One of the earliest methods that gained acceptance since the introduction of the basic squat was the "cheating" method of performing movements, using more weight than you could handle properly.
For example, suppose you could curl 100 lbs. while standing erect and without body motion; then one day you find that you can handle 125 lbs. by swaying the body and leaning back as you give a heave to start the barbell upward.
You immediately rush out and tell your pals that you can now curl 125 lbs. and of course you hesitate to go back to that insignificant 100 lbs. which you formerly curled. You do this also with a 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 lbs. At last you are a MAN!
When you do pullovers you bend the arms, and bounce the weight off the floor. 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 often crept into official weightlifting. The hunch or jerk presses during that era were sad to behold, and a few got 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 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. This article is primarily concerned with bodybuilding, 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 as the bouncing pullover 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 on the bar and do the old exercise properly. And this leads us into an exercise technique which has great merit --
the heavy and light system.
In this routine most of the standard exercises are followed but a stimulation to increasing strength is supplied by first doing 5 repetitions with the curl with a weight quite close to your limit, then taking up immediately a lighter bar and performing 10 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 10 full reps with a lighter weight.
Usually the last 3 or 4 reps of a movement are the ones which do you the most good, when the tissues are starting to get clogged. This brings the surge of blood to 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 very fine idea even further.
Hoffman:
Atkins:
About 1940 . . . read this part here:
https://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-little-more-from-harry-paschall.html
https://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-little-more-from-harry-paschall.html
Okay, now we can move on to . . .
HOW BARBELL MEN GO WRONG
You cannot spend a third of a century around physical culturists and barbell men without coming to a few conclusions.
You see many enthusiasts who thrive on their training schedules and attain a perfectly satisfactory degree of physical development.
You see others work and strain without noticeable improvement for months or years. Quite often these latter come up with the time-worn excuse that they are simply not the type to gain. Some experts have even given various names to these unsuccessful barbell men and inform them with regret that they cannot change their type and they are therefore doomed to failure.
The main trouble with the skinny boys is that they work too hard, worry too much and spoil their chances of improvement by fostering a deliberate case of nervous tension.
I have personally witnessed the transformation of many slender men into well rounded, broad shouldered physical supermen. What each of these former failures had to do was to create a distinct change in the metabolism of the body, to achieve a growing condition in which the digestive system would assimilate more food. In most cases this had to be done by drastic methods to jerk the subject out of his accustomed groove and start him along a new road by changing the physical demands upon his system.
I will give you a case in point. Mark Berry was the skinniest strong man ever seen outside the freak tent at a circus. He was strong, but had muscles like piano-wire. He weighed less than 130 pounds and had been in that classification for 10 years.
He did mostly lifting practice because he had long since given up any hope that he could gain weight or muscle. He was also a vegetable and hay burner. Mark did two things to shake himself out of the groove:
he moved from the New York area to Philadelphia, which is certainly something of a switch; and
he began doing less exercise.
He constructed a squat rack, and presently we find him doing 20 fairly heavy squats a couple of times a week, and further, he began to eat a substantial amount of nourishing food.
In a few months he skyrocketed to 160 or 170 pounds. What caused this gain? The magic of the squat?
I would say it was quite as much the rest he was getting as the fact that he was doing some functional, vigorous exercises for possibly the first time in his career. That the squat is basic in any weight-gaining program is now a proven fact. Mark was one of his own guinea pigs. The sharp turnabout in his program succeeded in shaking loose his metabolism, and he began to make use of the protein and starches he was eating.
To all thin barbell men I wish to bring a message of hope. And I also want to tell you of some pitfalls.
You need a change, but you will probably tell me that you have made many changes, that you have tried everything. This is one of your troubles. By this time you are a confirmed skeptic and while you are very willing to change, you still haven't any faith that a new program will work. This FAITH you must have, because you must have a mental image of the man you wish to be.
When you are dealing with me you're dealing with a guy who has seen hundreds of skinny guys grow up, and I know that your biggest problem is mental and nervous. If you had had faith enough to stick for a few successive months to some of your former schedules it is likely you wouldn't now be skinny. You want to do too much and you want to get places too soon. For the love of Hercules, take it easy!
And don't try to go right into the routines designed to round and swell the muscles. You should be glad to get any kind of muscles at all, and the first problem we must solve is to get you to quit exercising entirely.
Take a full month off. Don't look at a barbell. Relax. Don't allow yourself to get under tension. Let the world go hang for a spell; you can't stop it anyway. Forget your peeves and animosities. Try to be happy. Good things are going to happen if you don't peeve.
Now, after you have rested for a month, take up Routine No. 1.
This is designed especially for thin men who have spent years trying to gain. Keep on this course for six weeks. Don't change a thing, and for the Love of Apollo, don't add some of your favorite tearing-down exercises.
Eat like a horse, and get quite a lot of liquid; but don't overdo it, just eat like a healthy, husky man. Try to add an hour to your sleeping time if you can. Don't allow yourself to rush around too much in the day, and don't fight with your wife at night.
Stick to Routine 1 for the full six weeks, three workouts per week.
At the end of six weeks weigh and measure yourself. And by the way, obey the suggestion to get yourself a notebook and keep track of your progress; you'll find it a help. Put down your starting measurements, and the starting exercise routine; write down every workout with the weights and repetitions used; check up about every three weeks on weight and measurements; watch your progress.
When you come to the end of six weeks, take one week's complete vacation from the weights. I once called this system (in a spirit of egotism perhaps) the Paschall Pause. I take that back. Let's call it that Sabbatical Week. College professors have a nice custom of taking one year off in seven, and on this seventh year they take a trip, write a book, of chase butterflies or women. This is the Sabbatical Year. When you work you may work six days and rest on the Sabbath. When God made the world, they say, "on the Seventh day he rested." We'll do it on the 7th week. On this Sabbatical week you can do just as the professors do, rest, travel or chase butterflies -- but in Heaven's Name, don't touch a barbell.
After you rest, take up Routine No. 2
It is a little more strenuous, and begins to give you some muscle molding for those growing muscles. Continue to take it easy; to rest; to sleep well, to eat plenty and to keep your mind free from worry about gaining weight.
At the end of another six weeks take another Week Off. Probably by this time you will be feeling so good you can chase women instead of butterflies, but please, don't do it. Because now you are ready to go right into Routine No. 3 with the rest of the muscle men who are striving to out-Grimek Grimek.
From this point on, write your own ticket. You are no longer typed as a Thoracic or a Skinny [or a hardgainer].
Today, you are a Man!
Enjoy Your Lifting!
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