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Friday, April 30, 2010
Who Is To Blame For The Fat They Asked?
By Bill Sahli
“ High Intensity Training Workout “ Expert
One of the forums that I am recently a part of had presented a topic to its following audience that basically asked… “Who is to blame for the fat?”
It was a discussion about misinformation coming from different sources and how the government and authorities have no control to affect the outcome.
Well I have some ideas about this and they are pretty simple.
First, it is always personal responsibility for we as living breathing individuals to tend to our personal needs. One of those needs is health and strength. The problem begins when people never really research farther than what the generally accepted beliefs and knowledge are. Instead, in our laziness, we accept that whatever is put out there from the media, doctors and in text books is correct.
Many years ago, during World War II, a non governmental group researched and came up with the RDAs or Recommended Dietary Allowances to serve as an informational guide for healthy individuals to come up with a diet that met their needs. Shortly after that, to simplify the task, the Department of Agriculture put out material which broke that into a 4 food group plan:
1-
2-
3-
4-
This is all fine and good, as you can see, we as a society and further as athletes have paid attention to this guide and as you can see, the entire world or at least here in the states, we are extremely healthy, strong and disease free! NOT!
The fact is we are very much the opposite! Just look around you. Go to your local grocery store and see what 100 years or so have done for us with all this added technology and information. We have taken a dive in all aspects and this information from the authorities along with the controlled media has taken its toll not only on our health, but on our minds and our families.
So what are we to do? How about thinking about things a bit!
Let’s start. Our genetics are not 1000 years old… in fact they are much older, lets try 10,000 years old.
Back then, we did not have grain fields, those are fairly new, and in fact we were hunters and gatherers. The problem is that whether you are designing a high intensity training workout or a diet to preserve health or a diet to build muscle, you must work with what makes us tick, our genetics.
Here are some great facts that explain where we have not improved, but regressed in our pursuit… read on.
“There are a number of major differences between our diets and those of the cavemen.”
“Early on, before fire was controlled, only food which could be eaten raw was consumed. This ruled out grains, legumes, and some tubers such as potatoes. Even when early people started to use fire to cook food, they were mainly limited to roasting or toasting it. Besides meat, a few roasted nuts or grains by the fire were pretty much it. Additionally, before animals were domesticated (around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago) milk and dairy products were not consumed.”
“Obviously, any refined sugars other than occasional honey, or any processed foods, were totally out.”
“… but most of the diets are thought to be at least half animal foods (including insects), and many up to 70 percent food of animal origin. Gathering enough plant food to support highly active people simply wouldn't have been feasible in most places.”
“Despite this, large amounts of vegetation were consumed; some estimates are that
in many areas early humans ate up to 6 pounds of greens per day. This is a lot of
greens -
“A key difference that has been identified between “Cavemen” Diets and today's standard diet is the difference in the types of fats we consume:
*** Far less omega-
*** More saturated fat… “When we… feed our cattle grain and corn, we increase the amount of saturated fat in the meat. Early people ate more fish… as they would have had to be near a water supply. Much of our saturated fat comes from dairy products, which “Cavemen” didn't eat.”
***More omega-
“There is mounting evidence that this decrease of omega-
***Amount of protein… “Estimates are that the diets of these early people were about 20 to 35 percent protein. CM diet authors recommend high protein diets, usually at the upper end of this range.”
***Amount of Fiber … “Although this varied greatly by geography and season, most cavemen ate high fiber diets, of up to 100 to 200 grams of fiber.”
*** Glycemic Load … “There is no disputing the fact that “Cavemen” ate a diet that was far less glycemic than today's diet. Carbohydrate probably contributed about 20 to 40 percent of the calories, and none of it was processed sugars and grains.”
*** Vitamin and Mineral Consumption … “… The foods that have been added since those early days have mainly served to dilute the nutrient concentration in our diets. Grains are not very nutrient dense compared with vegetables, meat, and seafood, while added sugars and most cooking oils are devoid of nutrients.”
*** Food Variety … “Most “Cavemen” are said to have eaten over 100 different species of food on an annual basis.” We certainly do not do this today… “Yet we know that an assortment of food, especially a variety of fruits and vegetables, is one of the basic tenants of a healthy balanced diet.”
So where do we go from here? Well this is where I have gone…
I eat as raw as possible, that includes protein sources… raw meat, fish and eggs. Those sources must be quality meats, usually range free, hormone free (although at the moment I don’t have access to wild game it is as close as I can come at the moment), fresh and humanely treated animal sources including wild fish.
My vegetable sources are mainly leafy and green, as would be found by our early ancestors. I also get fresh in season, locally grown naturally, without pesticides used.
I add to that fresh fruit and honey on occasion. While eating this way I find I do not require supplements, one a day, one a week or any added amounts.
While first beginning this diet, inspired by a fellow High Intensity Training Coach, Joshua Trentine, a long nagging golf elbow injury has disappeared… my body fat level without really any effort dropped a couple of points and is still dropping; and my overall energy level is much higher.
To this I have added intermittent fasting. Remember, our ancestors did not have timed meals. What they did have was occasional meals, so what I do is one to two times a week, I go 24 hours without food and only drink water when I thirst. This is always not around training days and since I train once every 5 – 7 days, based on the Two Day Rule, it is absolutely perfect.
I also in most cases unless hunger dictates on other days, eat between an 8 hour window and that is it. I mean, come on!! We did not carry a cooler with us either.
If you are not ready to eat raw, then it still does not stop you in cooking your food the least possible to make it acceptable to you. Nor does it keep you from selecting the highest quality foods… this is a must.
If you are not active on a daily basis then get active. Walk, play and have fun. Also if you have not taken a stand in your strength, remember, we were not distance runners but had to be strong and powerful. High Intensity Training is a must in getting back to your genetics and training your body NOT to use fat as an energy supply.
Remember, aerobics and cardio use fat for energy, thus creating an adaptation or training it to be present, HIT does not! Only do HIT training, whether in the gym with machines or weights or outside sprinting or biking.
About two times a week I do a 4 minute high intensity interval biking session… yep, just 4 minutes. Hard for 20 seconds, easy for 20 seconds… back and forth until my 4 minutes are up!
Use these guidelines and you will find that the fat will begin to fall off you. Remember, it is you who are responsible for you, not the government or anyone else! The last thing we desire it to put our lives in the hands of someone else to control.
If you have any questions, just look me up!
If you are new to HIT then I suggest you buy and read my latest book...
Mind Becomes Mass: Beyond Time-
If you require personal instruction, look me up HERE!
TO YOUR SUCCESS... Bill
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Tuesday, March 02, 2010
How To Manage High Intensity Training Techniques Without Over Training
By Bill Sahli
If there is one thing that is at the top of the list when it comes to High Intensity
Training, it is the question of maximum progress. Due to the intensity of going to
failure, and beyond, the body can move quickly into a state of overtraining. You
must understand how to manage your progress. This has led me to creating hybrid routines
that incorporate low-
STRESS
Stress is a major contributor to overtraining because most do not take into consideration all the different types of stress the body contends with, both good and bad, which affect recovery ability. Lets take a moment to understand in a simplistic way, how the body lays down muscle. But first let’s set some ground rules…
1-
We really do not know what percentage of intensity is necessary to best stimulate muscle growth… is it 80% or 94%... which is it? So 100% is a reasonable place to start because we are asking the body to adapt to something it has never done.
If you do the same thing over and over again, there is no need for change. This is why you see people in the gym that never change!
2-
Because we have the ability to increase our strength 400% or more… yet our recovery ability may only increase 50%... we must be ever so conscious of what is minimally required to stimulate an increase.
Since the body is very intelligent, it is not necessary to stimulate over and over again with endless sets or an exercise. It is only necessary to do it once. Any more than is minimally required to stimulate this increase, while putting the adaptive machinery into process, is taking away from the recovery and the overcompensation process, which can only be considered overtraining.
Once set of an exercise is all that is required. It is not how many you do but how you do it.
3-
It is no secret that after you train intensely that something has been taken from you. You can feel it as you leave the gym when you are finished… if you truly trained to failure in an intense workout. Don’t get volume confused with intensity. They are opposites.
This is exactly what has happened. When you take a high intensity training workout, you dig a ditch in your system’s recovery ability. This is a good analogy and will make sense to you.
Since the body recovers as a whole and not by body part, which most trainees still do not realize, the rest required before you lay down muscle is based on a two step process…recovery and overcompensation.
If you go back into the gym before you have accommodated both processes, you are
short-
This process can take as little as 4-
You must first be 100% before you can be 120% or said differently, until you have compensated for the exhaustive effects of the workout, you will not lay any additional muscle down. So how do we know when to train?
THE TWO DAY RULE
This is possibly the most important concept you will learn if you are a high intensity training athlete. Here it is in a nutshell… Once you feel 100%, you feel energetic again and you are your great feeling self, then and only then, insert two more rest days before you go to the gym to perform your next workout.
The reason for this is simple. At 100% you have compensated, but, we are not here to break even are we? No, we are here to make strength and muscle gains up to our genetic potential. To do this we must pay attention and “Ride the Lightning” without getting burned… which brings me to my next subject and that is…
How to incorporate high intensity training techniques while not tipping the scales on stress which will allow you uninterrupted progress
HYBRID WORKOUTS
We hear a lot about hybrids these days.
There are hybrid boats that use motors that are electric, but fueled by a diesel generator which allows a greater reserve of fossil energy while propelling the craft efficiently and speedily to its destination.
There are hybrid cars that do the same and allow greater mileage while not hitting the supply of oil as hard as it would if they were running 500 cubic inch monster motors under the hood. This is not much different then what we are doing here.
What we are doing here is combining a low-
As one grows larger and stronger, the body requires a more intense contraction to move it past its status quo into a place it has not been. What must be taken into consideration is this…as implied above, the stronger you become, the more infrequent and brief your workout must become.
Many athletes, because they do not understand how to insert these most effective techniques and read their body properly, usually avoid them because they inevitably over train.
There are many types of intensity techniques; here are a few I like…
Forced Reps
Rest Pause
Omni Contraction
Negatives
Pre Exhaustion
Contraction Holds
Each one of these go beyond failure and because of that… increase the intensity. However there is a couple that is lower stress than the rest.
I am going to set up an example how you could proceed using a low stress and higher stress technique in a 4 set split routine workout. We will be using:
1-
2-
All sets that are not contraction hold sets are brought to complete muscular failure. All sets that are contraction hold sets require a workout or two to experiment with the proper weight in order to safely hold in the specified position. It is important to note that in most cases you will be using much more weight than you would normally use with a set of reps carried to complete muscular failure.
Here it goes…
WORKOUT 1
Chest, Shoulders and Arms
Dumbbell Flies (Pre Exhaust) -
Incline Smith Machine Bench Press-
Smith Machine Seated Press Contraction Hold (an inch below lock out) -
(These are performed seated with back supported with safety hooks engaged. Do not lock completely out rather just lift off the pins allowing shoulders and triceps to contract against the weight)
Curl Machine Contracted Hold (performed in fully contracted position) -
NOTE: As stated above contracted holds in this fashion employs much more weight than could be used normally for reps, please take the time to move safely into this technique and by all means have a good spotter and safety clips in the rack when you do, this is high stress. If you have any question of your health to perform such a workout, please get checked by a medical professional first.
WORKOUT 2
Legs and Back
Leg Press -
Toe Press (on leg press machine) -
Barbell Rows-
Smith Machine Barbell Row Hold – 7-
(Set the Smith Machine pins and safety at mid point between the floor and your waist so that the bar is setting on them before you begin. Bend over and lift off of pins and hold)
WORKOUT 3
Chest, Shoulders and Arms
Incline Smith Machine Bench Press Contracted Hold (1 inch from lock out) 7-
Lateral Machine or Dumbbell Laterals – 8-
Barbell Curls – 6-
Lying Triceps Extension – 6-
WORKOUT 4
Back and Legs
Pullovers (Pre-
Pull downs (palms facing you) – 6-
Leg Press Hold (an inch from lockout) 10 – 20 seconds
Stiff Leg Dead lifts or Hyper Extensions or Back Machine (i.e. Nautilus) -
As you can see, we are mixing pre-
Because of this make certain that you experiment with jumps and weights. A good example would be if you can Incline Bench Press 200 pounds normally, you could more than likely start with 275 or 300 pounds for Contracted Holds, 1 inch from lockout. Also, remember that you do not lock the elbows; rather you barely move the bar off of the pins and hold.
It is imperative that when using a similar routine example as I have given here (I have tested this workout routine for the past 2 months with great results in both size and strength) that sufficient rest be provided.
I would suggest training once (not the whole 4 workouts but one workout) every 5
days to begin with until you go through all 4 then start again, unless you are extremely
advanced, you may need to insert extra rest days (7-
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE: Remove the following exercises:
WO1 – Inclines
WO2 – Barbell Rows
WO3 – Laterals
WO4 – Pullovers or Stiff Deads/Hypers
Remember, you are doing nothing more but managing stress here. So manage it as you get larger and stronger and remember to use, The Two Day Rule!
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Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Art and Psychology of Avoiding: High Intensity Over-
By Bill Sahli
It goes sorta like this…
Hey Bill, I hope you can help me! I am not sure why the weights used on my exercises are not going up! I am feeling rundown, I am catching a cold and not sure what to do.
Well John, are you applying the theory of high intensity training… namely are your workouts intense, brief and infrequent?
Oh Yea… I am only training three times a week, going to failure with a couple of forced reps and doing three drop sets for each two sets of my 5 exercises.
You mean you are not only going to failure on each set, then doing another two more sets with reduced weight, but also doing two sets this way for a total of 5 exercises?
Yes isn’t that intense?
NOPE! It is High Intensity Overtraining. It is ridiculous and counterproductive and uses up the body’s limited resources of recovery ability quicker than you can say, “Although I am cross training and dropping the intensity of my workout, I am over trained and must take 3 weeks off!”
Muscle building is not Aerobics and a properly designed bodybuilding program is really a strength building program.
If you look at the above scenario it is not uncommon for most in the gym these days, whether they are conscious of it or not. Most avid and well intending folks going to the gym to “get in shape”… fall into the same rut and then wonder why their body changes for the worst or changes very little. They are under the mistaken, misapplied and/or cross applied economic social principle that “more is better”! This might be great for wealth or material possessions but, as Mike Mentzer said, not when it comes to the body.
Remember, the gym is nothing more than a means to an end… getting in shape.
What is getting in shape really? It is loosing body fat and gaining muscle. Every
human being on the face of this earths has a body that responds to the same stimulus
and is physiologically the same, based on genetics… of course you would be hard pressed
to try to articulate this to the faithful followers of the cardio clan who also misapply
this to anaerobic training. Thus this can only be explained by the art and psychology
of this over-
Overtraining is more of a mindset than anything else. I see it in many athletes still under the impression and belief that more is better. It is based in fear of lack, going without. If you are looking to become lean and in shape, bigger and stronger, lay down muscle and loose fat faster than butter in a steam room, you must learn how to think about it and manage your workout routine based on the theory of high intensity training.
Arthur Jones said it the best…
"Everything of any value related to exercise can be stated in less than a thousand
words, can, in fact, be fairly well covered in only a few words, as follows: Train
hard, Train briefly, Train infrequently, and always remember that your final results
will primarily be a consequence of genetics" -
Arthur understood this but did not perfect it. It wasn’t until a man by the name of Mike Mentzer hit bodybuilding circles that the up rise started!
“The Earth Is Not Flat!”
“Think People!” I could hear him say.
Well what Mike said could have certainly compared to the statement, “the earth is flat”, based on the ignorance of the bodybuilding community at that time. He not only underscored what Jones said but he stated that there is a precise volume and frequency, based on individual genetics.
Mike asked questions like…
“If we think of this logically where should we start? Should we start lesser since everyone is doing 20 sets…” at maybe 9 or 7 or 3 since we have let dogma and tradition dictate our thinking?
Seven days in a week, three square meals a day, the father, son and holy ghost or should we start within the logical place?
What would be the logical place?
Well Mike and I both agree… lets start with one!
