Here's what you need to know... • To build impressive strength, you have to spend time with a bar on your back.

• Plateaus in squat strength can be attributed to one of three things: mental, technical or physical issues. All of these can be fixed.

• The right warm-up, specific cueing, and correctly executed assistance work can help you break through a sticking point.

• There are no mystery exercises to take your squat into Elite status. Instead you must master the basics, from stance to hinge.

When your squat stalls, everything comes into question – from the obvious things like setup, technique, and programming – to the more deep-seated factors, like whether you're just too much of a pussy to move any real weight.

Squat plateaus have caused many strong lifters to stop competing, or quit powerlifting entirely. After all, you can still build a powerful looking body without ever entering a power rack. But you'll never really be strong – stronger than the average guy, sure, but not the type of strong you dreamed of becoming when you first set foot in a gym.

For that kind of strength, you need a heavy bar on your back. There's just no way around it.

Unfortunately, squats aren't the easiest movement in the world to do. To be perfectly frank, they can be hard as fuck. Even the most gifted squatter will at times look down at the puddle of puke between his legs and ask why the hell they're doing this to themselves. And when they pound away and don't get bigger or stronger – or worse, get injured – it's just a matter of time until they just stop doing them.

But that's not you, right?


Disclaimer: Powerlifting vs. Bodybuilding Squat First off, this article – and my expertise – is about building a stronger squat. It's not squatting for optimal leg development.

They are markedly different things and require entirely different approaches.

A bodybuilder squat is typically much narrower, more upright, and activates the quads through a much greater range of motion. It's all about tension, or isolating the quads while minimizing involvement of the lower back and glutes (to a degree).

On the other hand, a powerlifting squat is geared towards minimizing tension and just focusing on the movement. In powerlifting, whatever method or stance that allows you to move the most weight is the right stance for you.

It helps to think of it this way – one is all about muscle and the other is all about movement.

Many powerlifters make fun of the bodybuilder squat as it leaves a lot of weight on the table, but you have to remember that success leaves clues, and if a powerlifting squat built bigger quads, bodybuilders would certainly do them. They squat that way because it's the best for quad hypertrophy, period.

So if you're squatting to build bigger quads, this isn't the article you're looking for. If you want to get your squat bigger and stronger, read on.


The 3 Sticking Points Any sticking point can be attributed to one of three things:

1. Mental
2. Technical
3. Physical

As a coach, the first thing I do is figure out which of the three is contributing most to the plateau, as this determines the path I take.

Note: These are all related and are not independent of each other, but separating them this way has proved to be the best way for me to diagnosis sticking points.

MENTAL

The mental barriers in squatting are the most difficult for powerlifters to overcome.

If you've ever squatted heavy in your life you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. You take the bar out and it feels like a ton. You struggle to stay upright and can barely adjust your feet.

The idea of squatting the weight down and getting back up is ridiculous. You'll get crushed, stapled like a loser at the bottom of the rack.

But then it happens. You draw in your air, sit back into the hole and feel your hamstrings and glutes tighten up before exploding back up, driving that "impossible" weight to the start position.

What you thought was impossible was anything but. That's overcoming a mental barrier.

To achieve the right squatting mindset, the first thing to realize is that squatting is a skill, like a javelin throw or a shot-put. You just can't saunter up to the rack and squat 500 pounds, just like you can't throw a shot put 20 meters your first day.

Proficiency requires expert coaching and a ton of practice. You have to strive to make every rep the same – as close to perfect as possible.

Ed Coan once was asked to describe the importance of walking the weight out, something most lifters don't even think about. Ed proceeded to show how he walks the weight out, using the bar, and it was very clear every step was exact and specific, something he's done the same way for over three decades.

There was no wasted energy or extra movement. While you may think this is technical or even physical, let me tell you it's mental discipline and focus.

Second, you have to get over your fear. It's fear that keeps most guys from achieving depth with heavy loads. That's why I love the box squat so much. It gives guys a target, so they don't feel like they're dropping into a bottomless hole they can't come back from.

The trick is to start with a high box and slowly drop it down as confidence grows. Also, always be mindful to never just drop on the box, get loose, or do any of the other dumb shit I see online all the time. The box is a tool – not a fucking springboard. Sit back, stay tight, and in control.

Another way to accomplish this is with the power rack. Simply setting the pins a couple inches below the bottom position can give lifters the peace of mind they need to take the weight all the way down without fear of getting stapled. Yet how often do you see guys actually use a rack properly?

Oh, and spotters – good spotters – also help.

A third mental issue is over or under-arousal. While not being ready for the lift is obviously a problem, being too amped up can be a huge energy leak, especially before you're under the bar.

I just think of Steve Goggins – he was always focused right until he had the bar on his back. Then all bets were off. In other words, he saved his energy to unleash it during the lift. If you've ever seen Steve lift in person, his entire mental state changes as soon as he grabs the bar.

