouldn’t believe anyone could have that much muscle and every ounce of it was built with weights. I asked Maury how often he figured a man should work out.

“About an hour.”


Reg Park


I watched Reg Park work out once. I timed him. His workout took and hour and four minutes.
Gaining weight is a building process. Don’t tear it all back down again.

You only have so much energy. If you exceed it you won’t build up. You might even lose weight.
I was down in Chula Vista last summer. I dropped in to see Earl Clark. He’s a real friendly guy and built like nothing on earth. We spent a lot of time talking and I asked him how much time he spent working out.

He said, “From an hour to an hour and a half.”

“How often?”

“Three times a week.”

I said, “Do you think that’s enough?”

“Sure,” he said. “Plenty. Most of the guys spend too long at it. They do way too much. They’d look better if they did less.”

If you can’t gain weight you’re doing something wrong. You’re probably overworking. The late Harry Paschal published a weight gaining routine once. I tried it. The workout took forty minutes and I gained eleven pounds in a month.

Peary Rader said he could never see any difference in the development of an advanced man who took about an hour and a half workout and those who spent half the day doing it.

The extra time is largely wasted. If you’re trying to gain it can even be detrimental.

Weight training is concentrated. You reach the point of diminishing returns very quickly. 

If you want to gain weight quickly and easily – good solid muscular weight – then cut down on your long workouts. Never, never, never spend more than an hour and a half at a workout.

A good basic weight training program for beginners and intermediates would be the following:

#1 Press behind neck: 2 sets of 12 reps
#2 Bent-rowing exercise: 3 sets of 15 reps
#3 Bench press: 3 sets of 12 reps
#4 Curls: 1 set of 10 reps
#5 Squats: 2 sets of 15 reps
#6 Pullovers: 2 sets of 20 reps
#7 Stiff-legged dead lift: 1 set of 15 reps
#8 Leg raises: 1 set of 25 reps

You can get through this in an hour or less. That’s plenty. If you can’t gain, work on this for a month or two and see what happens. You’ll gain weight, I guarantee it.

Do the exercises like this:

#1 The best single exercise for the shoulder girdle. Take a wider than shoulder width grip and drive the bar up hard. Don’t pause at the bottom when you lower it. Get a rebound and drive it back up hard and fast. Don’t handle it like a crate of eggs. Be rough.

#2 The best all-round back exercise. Round your back when the bar is in the low position. Pull up to your abdomen and arch your back. Try to contract your spinal erectors.

#3 For chest and arms. Use a normal press width grip. Don’t pause at the bottom. Arch your back a very little bit and fire it back up again. This will thicken your arms and shoulders and put slabs of meat on your chest. Work up into heavy weights.

#4 Not too important for gaining weight. Use a fairly close grip and do them in strict style.

#5 The granddaddy of them all. Squats are the best single exercise for putting on weight. Do them in breathing style. Three monstrous breaths between each rep. Don’t pause at the bottom. Go down to slightly below parallel and bounce back up as hard and smooth as you can. Push hard. Fight. Drive. You should work up to about 150% of your body weight for 15 reps.

#6 Alternate pullovers with the squats. Use a light weight and stretch your rib-box.

#7 The best lower back exercise. This works everything from your heels to the back of your head. Work up to at least 10 pounds more than your squatting poundage. Use a reverse grip. This exercise will increase your power and bulk beyond belief. Work hard on it.

#8 This will keep your gut down while you’re gaining. There’s no point to getting fat.
Breathe as deeply as possible between reps in all the exercises.

There aren’t many exercises in the program. Work hard on every one.

Don’t touch the weights at all on your in-between days. When you finish your workout have a shower and forget about it till your next training day.

Get plenty of sleep and rest and eat lots of good food.

You’ll gain weight.


Enjoy Your Lifting! 

Comments Section not showing on the original posting of this article, so 
here it is again. 

Okay then . . . the dialogue on possible ways to update and possibly improve the Keys to You Know What. Starting with this starting routine in the series. Not changing the approach, just looking at possible sub exercises and performance of what's given in the original. The diet deal will come later. 

We tried this a couple years ago and here's the link to what we got and how far it went: 
























19 comments:

  1. Starting Keys to Progress 2.0 here, with comments on the exercise selection, for anyone wanting to add. Feel Free! But not so free you wind up in the psych ward, lose your job, etc., etc., etc.

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  2. On the exercise selection given: For a lot of people, subbing a standing Press for the Press Behind Neck may be a good plan. I've talked with lifters who find the PBN irritates their shoulders LESS than a from-the-front Press, so see for yourself over time and find out which type you are is also a good plan.