Yes one! One set! One set per exercise. It makes no sense to stimulate muscle growth (which is what a set carried to a point of failure is), and then when the body is ready to adapt… do it another time or another two times or whatever! Not to mention dropping the intensity of effort by reducing the weight! Remember, getting in shape is building muscle, adapting, like getting a tan. It takes intensity to do that. Like the hot August sun and its intensity of ultra violet rays, the body requires a reason to lay down muscle.
Yes… yes of course, you will say that you know people who do not go to failure and do a number of sets that have improved. Of course they have, because going from doing nothing to something is also a stimulus that causes an adaptive response. But unless you give the body a reason to grow it will do very little of it when it comes to muscle. And of course, who wants to spend hours in the gym?
I have been in the gym now for 4 decades, and see people come and go all the time. I also notice that they change very little after a certain point… just going through the motions. Quite frankly, they could have been a Mr. Olympia and never known it! Why? Because going into the gym and doing an arbitrary number of reps and sets, going through the motions is like going outside on a cloudy day and expecting to get a tan… It isn’t going to happen! Again, the more is better theory was misapplied to bodybuilding…
So if we use the more is better theory, does that mean when progress stops you insert an additional 2, 4, 10, 12 sets… eventually being in the gym all day? It sounds pretty silly right?
No, this is just the way most folks sabotage themselves by not understanding how the body reacts to exercise and how to find their way to their goals. Remember, it must exist in your mind first before you can put it into your reality.
The way the body lays down muscle is this…
1-
2-
3-
What I haven’t said is that the body can increase it’s strength some 300-
Again, it is a mindset… a detached one. You must think of yourself as a specimen in an experiment and pay attention to its results. Signs of illness, feeling lethargic, stagnant weights in your exercises or loss of strength and muscle are all signs of over training.
See it for what it is and make the necessary changes in your volume and frequency. As long as you are training intensely you are stimulating the increase of muscle and strength. You must then manage your volume and frequency using the two day rule to allow it to happen. If you are not making progress each and every workout in either reps or weight or both, it means you are not managing this properly. It is time to step back and look at it in a detached way to figure out where you have miscalculated. If you have allowed it to come to this point you require a layoff completely with the proper rest and nutrition. I usually recommend 3 weeks to a month.
If you are making progress with each workout you must continually reduce the volume and frequency inserting more rest days in between your workouts. Although you can schedule when your body will be ready and overcompensated again, it is paramount to use the Two Day Rule. You will never have to hit a wall again and will progress up to the upper limits of your genetic potential.
This is certainly an art and mindset to learn how to manage this. The hardest part is being so close to it. Getting emotionally tied to the gym or the feeling is not where you want to be if you desire success in your bodybuilding or personal fitness goals… remember it is the outcome that you are after!
I wish you success in your endeavors and always remember, it begins in the mind!
Learn how to manage your mindset as it applies to both your body and your personal desire achievement below:
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Monday, November 2, 2009
Building A High Intensity Workout Routine
By Bill Sahli
As a high intensity training coach for strength athletes I often, and sometimes on a daily basis, get questions about how to build a workout routine, how to advance a workout routine or what the next step is in reaching individual potential. I always keep it simple stupid using the basic theory of HIT.
I wish I could say it is just experience that allows me to answer these questions but it is actually a combination of critical thinking, experience and an understanding of how people around us including athletes, differ… based on their genetic makeup. What I am saying is that although high intensity strength training is probably the most effective training ever, because of it’s efficiency and the way our bodies are designed, we still all have different genetic fingerprints and in applying the theory of high intensity training properly, is the key to the puzzle.
It is no secret that we are all genetically different, from our fingerprints to the individual differences that make us up. If you look at color we have albinos at one end of the spectrum and Negros at the other. This difference also is directly related to tolerance to sun light where an albino can tolerate very little volume of sunlight where as a Negro can tolerate much more. These are genetics! Same applies to muscles, height, IQ and a list of others.
Same can be said for tolerance to exercise, although we are physiologically the same we are genetically different. This is the reason when I build an exercise routine I customize it to the individual using it. There is no One Size Fits All totally!
In saying there is no one size fits all, there are exercises that are very effective which turn on the growth mechanism of the entire body. These exercises are what I call the big exercises such as deadlifts, squats, rows, high pulls, dips, bench presses and their alternatives. When building any workout, I use a cross hatch of these exercises, based on the person’s goals and augment these exercises with other effective but less stressful exercises. By using the thermometer of volume and frequency to adhere with brief and infrequent workouts, I ask a number of questions to get a read of what their genetic makeup might be. This might include:
What they feel their weaknesses are
What their rate of progress has been for the past 3 months
What their energy levels are at the moment
What their current workout frequency is
What level of intensity are they applying
What their diet is like and what do they tend to eat
What is their body fat percentage at the moment
How long have they been training
What training have they been initiating; high volume or high intensity
Do they include aerobics or cardio training and why
These are just a few. In asking these questions I am painting a picture of who they are genetically, and the road they have traveled, to get to the point of where they are presently. If they are searching out a workout routine and find me, in most cases, the way they have approached their goals has been unsuccessful. What I find in many cases is that they are floundering. They have gone months and years without meaningful progress due to two things.
1-
2-
It is no secret that you can train either hard or long but you can’t train hard and long. The theory of HIT indicates quite simply this…
1-
2-
3-
Did you know that you can increase your strength beyond 300% however your ability to recover may increase only 50%?
The body only requires you to stimulate an adaptive response once, not over and over again and because any more than is minimally required takes away from the growth and recovery process and since the body systemically recovers, then whatever is left over goes into overcompensation, laying down muscle… then your training must be brief and infrequent. And all this hinges on one thing… genetics!
I find…
A properly designed program, including one for bodybuilders is really a strength program because muscle and strength are relative.
This means that it is necessary to do only what is minimally required to stimulate an increase. Any more than what is minimally required is overtraining! This means only one set per exercise… remember, you do not have to stimulate a response over and over again. Your goal is not to do more work, leave that to the distance runners!
There is also no reason to do a number of sets and alter rep range, every rep up until the last almost impossible rep performed that turns on the growth mechanism of the body is nothing more than a warm up.
The higher the rep range, the less stressful due to the weight being employed.
Big basic exercises, as previously mentioned, should be the core of your workout routine augmented with smaller exercises like curls, laterals, pull downs, triceps extension etc if necessary.
All big basic exercises do not have to be done in each workout, rather, performing just one or sometimes two per workout is plenty along with one or two smaller exercises.
In a split routine you can have up to 4 or more split workouts with rest days between each while experiencing amazing progress. You will not loose size but gain!
Rest days in general range most effectively between 4 days all the way to 14 days, based on genetics and the level of the trainee. A very advanced trainee who can generate very intense contractions thus strength may need 7+ days of rest as would a less experienced trainee who has a low tolerance to intense exercise. Both will advance, yet at different rates.
Advanced athletes require more intense contractions to advance, along with longer rest times. Higher stress intensity techniques are required and work very well in all exercises if managed properly.
Both beginners and advanced athletes require big core basic exercises to turn on the systemic growth process of the body.
Tracking progress means tracking your strength gains. You will either gain reps or strength or both which will result at a future point as a muscular bodyweight gain.
Diet plays a major role in performance, progress and recovery. There must be quality cement in place to build the house. Macronutrient manipulation in many cases is very beneficial, allowing the bodies natural systems to be used most efficiently. Processed anything should be limited.
Remember, you grow outside the gym not in it! It is an ends to a means. Use these factors when building your H I T workout routine and watch your progress speed along to reaching your genetic potential.
SPECIAL FOR NOVEMBER -
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Monday, July 6, 2009
By Bill Sahli
There is a great deal of confusion with-
In order for exercise to be productive it must be intense, brief and infrequent.
Anyone who has trained with Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty Training or my High Intensity
Powerbuilding workouts will tell you that even a 2-
This is an excerpt taken from my newest audio e-
“… Remember this… the growth of muscle occurs outside the gym and may take several days. The body recovers systemically, not by body part. If you trained chest and arms one day and they feel fine a couple of days latter, this does not mean you have grown muscle! On the contrary, the process is still in action. Here is how I described it…
You go into the gym and you put out 100 % intensity, go to failure on each set you perform… turning on the growth mechanism of the body. Something has been taken away and you feel it. You feel beat! You have stimulated an adaptive response in the body. The body now goes to work. It taps into the reserves left to replace what has been taken, to fill the ditch. This takes days in most cases. The first day after your workout you are still a bit tired, and could not possibly imagine going back into the gym, so you wait another couple of days. On the third day after your workout you may be feeling almost 100% again; at this point you know that you have another day to go. You wake up the next day and you feel yourself, 100% and you most certainly are! Not 110% but 100%. At this point you should wait another day or two. Why? Because your body is still in process of…
1. Finishing the compensation stage and
2. Beginning the overcompensation stage… laying down muscle.
Don’t get emotionally tied to this process. Your goal is to get bigger and stronger as a bodybuilder, not to see how much or often you can train… and bigger and stronger you will get…if you manage this properly.”
There you go! If you just pay attention to how your body is feeling, you will never
miss. How many times have you been told to just tough through it, without any attention
paid to what is going on within the amazing mechanism called the body? In fear of
possibly loosing strength and muscle, we jump into our cars psyched up and mentally
ready to wreak havoc with another high intensity assault to stimulate additional
muscle growth. But lurking in the body still underway is its greatest effort to make
ready for this exact assault, but it needs some additional time to repair and compensate
and build an additional level of fortress to handle this assault i.e. more muscle.
If you cut this process short, you short-
Have you ever taken a 3-
Always keep it simple stupid and by all means use the Two Day Rule!
GET YOUR PERSONAL COPY OF THIS SPECIAL EDITION AUDIO E-
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Monday, February 2, 2009
High Intensity Eating and Training for the Fast Metabolism
By Bill Sahli
Lately I have been getting many questions about diminished progress or a halt in progress entirely. Those questions lately are from bodybuilders who are looking to put on additional muscular bodyweight but have an ectomorph body type and/or have an extremely fast metabolism. In answering these questions for my column readers and coaching clients I find that a clearer understanding on how the body lays down muscle is required. Although I have covered this in many a place in the past, I am going to focus here on those with a fast metabolism.
Today, I received a question in a Q&A forum I write for… from an athlete that is an ectomorph bodybuilder. The work he is doing is much too much, especially while using the theory of HIT. HIT is high intensity training which is a very effective. Due to the intensity of the workout it must be brief and infrequent and not your garden variety more is better.
In his workout he performs 8 sets to failure up to 3 times a week. His diet is comprised mainly of egg whites, a protein bar, a protein serving like chicken turkey or steak accompanied by pasta or rice. Sometimes he would blend lunch into dinner and dinner was usually very late. His progress was minimal and thus he wrote me asking if I could help.
This is what I wrote just this morning in answer to his question…
“My approach to training and eating is very simple. Stimulate growth in the least
amount of time possible using minimal resources, stay out of the gym long enough
to allow the body to not only compensate for the exhaustive effects of the workout,
but to overcompensate in laying down additional muscle for the next assault... and
last but not least... feed your body based on your metabolic requirements...
What
does that all mean to you?
First off, (training) 2 -
8 Exercises! Way… too much! Why are you doing 8?
Why not 10 or 7… see? There is a lot of cross over that is unnecessary... 3 -
Eating
... it all depends on your metabolic rate. I just had a phone client in town that
trained and ate with me for a couple of days. His dimensions are close to yours.
He has in the past had the hardest time putting on muscle (muscular bodyweight) although
his strength has increased 400% and his bodyweight 20 pounds (very good progress).
… This is what he learned...
1-
2-
For breakfast he would have a 3 whole egg
omelet with vegetables including garlic and onion, whole cheese … home fries ala
Bill sautéed in olive oil and bacon (yes either turkey or pork is fine).
For lunch
it would be a triple Decker solid white tuna salad sandwich with tomato, whole cheese
on it, regular mayonnaise (I like Hellman's) in the salad, wheat bread (sprouted
wheat is best) on the triple Decker…
Some imported cheese as a snack or some assorted
nuts in the afternoon is a plus and by
dinner it would be beef kabobs or salmon...
a baked potato with the kabobs as they had a great variety of zucchini, onion, peppers,
tomatoes, garlic already on them. I would marinate them in olive oil and spices.
At night there would be a variety of cheeses, nuts… healthy snacks etc and always
wine with dinner.
Within a day ( the first day he said he felt stuffed), although
he was not used to eating in this way, his energy levels were high (although he needed
an additional nap), his workouts were strong and he told me he has never eaten like
this and had a hard time getting just 2000 calories in him. Well I assured him that
he was much over that level.
So this is what I suggest! I suggest you take at least
a two week layoff or maybe three and allow your body to recuperate and recover. After
that go to a workout that includes some basic exercises. My
I suggest picking two workouts from the following exercises (I have given an example
of a 4 set workout) and perform them once every 4 -
Here are some suggestions ... (remember to perform all your reps to failure
... keeping them in the 5-
WO 1
Dumbbell or Machine Flies (incline or flat)
(Superset with)
Dips (add weight if necessary)
Lying French Press or Close Grips
Leg Press (superset optional, see below)
OPTIONAL: Leg Press Calve Raise (on this one use the same weight as your leg press
weight except every rep at the top contracted position hold for a 5 -
WO 2
Pullover or Pulldown
High Pulls
Deadlifts or partial deadlifts
Barbell Curls
You can see this is just 4 sets per workout and all done to failure.
These BIG exercises as I call them, is where it starts and ends. As in my High Intensity
Powerbuilding, the focus is always on the back and legs, which are the foundation
of strength and thus size. This of course is just an example workout but it is one
with all the movements necessary to turn on the growth mechanism of the body most
efficiently.
Once you have put your … workout into place, make sure you back it up
with the nutritional cement necessary to build the house... without this you will
not make the gains in strength and size necessary. Eat when you can (times that you
are able too) and focus on quality nutrient dense foods. Put whole living foods into
your diet. Eat and refrain from drinking your food. As you are at an eatery, you
can get in tight with the cooks and they will make you whatever you like. (He worked
at a restaurant.)
(NOTE: the diet depicted above is for someone who is trying to gain
and has a metabolism on the faster side; however... it supports the idea that it
takes discipline to gain muscular weight just as it does for someone to be disciplined
in their goal to loose body fat. Always monitor the way you look in the mirror, so
as to not put on too much fat, as you may gain fat along with muscle but the goal
is to gain very little fat and a whole bunch of muscle... adjust your calories according
to your metabolism. The mirror never lies.)
As you get stronger you can eventually
split the exercises or similar from 2 workouts into 3 workouts leaving your workouts
shorter with less drain on your body's resources and inserting an additional day
of rest in between.
… Keep It Simple Stupid while following the theory of High Intensity
Training.
Keep it Intense, BRIEF and Infrequent!”
Find a detailed explanation of the theory of high intensity training in:
And the Next Step in:
(The above was edited for easy reading)
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Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Muscle Building is Not a Social Ritual
By Bill Sahli
I remember it like it was yesterday… the first time I saw the dungeon.
I was about 14 years old and I had just joined the YMCA. My parents thought it would be a great place for me, since there was a pool, billiards, ping pong and many other things to do. Lots of classes going on etc. however, I had other ideas. It was the first time I saw Roger DeCarlis.
Roger was a Mr. America caliber bodybuilder with a phenomenal physique. To me, a mere youngster, he looked larger than life.
The weight room at the Y could be considered a dungeon. No heat in the winter and no air in the summer. Temperatures reached close to 100 degrees on some summer days and it was wise to get in and out early.
You had to walk down a flight of cement stairs and would enter a 14 x 14 room. The room’s walls were block… painted yellow. Connected to the first room was another room that was about 20 x 14 in which there was additional equipment. This was a power lifting gym by rights and all you saw was 100 pound plates, Olympic bars, power racks, squat racks, benches and a host of dumbbells with absolutely no visual value... again, it looked like a dungeon. Along with that was a plate loaded leg extension machine that doubled as a leg curl. There was a cable pull down, a leg press machine, not a sled… and a set of dipping bars. All were dressed in rust. That was the extent of it. The windows, on just one wall… three I think, were about shoulder level, showing out to the street where passerby would peek in. There they would observe the screaming, grunting, clanging, chalk everywhere and the smell of ammonia capsules just before a record squat, deadlift or bench press was to be performed. This wasn’t some namby pamby gym you would find today that has alarms if you grunt! No Way! This was serious stuff!