Fourth are excuses. Every lifter with a shitty squat has a litany of excuses for why they suck so badly. I have no time for these people. If your squat sucks, offer your excuses to someone who cares – which is nobody.

And if you hate squatting, then don't squat! No one is forcing you to powerlift. Do something else, anything, and preferably far away from me. Do you seriously think anyone cares about your trick knee or back issues? Every lifter has issues to contend with so go see a doctor or shut the fuck up.

Finally, there's the simple fact that squatting is hard. There's no getting around it. A 10-15-rep set of squats will make you feel like your heart is going to explode, while a one-rep max can leave you seeing stars.

No magic mental tricks exist that suddenly make the lift feel easy. My advice is to just nut up and get under the bar.

Here's something I've never understood. Squatting is so problematic for so many lifters, yet everybody at some point wrestles with taking a stubborn shit on the toilet.

And what do they do? Fill their bellies with air, bear down, strain like hell, turn purple, and give it all they got. If this doesn't work they stay there until the job gets done. So most lifters work harder on the toilet than they do in the squat rack.

If all else fails, revert to how I handle the excuse makers: Do. Something. Else!

Technical

Squatting technique is a tricky topic as there are many different styles that can work.

First is the stance. I advocate a wide stance, but that doesn't mean it's the ideal style for every lifter. So your first order of business is to figure out the best stance and your anthropometry, injury history, and goals.

Here are some criteria:

• If you have shoulder issues, choose a medium to wide grip.
• If you have a short back, choose a medium to wide stance.
• If you have a long torso, choose a medium stance (the longer the torso, the closer the stance).
• If you have long legs and a long back, choose a close to medium stance.
• If you have long legs and a short back, congratulations. You can squat any way you want.
• If you're using gear, obviously a wider stance is best as the gear supports the hips.

The reason I like the wide squat so much is efficiency. It shortens the distance the bar has to travel to reach depth.

For example, when I first showed up at Westside, the average distance the bar had to travel for me to hit depth was 16 inches. After working with Louie Simmons for so many years, it was shortened to just 6 inches.

Simply widening my stance shaved 10 full inches off my range of motion, which is a big advantage when you have PR weight on your back.

Next, you have to do the right shit. A good squat should sound like this:

• Tight (From hands on the bar to feet on the floor.)
• Back arched
• Chest up
• Elbows under bar
• Upper back tight
• Belly full of air – breathe into you belly, not your chest. Look in the mirror – does you chest rise when you take a breath? If so, learn to pull that air into your belly. The reason is if you pull air into your chest, what happens when you breathe out? Your chest falls and the bar drifts forward.
• Grab the bar as close as possible without aggravating the biceps or shoulders. (Wider bars have led some to use a grip that impairs their ability to keep the upper back tight.)
• Load the hips first (hip hinge) and then break at the knees. This increases glute and hamstring involvement.
• Knees tracking in line with the angles.

Above all, be mindful of the path of the barbell. When viewed from the side, the barbell should drop straight down and come straight back up, like you'd dropped a plumb line.

This can occur with any stance and depends 100% on how the lifter is built. So if you're unsure whether your stance is right for you, start there.

However, it's very hard to go from a close stance to a wide stance. It can take upwards of two years to relearn the movement and develop the flexibility, especially if the lifter is very tight.

Many lifters will crap out and just return to their original stance, and I don't blame them. But if the plumb line test reveals they should be squatting wider, they'll never reach their potential if they don't change their ways.

Keep a close eye on your knees. Some forward movement is okay (I don't like it personally, but with a medium stance you can't avoid it), but it should never exceed mid-foot and your knees should never drift in, unless you want to blow an ACL or quad tendon.

Also, remember that when your knee moves forward it lengthens the distance to hit parallel. The most extreme example of this is a sissy squat – at the bottom position your knees are almost on the floor. You're low as hell but not even close to parallel.

So what you give up with forward knee movement you have to make up with strength, or your technique trade-off is hurting your squat more than helping it.

Don't get me wrong, I like the close stance, Olympic-style squat. I think it's a great looking squat, and I know a lot of very strong men who squat that way. Here's the thing – the guys that it works for, it works because it's the right squat for them!

The majority of powerlifters who would be far stronger if they went wider and stopped pretending they were late cuts from the Chinese Olympic lifting team.


Physical

I've never seen a "perfect" squat. There's always something that could be improved upon. I worked out with Chuck Vogelpohl for 14 years – arguably one of the top squatters in the world – and there wasn't one workout where we didn't have to yell at him to keep his chest up, head back, or some other cue.

Heavy weight has a way of humbling all mental, physical, and technical attributes of the squat. There needs to be reinforcement. There needs to be coaching.

This speaks to the importance of proper cueing. You have to be in each other's ear with the verbal cues throughout the lift, especially as the weight gets heavy and the fight or flight hormones kick in.

Sometimes you have to say something 15 times or more before the lifter hears it, so it's smart to get in the habit of cueing throughout the lift.

