Anyone who reads my articles with some degree of regularity has caught two points that I always try to stuff (as gently as possible) down my students' throats:
A) You must work very hard if you want an excellent physique, and
B) You must work with heavy weights, sooner or later, if you are after the maximum development possible, according to your own potential.
Now . . .
. . . I suppose those two points don't actually sound so profound or so difficult to comprehend and adhere to. However, it is utterly amazing to see how many barbell men absolutely will not understand and apply these simple principles.
They will try routine "X" or routine "Y" or dabble for a while on schedule "Z" (with maybe a three-week detour to test out program "R") and then return to the crackpot publication that sent them off on this idiotic goose chase, only to find that so-and-so has announced THE PROGRAM which will miraculously transform you in four weeks, and it has the full endorsement of the trainer of champions, who, interestingly enough wrote the thing in the first place.
Yes. Eat more "protein" and be a real He-Man.
Eat your greens. Don't forget your beans and celery.
Eat a grape, a fig, a crumpet too.
You'll pump 'em right through.
Eat your shoes and socks
and even eat the box
you bought 'em in.
So be it. Some people will always fail; at least as long as they allow some weirdo with "space age super ideas" and advertising gimmicks to sucker them into trying every garbled up mess he puts into print and dubs a "super system."
As a plea to IronMan readers, PLEASE do not let any phony deceive you about building muscle. Hard work on good, simple routines, coupled with rest and careful nutrition is what builds great bodies. There are no secret methods. You will find everything you need to know, right here in IronMan . . . the simple truth.
Article originally published in this issue,
March, 1974.
Questions about training are bound to pop up once in a while. Morons, apes and simpletons don't ask questions. Men do. Children do also; and the more intelligent the child, the more he demands reasons for something you tell him to do.
One of the most common questions I get hurled at me goes something like this: "You are forever talking about the importance of heavy weights, so I always keep trying to add more to what I do. Yet, I find that as I add weights to the basic exercises, I begin to get sloppy, and I "cheat" when I do them. So tell me, which is more important, HEAVY WEIGHTS or PROPER FORM?"
The answer to the above question is actually obvious.
WHEN YOU PULL YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR CONFUSION LONG ENOUGH TO REMEMBER A SIMPLE PRINCIPLE . . .
Barbell exercise is exercise, not labor, and it must make progressively heavier demands upon the gradually strengthening muscles if it is to be effective.
Note the word GRADUAL.
If you are employing a weight, ANY weight, and it is making severe demands upon you, then it is A HEAVY WEIGHT FOR YOU.
When I speak (or as some rather humorous friends have said "rant"), about limit poundages and heavier resistance, I am speaking merely of using all that YOU are capable of using. It is outrageous and dangerous to set up some haphazard and arbitrary figure as a poundage goal for all, and then to order, "Lift This!" Simple reasoning tells us that such an approach is anything but progressive resistance exercise.
This is why, when I do suggest poundage goals, I suggest that they be gauged according to your BODYWEIGHT, not according to an arbitrary list of poundages.
Double-spacing line breaks has ruined my biceps.
Often, in their quest for bigger lumps and better lumps, barbell men forget that bodybuilding involves more than "how much can you lift." The results very frequently are dependent more upon HOW DO YOU LIFT the weights you are working with.
For example, the bench press is a fine bodybuilding exercise (although overrated by many). When a trainee works out properly he uses the big movements (like the bench press) in his routines. In such exercises heavy weights will generally be employed. This is simply because these basic exercises work the biggest and strongest muscle groups. Yet, if a trainee attempts to use too much weight (in the bench press, for instance) he will not be deriving the benefits he would get with LESS (but still heavy) resistance.
No doubt many of you have been amazed at the sight of some pretty rugged bench pressers. They bounce the fully-loaded Olympic or Power bar off their chests like it was a broomstick. These same champions, however, do not train to the extent that they LIFT while in competition. They build up to this strength output by focusing, in their workouts prior to competition, on what they are capable of PROPERLY DOING. Naturally, they don't take it easy; but there's a heck of a lot of difference between heavy training and too-heavy training.
The right way to train is to use a weight that JUST ALLOWS YOU TO SQUEEZE OUT the correct number of repetitions desired. But those last couple of reps should be squeezed out by sheer muscle power; THE POWER OF THOSE MUSCLES TGHAT ARE CORRECTLY SUPPOSED TO BE EMPLOYED IN THE GIVEN EXERCISE.
This means, returning for example to the bench press, that is it GOOD to fight hard for the last couple of reps with your chest, shoulders and triceps, but BAD to do so by arching your back, or by letting the bar rebound hard off the chest. Reps like that may feel excruciatingly hard, but actually they are not "hard" at all . . . they are merely difficult to do. If a weight is too heavy to use, it is too heavy to use, and you would better accept the fact and train with what you can use, until your body sufficiently builds up to be able to handle an increased poundage.
If a trainee, in his desire to build up his shoulders, tries to work out with a weight that is too heavy for him in the press, he won't jolt his shoulders into responding. He will, instead, defeat the whole purpose of the press. His deltoids and triceps will NOT be able to press the weight he has chosen, and, when he naturally "lays back" to hoist the excessive weight, his muscles (those he WANTS to develop most) are RELIEVED of the work.
Now ask yourself . . . is this sensible or logical training?
I think that you will agree with me that it is not.
Muscle must must be given time to develop. Like intellectual education, physical education takes time. You must not try to hurry up the process faster than your body can keep up with you, lest you defeat your purpose. Muscles can and must be induced to grow by very hard training, but they will, sure as shootin', go on strike if you demand that they work overtime.