In those days, we were considered another culture of sorts, hardly understood on why we would put our bodies through that sort of physical stress. Little did they know we were competing against ourselves in the deepest parts of our souls.
Roger got up off of the leg extension machine and I could hardly believe my eyes. He looked like superman to me. The first thing I saw was a huge chest, thick shoulders and massive arms. His tiny waist added to the symmetry of his physique and made everything appear even bigger.
Roger normally weighed about 190 at 5’7 but was always rock hard. About a 30 inch waist with arms close to 19 (yes I saw them measured) he was amazing. His legs were large but not as developed and with the muscular separation of his upper body but certainly not by reason of not working them hard. I have witnessed him do 20 reps with 640 pounds on the squat below parallel each rep. Think about that for a bodybuilder weighing 190! His entire bodybuilding career Roger would go literally through hell in trying to bring his legs up to the development of his upper body. His back was a sight to see also, huge thick erectors and a thick wide lat spread and squared of traps. Roger was all business as I would soon find out. He would not say a word while in the gym in any social way and his focus was of a man possessed. You always thought he was just plain mad but the funny thing is that he really didn’t care what you thought… the only thing that mattered was his mission that day… the workout! I learned focus and discipline from this man.
It didn’t take long to figure out that this was no social ritual. I must have been a real pest in those days because Roger finally got tired of all my questions and hanging around and agreed to allow me to train with him. Our workouts were just like I witnessed in first meeting Roger… all business. There was absolutely no screwing around while training. Each rep was deliberate, without momentum and I learned to focus each rep with my mind, to visualize and feel the rep. Roger moved with very little rest despite using poundage on exercises that was almost ridiculous, he was extremely strong. He built his entire physique with barbells and dumbbells but attributes his edge being his mind and focus.
Fast forward a few years… it is no longer circa 1971 but approximately 1977. Roger and I although no longer training together are still great friends… as we are today. By now I have been introduced to High Intensity Training by the likes of Mike Mentzer hitting the bodybuilding scene by storm. He called his version Heavy Duty and that it was. Mike, after working with Arthur Jones, turned bodybuilding up side down. He showed bodybuilders how to use their ability to critically think while proving that the more is better theory does not apply to bodybuilding. Further proving that we do not need to be our own scientists as the muscle magazine imply… searching in the dark for what works for us. His theory of High Intensity Training, lives on today and his rational approach to bodybuilding is a guide for all. He was considered the thinking man’s bodybuilder.
Although I did not know about the theory of High Intensity Training prior to that, my training was brief, infrequent and intense by necessity. At the time, my goal was to get the biggest and strongest I could. The only way to do that was to rid my workout of all the fluff exercises that got in the way and robbed my energy and focus and just perform the movements that made me strong. And strong I got.
It was and is all about focus! I only performed one work set… i.e. one set to failure for each exercise. I only performed the basics… bench presses, squats, rows, deadlifts, leg presses, close grip benches, dips and partials. I removed completely from my workouts any direct biceps exercises, shoulder exercises, calve exercises, chins, dumbbell movements like flies etc. I only did what would assist me to get stronger. And in knowing that strength and muscle size is relative… what do you think happened? You got it! I grew and became my all time strongest and in doing so my biggest ever. At the time I was training maybe three days a week… sometimes two… which I learned later on was still too much. I was doing about three sets a workout… period… but with immense focus… it was all business as I had learned early on in my career.
Oh yes, others came in the gym and went through the motions without the mental focus… true… but they never changed, they lacked that same focus and vision that would lead them to their goals… it was a social ritual for them. They enjoyed being there. Maybe their goals and purpose did not exist or maybe they did not know how to zero in on them... I guess we will never know, it doesn’t matter.
My preparation for each workout was like a planned mission. (see High Intensity Mindset) I would focus and actually see what I was going to do. I would keep a log book and go over the weights. I would perform a self hypnosis visualization routine each day in preparation for the next workout, this alone helped in an amazing way in reprogramming my mind for success. When I hit the gym, it was all business. I never spoke with anyone and everyone knew it. It was like the movie “Over the Top” with Sylvester Stallone when he is ready to arm wrestle and turns his cap around with the visor facing his back, like flipping a switch, which was his indication it was time to do business. In fact, I still have a shirt given to me 35 years ago with the Tasmanian Devil on it… you know, that Looney Tunes character that spins around! The twin brothers that gave it to me told me that this is what I resembled when I walked into the gym and began my workout… like a person possessed.
I still train this way today. It is all business and certainly not a social ritual. Of course I have a keen understanding these days of anaerobic exercise and understand now that training is only a stimulus and always a negative in the equation because it takes away from growth reserves. In looking back like a wise man in a movie I think to myself… “If I knew then what I know now”, I would have trained more infrequently with more rest.
My own personal workouts today last about 7 – 15 minutes… performed once every 6-
I often see trainers (not all) waste precious time with clients in the gym… burning
an hour easy… probably because that is how they charge. The sad thing is that it
is truly a social ritual. They have them doing dumbbell curls while balancing on
a ball (just half exaggerating)… standing on their heads while talking about what
the weekend was like, as they throw the weight up and down. Their understanding of
anaerobic exercise is so limited and their focus passed on to their clients is less
than desirable to reach their intended goal. My clients train for no more than 7-
As Greg (Anderson, another HIT Trainer and colleague in Seattle) said in his article, High Intensity Strength Training: More Aerobic than Aerobics…
“it usually takes a few workouts before the client understands the depth and magnitude of cardiovascular involvement possible from strength training. As one of my trainees remarked recently (after a set of squats to complete failure followed by 20 seconds of effort against the bar in the bottom position): "My God! (gasp, gasp...) this is more aerobic than aerobics..."
In fact, when we spoke just a couple of weeks ago, we were chuckling at how little exercise it takes when you are focused and working hard rather than long. One particular was about another athlete out in Seattle I believe… a HIT die hard who trains for minutes every 9 days.
Muscle building is nothing more than a stimulus. Stimulate muscle with intense training and then get out of the gym to allow the adaptation to occur... i.e., all the body to lay down additional muscle for the next assault. This takes focus and vision and it is the farthest thing from a social ritual there is. And most important to remember, because the body has the ability to increase strength by some 300% while its ability to recover increases at most 50%, then as you get stronger you must reduce both volume and frequency to continue to progress to your genetic potential. There is never a need to take a layoff due to over training as there is never over training if it is managed properly.
If you R Serious about your progress, H I T it hard, 7-
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Monday, Sept 1, 2008
The article below was written by Greg Anderson back in the mid 90’s. It is a great piece of work and clears up the many myths and misunderstandings around aerobics and anaerobic exercise. JUST SAY NO to Aerobics!
Thanks you Greg for an amazing contribution and consenting and allowing me to reprint it here at RUSerious!
High Intensity Strength Training -
By Greg Anderson
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Thursday, July 31, 2008
By Bill Sahli
I guess the article should be inverted to say… “Hello!” you are missing something important… in order to successfully apply the theory of “High Intensity Training… Keep it simple stupid!”
The Theory of High Intensity Training or simply an understanding of anaerobic training is not hard, it is actually very simple. However, those athletes trying to think through it and apply it have the hardest time trying to do so. The reason for this is that they are trying to explain the electronics of the radio while having no knowledge of transistors, instead of focusing on the elements necessary in order to listen to the desired station… which is… the tuning knob.
In order to apply the principle properly for uninterrupted progress there are a few points and very few, that need to be understood. It all goes back to what Arthur Jones said…
"Everything of any value related to exercise can be stated in less than a thousand
words, can, in fact, be fairly well covered in only a few words, as follows: Train
hard, Train briefly, Train infrequently, and always remember that your final results
will primarily be a consequence of genetics" -
Now Mike Mentzer expounded on this quote many years later while talking with me and said…
“Bill... Back then (when I was competing), I was training less than everyone one
else by comparison, but even then I was doing too much... I know now with certainty
that you should never reach a point of over training. If you manage this logically
and your workouts are intense, brief and infrequent ...you, me... anyone should reach
their genetic potential within a year or at most two!” -
So what is it that we are missing? What are we complicating? I get questions quite
frequently regarding how many reps, 3 or 20, how much rest, 4 days or 10 days, what
type of cadence, 4-
All these questions are irrelevant if you understand the theory.
RECOVERY ABILITY
Since the body has limited resources of recover ability (i.e. the average person has the ability to increase strength by some 300% while only increasing the ability to recover by approximately 50%), any exercise performed over what is minimally required to stimulate a response is not only not necessary but a negative, overtraining! It takes away from the body’s reserves to grow. As one gets stronger, this is more of a threat and must be managed properly.
SETS
The logical place to start is one. There is no reason to stimulate, then… do it again and again and again… and then come back and do it in an hour or in a couple. The body only knows that there is a stress imposed on it and it is going to react. It has been threatened and in being the adaptive organism that it is, it puts in place the proper mechanisms to be ready next time it is threatened… muscle. It turns on the growth mechanism. If the process is not allowed to complete you will backslide.
REPS
Whether you do one rep or 20, every rep up until the last almost impossible rep that turns on the growth mechanism of the body is a warm up rep. There is certainly question as to the higher reps being less stressful in terms of the joints or tendons, due to the lighter weight being employed, but there is no question as to both being intense, whether high or low. Some athletes have outgrown high reps due to certain cardio pulmonary issues… especially an athlete who is advanced and because of the intense contraction of his large and developed muscles, the amount of waste accumulated is a hindrance, limiting the intensity of the contraction. In this case, other High Intensity Techniques such as rest pause can be used to an advantage managed properly.
REST
How long does it take for the body to recover? Yes, I did say the body! When you train a body part it is not just the body part that has to recover. The body recovers systemically, as a whole. When you train intensely you dig a ditch. The first thing the body does is compensate for the exhaustive effects of the workout… it fills the ditch. Then, once the ditch is filled, if there is enough left over (i.e. you have not done too many sets or trained again before the process was completed), it will overcompensate by laying down muscle, building a mountain. It is an adaptive response.
Muscle does not grow in the gym! It grows while you rest. Even though you may have trained your back or chest and they feel fine, don’t be fooled. That does not mean that WALLA… you have gained muscle. The body takes days to recover in most cases. How many days?
I find in general that the body, depending on the stress, intensity and volume of
a particular workout, takes a minimum of four days to two weeks to recover. Remember,
as one gets bigger and stronger, the ability to recover gets thinner and thinner
due to the inroad produced. An 18 inch arm contracting maximally takes more from
the body than a 13 inch arm. Have you ever noticed after a three week layoff or even
a six week layoff you come back even stronger? One client of mine was performing
three sets every 8-
CONFUSION
The biggest thing that confuses athletes is that they are trying to apply a social economic principal to anaerobic training; through a filter of emotion… namely, more is better. Most can get themselves to train as little as 3 days a week for an hour or less, but because of the ego, the belief system, molded from years of reading muscle magazines and listening to the supplement companies, few can logic through the mine fields.
KISS
This Keep It Simple Stupid statement has been around for some time but its application is paramount in managing High Intensity Training.
1. Perform only one set per exercise. Your workouts should be BRIEF, no more than
4-
2. The last impossible rep turns on the growth mechanism, train to failure. High reps are less stressful and low reps are more stressful. The last rep to failure, high or low is INTENSE and thus turns on the growth mechanism of the body.
3. Do not use momentum! Swinging and using poor exercise style does nothing but decrease the intensity of contraction, not to mention, create a dangerous situation for injury to occur.
4. As you get stronger insert a rest day or two, if you are tired and have rested four days and on the fourth day you feel recovered, give yourself another one or two days, you will be stronger and produce better gains. This INFREQUENT training will insure overcompensation. Get in touch with your body.
5. Certain exercises that involve large muscles or groups are better in TURNING ON THE GROWTH MECHANISM in the entire body than others… example: deadlifts, squats, rows
6. Eat for muscle. With the proper CEMENT available, your gains will be forthcoming. Don’t expect to make huge progress while on a very low calorie diet. This is for the natural athlete. Those who use recovery and growth inducing drugs will have a different experience.
So don’t forget to KISS with HIT! AND…Don’t forget to brush J.
Related Tools
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Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Is Rest Pause Training Still Popular?
By Bill Sahli
A funny question was asked to me the other day by a prospective client… Is rest pause training popular?
I have been asked a lot of questions in the past about effectiveness and execution of certain high intensity techniques but never about its popularity.
Mike Mentzer back in the 70’s popularized (there is that word again) rest pause training for bodybuilding. Until then it was known but not used in the bodybuilding world… at least not by many. It has been around since the mid 1940’s and its effectiveness, at least the effectiveness of single maximum reps in developing strength and thus muscle size, has been used by strongmen for decades.
Rest pause is extremely effective for the advanced athlete who may have hit an impasse in progress and has the ability to focus on exerting maximum intensity of effort with just one rep. It is not for the faint hearted or for beginners who have yet to hone their skills of focus in going to complete momentary muscular failure. It is however, for the seasoned weightlifter whose experience with proper exercise style and execution is keen, as the force from the very first rep is high.
With most exercise programs incorporating a number of reps, the first rep of a set
is the safest because it is nothing more than a warm-
Although the beginner may use 135 pounds for his set of squats, imagine the bodybuilder using 550 for his. I have seen this with advanced trainees doing legs; it is their breathing, not their strength that interferes with them reaching the last almost impossible rep that turns on the growth process of the body. So what’s the answer?
Rest Pause! With rest pause there is a rest between each and every maximum rep, allowing the cardio pulmonary system to reset itself (or catch up), without the negative… the build up of waste residue, allowing for another maximum contraction. Because heavier weights are used and there is a maximum contraction on every rep, this type of training is extremely demanding and effective.
Longer rest periods are needed along with sufficient carbohydrates being present in your diet to fuel these workouts. A well balanced diet is necessary. Glycogen is needed for the high intensity contractions of this type of training.
Since this is very intense training, it should be brief and infrequent. Below is an example of a properly designed rest pause workout routine split into three workouts.
NOTE: Each workout will be performed with 4 repetitions, each maximum weight, with
10 seconds between each rep and up to 15 on the last rep. You can either have assistance
from your training partner to complete reps 2-
WO 1
Chest, Shoulders, Biceps
Peck Deck
Nautilus or Hammer Bench
Nautilus or Hammer Laterals
Wide Grip Upright Rows with cable – Done in regular fashion to failure – 6-
Nautilus or Hammer Curls
-
WO 2
Back and Triceps
Nautilus Pullovers
Chins or Pulldown (palms facing you)
Deadlifts – Done in regular fashion – 5 reps max
Nautilus tri Extension or Pushdowns
Close Grip Benches – Done in regular fashion – 6-
-
WO 3
Leg Extensions
Leg Press or Squat – (if no training partner safety first, always employ a power rack or do a straight set of squats stopping one rep prior to failure)
Leg Curl
Calve Raise
As mentioned above, because of the leap in intensity…while employing this type of a workout or any HIT workout, rest is paramount. If you manage your volume and frequency properly, you will progress without the affects of overtraining.
I suggest a 4-
WO 1 – Wide Grip Upright Cable Rows
WO 2 – Either… close grip bench or triceps extensions
WO 3 – Leg Curls
You will notice when implementing rest pause correctly, along with the theory of high intensity training, that your strength will sky rocket. If you are an advanced athlete who has hit an impasse in progress, I suggest you take a full two weeks off or more…before starting rest pause training. What I find is that in many cases you are already in a state of overtraining and this time is needed for your body to compensate for that over trained condition. Good Luck!
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Saturday, May 31, 2008
By Bill Sahli
Wide shoulders, the foundation of that Herculean look. Over the ages wide shoulders have been associated with strength and prowess… primordial indeed as the cornerstone of masculinity. You just can’t hide a pair of big wide shoulders.
So what are the how tos of developing a big set of shoulders? What exercises are the best? How many sets or reps?