To that end, here's what everyone's been waiting for, the "what exercises should I do when my squat looks like this" section. Even though 90% of the time the issue is poor technique or choice of stance, lifters still think that there's some magical assistance lift they're not doing that's preventing them from being a world champion. Fantasy land, I know. All right, I'll indulge you.

If you fall forward. The big thing is to simply perform the lift correctly. Chest up, knees out, big air, belly tight, tight grip, and spread the floor. This eliminates many problems right away.

Failing that, falling forward is typically due to weak abs and lower back.

My favorite exercise for this is the hanging leg raise, performed with straight legs and kicking the bar at the top. Be sure not to extend backwards more than 6 inches – keep the tension on the abs.

If these are too hard then bend at the knees and pull up as high as you can. Use elbow straps if grip is the limiting factor.

Another good move is the pulldown ab crunch. Attach a triceps attachment to the lat pulldown station and stand facing away from the unit. Pull the rope taught and hold it under your chin.

Do not press your ass against the machine – keep the tension in your abs. Contract your abs and bend at the waist, pulling air into your diaphragm as you go down. This greatly improves stability during the squat while also strengthening the hip flexors.

For the lower back, hyperextensions and reverse hyperextensions both work well.

If you get stuck in the bottom. Here's a thought – before you angst over the right magical assistance lift, maybe the weight is just too fucking heavy. While painfully obvious, you'd be amazed at how many lifters fail to consider this.

After that, often the problem is not sitting back far enough, and if in a medium or wider stance, not pushing back far enough (there's a difference). You need to elongate the hamstrings during the descent to create the stretch reflex. That's why the closer stance can feel stronger out of the hole – it creates a greater stretch reflex.

If you get stuck three-fourths of the way up. This is due to weak glutes and hips. Here glute bridges, reverse hypers, and good mornings pay huge dividends, as does simply learning to flex your ass.

One trick I like is sitting on a box that's way below parallel with bands wrapped around my knees and holding it for 15 seconds. The bands should be tense enough that 15 seconds feels very hard.

This not only helps activate the glutes, it also helps build stability in the knees and hips, which is huge because a muscle must stabilize, then absorb force, and then create force – but only in that order.

If your knees buckle in. This leads back to the hips, glutes, and hip rotators. The first thing is to reassess the stance, making sure it passes the plumb line test. Next is to reinforce basic cues like "spread the floor" and determine if flexibility is where it should be.

This can be a huge problem, so I'd reduce the training weight to a point where this won't happen and then reintroduce the loading as the weak points are overcome.

If the bar feels heavy. Step one is to grow a set of balls. Seriously. Sometimes shit is heavy – that's why it's powerlifting. You want easy weights, go hop on a leg press, preferably the pin loaded version. That way you can pump out reps while you read the paper or update your Facebook page. Pussy.

Next is to strengthen your abs and your hip flexors and to focus on achieving maximum tightness from the get go. Too many guys wait until the bar is on the back before they get tight – that's already too late.

I like to see guys fill their belly with air and keep it while they find their stance, and then let it out gradually before pulling it back in with one big breath and holding it. It makes a huge difference – try it for yourself.


Putting It All Together

I'm not going to write out some new squat routine; the greatest routine in the world won't help you squat any better. So here's a framework for how you should approach every squat session.

Warm-up. Do whatever you feel you need to do to warm up. This should not be a freaking 20-minute sweat session. People are getting way too carried way with this shit.

Here's what I've noticed. If you have hip issues you're told to do a series of mobility movements. Okay, I get that if the issues are muscle or tendon related, but what if it's muscle activation or joint related?

If the muscle isn't being activated then working the movement won't do it. If that were the case it would be activating in the first place!

If it's joint related – the joint is bone-on-bone or losing space – the best way to worsen the issue is by moving it more. It's called wear and tear for a reason, so if the joint is bone-on-bone, how exactly will a couple hundred reps of extra movement to the joint help? Think about it.

My advice. If you're messed up go find a good doctor or physical therapist. Trust me, they're out there.

As far as specific warm up stuff:

Pulldown Abs. Yeah, do these before you squat. These stretch the torso, hips, and the abdominal region. Do 3-4 sets of 10-15 reps.

Glute-Ham Raise. Simply because most people absolutely suck at them. Do 3 sets and keep them all a few reps shy of failure.

Now it's time to squat. You're going to do a ton of warm-up sets. A good rule of thumb: if you're trying to reinforce your technique, double the number of warm-up sets you normally do.

You can't practice technique when the load is heavy, so it's during your warm-up sets that you lay the foundation for a good squat session. Don't screw this up.

Next, after the warm up, squat as prescribed – whatever protocol you're using.

After the squat, its time to hit the assistance work. Start with a supplemental lift that builds the squat, performed in the 3-5 rep range. Best choices include:

• Barbell Row
• Stiff Leg Deadlift
• Romanian Deadlift
• Good Morning

Work up to a couple work sets and swap out the movement every 3-4 weeks or when you can no longer make progress with it.