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    1. Me likey. Learning to perform BtN-Presses in strict style, using your lats and traps to move the bar like on rails, can teach you a lot about your shoulder girdle, and you may even learn to perform Scott presses without grinding your joints into dust. I still like to alternate them in some kind of freestyle heavy/light format with military presses and DB-presses. The latter can also be used as a breathing exercise if you move the weights in a nice wide arc, you'll feel the pull on your clavicles.

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  3. The Bentover Row. "Round your back when the bar is in the low position." I've tried both ways over time, the flat-back, slightly arched back . . . and the rounded back when lowering to put more work on the lumbars and hamstrings. Both worked fine for me, I had to obviously use less weight when rounding the bottom portion, but I got PLENTY of yer stimulation from toes to top-of-head when I used that style. It can be a bit of added risk, though, especially if you're the type that equates nothing but poundage with progress and hasn't yet taught himself the myriad styles of doing any given lifting movement. With this program I use the round back SDL, and I've done it many a time. This layout, The Time Factor, according to the way The Keys was presented, lasts for four months, giving you plenty of time to fine tune and individualize your performance of the exercises listed during those four months.

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  4. Bench Press. Medium grip, get the triceps all hot and bothered. There's no triceps "isolation" exercises in this one, so you're looking at getting the maximum effect from all the movements, be it a bench press, press, whatever. You may be able to move more weight using a wider grip, but the goal is to get your shoulders, chest and triceps all involved heavily here.

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    1. I prefer bent arm pullovers to close-grip floor presses with a skullcrusher negative, since
      pecs come easy to me, and tris do not. In a later article John recommends to do the benches
      "in a rather loose style". "Don't do that", says my right shoulder.

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  5. Barbell Curl: Whatever, it's nothing really in this routine. Feel free to ditch it any session you feel like it. That's my view. One fucking work set of curls is about as useful as lifting a glass of beer to my mouth . . . no, correct that . . . nowhere near as useful.

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    1. The curl is very important. Stretches the arm cage, aids in expanding the bicepioid box.

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  6. Okay . . . now to the Big One here . . . The Squat. How to breathe. What style to use. How to add poundage. Etc. Any views? Be a famous boob and get your name neatly acknowledge in an online, for-free booklet no more than a dozen or two people will ever read! Fame and fortune await you too!!!

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  7. I expect little or nothing here really. Call me negative, say I exist suicide-less only with lowered expectations, but I am bound and determined but not is a sexual way to create this booklet updating the holy cow oh my god Keys To McProgress.

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  8. Here's somethin' for ya . . . I used this layout before, several times, and love it still. Have done it in a split as well. Two ways: 1) Do the squats/pullovers, SDL and ab crap in the morning. In the evening, do the press, row, bench, and curl if you bother to do that last one ever. 2) Lift five days a week, use that same split and you'll wind up with, first week: upper body three times and lower body twice; second week: lower body three times and upper body twice. Real nice short workouts five days running, plenty of energy on each exercise so you can push it harder. What, Me Worry?

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  9. The idea here, golly, might be to show others who are stuck with slavishly following the routines of fat, aging gurus and/or young roid boobs that they can be individualized and the flames of Satan will not flow lava-like onto your life with these said changes. Fuck the guru! Learn to learn for your fucking self, pussy.

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  10. Anyhows, yeah, all vitriol aside . . . this BREATHING thing with the squats can make a huge difference. How do you prefer doing the breaths with a breathing squat set? Breathe through what, nose or mouth; breathe into where, upper lungs or lower gut stuff? I think we may even be along enough in this trip to compare ways we go about doing the same thing without having a pile of halfwits shitting out their non-related crap all over the place by now, no? We can actually share what we've learned without charging anyone for it! Miracle of miracles, there may still be hope for humanitee afters all!

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    1. The sorest my rib cage ever got was by alternating two chest exercises with dumbbell swings for 40min.
      No1 was breathing with a bar, less than bodyweight, on my traps, focusing on making a big chest and holding that breath for a second or two, while keeping the windpipe open. Keep going until your ribs hurt.
      No2 was the straight arm pullover, done as follows: Reaching far back, like a lying overhead shrug, while breathing OUT. Then lifting the weight back up, nice and controlled strong squeeze, while breathing IN and keeping the shoulders up and back to avoid the lats and pecs to take over. (They will take over if the weight is too heavy)
      I like to call it the "Dynamic Rader Chest Pull". And if you experiment a little bit I'm sure you can make something similar work for you with hindu pushups.
      If you get yourself out of breath (as in leg work as in squats), you'll be greedily sucking air.
      If you then breath in SLOWer and deep, the contraction in your breathing muscles aka rib cage will be stronger.
      That's the secret. And if keep the doing the deep breathing after your chest exercises, you're essentially performing a dropset, you can really make you chest walls hurt that way(in a good way).