There are some High Intensity Training basics that we must cover first and I am going to borrow those basics from some of my previous work. We will start with understanding what makes muscles grow.
AN INTENSE MUSCULAR CONTRACTION
Muscle growth is a reaction to a stress, like going out into the hot August sun. When you go out into the hot August sun, your body experiences it as a stress. Due to the intense sunlight, your skin begins to compensate, and then overcompensate, to lay down a means of protection for the next time you are exposed. The pigment in your skin becomes darker, you get a tan!
If you went out on a cloudy day in October for five hours, you would not get a tan as you would, being exposed to direct sunlight in August. The reason is because there is no stimulus… even if you put a whole bottle of suntan lotion on! By the way, I equate just that to bodybuilders who are in the gym doing four sets of eight or a predetermined number of reps, stopping short of the last almost impossible rep that turns on the growth mechanism.
How long and often do you think you would have to go out into the hot August sun to get darker? If you stayed out for three hours rather than two, you would possibly burn. If you went out again the next day you would probably blister and if you continued you would end up in the hospital. The reason is that the body would not have the time to compensate and then overcompensate for the intense rays of the sun. The volume and frequency is just too much.
Muscle requires an intense contraction in order to grow. As one grows stronger, the contraction must be more intense.
The question…how many intense contractions does a muscle need to stimulate growth?
The answer…one good one! Why one? As with the affect of the hot August sun, the body has a limited tolerance to exercise volume and a limited resource to compensate for that stress. Volume is not the answer, intensity is!
EXERCISE SELECTION
Before we cover more on intensity, let’s proceed on with which exercises work best to grow the shoulder muscles. The shoulder has no ball and socket like the knee for instance; rather it has a complex of muscles and tendons called the rotor cuff. The width of your shoulders depends on the lateral head of the deltoid. The shoulder itself has three heads…
The anterior or frontal head
The lateral or side head
The posterior or rear head
THE ANTERIOR HEAD
The frontal head of the deltoid is worked efficiently any time you do most chest movements like bench presses, incline presses, dumbbell flies, parallel bar dips and the like. As we already know, it only takes one good contraction to stimulate muscle growth. We don’t have to stimulate over and over again, so we will leave this part of the shoulder or deltoid to chest movements.
THE LATERAL HEAD
The side head is a different story. The lateral head is hit most efficiently with lateral raises and press behind the neck. Since the press behind the neck also hits the front deltoid we will focus on lateral raises, especially if working shoulders after a chest workout.
I prefer to use a machine rather than dumbbells when doing laterals if there is one available. As a bodybuilder you require an intense contraction and a full range of motion. My preference of machine is Nautilus, however if there is not one available to you, use dumbbells.
My experience in the gym has taught me that most trainees, including trainers, do
not perform this exercise properly. When using either a machine or dumbbells, it
is important to use the proper cadence rather than just use a continual motion with
too much weight. Anytime there is momentum, to that degree the intensity of contraction
is reduced, and as we know, this is not conducive to maximum growth stimulation.
The proper cadence to use is 3-
THE POSTERIOR HEAD
The rear deltoids as they are called is best worked using a bent over lateral raise
if done with dumbbells, however, my first choice is a rear deltoid Nautilus machine,
followed by my second which is a peck deck machine in reverse. While sitting facing
the back of a standard peck deck machine, place your triceps against the pads where
you would normally place your forearms (Nautilus will look similar except it will
have a front and back). Begin using a 3-
CLIMBING THE LADDER OF INTENSITY
As your muscles grow larger, it is not sets that you must add or reps but a more intense contraction. You can train hard or long, but you can’t do both!
For example, if you have been doing a set of Nautilus or Dumbbell Laterals to failure
and have hit an impasse in growth maybe it is time for a kick start. Well we all
know that the most important rep of any set is the last rep because it is the one
that turns on the growth mechanism. Every rep previous to that is nothing more than
a warm-
CONTRACTIONS ONLY AND NEGATIVES
This works wonderfully and best if done on a Nautilus Lateral machine. Have your training partner assist you into the contracted position or if you don’t do it in Omni fashion (one arm at a time) and use your other arm to assist and stabilize. This can be done with dumbbells too!
Use a weight heavier than you would normally use. Have your training partner assist you into the contracted position where your deltoids are fully contracted. Be careful to align your shoulders with the axis of the machine and do not raise your arms any higher than parallel with the floor. Hold the weight for seven to ten seconds (as a guide), to a point where you no longer are able to hold the weight, at which point you will do an extremely slow negative all the way to the bottom of the movement. Only one set necessary! After a couple of workouts like this, you will find when you go back to doing reps to failure, you will be stronger.
PREEXHAUSTION
This is another that can be done also by those who do not have access to Nautilus or Hammer Strength machines although recommended. It will raise the intensity of your shoulder workout.
Superset one set of either dumbbell laterals or Nautilus laterals with press behind the neck or Nautilus press. After finishing your set of dumbbell laterals (this can be done as a contraction/negative only also), go immediately to presses until failure performed in normal cadence. Since your triceps will be fresh it will raise the intensity of the muscular contraction thus growth stimulation.
For rear deltoids this can also be done with bent over laterals or reverse peck deck
laterals followed by a superset of close grip palms facing (you) lat pull-
This workout is best suited when not doing chest and shoulders on the same day. However,
if you are currently using pre-
BE CAREFUL WITH TECHNIQUES
Be careful to not overuse these techniques. Use them for a couple or three workouts and then go back to training to failure. The leap in intensity is great. Always manage your volume and frequency as you get bigger and stronger.
ABBREVIATED ROUTINES
If you are doing an abbreviated routine in which you are not doing direct shoulder work, you can incorporate some of these techniques such as contractions and negatives. Don’t get stuck using any technique for a long period of time or every workout as they can lead to overtraining very quickly.
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Friday, May 2, 2008
By Bill Sahli
As you may or may not know, as a bodybuilder you require an intense contraction and a full range of motion to stimulate growth. But in order to get an intense contraction there must be no outside forces such as momentum as this will decrease the intensity of contraction and thus reduce your progress.
In my observation in numerous gyms over my 36 years of bodybuilding experience, it never ceases to amaze me how bodybuilders, personal trainers and experienced weight lifters lose track of the importance of proper exercise form. I see those swinging, hoisting and using all types of body language to complete a rep... and not just the last one but in many cases all of them. It is almost like the goal is to see how quickly and for how long you can keep an exercise going no matter what. This is pure craziness and due to this way of training many make no progress and incur injuries and often seem to believe that lifting weights is a toss up between aerobics and a social ritual, loosing sight of the fact that lifting weights is a stimulus and must be limited and efficient.
Let me just say right now, to the point that momentum is used in executing a repetition so is there an inverse to which the intensity of contraction is reduced. Many who have trained with me find that they use half the weight they normally use when employing the proper form of exercise...at least initially. Remember, strength is just a gauge to your progress and nothing more. In my book R U Serious – The Foundation I go over the proper cadence to be executed while performing a set of any exercise. What is cadence? It is the time it takes to move the weight from point A, relaxed position... To point B, fully contracted position... including the amount of time in the contracted position before moving back to point A, the fully relaxed position. So what does that look like while doing a chin up or a lat pull down… let’s go over it.
With your palms facing you, arms fully extended above your head gripping a lat bar,
begin to pull the bar to your Clavicles (collar bone) without any momentum or jerking
but in a very smooth pull lasting from point A to point B approximately 3-
Once in the fully contracted position at point B, contract the muscles involved which is primarily the biceps, lats, rear delts and to a lesser degree your entire body as hard as possible for a 2 second count.
On completion of a 2 second count, slowly move the bar up from your Clavicles to the fully extended position taking a full 4 second count.
So if we look at the cadence it would be 3-
There are those exercises that are the exception. They are barbell rows, calve raises, squats, dead lifts and dumbbell laterals to name a few, but... There is however, no exception in that control and form should be applied as to minimize momentum.
Apply the proper exercise style and watch yourself progress!
-
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Revisiting the Theory of High Intensity Training
By Bill Sahli
I continue to be overwhelmed by questions from experienced bodybuilders regarding High Intensity Training. Bodybuilders are confused and bewildered about the proper course of action to take in designing their workouts while applying these principals. Mike Mentzer covered the issue very well in his book, Heavy Duty II, Mind and Body and I have covered it also in my book, R U Serious – The Foundation. Despite these efforts, confusion still arises. I have tracked it to a single reason, just one thing. That thing is thinking. If you understand how to think through and apply the Theory of High Intensity Training, it all becomes very clear. In this article I am going to attempt to clarify any confusion and once and for all give the simple roadmap to designing a HIT workout.
It all started back in the 70s with an entrepreneur named Arthur Jones. Arthur was a genius of a man with a great mind. His passion was in discovering ways of measuring exercise and the elements related as such… i.e. friction etc. In doing so, Arthur Jones created the famous Nautilus machines, which in my opinion are the best on the market, with Hammer Strength following closely behind.
In those days… bodybuilding took a leap of popularity with the introduction of Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was Weider’s star, with a persona that captured the bodybuilding world. Arnold had it all and was one of the best bodybuilders that ever lived. I remember the movie Pumping Iron that gave the world a look at the bodybuilding culture. He was a genetic marvel and took the bodybuilding word by storm.
Arnold professed somewhere between 12-
No one questioned how many sets were too much, some were doing 40 sets but just about everyone was doing over 20 sets. The frequency was never an issue either, some trained 5 days, some 6 days and some twice a day. Well, back then all the top bodybuilders were using recovery inducing drugs, steroids. And, they weren’t the fake stuff you find circulating today. Back then you could go to a doctor, get a prescription and or a shot, and have your body tested every so often. i.e. liver function etc… and you were good to go. In fact Dianabol was created by Dr. Ziegler who had worked for Ciba for a time in the early 50’s and then went to research performance enhancing drugs until about 1959. In 1960, to enhance their edge against the Russians, the Olympic Weight Lifting Team via Hoffman, or certain athletes in their team were administered this drug or a form of it... a little trivia for the bodybuilder on steroids.
Everyone was using a social economic principal, namely, more is better…everyone except
for Arthur Jones that is. Arthur was a driven man and he was driven by his passion.
Arthur established one of the elements contained in the Theory of High Intensity
Training which is… “Intensity refers to the percentage of possible momentary muscular
effort being exerted, and that to stimulate an optimal increase in strength and muscular
size, a set of an exercise must be carried to a point of momentary muscular failure
where 100 percent intensity of effort is being exerted.” Jones precisely defined
what intensity is. Jones didn’t stop there either; he said that if everyone is doing
12-
At the time Casey Viator was training under the direction of Jones. Casey was the youngest Mr. America contender to win the title at the time at age 19, in 1971. It was here that Mike Mentzer met Casey Viator, being defeated by him and taking 10th place. It was through Casey that Mike began to work with Arthur Jones and first learned about High Intensity Training.
Mike took some time off and in 1975 started competing again using High Intensity
Training principals. This was actually the first introduction to High Intensity Training
for me. In the muscle magazines in the later 70’s…Mike began to publish his workout
regiment which was totally in contrast to what everyone else was doing. As I studied
them, they made sense as I was tired of spending hours in the gym and I began to
use them. Instead of being in the gym 5 or 6 days a week for a show, I was there
2-
I competed using Mike’s Heavy Duty Training and did very well… however, I always inevitably ended up in an over trained state. Back then we were still doing too much, less than everyone else, but still too much. No one up until this point had discovered the precise amount necessary to stimulate muscle growth without at some point becoming overstrained, i.e. volume and frequency.
I competed in my last show in 1988, the Nationals which was the biggest amateur show of my life, a pro qualifier. I did that using High Intensity Training. Although in the best shape of my life, I did not win my weight class. I had reached my genetic potential and was not willing to take the type of chemicals necessary to move any further. It was just not worth the risk. I retired from competition but still trained in high intensity fashion as I do till this day. In the early 1990’s, I was putting together a personal training business and at about the same time, so was Mike Mentzer. I called Mike and asked if we could work together and he agreed. Mike was building his personal training business and phone coaching business at the time and was working with quite the number of athletes. He also was a study of philosophy which helped him think through the proper application of the theory of High Intensity Training. One of the first things that Mike made very clear is that even though we were doing less than everyone else back then, we were still doing too much. Mike, up until this point, discovered that just once set per exercise and in most cases two sets per body part was sufficient… and he said that three times per week was too much. In fact, he said we should not blindly accept dogma to dictate our exercise workouts; rather it is our individual genetics that dictate exercise tolerance.
Wow, that was a mouthful for me to digest. Even though I was training intensely and briefly I was still doing too much? Well, I went to work in changing things around for myself and dramatically reduced the workout sets and the frequency and guess what… I began to gain all over again. My strength went through the roof. I also took a layoff of almost three weeks before starting on my new endeavor. This came in pretty handy because I needed the time to kick my training business into high gear. Indeed I did with the help of Mr. Mentzer and his suggestions and we became friends. His guidance helped me through learning how to think logically and with his lifetime experience.
Fast forward to now and what we know. We know that in order for us to succeed, we must apply the theory of High Intensity Training properly. We must understand the elements involved and be able to manipulate them as we change, i.e. grow larger and stronger.
An important fact to understand is that the body’s ability to get stronger can improve by some 300% where as the ability to recover may only increase 50%. This means that as you get bigger and stronger, you must manage your volume and frequency downward. We have a limited amount of recovery ability. For the sake of example let’s call that 100 shovel fulls. As you get stronger, the contraction of your muscles create a deeper inroad… i.e. a 14 inch arm contracting while curling a 20 pound dumbbell will not create the same inroad as an 18 inch arm curling an 80 pound dumbbell... therefore you must adjust the volume and frequency to allow for the growth to happen. Since the body recovers systemically, as a whole and then overcompensates by laying down muscle, you must first allow it to compensate and then overcompensate. If you short circuit this process, you will not grow optimally or grow at all.
We know that intensity means carry a set to a point of momentary muscular failure where the last almost impossible rep is the one that turns on the growth mechanism of the body. This is failure, not when it sort of feels like your muscle is burning or hurts (not in a painful injury way), but true failure where you can not do another rep in strict exercise form.
Then, as part of this, let’s visit momentum. As a bodybuilder, we need an intense
contraction and a full range of motion. If you are using momentum, or throwing the
weight, you are decreasing the intensity of contraction. The proper style of exercise
is one that there is control through the entire movement. Applying a cadence of 3-
Next is managing the volume and the frequency. As you get stronger… as explained in the above paragraph, your ability to recover does not increase in the same degree, therefore, as you become stronger, you must allow your body to compensate and then overcompensate, or lay down muscle. What does this mean? Inserting an additional day between workouts and/ or removing a set from the workout. If you continue to get stronger, i.e. change and you do not adjust your volume and frequency, you will slip into a state of over training. In my book R U Serious – the Foundation, I cover a properly designed program and how to manage it.
If you are presently following a HIT workout and you have ceased to make progress or you are back sliding, loosing strength, feeling lethargic, metabolism slowing… you are over trained! Plain and simple… you have allowed yourself to slip into this state without properly managing the volume and frequency downward. When this happens, don’t start flipping through muscle magazines or visiting websites looking for different workouts. There IS and can be only one valid theory of High Intensity Training and if you revisit and rethink the following you will always find your answer.
1-
2-
3-
Train intensely using the proper cadence. Use one set per exercise and no more than two sets per body part. As in the science of electricity, you don’t have to keep flicking the switch on and off in order to get the light to go on, it only takes one flip of the switch. Allow the process to happen. Remember, you body first has to recover or compensate (fill the ditch) and then overcompensate (build the mound) for the exhaustive effects of the workout before it can lay down muscle.
Apply these three elements properly and you will find your answer. You will always progress up to your genetic potential, whatever that potential may be. Don’t get mystically enticed by those who assert contradictory. Don’t compare yourself to Arnold, or Mike Mentzer or even me. We all have genetic traits mediated over a broad continuum such as height, intelligence and sunlight tolerance. So we do also have our genetic capability to build muscle and to what degree. Compare yourself to yourself. Use your training journal to chart your progress. As you get stronger begin to insert rest days and randomly remove an exercise from your workout. You will find that your progress, based on your strength gains will be forthcoming and consistent.