Next is hamstring work. Here you'll hit the glute ham raise first – because everyone sucks at them – and then another hamstring movement that hits them at either the origin or insertion, like leg curls and Romanian deadlifts. Bump up the reps to 8-12 for a few work sets.

Now it's more abdominal work. Hit hanging leg raises or pulldown abs. Cycle between the two every three weeks.

Finish off the day with lower back work. Reverse hyperextensions or back extensions, performed for high reps (at least 20).

The work continues even on non-squat days. Remember, technique trumps everything, and you'll never become a proficient squatter if you only work on the movement once or twice a week.

On your other days, I recommend performing squats with just a broomstick during your general warm-up. This helps reinforce sound technique by "greasing the groove," so good habits stay on top of mind.

It takes a ton of reps to master even a basic movement, and that much more when correcting a previously established motor pattern.


That's It It all boils down to learning the lift correctly from the ground up. My hope is that you don't fall into the trap of trying to find some mystery exercise to take your squat into Elite status, and instead get brilliant at the basics.

Find the right stance for you, learn to sit back and hinge, and get those cues drilled into your subconscious. There is no shortcut to mastery.

By John McMahanPublished: June 3, 2013

As co-owner of a supplement company, I get a lot of questions about the role that supplements play when trying to reach fitness and athletic goals. Many of these questions are about trying to find the perfect supplement.

I want to state a simple truth…the most important factors toward achieving your fitness and athletic goals are your training and nutrition. Supplements can certainly help but should be considered after you have those factors in line. Supplements will never be the magic bullets that help you get your next PR in the gym, obtain the physique you want, or acquire the medals on the wall. Getting there takes epic amounts of consistency, will, and discipline. No amount of magic in a bottle will do it. Simply put, there aren’t any shortcuts and there isn’t any easy way.

There isn’t any easy way.

If your goal is to gain strength, add muscle mass, or improve your athletic performance, get your training and nutrition dialed in. Make your training more effective by tailoring it to your specific goal, whether it’s strength, hypertrophy, a combination of both, or sports related. Make sure it utilizes effective training principles like progressive overload. Have a basic understanding of your nutritional requirements. If your goal is muscle gain, eat at a caloric surplus. Fat loss? Eat at a caloric deficit. Understand what macros (fats, carbs, proteins) are and have an idea of your daily requirements. This is nothing new to most people reading this, but it needs to be stated over and over.

You’ll be hard pressed to find someone who does everything right when it comes to training. It’s difficult to find someone who eats a perfectly balanced diet, but here are some examples of what I’m talking about:

• Joe wants to gain muscle mass. He spends time searching for the best type of creatine but doesn’t hit his daily protein goals.
• Mike wants to gain weight. He thinks a mass gainer product will help him do this but eats at a caloric deficit.
• Jill wants to lose fat. She decides to purchase the newest fat burner on the market and do tons of cardio. She eats at a caloric surplus.
• Bill purchases a pre-workout/intra-workout/post-workout stack in the aim of increasing strength but doesn’t consistently follow a training program that utilizes principles like progressive overload.

So why is the co-owner of a supplement company telling you this? Because I think more people need to hear it instead of falling for the marketing voodoo so rampant in the industry and because I want to help people know what to look for when making supplement decisions.

Here are three principles I believe will help you make smarter supplement decisions:

1.   Non-proprietary blends: Proprietary blends are bundled ingredients in which the amounts of all the ingredients in the blend are stated on the supplement label as one combined number. Simply put, the blend lists ingredients without the amounts. It’s important to know what you’re putting in your body and be able to determine if the ingredient in the product is at an effective dose.

Here’s an example of a proprietary blend:

The FDA requires that the dietary ingredients in a proprietary blend be listed in order of predominance by weight. So in the example above, maltodextrin is the most abundant ingredient in the blend.

2.   Proven ingredients: Is there scientific backing/evidence showing that the supplement will actually provide a positive benefit? Many claims are made about proven ingredients, so it’s important to see what the research actually says. Consider the number of studies showing positive benefits along with the number of studies showing no benefits or even negative impacts. Were the studies on humans or critters? What do experts think of the ingredients in question? Spend some time looking into the ingredients so that you can decide for yourself. Here’s a good resource for looking into the scientific research on supplements: www.examine.com.

3.   Effective doses: Does the ingredient dose used in the product replicate the dose used in scientific studies or clinical trials when the ingredient’s effectiveness was established? There isn’t any point in taking a dietary ingredient if you aren’t getting an effective dose.

Here’s an example of a non-proprietary blend with a few proven ingredients but ineffective doses:

In the example above, the mix contains 30 mg of creatine monohydrate. The daily effective dose of creatine proven through research is 3–5 g. You can see that the mix is under dosed (by 100 times), so you won’t get any benefit from that ingredient. Although creatine is a proven ingredient, it also has to be combined with an effective dose to ensure that you’ll see a benefit.