      Here's a funny: Stand up straight, expel almost all the air out of your lungs, and close your windpipe.
      Now make a big chest. Congratulations, you just learned the vacuum pose AND performed muscle control on the muscles you want to hit with the squats 'n pullovers combo.

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    2. Thanks for your input, Y.M.! The empty lungs when doing Rader pulls really changed them for me. I like this "vacuum" plan between puff and pant sets!

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  11. OK, here's my take on what I'm at least a little familiar with:
    When I did "Super Squats" in the mid 80's, I couldn't gain unless I only squatted 2 times per week(I could never do a 3x routine unless it was HLM or similar). I never bothered counting breaths, I would just get as many as I could at a time and if I felt close to failure, then I would take some big breaths but only until I thought I could get another rep or two. As the weight got heavier, the pauses came sooner and I took more breaths. I got up to 300 x 20 and those were pretty much one at a time with lots of breathing in between. I actively avoided failure because I knew if I did a slow grinder of a rep, I wouldn't be able to get many more no matter how many breaths I took. That was the only time I ever gained obvious size in a short time going from 24" to 28" on my legs. But no weight gain or size anywhere else(but I wasn't trying to gain weight, either).
    If I was doing the routine above, I'd probably do the rows and no SLDL or vice versa. And if I do rows, I would do them in the rack so I could take the weight in the same position as you described with a flat back, slightly arched. Actually, for me, if my deadlift got stronger, my rows would get stronger even if I wasn't doing any rows in my routine.
    I think I would nix the rows and do chins instead. Then add another set of SLDL's. Then, since I'm doing chins, I would toss the curls because I have short biceps muscles anyway.
    I'd press in the front instead of behind neck because front presses feel better for me. If I felt I could do them behind the neck and not hurt myself, I would do them that way just because I think they keep you more upright(read: they keep ME more upright). I tend to lay back too much and then it's difficult to lock out from there.
    On the bench, I use a medium grip(about 22" between hands). In my experience, a narrower grip can maintain the wider grip better than the wide grip could maintain a narrower grip. If that makes any sense. When I competed, I used a max width grip all the time. But at my age now, the wide grip starts to hurt the shoulders, so I have to move it in. And the more narrow grip sure makes the triceps stronger. So if I pressed and benched narrow, I wouldn't feel the need to do isolation work for the tris( which might start my elbows hurting anyway)
    Then, because I'm 64 and work a strenuous job in a warehouse, I would divide the program up 2 or three ways and train each exercise once per week. If I try to squat, bench or dead or anything, really, more than once per week, my joints ache and feel stiff and performance is poor.
    All my changes are just accommodations to suit myself. They're not something I would suggest to anyone else to improve the routine. I mean, almost everything we do in the gym is an accommodation of some sort or another. There are so many things I did in the gym just because someone stronger or bigger or more experienced said so. I could have saved myself a lot of years of no gains if I would have given myself the freedom to make my own decisions.

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    1. Hello Frank! Thanks BIG for sharing your experience and the way you came to individualize things. There's the stuff, the REAL research! I've been having some good luck lately, able to, 71 next month, push some things nicely providing I don't do too much at any one session. At this stage of the strange game of life, I find I can work out every day, sometimes twice, but only in short blips, and for some reason I don't get all tweaked, sore, or worn down. Whatever works!

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    2. Yeah, I retire at the end of this year, so I'm looking forward to experimenting with training when I don't have to walk 30,000 steps lifting, and stacking all day. I love to lift so doing more of it sounds like a great retirement activity!
      I had no idea you are "neander" on irononline! Sometimes I google a question about training hoping there's an old thread from someplace like irononline so I can go glean some truth and get lost in the posts from people who,like you, actually do the deeds. You're right, that's the REAL research! Like Ed Coan said," doesn't matter what you do, make it work". The "making it work" is where you learn.

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    3. Almost there at retirement! Lifting should be different when you're not doing heavy labor alright. "Why does this work, and that doesn't?" That can cover a lifetime! But when it comes to "why" I like to just ditch what doesn't and keep moving on. We don't need no Ys!

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