Also, it is important to mention that for natural athletes, it is necessary to increase the calorie allowance a bit, but no more than 250 – 500 calories above maintenance level. This will give the cement necessary to continually make progress. As you get bigger and stronger that will increase also. In the same way, those who are trying to reduce body fat on a lower calorie diet, your goal should be to maintain your existing muscle. If you are getting stronger, this is a plus… very difficult to do as a natural athlete.
Well, there you have it. I hope this will give you the road map you need to successfully accomplish your bodybuilding goals. If you hit a wall, remember, as Ayn Rand said…
“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction,
check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”-
-
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
By Bill Sahli
The following article is followed by additional question and answer session posted here on our Q&A Section,
More on Recovery and Overtraining, Click Here...
FOREWORD:
I receive this so often that I thought it was important to reiterate it again. If you are having an impasse in progress, if you are feeling tired, lethargic or your metabolism is slowed...
your body is trying to tell you something and that something is that you may very well be in an overtrained state, a deep overtrained state or nearing an overtrained state! It may require a layoff, long layoff, a change in volume and frequency or all of the above. Overtraining is overtraining people, please get this as this is the most important and the most basic issue in the theory of High Intensity Training brought forth by Mike Mentzer, the Olympian Champion, the thinking man's bodybuilder who spent his life and made huge discoveries in his trade mark Heavy Duty Training. Mike was my mentor, hero and friend. The most valuable thing he taught me was how to think!
Mike Mentzer Said....
When Mike Mentzer said overtraining was not just something sorta negative and that it takes sometimes weeks to recover, well it is the truth.... I have seen it in the gym and with my phone clients... although they don't like to hear it and usually until we go through a thorough phone session their negative results so far can usually be linked to overtraining, not stimulus, meaning not resting long enough, not the intensity employed.
You have to check your logic here really... become emotionally unattached...because if you think clearly here... RIGHT NOW...you are the strongest and most muscular you have ever been. IF you continue to train within a specific spectrum of rest, and I find this very often...you are going to lose the battle. Your strength can increase some 300% while your recover ability may increase 50%...
do the numbers and you will see the seesaw tilting to one side. The only way you can compensate is taking more rest time.
It takes time for the body to recover. I cant begin to tell you how important that
is. If it doesn't recover it cant go to the next step of laying down muscle. I have
folks that train every 10-
This is the way to think through it...
OK, I (You) am training intensely, with an intense contraction to stimulate muscle growth, to turn on the growth mechanism.
I am training briefly, not using so much of my recover ability and leaving as much possible there ... being aware not to dig too deep of a ditch...
Question....Are you really, do I need to be more brief. Remember, training is always a negative, we are talking VOLUME....
If I am still tired after a week, or two or three, my body has not compensated for the exhaustive affects of the exercise, let alone compensated.... more rest is required. Not everyone is using recovery enhancing drugs etc so it will take time, but the wait is well worth it.... we are talking FREQUENCY
Read about Lethargic....
Lethargy or Lethargic-
energetic] ... is lack of energy... energy is something we are, everything is energy... when we expend it... it must be replaced. The body recovers systemically and replaces energy as such.
Have you ever noticed how when you are sick sometimes or over tired, you do not even feel like eating. Animals are the smartest...
when they are sick, they waste no energy on eating, their body saves all its energy to fight off the STRESS, sickness is a stress.... See... it is all stress related... the body doesn't know the difference...
So if your metabolism seems sluggish, you feel lethargic etc, chances are you have allowed yourself to move into a state of overtraining and continuing so just digs a deeper hole. A sluggish metabolism or lethargic is the first symptoms I use, along with a slowing of progress, as the beginning of the overtraining condition. If you are active and healthy and not overtrained, you should feel energetic. If done properly, you should never reach a condition of overtraining.
If we realize there is one valid theory of high intensity training, if we really understand anaerobic exercise, then the answer is not changing routines, not going to the volume approach, not dropping the intensity, the answer to the problem or question can be found in one of the two elements of this training... that is in volume or frequency or both.... who says that you have to train every so many days? Who says that your workout has to be one, two, three or five sets. Who says that those abbreviated workouts have to be all large compound movements... Stick with the theory and you will find the answers to the question.
This really has nothing to do with being a wimp, but about being 100% when going to your next workout. I personally could not imagine at this moment, another Rest Pause Leg Workout, which is my next workout. I am scheduled to train again tomorrow and I got news, I will reassess where I am on next Monday, today is Tuesday, so since there were already about eight days since my last workout, tomorrow will be nine days, I will add five days till Monday and if I am 100%, I will be there, 14 days later... if not, no problem. I am after the result not the experience so the less I am in the gym, the better.... gives me more time to live, play and enjoy the result, a strong, muscular and energetic body...
Always use logic in working out these similar problems and you will find the answers precisely.
-
Thursday, March 6, 2008
By Bill Sahli
Although it sounds like quite a different stance from what a lifecoach would take, it is not intended toward your attitude but toward your high intensity bodybuilding workouts. It is a well known fact that in order to stimulate muscle growth, there must be an intense contraction and in most cases, a full range of motion. It is also well known that the muscle as it relates to exercise has three levels, the positive portion or lifting the weight, the contraction portion or holding the weight and the negative portion or lowering the weight. The portions we are going to talk about here are the contraction/holding portion and the negative/lowering portion.
It is all about adaptation. As you adapt to certain levels of training stress, by growing stronger and larger muscles, increased intensity is required to further stimulate that same adaptive process. The problem is that there are other factors involved like friction and blood flow. A muscular contraction can become so intense, that the blood flow to the muscle can decrease, however, if the contraction is short enough and the rest is long enough, you have eliminated the problem. Unfortunately you can not control the duration of the contraction and still generate the desired intensity but you can control the amount of rest.
I find this cardio pulmonary issue mainly with athletes that are advanced and already strong and heavily muscled. It is obvious because of the greater mass and the ability to work at maximum intensity, these athletes use up a lot more reserve or fuel and oxygen and thus create a great deal more waste product than those athletes that are not as advanced, massive and strong. Even in a conventional set carried to complete muscular failure, every rep to the point of the last intense rep, still complicates this problem.
The solution is no movement! If we could bypass the gym and stimulate muscle growth with no sets, then 100% could go into the adaptation stage with nothing wasted on the workout, but we haven’t quite found that solution yet, but we have come close.
Back in the early 90’s, a former Olympian bodybuilding champion named Mike Mentzer, was doing some work with the solution I am about to discuss. At the time, I was building a small personal training practice and Mike helped me with ideas in putting it together along with my own understanding of anaerobic exercise. Mike was the thinking man’s bodybuilder and my mentor, teacher and soon became my friend. He revolutionized bodybuilding by dispelling the much believed concept that bodybuilders had to spend hours in the gym. Mike saw that bodybuilders were applying a social economic principal to bodybuilding science. It’s called context switching and it is a grave mistake. The economic principal they were applying is the “More is better” principal… but its application does not apply to anaerobic exercise and bodybuilding.
The solution is an intense contraction followed by a slow negative, completely bypassing the positive portion of the exercise…with a limited number of reps and enough time between each rep to allow a somewhat normal blood flow to the muscle. Who said anyway that a set has to have 5, 6, 10 or 12 reps? The body only understands, stress, reaction, solution… again, if we could bypass the gym and stimulate muscle growth without any exercise, the body’s limited resources for recovery would not be tapped, and 100% could be put into muscle growth. Remember, your body recovers systemically, thus it first compensates for the exhaustive effects of the workout, then, whatever is left over, goes into the overcompensation phase, laying down muscle. To add a twist, your body has the ability to increase in strength by almost 300% while at the same time, your ability to recover increases maybe 50%, so you can see where I am headed. And to add the topping to the cake, in doing a conventional set, each rep is almost a waste because it is nothing more than a warm up rep to the final and last almost impossible set that turns on the growth mechanism. In that conventional set, the last rep and the contraction time of that last rep is only a second or two. We want a more intense contraction and a full range of motion and this accomplishes both.
Because of the nature of what is required for an intense contraction, exercises that allow for resistance in the top or contracted position must be employed. These exercises in most cases must be done on a machine. I prefer Nautilus and Hammer Strength for their design but other can work. Examples of these exercises are flies, pecdeck and crossovers; laterals raises… side and rear; lat pulldown performed close grip hands facing you, rows and shrugs; machine curl and machine triceps extension; leg extensions, leg curls and calve raises and the like. As I said, if you do not have these machines in your gym, you can make others work. Cables are also an option.
In using this technique you will only require three or less reps. Rep one of the
set will be much heavier than what you would use as an all out single rep, thus the
contraction is more intense. You will need someone as a training partner to help
you move into the contracted position, bypassing the lifting portion of the movement.
Use a weight that is 20 to 30% greater than your normal rep. This is a good place
to start but you will have to be the judge ultimately. Your goal is to hold this
weight for 7-
This works very well with all the exercises exampled above. One of my clients using this technique was scheduled for a chest workout. He found that after just one set of machine flies performed in this fashion, that he was not capable of proceeding to his next set of smith machine bench press. Just one set done in this fashion was enough to completely leave his pectorals spent. Since this particular client was training shoulders and triceps in the same workout, I suggested that he follow the exercise with just one set of Nautilus shoulder press and then triceps push downs, performed to failure in regular fashion. This is but a 3 set workout allowing intense stimulation without delving deep into his limited recovery ability. The next step would be to drop the triceps push downs as the press will thoroughly stimulate an already strong and muscular triceps muscle, bringing the total workout down to two sets.
I have found these abbreviated intense workouts to be super productive in my clients. They are in the gym minutes a week and they progress each and every workout… reaching their genetic potential in the shortest time possible. My best test results were with a client who trained once a week, with a three set workout lasting 15 minutes. Within 17 weeks gained 40 pounds of pure muscle. Amazing! If you do this right you will progress each and every workout but you must manage the volume and the frequency. As you get stronger and bigger, you must continue to adjust downward.
Remember, as a bodybuilder, your job is to get into the gym, stimulate muscle growth in the most efficient way, turn on the body’s growth mechanism and get out allowing it happen. It could take, depending on your level, from 4 days to two weeks for this recovery process to happen. It is not how long you train or how often, but how hard and if that process is short circuited by another workout, you get zip! So, stop being so positive and blast your progress into the stars!
-
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Drop Fat and Maintain Muscle the R U Serious Way!
By Bill Sahli
In most places in the states, February is a cold time of the year… except for a few places like Florida where beach weather is setting in. It incentivizes many to do an assessment of their body fat levels. Whether you are a fitness enthusiast or a recreational bodybuilder, ready to get rid of some unwanted baggage, the last thing you want to do is to loose hard earned muscle. If this is your intent, there are a few things that you must understand and consider before this undertaking.
MUSCLE AND FAT
Muscle and fat are like apples and oranges. They are not the same and you can’t turn muscle into fat. Underneath our covering of subcutaneous insulation, is an anatomy chart. It doesn’t matter if you are a bodybuilder, an aerobics instructor or a construction worker. The difference is this…the farther away you are from your ideal body fat level or your goal level, the longer it will take for you to get there and the more careful you will have to be in your journey. The more muscle mass you carry, the faster your metabolic rate is. That is why you see bodybuilders who are big and muscular yet lean and defined and eating everything not nailed down. It is because muscle is active. The more muscle you gain the more calories you need, plain and simple.
DETERMINE YOUR FINAL DESTINATION
In charting your goals, just like taking a trip, you have to know where you are going
before you can map it. You can do this by purchasing an inexpensive pair of calipers.
They come with directions and are easy to use. They are not as accurate as underwater
weighing which has an accuracy weight of 2% as compared to calipers 7-
Let’s say for instance you weigh 200 pounds and are at 17% body fat. This means you have approximately 35 pounds of fat and 165 pounds of lean body mass. Let’s say your goal was 10% body fat which is athlete condition. You want to remove 7% of your current fat from your body. Just multiply 200 x 7% on any calculator and you will get 14. So now you know you want to bring your bodyweight down to 186 pounds without loosing any muscle.
NO SACRIFICE NECESSARY
Have you ever noticed those who go on a diet and loose extreme amounts of weight sometimes look shriveled with their skin sort of hanging all over the place? The reason for this is they sacrificed both muscle and fat. That is not our goal. We want to keep every bit of hard earned muscle and just dump the fat, how do we do that? It is a simple solution, train for maximum muscle and diet for a lean body.
AEROBICS
The first mistake I see many doing is not only adding all kinds of aerobics to their
schedule but turning their weight resistance workout into an aerobics workout. They
lower the weights and add more reps and sets and before you know it, they look like
the thin man or woman and have lost a year’s worth of hard earned muscle. This is
not necessary or recommended. If you do this thing right, you can loose 1 to 2 pounds
a week and at the end of 4-
HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING
Arthur Jones said it perfectly and accurately in his description of a productive
workout. Your bodybuilding workouts should be intense, brief and infrequent. All
my clients follow a HIT workout consisting of 2-
DIET
My approach is the scientific approach to diet is plain and simple. It is all energy.
Fat is just stored energy. In order to loose fat you must create a deficit in your
energy requirement. The goal is to still maintain a well balanced diet while you
do it. There are many ways to figure out your calorie requirement, but the simplest
and most accurate is what I am about to describe. Record everything that you have
eaten for 3-
Another way to determine your weight by example is this. Take your bodyweight… 200
pounds and add a zero to the end of it… 2000, then take your bodyweight again and
if you are a man, multiply it by two… equals 400 or if you are a woman by one…equals
200 and then add that figure to the 2000 above. So if you are a man it will be 2400
calories or if you are a woman it will be 2200 calories. This will be your requirement
without any activity. I have found a neat piece of software that is inexpensive and
has everything you need to accurately track your diet. It is called Weight-
In sticking with a scientific approach, a well balanced diet is necessary. Any diet that removes macronutrients is just plain, not healthy. I suggest sticking with a well balanced diet and reducing your calorie intake by 500 a day initially. If you do the math, a pound of fat yields 3500 calories. If you reduce your calorie consumption by 500 a day over a seven day period, you will loose one pound of fat a week. However, you can not maintain a well balanced diet on less than 1200 calories a day, so, if your stature and bodyweight is such that you would have to go lower than 1200 calories a day in order to begin loosing, don’t go lower! Then and only then add aerobics. Start with 30 minutes every other day, either spinning, or fast walking. Nothing too hard, you should be able to talk comfortably while performing.
Your goal is to eat small meals frequently. I suggest 5 feedings or more equally spaced in calories throughout the day. This will keep your metabolism keyed as digestion is an important part. Eat salads frequently as they cost more calories to digest than they maintain. Drink water as it will help to hydrate you and cleanse the body.
Every couple of weeks on a single day, blow your diet. If you are wishing for ice cream eat it, if you want mashed potatoes and gravy do it. While competing I found that I could keep myself from hitting a sticking point when I did this and when I did hit a sticking point, rather than reducing calories even more, I did a whole day of it…when I finally lost the water weight from all the calories, my metabolism was racing and I was back on the fat loss wagon. Works every time!
ACTIVITY EQUALS ACTIVITY
Although aerobics is not recommended activity is. It is ok to go walking, hiking and dancing etc. This activity will also burn some additional calories. You can also try keying your metabolism with a change in schedule. Try getting up an hour earlier and/or going to be an hour later. This again increases your waking hours and of course affects your metabolism
ONCE YOU GET THERE
Once you are where you want to be, continue to eat in the way you have these past few weeks of dieting. Keep the meal frequency and the calorie allotment even and just add calories up to your maintenance level and if you now want to continue to add muscle to your frame, just add a couple of hundred extra calories a day, not much. The force feeding gurus will loose a bunch of money and so will the supplement makers but you will enjoy reaching your muscular goals while maintaining a lean physique.
While competing I would begin to diet way ahead of time and once down to my desired body fat level, I would eat my way to the contest. So leave yourself enough time to reach your goals in the safest and healthiest way possible! Good Luck.