In closing, humans are hardwired to seek the path of least resistance. You have to understand that there isn’t any such path when it comes to achieving your fitness and athletic goals. If you understand that, have a solid training and nutrition program, and make informed decisions about the supplements you take, you will have a much better chance at realizing your goals.

By Boris BojanovicPublished: March 24, 2011

How long is a piece of string?
We all know that if you have long arms and a short torso, you should pull conventional. If you have a long torso and short arms, sumo suits your anatomy better. But how do you tell whether your arms or torso are short or long? With some people, it’s just not as obvious as with Lamar Gant.

A recent article by Dr. Michael Hales published in the Strength and Conditioning Journal quantified what a “short” torso is and how long your arms need to be before you could call them “long.” In this article, I’ve simplified the research for you so that you can measure your own arms and torso to decide whether you are better suited to deadlifting conventional or sumo.

You will need a tape measure and a friend to help you measure your height, arm length, and torso length. Directly comparing your arm length to the arm of someone who is 5’10” won’t mean anything unless you’re 5’10” as well, so you’ll need to get your calculator out. You will need to express your arm and torso lengths as a proportion of your height, which is math talk for divide your arm length by your height and your torso length by your height. So if you’re 5’10” (70”) and your torso is 35” long, your torso is 50 percent of your height. This percentage can be used for comparison.

• Your torso is measured from the bony prominence on the side of your thigh at the top (greater trochanter for all the anatomy geeks) to the top of your head vertically.
• Your arm is measured from the bony part of the top of your shoulder (proxy for the head of the humerus) to the middle finger with your arm held out straight.
• Your height is taken barefoot standing up against a wall.

Now that you’ve taken your measurements and have done your calculations, you can use the following table to find out if your arms and torso are short, average, or long.

Table 1: Torso and arm lengths expressed as proportions of height

Now that you know how long your arms and torso are, you can use the following table to see whether you should be pulling conventional or sumo.

Table 2: Recommendations based on relative lengths of torso and arms

Using that information, if you have short arms relative to your torso, you are better suited to adopting a sumo stance when deadlifting. If you have long arms relative to your torso, you will probably find conventional deadlifts easier. And if your arm length matches your torso length, you can get away with both styles, so you should experiment with both to see which works better for you.

That being said, we aren’t just made up of bones. Strength and flexibility also affect which deadlifting style will add more to your total. The conventional deadlift is better for those with strong glutes, hamstrings, and lower back muscles. Pulling sumo uses the quads and adductors to a greater extent than conventional but also requires above average adductor flexibility.

Have you ever looked for various training programs online? Asked someone you thought was more knowledgeable to help you out with your exercise selection or write you a program ? Thumbed through magazines to see what exercise split the pro’s use? Or worse: paid good money for someone to provide you with a program? And did none of those things ever give you the edge in the gym you were hoping for? Well join the club. Just about 99% of physical culturists and fitness enthusiasts go through this exact cycle of events and come up empty. That’s because the industry has perpetuated the notion that the exercises you do and when you do them are what make the difference in the gym. In truth they only contribute about 10-15% of the whole, and usually don’t become key determinants in your success until you have attained a certain level first.

Let’s look at it briefly from the other side. How many different training programs are out there right now ? A hundred thousand ? A Million? All I know is there are new ones every day, and almost every single one has its protagonists claiming it’s the best way to train. It’s been that way for a long time, dating back to the days Arnold propagated the Weider high volume principle and Mentzer propagated Jones’ HIT style training. To this day people think its relevant to discuss which of the two was better in the 1980 Mr.Olympia. But all you can say is despite such a different training style and such great genetics, both men looked pretty damn good. Fact is, since then science has progressed, and the number of people trying to benefit from the fitness industry financially has boomed, and with them the number of opinions, the number of people trying to sell you their own unique brand of something, and the general sense of disinformation prevailing among the consumer base.

The simple truth is that despite many years, and certainly not for lack of trying, science hasn’t even come close to elucidating what constitutes the best type of training program, what the best exercises are, what the optimal training split is. And the real world results seem to confirm, in the end, the difference may be negligible. If you go to any gym and look at the people who are most successful at what they do (or compare two people at the top of the game), you’ll find that very often they have a quite different approach to volume, exercise selection and other things that make up the average training program. Do you then believe it’s feasible that you will be successful simply by copying their program if you failed to be successful previously ? First you need to consider there are other factors like nutrition, rest, genetics and possible drug use (two of which you can fix just as well, and two who shouldn’t be used as an excuse to justify a lack of progress), but all those being equal, some people simply are more successful than others, based solely on their training. Want to know the secret to their success?

Stop looking at WHAT they are doing, start looking at HOW they are doing it!