Growth rate varies so much with each person that so-and-so will be lifting such-and-such by any particular time. The important thing, the key, is to keep raising, however slightly, your own maximums.
"Add one rep." - Doug Hepburn.
Never mind what Reg Park presses behind the neck in his workouts. By all mean take heart from his example, but don't insanely try to imitate him when he is he and you are you. A young man who will never forget about setting records, or keeping up with the Joneses, and concentrate, doing a little better than he himself did last time, will end up by doing A LOT BETTER in the long run.
"The rep is king." - Doug Hepburn.
This cannot be overstressed. What counts is your own progress. NEVER simply add weight at the cost of performance. If 10 reps with 125 pounds is all your can do in your squatting . . . FINE! Don't worry about it, just keep DOING IT. Stay with it, concentrate, and I promise you will surpass your present limitation.
Compare weight training to reading . . .
To an extent it is helpful to strive always to read more, to read better and faster. To an extent. But would anyone care to claim that reading more and faster, at the cost of UNDERSTANDING, is worthwhile? I think not. The identical principle holds true with barbell exercise. Yes, you must strive to improve, but no, No, NO, a thousand times NO, NOT at the cost of correct training.
I expect, at this point, that somebody, possibly an advanced bodybuilder, will want to bring up the cheating style of training, and then tell me to peddle my wares elsewhere. Well, before this happens, let me say, if we examine RESULTS we will find, invariably, that trainees who seldom cheat, but who, instead, work strictly with their limit resistance, do better. It is true; believe it or not. And if you make an effort to understand the human muscular system and how it operates, I don't you will find this simple fact hard to understand.
Cheating, for one or two reps, at the end of an otherwise strict set is FINE.
Cheating, as a rule, without doing full-range movements, is abusing your body, not training.
Let's say that you are doing a set of curls with 80 pounds (for a trainee weighing between 160 and 180 pounds, this is pretty fair). All right. You do 10 curls in as close to perfect form as you can. Your arms become tired, slightly pumped and your biceps and forearms have a good workout. You can add, if you'd like, one or two cheating reps, but at that point, STOP.
But suppose you get hold of a muscle mag that has a biceps blitzing program on page twenty-one. And you read, in the first paragraph, that Mr. Super Arms Man (who is posing for the illustrations of this outrageous article) uses his bodyweight, 200 pounds, for 10 sets of 8. Wow! You feel your own upper arm and you begin to think that you may need a transfusion.
Next workout you take 115 pounds, determining to work up to 160 within a month or so, and you go for 5 sets of 8.
Naturally, you cheat in almost every single curl rep. the set exhausts you totally, so you conclude that, at last, you're working hard. You keep this insanity up for two weeks. They you either:
a) go crazy, or
b) go back to your old routine . . .
since you've gained ZERO on the present one.
And under your breath you curse yourself, because you feel you haven't got what it takes.
Actually, why did you fail on those heavy cheating reps?
Because you hardly worked you biceps at all, that's why!
The cheating brought your back, legs, and even chest (!) into play, but it only threw an occasional strain on your arms. And an occasional strain is NOT what builds up the arms. Steady, direct exercise does.
One point that I absolutely want to stress: I am NOT an advocate of light or spinning type pumping exercises. I feel about this style of lifting the way swimmers feel about sharks. Stay away! When I say that you should keep the weight resistance at a level you can manage, I am simply saying that you would be wise to progress at your own best rate of individual development. That means don't put the car before the horse; add weight whenever YOU are READY for it.
The cheating method of training is effective only at times; and it should never be used as one's exclusive style of working out. There would be no point to such a training regimen. All it would do would be to wear you out physically and scramble your marbles up.
Exercise should not be done in a spirit of depression. Yet, if a trainee knows that every exercise he is doing is going to call upon every ounce of his total body's staying power and nerve force how can he look forward to training?
Well then, here's an interesting book from 1913, one that's very easy to find.
Yes, only the latest breaking trends are permitted here on TTSDB. Movers and shakers gather in the Inner Circle of current understanding and knowledge! Hit like . . . subscribe . . . please kill all fitness influencers and flatulent steroidal oafs roaming the disappointing veldt of modern social media in search of big bucks for dinner.
Anyhow . . . don't think twice . . . it's alright. Feel free to toss lifting down the shitter at will.
Squats are rough enough when done with a heavy weight for a good number of reps in perfect form, but they are simply torture when done using a poundage that requires everything in you to do each repetition. It is certainly no wonder that many trainees give up entirely after a few short bouts with such a "routine."
That is not the way to train. No sir, and no sirrah! Even elite lifters don't work in their exclusive limit every time they train. A pleasantly tired state is the ideal. You ought to feel worked, not dead, when you're finished a workout.
You ought to feel buoyant after a workout with the weights and a nice shower. It you need an ambulance, something is wrong.
You should have more energy at the completion of a training session, not less.
When you are working out you should feel right about what you do. That is, while working hard you will still have a sense of stability, control and energy while you grind out each rep. And the total workout will be an exhilarating experience.
When you add weight to what you do it should be MANAGEABLE weight. If you will adhere to that simple standard, then your blocks and sticking points should be rare or nonexistent. It is not of terrible importance exactly how much weight you increase resistance by in any exercise. If 2.5 pounds is more than what you were doing previously, then it is ENOUGH to add only that. Remember, weight training is no picnic . . . you should, if you are training hard, expect progress in what you lift to be GRADUAL.
Proper form and adequate resistance work together to produce the best possible results in bodybuilding. It is NOT a question of either-or, but of both.
To sacrifice proper form is not to exercise, and to use light weights is to make your sessions a keep fit gesture.
Use the heaviest possible weights that YOU can properly handle and you'll do fine, just fine.
Enjoy Your Lifting!
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