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Saturday, January 26, 2008
Adjusting Volume and Frequency Equals
High Intensity Progress
By Bill Sahli
Amazing as it may seem, most bodybuilders, powerlifters and powerbuilders have not mastered this key. This is one of the most important points to your progress and if you don't get it right, you could be wandering aimlessly in a pool of confusion and doubt. If you do get it right, you will make progress each and every workout to the point of your genetic potential and this will not take decades, but a mere year or maybe two.
Science is a discipline, thus, there are not multiple valid theories. The muscle magazines for years have been conveying that everyone is different and you have to find what works for you. Rubbish!
If that were so, doctors could not prescribe medicine nor give anesthesia.
Could you imagine being on a table ready for surgery and the doctor of anesthesia says to you, "well Joe, we are going to try 200 milligrams of anesthesia instead of 150 milligrams we gave the last patient having this surgery and we will just have to see if that works...because of course, everyone is different and we really don't know how much to give you!"
You would jump off that table and be out the door before he could finish his last word! Of course this is not the case at all...doctors know exactly what to give, based on certain criteria. Medicine is very much a science as is the science of space travel. Do you think that NASA wonders if their astronauts are going to come back each time?
The science of building muscle is actually very cut and dry. The same things that work for you work for me and others... with the end result based on your genetic potential. It is not a free for all or a guessing game! In order to build muscle and strength, exercise has to be:
* Intense
* Brief and
* Infrequent
The reason for this is that your body has the capability of increasing its strength to the upper limits of 300% while only increasing its recover ability only 50%. This means as you get bigger and stronger the ability of the body to recover or compensate, and build muscle or overcompensate, becomes harder and harder unless... you regulate volume and frequency! Lifting weights is nothing more than a stress reaction as is a tan. You will receive an ultimate tan by going out on a sunny hot August day...not a cloudy December day. You will stimulate muscle growth with an intense contraction, working hard.
The question then becomes apparent, "How many times do I need to stimulate muscle growth in a workout?" or asked a different way, "How many sets do I have to do?"
If you wanted a tan, you would not go out into the hot August sun for two hours, out for 10 minutes, back in for two hours, out for 10 minutes and then repeat that cycle the entire day. Your body would not be able to cope with that stress! No way, especially if you were fare skinned! You would burn, blister and if repeated day after day, possible die!
Same goes for exercise. Once you have stimulated muscle growth with an intense set, you don't have to continue over and over again, get out of the gym! Also an important note is this... every consecutive rep up until the last almost impossible rep of a set is nothing more than a warm up. That last rep is the safest rep because the muscle is not able to contract full steam. In truth, it is the first rep that is most dangerous, but, it is the last rep that turns on the growth mechanism of the body.
Because of the following reasons, I agree with Mike Mentzer that, only one set per exercise is required:
* The body recovers systemically, meaning, as a whole. After it has recovered from the exhaustive effects of the workout, only then, if enough recover ability is left, can it compensate or lay down muscle.
* Since there are only, for explanation purposes, 100 shovel fulls of recover ability, the workout must be brief. The more sets that are done, the more shovel fulls are used, leaving less to lay down muscle or overcompensate.
* Because the body recovers systemically, as a whole, and not by body-
I would like to debunk a theory that many bodybuilders and weightlifter have right now...that is, if they don't get back in the gym in one to three days, that they will start loosing muscle.
This is ridiculous. How could you possibly loose muscle if your body still has not recovered from the last workout?
Now that you have a broad brush of the elements involved, how would you adjust volume and frequency? Read on...
Most of my clients perform 2-
Since I released my latest book in October 2007, High Intensity Powerbuilding -
What great testimonies of strength and muscle gain! But here is where it all ties together...
Those who were using this workout for a month or more asked, "Over the holiday season
I took almost 10 days off (and some said 14 days off, rather than 4-
As you get stronger you must reduce the volume and frequency of your workout so that your body can compensate and then overcompensate. If you take one more workout before this happens, you short circuit the process and get nothing! If you do one more set than is necessary to stimulate muscle growth, you are overtraining!
You move into that overtraining state and if you continue, it could take possibly weeks or months to recover.
So the best thing to do is to insert another 2 or 3 rest days between workouts. Remove an exercise. Many of my clients are on a two set workout performed every 7 days. One client went from 155 to 195 in 17 weeks training once every 7 to 10 days for 15 minutes! Lets do the math, If I have done this correctly he gained 40 pounds of muscle training about 3 hours total... total! I know bodybuilders that spend 3 hours in a single workout, 3 to 4 times a week. They are lost and wonder why they do not make any gains and negligible progress.
Now, an important point to mention is genetics. Your abilities are based on your genetics.
That is a true variable. Not everyone is going to be an Arnold or a Mike Mentzer but you can certainly be the best that you can be. The example above shows that this person had very good genetics. But what if it was only 20 pounds... still great!
If you do this right people, you will make gains each and every workout based on your genetics but until you take the right path, steps and understanding, you will never know if you could be an Arnold or a Mike Mentzer.
-
Friday, January 18, 2008
By Bill Sahli
This is a very profound statement. In our day of more is better, we are all lured into thinking that it applies to everything... You know... more money, more toys, more vacations, more pretty women, more, more, more. This is clearly an economic principal that does not apply to bodybuilding. Be warned, although the muscle magazines and supplement companies would have you think so, more is not better.
The body has specific and limited recovery ability and does not deal with volume and intensity together well. You can train long or you can train hard, but you can't do both.
A perfect example of this is the distance runner and the sprinter. The distance runner performs a great volume of work over a large duration of time in a very low intense fashion. The sprinter performs very little work, yet full bore, very intensely, over a short duration of time. It would be impossible for the sprinter to run full bore for miles, he would have to pace himself right? But look at the difference in the legs of the two. The distance runner's legs are stringy and the sprinter's legs are muscular and larger.
In order to develop large muscles the intensity of contraction is paramount. Of course, as a beginner, anything that you do will induce stimulation and require the body to compensate by an increase in muscle size, but the key word here is intense.
Much like going out in the hot August sun to get a tan, your muscles require an intense contraction to turn on the growth mechanism within the body. The body must them compensate for the exhaustive effects of the workout and then overcompensate by laying down muscle. This takes time and is not done in a day or two. The body recovers systemically and not by part.
In the gym, we are sprinters. It is not longer is better but harder is better. We have all seen those in the gym who spend hours doing endless sets and reps yet stopping at a predetermined number. I have asked many why they do what they do and they say, "Well, I read it in a Muscle Magazine and that is what So and So does"... They don't even know why they do it. These are the distance runners in the gym folks. They may progress to a certain point and stop and don't know why their progress has ceased. I get them ringing my phone daily. They are confused, bewildered and ready to quit in many cases because they think they do not have the genetic predisposition to succeed as a bodybuilder.
Once you stimulate muscle growth, you go home and rest and there is where your gains
are made. What does it take to stimulate muscle growth? Let's discuss that... is
it eight reps, ten reps, six reps...what is it? Well your body doesn't really know
how many reps you are doing. Every rep up until your last almost impossible rep,
the one that turns on the growth mechanism is nothing more than a warm-
Now that we have that cleared up, how many sets are optimal per exercise and why?
Is there a magic number for that? Should we start with five sets, four set, three
sets... how about one? Yes one! Like going out in the hot August sun, we do not have
to be out there for hours. It only takes one good exposure to get a tan and if we
were out for hours we would burn and possibly blister. Same thing here... once you
stimulate muscle with one set per exercise, that is all it takes. You don't have
to stimulate then re-
Arthur Jones said this:
"Everything of any value related to exercise can be stated in less than a thousand
words, can, in fact, be fairly well covered in only a few words, as follows: Train
hard, Train briefly, Train infrequently, and always remember that your final results
will primarily be a consequence of genetics" -
Most of my clients train using 2 -
-
Thursday, December 13, 2007
By Bill Sahli
There has been a lot of talk in the High Intensity Training community and HIT Forums about abbreviated workouts; performing a one or two set workout. In first hearing this the layman who has not trained in HIT fashion would glaze over this as some ridiculous assertion. I guarantee you that this type of workout is nothing to glaze over, if you understand the body's limited resources and what it takes to stimulate strength and muscle.
In the past two days, I have had the pleasure of talking with two people, one from my bodybuilding past, a close friend and one I just recently met through a friend of a friend, who brought me back to reminisce about the days of old, when I first started bodybuilding.
Alex, who is a high energy presence at Nautilus Exercise Equipment and I, reminisced about the old hard core gyms, where men extremely strong by even today's standards, would do crazy things prior to a set, because their psyche was so into their set. Alex spoke of a gym called BG gym... BG standing for Blood and Guts... where there are still holes in the wall next to the squat rack where one of these extremely strong men, after chalking up and taking a good sniff of a capsule of ammonia, put his head through the wall, hit a stud and with head bleeding proceeded to squat with hundreds of pounds to exhaustion. How many sets like that do you think one could do? (without the bleeding of course!)
I have memories of a picture floating around somewhere (maybe still) in Upstate New York of a guy named Bill, in a power rack, with an army helmet on and no shirt, with a thousand pounds on his shoulders after doing half squats with it. There were no hundred pound plates in the gym so the spotters tied 45 pound plates onto the locked collars to bring it up to on thousand pounds. The bar was bending around his shoulders. Crazy right... only one set could be performed, it is all she wrote!
You can tell what I am getting at. After performing sets like this, how many other sets to failure do you think the body is capable of without using every resource necessary to not only compensate but overcompensate for the exhaustive effects of the workout. Let me put it another way... how many 10 second exposures, three feet from the sun can you endure, before your body disintegrates? Remember exercise is only the stimulus; we grow muscle outside the gym!
While speaking to my close friend Jimmy last night, with whom I grew up with, it was evident that still today, many of those training in the gyms these days, do not have a thorough understanding of how muscular gains are made. However, Jimmy and I do, and I am going to share!
JIMMY'S SUCCESS
Jimmy was an amazing athlete and still is. Years back when we were in our twenties, Jimmy and I would train at the same dungeon together. I call it a dungeon because that is what it resembled. There was no flashy equipment unless you call a plate loaded leg extension machine and a lat pulldown machine flashy. It was all about strength for us because we knew that strength was always followed by size. The stronger you get, the more muscular you will become.
Jimmy stood 6'3" and weighed 310-
THE CORE ROUTINE
His core routine was the bench press, the squat, the row and deadlift... just three exercises. He didn't waste time on the small exercises usually that didn't matter. At the time, we didn't use wrist raps either, we used chalk! You know, hand chalk? Or do you? It would always be, "Jimmy, pass the chalk!" before a heavy lift as it was about grip strength and you are only as strong as your weakest ink!
While we talked last night, Jimmy shared a story. While deadlifting at his regular gym, another younger guy was deadlifting next to him, he was in his mid twenties. Jimmy, the gentleman that he is, offered his chalk to this young man prior to doing his set of deadlifts. The young man responded..."What is that?"
In the days of wrist wraps and shinny equipment, elevator music in corporate gyms and little noise or gym screaming or grunting prior to a set, I reflect a great deal on what set the foundation for our success. It was the basics! It was the desire and it was the mindset, that "no matter what" mindset! What we did worked. We trained with abbreviated routines, we trained for strength and our physiques showed it. We ate well and were not worried of a bit of fat on our midsection. Our motto was, "Don't make your waist smaller, make your shoulders wider". Because it is the illusion in bodybuilding that makes the difference, which is why a man with the right symmetry and body type looks pounds heavier than he normally is. Remember Dorian, tales are told his waist was almost 40 but you would never know it!
MIKE MENTZER, THE THINKING MAN'S BODYBUILDER
Mike Mentzer, still my bodybuilding hero to this day, years later, validated what we already knew to work. Not because we put the thought into it like Mike did, but because that is the way Jimmy and I trained as bodybuilders in a power lifting gym! It was all about strength. We never worked down; just up to our "work set" we called it. We hardly did anything but big exercises and didn't want to waste energy. When we felt still tired when our next workout was scheduled, we would go and eat and not worry about it. We would come back stronger the next day.
Mike taught us why it worked so well. Mike established the true theory of High Intensity Training and with that theory reasoned and experimented to the point of no doubt, that an abbreviated routine is the most productive step toward reaching your muscular goals. I am so very grateful for his work and his contribution to bodybuilding. I don't think that anyone so far has had such a profound affect on the bodybuilding community.
WHAT EXERCISES COUNT
The next question is what exercises are the best. Well, with strength in mind, Paul Anderson, who is my strength hero, knew and understood that strength truly comes from the legs and back. So this is where the focus should be. The basics... squats, deadlifts, rows or high pull and to round it off, a pushing movement in the order of a press, bench or dip. Where is the arm work, shoulder work and calve work you ask? No need. Believe me if you do this right, none is necessary. Both Jimmy and myself, without doing any direct arm work or shoulder work for months experienced huge arms by even today's standards. Jimmy's taped over 20 inches and mine 18 ¾ inches. Without doing a curl for months I could barbell curl 225 or more for reps! My calves responded similarly, as did my shoulders with a 275 press behind the neck without doing them!
I am currently experimenting with just such a program and once perfected in the gym, I will release it on my website but in the mean time, stick with the basics for best results.
Jimmy, pass the chalk! And the ammonia capsules! J
-
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Contest Prep for the Bodybuilder
By Bill Sahli
Lately there has been a lot of discussion about building muscle and loosing fat. There are many miracle diets and workouts on the market today. Most bodybuilders are confused and bewildered on what to do. Whether you are getting ready for a show or if you just want to look your best for the beach, there are steps necessary to insure you success!
Rule One... Train for strength, Muscle!
Rule Two... Eat for definition!
Rule Three... Prepare in advance!
The first thing necessary is to determine what kind of shape you are in today and where you want to be when you walk on stage or on the beach!
Use the mirror, it will never lie! When I was competing I knew that I was in shape when just below my belly button, the skin was transparent, meaning, no fat. If I was holding body fat there, I knew I was not lean enough.
The second thing is to start way ahead of time in your contest preparation. I actually would start dieting, depending on what shape I was in, weeks out, sometimes 16 weeks or more, so that I could reach my lowest body fat level a month out from the show. I would then eat my way up to my best shape at which I would compete. The advantage here is to do away with the stress of being on an extremely low calorie diet. I would walk on stage looking health and energetic.
The third thing is NEVER add aerobics unless it is absolutely necessary. Remember, your goal is to go into the show the biggest and hardest you can be. If you are doing aerobics you will not come in at your biggest and best, as now you are cross training. Start weeks ahead of time so that you are not panicked while doing tons of aerobics last minute to shed the residue of fat left. This will burn muscle and fat, the opposite of what you want. Walking is OK at a leisurely pace.
The fourth thing is to train for strength. High Intensity Training folks! Intense, brief and infrequent! The stronger you are the bigger and more muscular you will be. I was at my strongest a couple weeks before the show, always! Forget the light weight and high rep nonsense! We are all anatomy charts underneath the blanket of fat we wear on our bodies, no matter how much or how little that is. I left the last couple of week to back off of training and perfect my posing routine.
DIET
Although there are all different types of diets... low fat, high fat, high protein
etc. It is calories in and calories out. Follow a well balanced diet while cutting
your calories by 500-
TRAINING
Muscle and fat are two different things. Your goal is to train to preserve or increase your strength and thus your muscle. How? By training intensely, briefly and infrequently...once every four to seven days, based on your level and progress. Remember, we are talking muscle here, not fat. Your body fat level is managed by your diet. There should be no change in your training for a show except to possibly get bigger and stronger. Remember also, that the diet will add an additional stress factor to your body so be cognizant of that and how you feel. If you find you are still not recuperated and need an additional day of rest, no problem. Monitor your calories and take the rest.
I found I made some of my best gains while training for a show because of the emotion put into it, the mindset and the effort.
POSING
Practice your posing. There are many great movies of bodybuilders of yesteryear posing. I always liked Mike Mentzer and Ed Corney. Get these movies and watch them.
Train yourself to have a smile while effortlessly hitting graceful poses, if that is your style.
Find music you would like to pose to. Classical music is nice, but I have also posed to the theme song "Iron Man". Whatever one you choose, practice, practice, practice! It not only burns calories but allows you to achieve the muscle control necessary to display your hard earned muscles.