Training properly It’s perfectly possible if you go up to these people and ask them what the secret to their success is, they may not even know. Some people just naturally train the right way and as a result have more success. For some people there is an instinct, an ability to feel what they do, which for most of us takes years to develop. But that is the take-away message: It can be developed. What’s more, if you know what you are doing, and don’t have to find out everything by trial-and-error, you can probably achieve it in a relatively short period of time and be on your way to continuous growth. I’m not selling you on some insane new method of being successful here, none of what I’m about to tell you is going to make you have to work any less hard, or magically sprout muscle by looking at a barbell, but it will, I guarantee you, ensure you aren’t wasting your time in the gym. Every training session is a new opportunity to get the most out of your body in a relatively brief time, and walking away from each one knowing you did all you could, is simply the most efficient way to reach your goals.

All those other things, like which exercises you do, how many times you train, when you train, how many sets and reps you use, are going to become quite important down the road, and they will make up the lengthy content of the next installments of this series. But chances are your current program (whether it’s a cookie-cutter from your local gym, or something you picked up on an obscure website) already has the necessary basics to do what you need it to do. But just to make sure we should probably establish that a training program consists of 4-6 working days per week, lasting 40-60 minutes per session, training 1-2 body-parts per day, with multiple sets (3-8) per exercise and 6-12 reps per set. The how and why of those things and how to narrow it down to a more optimal ranges for you will be discussed at a later time. Suffice it to say if your current program meets those requirements and contains as many as possible basic lifts that stimulate a lot of muscle fiber, it will do just fine as you learn the following principles. In fact, following these principles will demonstrate that the difference between training programs is minimal, especially until you reach a certain level of strength and muscle mass.

I’ve broken this down in a few paragraphs to discuss each part individually and will discuss how to best apply these things in the conclusion. For the duration, as long as it takes to unlearn bad training and relearn proper training, this is really all you should focus on.

Principle #1: Failure is success I get quite lyrical on this subject. Bodybuilding is NEVER a success story. If you’ve observed any of the pro’s on their way to the Olympia from 1977’s Pumping Iron to next year’s release of Generation Iron you will see these men are notoriously unsatisfied with their current level. They know that however good they are now, it’s never good enough. Some call it a disease, and perhaps to some extent it is, the same way an anorexic girl feels she is never thin enough. But the truth of the matter is they KNOW that all the guys standing next to them on stage will be doing their best to be bigger, better, leaner and more symmetrical by the next year, and even if they walked away victorious now, the bar will always be set higher, and that being the best now is no guarantee to be the best next year. Why am I rambling on about this ? Well because this lies at the very core of our sport. It’s the only sport where failure is your guarantee for the greatest success.

Bodybuilding is the only sport where failure is your guarantee for the greatest success.

In a way we are the biggest losers. A lot of us take up training because we feel like losers. But in the end, this feeling at our core is what makes us stay with the sport and excel at it. Training is all about failure. It’s failing today, so you can fail bigger tomorrow. It’s not about the weight you can successfully lift, it’s about the weight you just failed to lift. If you have followed the bodybuilding community AT ALL, you will be familiar with the words “training to failure”. But are you familiar with the actual concept of it ? In spite of the amount of work or scientific value certain training programs have, I have seen many stand and fall with the ability of their author to properly convey what training to failure means. To start, I’m going to give you the usual lecture, because it’s relevant to the rest. A muscle doesn’t grow by itself. It has no ambition, it doesn’t strive to be greater than it is, it strives to be as good as it has to be. That means if you don’t make it feel that it’s simply not good enough, that it HAS to grow to cope, it won’t. This is where failure comes in. When you perform an exercise in a certain rep range, let say 8-10 for the purpose of this example, it does not imply that you can pick any weight, knock off 8 repetitions and grow. The rep range is there to indicate you should do your 10 reps and be ABSOLUTELY INCAPABLE of doing an 11th rep. This isn’t even complete failure, this is what we call “concentric failure” (more on that in principle #2). When using your 8-10 rep range, if you can do 11 reps with your current weight, it means you need a heavier weight. If you fail to reach 8 reps, it means you need a lighter weight.

Most of all this principle requires honesty. The question “could I have done more ?” should be the one you ask yourself most often. The mind will all too often fail before the body does. Having a training partner to spot you can help alleviate some of the fear associated with that (especially on lifts like Bench press and squat, which entail a certain risk), but simply not being afraid of the pain helps a lot too. I’m not entirely sure I was able to aptly convey the importance of this principle to you. I hope I was, and like I said, the ability to convey this properly is often the first key to success, so all I can hope is that you will take the time to read this paragraph again and ask yourself if you truly understand it.