Learn how to transition from one pose to another. Set up a posing lamp in front of a full length mirror, front and back and start practicing from the get go. Practice your compulsory poses while holding them for a minute or two.
Start shopping for posing trunks, the color, and the cut. Black is a good color to start with and then you can go from there.
CARB LOADING
Carb loading is done to ensure that your muscles are as full and hard as possible when you walk on stage. This technique is done a little differently by many, so I will give the process I used to load for a contest.
If I was going to compete on a Saturday, I would start the process on Monday. The last week I would do very little other than pose daily. My training would cease almost entirely, except for a workout in the beginning of the week. Other than that I would stay active, walk and pose daily, sometimes posing for an hour or two!
Starting Monday, reduce your carb intake to less than 30 grams a day and increase your fat intake to compensate for it. We don't want to drop calories at this point so make it up with fat. Monitor your carbs and protein and increase your fat to your calorie level. Make sure you drink plenty of water as it will seem as if you are urinating allot, due to the lack of carbs to hold the water inside the muscle.
Thursday morning, you will reduce the fat in your diet, drop your protein a bit,
and add carbs to your diet. Not just any carbs, but those low on the glycemic-
By Friday, during the day you should be looking pretty good. Continue to do your posing but nothing else. Limit your posing on Friday as I want you fresh for Saturday.
Saturday morning, have a good breakfast but be careful with the salt and sugar etc. Don't over eat but don't under eat either. Sip water don't drink.
After prejudging don't blow it, continue your monitoring of your diet for the night show. Good Luck
TIPS and SECRETS
If you come to a point in your progress in loosing body fat where you are stuck, go off your diet for a day! Eat anything and everything you choose but then the next day, even though you may be holding water and seem to have gained a few pounds, don't worry. This will kick start your metabolism. What a fun way to do a kick start!
You can sometimes key your metabolism by sleeping less. Start with either waking up an hour earlier or going to be an hour later. As long as you don't feel exhausted you should be fine.
Although coffee and caffeine have had some negative press, it also keys the metabolism and helps prior to a workout.
IF YOU MUST
If your metabolism is such that you can not reduce your calories while consuming a well balanced diet, which become impossible below 1200 calories... then, add some biking or walking. No more than three times a week for no more than 30 to 45 minutes. This mainly pertains to the lighter athletes and females. Be careful with aerobics.
MY FINAL THOUGHTS
If you stick to science, and think through it, you will never be confused or bewildered. The science of bodybuilding has exacting principals as does the science of nutrition. I wish you luck on reaching your bodybuilding goals, whatever they may be!
-
Friday, November 9, 2007
Serious Biceps with One Set
by Bill Sahli
Biceps... everyone loves big biceps!
Whether they are looking at them, or own them, or feel them, they love them. Biceps are associated with strength and prowess as are wide muscular shoulders. Very primordial indeed as the cornerstone of masculinity, it is usually the first thing noticed in a short sleeve shirt.
So, how does one develop a big set of biceps? Or, more importantly, once they begin to grow, how do you keep them growing? Do you just add more sets of eight or do you raise the reps to twelve or maybe twenty to shock them into growth? It is shocking to see that many do just that!
AN INTENSE MUSCULAR CONTRACTION
Muscle growth is a reaction to a stress, like going out into the hot August sun. When you go out into the hot August sun, your body experiences it as a stress. Due to the intense sunlight, your skin begins to compensate, and then overcompensate, to lay down a means of protection for the next time you are exposed. The pigment in your skin becomes darker, you get a tan!
If you went out on a cloudy day in October for five hours, you would not get a tan as you would, being exposed to direct sunlight in August. The reason is because there is no stimulus... even if you put a whole bottle of suntan lotion on! By the way, I equate just that to bodybuilders who are in the gym doing four sets of eight or a predetermined number of reps, stopping short of the last almost impossible rep that turns on the growth mechanism.
How long and often do you think you would have to go out into the hot August sun to get darker? If you stayed out for three hours rather than two, you would possibly burn. If you went out again the next day you would probably blister and if you continued you would end up in the hospital. The reason is that the body would not have the time to compensate and then overcompensate for the intense rays of the sun. The volume and frequency is just too much.
Muscle requires an intense contraction in order to grow. As one grows stronger, the contraction must be more intense.
The question...how many intense contractions does a muscle need to stimulate growth?
The answer...one good one! Why one? As with the affect of the hot August sun, the body has a limited tolerance to exercise volume and a limited resource to compensate for that stress. Volume is not the answer, intensity is!
CLIMBING THE LADDER OF INTENSITY
As your biceps grow larger, it is not sets that you must add or reps but a more intense contraction. You can train hard or long, but you can't do both!
For example, if you have been doing a set of Nautilus Curls to failure or maybe Barbell
Curls and you hit an impasse where your strength and/or size gains have ceased, what
should you do? Well we all know that the most important rep of any set is the last
rep because it is the one that turns on the growth mechanism. Every rep previous
to that is nothing more than a warm-
CONTRACTIONS ONLY AND NEGATIVES
This works wonderfully and best if done on a Nautilus or Hammer Curl machine. If you have a training partner, you can have him assist and use both arms simultaneously or if you don't do it in Omni fashion (one arm at a time) and use your other arm to assist.
Use a weight heavier than what you could normally curl, usually thirty percent or so. Have your training partner assist you into the contracted position where your biceps are fully contracted. Be careful that your elbows are aligned with the axis of the machine. Hold the weight for seven to ten seconds (as a guide), to a point where you no longer are able to hold the weight, at which point you will do an extremely slow negative all the way to the bottom of the movement. You will find as I did in my phone clients that after a couple of workouts when they go back to doing a set of reps to failure, they will be stronger. Only one set necessary!
PARTIAL REPS
This is one of my favorites and it was Mike Mentzer that turned me on to this. He and Ray used to do this one with over two hundred pounds!
This technique is best done with a ninety degree preacher curl bench and a barbell. Your rep range should be about six full reps to failure, but don't stop at six if it is not failure. Once you reach the point where you can not do another rep, have your training partner assist you with the next. At that point, your training partner will be holding his hands under the bar, as a safety net, while you lower it slowly. There will be a point where you feel you will not be able to return and your partner at that point will give you just enough assistance until you begin to move and complete the rep on your own. You two must be in synch with this! Now this point is usually less than half way down. Your partner will just get you moving again as you contract as hard as you can until you are finishing the partial end of the movement your own. Your partner can hold his hands at that same point as you lower the bar into his hands and he assists you until you get it moving again, sort of catching it for you. Do as many partial reps as safely possible, usually about four are enough but you will know. Move the bar slowly and strictly. One set is enough!
PREEXHAUSTION
This is another that can be done also by those who do not have access to Nautilus or Hammer Strength machines or to raise the intensity temporarily of your biceps workout.
Superset one set of barbell curls to failure with a close grip, hands facing you
(like a chin up) lat pull-
(Authors Note: I suggest if you are doing a bicep movement after back, and are doing
a pull-
BE CAREFUL WITH TECHNIQUES
Be careful to not overuse these techniques. Use them for a couple or three workouts and then go back to training to failure. The leap in intensity is great. Always manage your volume and frequency as you get bigger and stronger.
ABBREVIATED ROUTINES
If you are doing an abbreviated routine in which you are not doing direct bicep work, you can incorporate some of these techniques such as contractions and negatives... and partials. However, do not get stuck using any technique for a long period of time or every workout as they can lead to overtraining very quickly if not managed properly.
-
Thursday, November 1, 2007
The Other Side Of Genetics
by Bill Sahli
Genetics play an amazing role in everything you are including your body.
Will everyone that lifts a weight become an Arnold, Mike Mentzer or a Dorian Yates? Not likely but if they do it right, they can reach their genetic potential. What about you, what are your goals?
In my Book, RU Serious, I have this to say about genetics...
"Although we are made up the same
physically and muscle growth is stimulated
in the same way with you, me, her, him
etc., we all have different genetic
capability. Not everyone is going to have
the genetics to become an Arnold or a
Mike Mentzer. In the same way, not
everyone has the same exercise
tolerance... There are those who can train
every 4th day and those who may have to
train every 10th and even longer. At the
same time some may be able to do 5 sets
per workout and others only 3 sets per
workout and sometimes only 1 or 2 sets!"
We all know that it takes intense, brief and infrequent exercise to stimulate muscle growth. Arthur Jones, a genius and the creator of Nautilus exercise equipment, who spent a small fortune testing and finding out how muscle grows, had this to say...
"Everything of any value related to exercise can be stated in less than a thousand
words, can, in fact, be fairly well covered in only a few words, as follows: Train
hard, Train briefly, Train infrequently, and always remember that your final results
will primarily be a consequence of genetics" -
We all know by now that everyone although physically the same may and usually does have a different tolerance to exercise, the amount of volume they can tolerate while training intensely. In this case lesser is always better because "training hard" as Arthur Jones referred to it, uses quite a bit of the body's resources especially as you grow stronger. And, since the body recovers systemically, rather than locally, meaning... the entire system has to put back what was used in the workout before it can overcompensate or build muscle, it is imperative to have enough left to do so and that takes time and is based on your genetics.
Remember, training is always a negative. If we could figure out a way to do no sets and stimulate growth, that would be amazing. Unfortunately, that isn't easy. If in fact another workout is performed before the process described above takes place, you will literally short circuit the process, i.e. You will not build muscle.
A QUICK NOTE: This dispels the belief that you loose muscle after a certain period if you don't train. Think about this... if you understand how the body lays down muscle, how could you loose muscle if you haven't even gotten through the compensation stage? Have you ever taken a month layoff, either forced or voluntary and come back stronger? Get my point?
Ok, where am I going with all this... what is the other side of genetics?
If you are doing this thing right, you should be progressing, each and every workout and that means getting stronger. You should be adding reps or weight or both each and every workout.
Remember, a properly designed workout program is really a strength program.
The question then arises, "what if I am getting stronger each and every workout and my body is not changing, I am not gaining or loosing weight but getting stronger?"
I have found in my past experience, a strength gain always precedes a bodyweight gain. I personally have gone a couple of months or so and not gained anything... then I jump on the scale and I am five pounds heavier. There are others including Mike Mentzer that verified the same experience personally to me.
Now the other side of genetics...
I have had clients on all sides of the spectrum.
I have had some that continue to make progress in strength but it may take them longer for that five pound muscle gain, maybe five or six months or longer. These folks are at the lowed end of the genetic table for adding muscle. Typically these folks are on abbreviated routines and their genetics are doing the best they can.
I also have had clients that are middle ground. It may be a couple of months of no bodyweight gain then they jump on the scale and are five or ten pounds heavier. Typically these folks can use an alternating upper lower body routine and need about four days rest between workouts. They also have to be scaled down further as they grow stronger so as to continue to make progress.
Then I have those who are on the other side of the spectrum, the high side. Let me
give you a recent perfect example...I have a RUSerious student that I consult that
hasn't stopped gaining muscle! He has gained so far (36lbs NOT!-
"I have a problem."..."What is it?" I said... He goes "I just bought all new clothes and I haven't stopped gaining! My thighs measure 26 inches and I don't want them to get any bigger because I will have to buy new pants!"
WHAT A PROBLEM! I think every bodybuilder wishes that they could have a problem like that. I told him...
"Cut your leg workout down to once every four workouts and don't add any reps, just maintain."
Not until we got him down to three sets did he start making those kinds of gains!
In fact, talk about gains...I had him doing dips as part of one of his workouts. He started with an assisted dip machine, one you stand on to help you do dips, so that your entire bodyweight is not used in doing the exercise. His last workout he did his bodyweight PLUS 90 pounds for 5 reps! And remember, he also gained 40 pounds so far.
This bodybuilder is the all star of genetics. He is on the other side of the spectrum
but you don't know that until you apply the correct theory and principals. Typically
someone like this will be cut down to doing 1-
So, if you are training intensely, briefly and infrequently and are making strength gains you are moving along nicely. Your body can not get stronger without, at some point adding muscular bodyweight, based on your genetic potential. Be especially careful to manage the volume and frequency being applied.
Also, it is important to give your body a little extra to create the cement to lay that extra muscle down.
I am going to add a section from my book RUSerious below to help you determine how much extra cement you need. See below:
Insert RU Serious-
A Balanced Diet
Please don't make this complicated, it isn't. Follow a well balanced diet, based
on your caloric requirement. If you want to get an idea of what calories you require,
take your body-
i.e. 200 lbs x 10 = 2000 calories. 200 x 2 = 400. 400 + 2000 = 2400 calories for a 200 lb body.
Or, you can keep track of everything you eat for 3 days. At the end of 3 days, if you have not lost or gained, divide that by 3 and the result is your daily maintenance level.
If you want to loose fat, decrease no more than 500 calories a day. If you want to gain, try increasing 250 a day over your daily maintenance in a balanced fashion.
Below is a link that will give a wealth of information about what constitutes a well balanced diet....
Keep it simple, it is the stimulus and then the rest that creates muscle. The diet supplies the nutrients to accommodate the growth. Anything over that which is needed is excreted and in the case of macronutrients, laid down as body fat. As long as you continue gaining strength as documented as weight and reps in your log book, you are gaining muscle. In most cases a strength gain will precede a muscular body weight gain.
Additional Calories
In order to gain optimally it may be necessary to supply your body with additional calories in order to have the substance necessary to add additional muscle. Although it has been documented that extreme muscular gains have resulted on a deficit of calories present and those calories were borrowed from another source, such as a fat source, it is wiser to supply additional cement necessary to create that growth. I would suggest 250 calories in excess of your normal level or if you are extremely thin, 500 calories.
Supplements
On a well balanced diet it is not necessary to add supplements; unless you feel that you are not maintaining a perfectly balanced diet. In this case try adding a multi vitamin/mineral tablet. This should work perfectly.
Also, remember, we are mostly water, make certain that you drink enough water. A good rule of thumb I use is take your bodyweight, divide it by two and this is the amount of water you should be drinking. If you weight 200 lbs, drink 100 ounces of water a day.
Below is a great place to calculate it...
End RUSerious Insert -
Again, as long as you are getting stronger, you are adding muscle. Muscle is gained in grams each day. A gram is equal to .035 oz. If you do your math you will see it is almost non recognizable to see on a daily basis that kind of a gain. Your bodyweight may vary based on different variables like holding water or a hair cut. The only way that you can accurately monitor your progress is by your strength.
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Friday, October 18, 2007
George, Is The Squat Necessary?
by Bill Sahli
I have been asked this a number of times by my phone consult clients. Growing up in a power lifting gym, you learn pretty quick that the squat is the king of exercises and if you want your body to grow, you better master it.
BIG EXERCISE BIG MUSCULAR GAINS
Any "big exercise" that employs that kind of muscle mass in the body is a growth exercise. See... although we all know that the quads are the main movers in the squat, it also works to a lesser degree the calves, lower back, hamstrings, gluteus and because of the nature of the exercise, meaning you have to really contract and lock every part of your body to perform this exercise, the squat stimulates growth in all the muscles groups.
Back over 30 years ago, in an area YMCA that I cut my teeth in, there was a man named George Minor. Back in that time bodybuilding was not as prevalent as it is today and the YMCA weight room was mainly power lifters, with only a couple of bodybuilders, myself and my mentor at the time, Roger being the couple. George stood about 5'3" and weighed about 230 pounds. He was a massive man who was a power lifter. Well, talk about high intensity abbreviated training, George had the ultimate workout. I didn't know back then until I was already into my bodybuilding career, but George was onto something that would later be utilized by the likes of Mike Mentzer and myself and others, to create growth, strength and mass in not only ourselves but our training clients.
GEORGE'S FIRST EXERCISE
George would come into the gym every 5-
George squatted with the bar below his traps, on his rear delts, the way most power lifters or those around power lifters learned to squat. Although many bodybuilders are taught to train with high bar squats, George's thighs were massive to look at... so his style of squatting did not hamper the growth of his thighs.
George also went what he called "Rock Bottom" and just did not know what a partial squat was all about and because of it, his development and strength showed it.
WARMUP
The warm up was pretty basic... George did not believe that you should have to warm up with countless sets. He believed that it would take away from the ultimate effort set. George did sometimes one warm up, maybe two and most of the time none! He would put a couple of plates on each side of the bar if he decided to warm up that day, take it off the racks and do one maybe two reps, that is all he needed he said.