Principle #2: Be more negative When talking of muscle contraction we will often use the terms concentric (also called the positive part of the rep), eccentric (or negative part of the rep) and isometric (static hold). When performing any common exercise you will have a concentric portion, which shortens the muscle. This is usually the part that corresponds with “flexing” the muscle or bringing it in a state of full contraction. And the exercise will have an eccentric portion, which lengthens the muscle. This would be the part where the fully contracted muscle returns to a fully lengthened state. Research has repeatedly shown that eccentric work results in greater protein synthesis (1) and resulting hypertrophy. You’ll often hear it stated that this is because eccentric work causes more muscle damage, but that isn’t exactly true. As I will discuss at length in a detailed, better referenced piece at a later date, muscle damage may be required for growth, but it should be minimal. Greater damage is usually associated with endurance training and injury, and all the factors associated with it (IGF-1, IL-15, increased myocnuclear density, increased satellite cell activation, greater level of protein synthesis) are usually more abundant in endurance trained or injured muscle, and neither of those states leads to greater hypertrophy. On the contrary. Endurance training, and the greater muscle damage associated with it, causes a shift in muscle fiber type from the more hypertrophy responsive TypeIIb fibers to the more oxidative Type IIa and Type I fibers, who are forcibly kept small by your body to conserve energy to feed its higher respiratory state and greater protein turnover.

Initially it’s good to focus on the negative by counting it out, using about 4 seconds to lower the weight back to the starting position.

Let it suffice for now to say that eccentric exercise causes greater growth because it helps us reach the optimal state for growth induction better. A muscle is much stronger in the eccentric portion than the concentric portion. This is an evolutionary conserved safety protocol, because we simply wouldn’t survive very long if we could lift a heavy object and were unable to place it back down safely. True eccentric exercise is actually failing to stop the progression of a weight pressing against the direction of your working muscle (again, “failure”, see how ingrained it is in our lifestyle ?) but simply returning a weight back to its initial position in a controlled fashion is already considered an eccentric effort. In order to maximize growth potential we will therefore increase the time we spend on the eccentric portion of our reps to make sure we spend the majority of the time performing eccentric work. In practice that means you will want to execute an explosive (1-2 seconds, depending on level of fatigue) positive, followed by a controlled negative (3-5 seconds).Initially it’s good to focus on the negative by counting it out, using about 4 seconds to lower the weight back to the starting position.Once you get the hang of it though, you’ll have a good grasp of what a “controlled negative” means and depending on the exercise you could do 3 or 5 seconds instead, without necessarily counting it out.

Principle #3: Increased Time under Tension Sorry, couldn’t come up with a cute wordplay for this title. Most of you deeply entrenched in the industry’s literature and propaganda are probably familiar with the term Time under Tension or TUT for short, even though it’s, compared to the previous two principles, a more novel concept. The most recent literature seems to consistently report, keeping minimal load (see principle #5) in mind, that an increased amount of time a muscle spends under tension leads to increased growth (2). This is believed to be due to the metabolic stress caused by the glycolytic depletion of the fast-twitch muscle, you can call it the pinnacle of fatigue for fast-twitch muscle. When a muscle runs out of energy for anaerobic exercise (glucose and creatine phosphate depletion) it will have no choice but to recruit more fiber to complete the exercise, and when that too fails, the result is that the muscle has no choice but to increase its size and storage capacity long term to prevent such an event from occurring again.

There is a limit to this factor however that has everything to do with a minimal load that is needed to induce hypertrophy. Using a lighter load leads to aerobic exercise, which can be sustained considerably longer via adequate supply of oxygen and outside nutrients (fat), while the very nature of resistance exercise is explicitly anaerobic, causing a state of transient hypoxia (prolonged hypoxia is in fact catabolic). Performing exercise of an aerobic nature leads to muscular adaptation that improves oxidative capacity and restricts the size of the muscle. This is where our rep range of 6-12 reps originates from, it forms the perfect intersection between optimal load (principle #5) and optimal TUT (principle #3). More on that in part two of this series.

In order to maximize your time under tension you need to stop looking at a set as a collection of repetitions, and instead perceive it as a continuous flowing motion. It basically means you don’t “lock out” or pause at the top or bottom of a repetition, but commence your next repetition as soon as the last one ends. When you “lock out” you place the weight in a mechanically advantageous position that is easier to maintain and reduces the tension in the working muscle. The only time you should (temporarily) employ a brief pause, is when you have certain exercises where you need to eliminate momentum (given that momentum also reduces tension on the muscle). When you perform one rep with a 1-2 second positive and 3-4 second negative you will spend ~5 seconds under tension, which is already significantly better than the 3 seconds (1.5 second up and down) you would instinctively spend on a repetition. If you pause after each rep, you will spend 6-12 x5 seconds Time under Tension, allowing the muscle to replenish its ATP in between reps. When you don’t pause and see the set as a whole you will be spending 30-60 seconds on end under tension, a drastic improvement.