ARE YOU A MAN!
George's famous quote (he had a couple) and he would say to me, "Bill, your not a man unless you can go rock bottom with 600 pounds" and he would let out a half grunt half laugh sorta like "ha". Now George had one of the deepest voices I had ever heard, he was a true Hercules of his day.
THE SET
George would load 600 pounds on an Olympic bar, a site to see. He would put collars on the bar and secure them tight to not have any accidents and as he unracked the bar, as it was bending over his shoulders, without any belt, straps etc, he would go ROCK BOTTOM for one rep with 600 pounds. Yep, ass to the floor, rack the weight and walk out of the gym! DONE!
A ONE SET WORKOUT?
Is this so hard to believe? We read all kinds of complicated articles and look at all types of workouts in the muscle magazines that have you doing 3 sets of this, 4 sets of that... keep it simple! George only added bench presses to his workout to re establish his benching form. George did this just a month before a power meet. George was a 400 pound bencher and was natural, no drugs! Except for one, I will tell you about later! George also did not deadlift, except about two weeks before the meet, again for style. So here you have a natural athlete, who is a 400 bencher, 600 squatter and a 585 dead lifter whose entire workout is ONE SET OF SQUATS!
MY THOUGHTS AND FINDINGS
In my bodybuilding career, especially in the beginning when I was a teenager and competing, I tried a number of routines. However, growing up in a power lifting gym helped me to get good and strong in the very basic of exercises.
Reading and studying the findings of Mike Mentzer also helped me to understand what productive anaerobic exercise was all about and aided me greatly to be a successful competitive bodybuilder.
Moving through into today and after training a number of clients as well as myself, I learned early on that it is all about intensity of effort. It is not how much you do but how you do it. It is the stimulus as the body is affected and then compensates systemically and then overcompensates, that matters. Sometimes this could take days and sometimes weeks.
My best gains of my career was when I trained with abbreviated routines and at the slightest sign of not being recovered yet, my training partner and I would go eat rather than train and would normally take a few more days off.
While on the road for two years as a musician some years back, I stayed away from the gym totally. In my house I had a home made leg press machine, a dipping bar and chin up bar. I would do 1 set of leg presses, one set of chins with my hands facing me (the conventional way) and one set of dips to failure, a couple of times a week. I not only maintained my existing muscle mass but increased my strength and size. Two years later I returned to the gym and the first day back, without ever benching in those two years, benched almost 400 pounds! The dip is the squat of the upper body.
I just had an RUSerious student, one of whom I am working to make a training video
with, just gain 31 pounds of muscle in 13 weeks, while training once every 7-
WHY? Because he has grown so strong and his contractions are so much more intense, (and although you can increase your strength by 300 percent, your ability to recover only increases 50 percent) that his workout volume must be reduced along with his frequency of workouts so that the compensation and then the over compensation can occur.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? You can either train long or hard, but you can't train long and hard... compare the sprinter with the distance runner. Since he is stronger and bigger, what used to take him 8 days to recover then build added muscle will now take longer because there are only so many available resources allow. And, because of this, the least that can be done to stimulate muscle growth will leave more to go into the growth process. Training is always a negative. If we could stimulate without training, that would be the perfect scenario. If the volume and frequency of his workouts were not managed correctly, he would quickly move into a state of being over trained.
WHAT IS OVERTRAINING? Overtraining is doing anything more than is required to stimulate a positive gain.
GEORGE'S DRUG
The only thing that George really indulged in and he truly loved was not a drug.
He loved McDonald's Egg McMuffins. He would say to me, "Bill, I love Egamuffins".
Thank you George for your wisdom!! :-
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Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Is 30 pounds of muscle in 3 hours impossible? NO!
by Bill Sahli
15 years ago, I would have said impossible to gain anymore than 10 pounds of muscle in a year! This is certainly not the case anymore. In fact, it is proven!
Based on a 35 year learning curve in bodybuilding competition and what I know about anaerobic exercise and diet now, this would certainly seem impossible from where I was back then. However, as the saying goes... "If I only knew then what I know now!"
Back in the 70s I was training comparatively much less than anyone else on the scene
except for a man named Mike Mentzer and his brother Ray. I was training 3 days a
week, doing one half the body on one workout, and the other half on the other! I
was doing maybe 7-
It was very refreshing to see how Mike had changed the way bodybuilders conduct their business, meaning, building muscle. Mike approached it from a scientific point of view. With the help and time spent with his mentor Arthur Jones, who is the creator of Nautilus, Mike became known in that time as the Thinking Man's bodybuilder! Although Mike is no longer with us, due to an undetected condition unrelated to bodybuilding, I still consider him one of the greatest minds in bodybuilding science and more over in this era.
Back in the early to middle 90's, I had the pleasure of Mike's knowledge first hand. I contacted him for phone consults for myself and in that we developed a friendship where he helped me forge my thought process, which has allowed me to guide my clients' progress without guessing or hoping, they might make progress. They just do! At the time Mike had been building his own personal training business (and he helped me with mine) and was doing an awful lot of research on building muscle. He admitted as I just have, even though he was training less than anyone else, he was still training too much!
GENETICS
As with all human beings, we are physically not that different. If we were, doctors could not treat symptoms, perform surgery and help us heal our illnesses if they are present. A good example is with an anesthesiologist. This doctor knows exactly how much anesthesia to give you when performing his craft. He doesn't guess! It is a science. In being a science much like any other science that has exact disciplines, there are certain proven theories. If this was not the case, NASA would never have been able to send an astronaut into space and have him come back safely. It would be a crap shoot! But, it isn't.
Genetics is a factor in the mix. As are there different individuals who have tolerance to sunlight, i.e. albinos at one end of the spectrum and Negros at the other, there are those who have different tolerance to exercise within a specific spectrum. Meaning, they can only be EXPOSED to a certain volume and frequency. I have a good friend that is a Negro who has no problem being out in the hot August sun for an hour or more, however his wife, who is a red head, fair and freckled, can not withstand a fraction of the same that he can, without incurring a nasty burn.
There is no question that high intensity training, like the sun, is nothing more than a stress that nudges the body to adapt and compensate for that stress. Once it compensates for the added stress, it overcompensates. The overcompensation that occurs by intense training is the laying down of additional muscle and the overcompensation that occurs in being in the hot August sun is the laying down a tan, darkening the skin.
Here is a great analogy... like working in the garden, and getting a callus on your hands, you never get a callus on your hands by setting the table.
THE INVERSE
You can train hard or you can train long, but you can't train hard and long. The harder you train, the shorter the duration must be! It is specific to the outcome.
No one really knows how much intensity it takes to turn on the growth mechanism of the body. Is it 50, is it 70, is it 85 or is it 100%? No one knows. So the most logical place to start is at 100%. There are those who tout cycle training or periodization, where you increase and back off of the intensity in a cycle fashion. This is malarkey! All they are doing is trying to compensate for the exhaustive effects of the workout. If done properly this is unnecessary!
SYSTEMIC RECOVERY FIRST
The body does not recover based on your body parts ...meaning, if you train chest and arms today it does not mean that your system has recovered to train shoulders and back tomorrow, wait a day, train legs, then eyebrows and fingernails (just kidding) etc. The body recovers systemically. It recovers as a whole. If you short circuit the process in the mean time by training again before you have compensated and then overcompensated, you will experience very little gain if any and quite possibly back slide or loose muscle in the long run.
Did you ever notice as a beginner bodybuilder you make gains right off the bat no matter what you do. However, as you get bigger and stronger, your gains slow down? Once your progress slows the usual response is the more is better theory. Those trying to build a more muscular body go to the nearest guru muscle magazine, search through all the routines to find out what the most current Mr. Olympia is doing and then switch to that routine! RIDICULOUS! Then they thumb through to see the most recent magic potion that will help them gain muscle while they train!! STOP WASTING PRECIOUS TIME!
First off, the Mr. Olympia's of today and yesteryear use and used, huge amounts of drugs like growth hormone, insulin, steroids to name a few. All of these drugs step up the body's recovery systems and put them into hyper space. The problem is two fold, they are very expensive and they are illegal. Now there is question if I agree with their legality as I believe in free choice but the fact still remains that they aid in warp speed recovery. Most of us choose to gain muscle based on our genetic ability and not with drugs.
Building muscle is much like building a mountain. When you train, the stimulation or stress, as long as it is intense enough to turn on the growth mechanism in the body, is much like digging a ditch. Before you can build a mountain, you must first fill the ditch. Once the ditch is filled, then and only then, can you put more earth on top of the filled hole to create the mountain. OK, here is the clincher!!
You body only has 100 shovel fulls or points (I will call it that) of recovery ability. It doesn't matter if you have a 12 inch arm or an 18 inch arm... that is all you have no matter what level of development you are at. If you use those up during your workout there is nothing left for recovery or growth.
The problem is that an 18 inch arm able to curl 200 lbs can contract more intensely than a 12 inch arm that can curl 50 lbs. THIS MEANS that the more intense contraction of the 18 inch arm uses more of those 100 shovel fulls and more of the recovery ability than the 12 inch arm. REMEMBER, training is always a negative. If we could stimulate muscle growth without training...this would be perfect as we could use those 100 shovel fulls in the compensation (or recovery) stage and then the overcompensation stage which is muscle growth. Reiterating again, the body must first recover from the exhaustive effects of the workout or compensate, fill the ditch, then anything left over goes into overcompensation or building muscle, building the mountain. Recovery can take up to several days if not weeks!
MANAGING VOLUME AND FREQUENCY
Have you ever noticed after a layoff whether forced or voluntary, you always come back even stronger? I have noticed this myself and throughout my bodybuilding career and with my clients. These are the findings...
THE PERFECT WORKOUT
We spoke about a number of things so far, let me give you an example that will interest you...
Peter, who is an RU Serious avid student started on a workout I prescribed over the
phone to him 13 weeks ago. He was doing 3 sets, 2 separate workouts, training once
every 7-
Age -
Height -
Beginning Bodyweight -
Bodyweight 13 weeks later -
Lean Muscle Gain 13 weeks -
Goal Bodyweight -
As you can see, it does not take much in volume to stimulate muscle growth. In fact, the stronger you become the less frequent and the less volume should you implement regarding your workouts.
I am actually going to recommend for Peter to reduce his sets from 3 per workout
to 2 per workout and train every 8-
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Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Introducing Peter C. Lowden, LMT and Bodybuilder
by Peter C. Lowden, afterword by Bill Sahli
Hello readers of RU Serious...allow me to introduce myself. My name is Peter Lowden and I have been a massage therapist for 12 years now. My interest however in health and all things associated extends back much further than that.
When Bill asked me to contribute articles to his website, I honestly hesitated at first due to my ever growing therapy business.
Then I decided why not? Every day I am speaking to patients about massage, exercise, honoring themselves and their bodies and simply just listening when your body says "Take care of me!"
In this first installment I just wanted to introduce myself and give the readers a brief, keep it simple, description of what massage is... and can do, to enhance your workout recoverability.
Massage is a diverse yet uncomplicated therapy. There are many names and types of work (medical, structural, neuromuscular, energy, shiatsu, acupressure, touch for health the lists can go on), yet when you put them all together, there are more similarities than differences. At another time I will give more detailed descriptions of the different therapies, but for now, I will keep it simple.
The basic goal of using massage after exercise is to assist one's body in removing the waste byproducts associated with the stress the body was just subject too. And a few are:
1. Relaxing tightened muscles
2. Stretching
3. Increasing blood flow
4. Increasing energy flow
5. Creating a space was someone feels comfortable enough to allow their body to release or remove tension.
Most alternative therapies like massage put the patient's wellness first and assist individuals in learning how to become accountable for their own well being.
In my future contributions I will touch on:
1. The importance of proper hydration and how lack of such can affect your workouts
2. The importance of stretching after exercise
3. More specific descriptions of massage so one may find a style that suits their individual goals.
Thank you for allowing me this space to express in writing what I have been preaching and teaching for years.
Blessings,
Pete
“Peter Lowden has been a bodybuilder for 20 years and is an avid user of the principals
found in RUSerious?-
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Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Pills, Potions and Going Through the Motions
by Bill Sahli
As I was driving to the gym today to take a workout for myself (1st in almost 7
days, took about 12 minutes) I was thinking of a conversation that I had with one
of my new phone clients about diet and exercise the other day. Sergio is a truck
driver and he used to be in shape when younger but not lately. In assessing his needs
and what he is trying to accomplish, Sergio had some interesting questions and commentary.
He advised that because of his profession and new born baby and bride, he is no longer
able to get to the gym 3-
He wanted to know what supplements I am using and recommend and how many hours a day minimum he could use to get back in shape.
Folks, please let's think about what was said here for a second... (Sergio gave me permission to write about this by the way as long as I changed his name so I did) we have a middle aged man, who is mainly sedentary due to his profession, eating fast food. Since he has not used his muscle it has atrophied and he has bought a cure all elixir to take up the slack!
He is confused!
Before muscle can be built, it must be stimulated, period! Like a suntan, you must
go out into the hot sun, enough to stimulate the effect of that stress. If you go
out for hours and possibly for the day, you might burn or blister. Same thing with
muscle, you will never get a suntan on a cloudy day no matter how long you stay out
there and no matter how much suntan oil you rub on! Also, it only takes a stimulus.
Once stimulus has occurred you don't have to re-
Muscle does not turn to fat and visa versa. An apple can not turn to an orange! Fat is storage. Through out history, there has been famine. When you body senses that you are starving, it begins to store body fat because it thinks you are going to die. Why do you think bodybuilders eat frequently and are always lean? Because the body never has to hold on to any storage because it never thinks it is starving. Eating one or two meals a day encourages the body to hold onto body fat. Eating a high calorie meal once a day with little nutritional value tells it that you are starving and not only holds on to it but also slows the metabolism down to be ultra efficient. There is no nutritional supplement that will undo this process!
So, what is the way around this problem? Simple! In fact let's keep it simple!
1. Cereal and Grains -
2. Fruits and Vegetables -
3. Proteins -
4. Milk and Milk Products -
Reduce your calorie intake below your maintenance level
If you reduce your calorie consumption by 500 calories a day, you will loose 1 lb of fat a week for each 500 calories you reduce. See the math...
1 lb of fat yields 3500 calories (as apposed to a 1lb of muscle that yields 600 calories). Your maintenance level is based on your bodyweight.
If you are a man add a zero at the end of your bodyweight. Multiply your bodyweight by two and add it to that figure.
If you are a woman add a zero at the end of your bodyweight, then add your bodyweight to that figure and that is your BMR.
Example: 200 lb man means 2000 calories. Take 200x2=400. Add 400 to 2000 and that is your BMR which means Basic Metabolic Rate... 2400 calories. This is what you body needs just to fuel the vital life process and leaves out calories expended in your voluntary daily activity.
NEVER GO BELOW 1200 Calories a day, as it would be a challenge to eat a well balanced diet at that level.
(If you BMR is so low that even at a 1200 calorie diet per day you can't loose a minimal amount of body fat, consider burning those calories in addition through exercise, namely aerobics, biking, walking etc. Biking will burn approximately 500+ calories an hour if at about 10 mph)
Train intensely to stimulate muscle growth
In my book RUSerious? (Buy at biz ) you know it does not take much in volume to stimulate muscle growth. It is the intensity not the volume that creates the stimulus. It is the difference between a distance runner and a sprinter. The distance runner has stringy muscles conditioned to do more and more work with low intensity as apposed to a sprinter who has muscular shapely legs who goes full bore for a limited number of meters. Why? Because if you are training intensely it is impossible to train long! You train short and intense and get out of the gym to allow the muscle growth to occur. Could you imagine a sprinter sprinting 10 miles?
Potions
If you are training intensely, not training too long or too often, eating a well balanced diet, that is all you need! Get rid of the pills, potions, fat burning elixirs and put that money into your pocket. There are no secrets as long as you understand the way that muscle grows and how fat is deposited.
I say it over and over again, "Stop Wasting Precious Time", reach your personal and bodybuilding goals and make progress each and every workout.