Principle #4: Anything worth doing is worth doing right The biggest ailment across gyms worldwide is poor execution on exercises. It not only increases the risk of injury because people are using heavier weights than they can safely handle, it also decreases the amount of work the muscle you are attempting to train actually does. In order to lift more weight than a single muscle can handle, the body has to find other ways to get the weight up, and it typically does this by A) enlisting the help of other muscles and B) changing the body’s position in space to place the weight in the middle of the range of motion, where your muscle is strongest. As an example, when you are bench pressing, you will start recruiting more shoulder and triceps mass in an effort to heave the weight, and procentually less pectoral muscle fiber. That in itself isn’t so detrimental (unless you hate large triceps and shoulders), but in order to do that, it will also contort the body (for instance arching the back off the bench) in order to place those muscles in a more advantageous position to help, and at the same time reducing the range of motion for the pectoral muscles. You’ll see similar things when you perform leg extensions and your butt comes off the seat, or you perform bicep curls and you heave the weight to get your elbows under the weight where your biceps are stronger. To confound matters, you will start employing momentum, which is basically just getting gravity to help you, and places no tension on any muscle at all.

The best way to ruin your chances of getting where you want to be is to only train your muscles where they are already strongest, in the middle of the range of motion. It eventually creates a bottle neck at the top and bottom of every range of motion, and as the saying would have it, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the result is you hit a plateau that you seemingly can’t overcome. While training with proper form across a full range of motion will force you to use a lower weight, it also forces you to strengthen the weakest parts of your muscle, so that it gets stronger as a whole, and progress will be much more linear.

The importance of a proper and full range of motion to train a muscle is, despite how logical it seems, not universally accepted as a necessity for complete growth of the muscle. The reasoning is that the muscle is like a cord, and in physics, when you tighten a cord along its length by exerting a force on both sides, the force is distributed evenly across the cord. As such, some believe it’s not possible to accentuate a different part of the same muscle across its length. This is of course true to an extent, since muscle fibers do typically stretch the full length of the muscle and any force exerted on it will be felt across the length of the fiber, so there is no such thing as true isolation in the length of a muscle. There are however various factors that make training along the full range of motion a necessity to fully develop a muscle. First of all even if one treats the muscle as an actual rope, the attachments aren’t lined up in the same plane very often, and on top of that, a for a lot of muscle, other structures like other muscles, tendons, bone etc, will prevent them from being tightened across their length, creating additional forces. This alone will already affect force distribution to some extent. But more importantly, one can’t treat a muscle like a rope. A muscle is comprised of fibers that are both in parallel and in sequence, but those fibers in turn are made up of sarcomeres in parallel or in sequence (for more information see here). When a muscle contracts in the midpoint of the range, in all the sarcomeres, the myosin will travel the same length of the actin. However, we know that the Z-disk is the most mechanically sensitive part of the sarcomere, and the Z-disk will be placed under the most strain when the sarcomere is either fully contracting and attempting to retain that position, and when its fully lengthened and attempting to retain that position. On top of that, a sarcomere is mechanically at a disadvantage when in fully lengthened condition, because less of the myosin can be used to contract across the actin filaments. This is why extreme forceful lengthening in itself is considered an anabolic factor, and is known to increase the number of sarcomeres in series, and all this data taken together emphasizes the importance of utilizing a full range of motion to maximize tension on a muscle in fully stretched and fully contracted positions. Lastly, as discussed at length, certain parts of the range of motion become mechanically less advantageous because assisting and stabilizing muscles are no longer in as good a position to assist in the motion, placing more of the weight on the working muscle, leading to greater recruitment of fibers in parallel as well.

So in short, while we are fairly limited in the amount of manipulation we can place in isolating parts of a muscle across their length, the importance of a full range of motion in heavy exercises, as well as the usefulness of more isolating movements focusing on maximal stretch and/or contraction of the muscle should not be underestimated.

This concept again is not a novel one, but a tricky one nonetheless. As you were reading these last lines, many of you probably thought “well duh, I already know I have to use proper form and I do”. But there is a distinct difference between thinking you use proper form simply because you attempt to use proper form and actually using proper form. The latter requires the actual knowledge of knowing what full range of motion and proper form is for each and every exercise. Obviously that sort of detail is beyond the scope of this article, and hopefully fodder for a whole series of articles yet to come, where you can learn this stuff by heart or check it when needed, but in the meantime a willingness to learn some very basic anatomy can go a long way towards figuring these things out for yourself. A wide array of textbooks and websites can fill you in on the individual muscles including origin, insertion and function. The first two are tricky, since you will need to know the various bumps and dips on the skeleton to locate them properly, but if you do, you can do something as simple as take a piece of thread and place it on the origin and insertion (on your own body, someone elses body, or best of all, if you have one at your disposal, an actual skeleton) now move the joint across the direction of the thread and the farthest stretch and contraction you can pull off should give you the outer ends of your range of motion. Of course, you have to be willing to place yourself in those positions as well. For instance a bicep isn’t fully stretched until the arm is fully stretched, and an arm isn’t fully stretched until you tense the tricep. So next time you do curls, try tensing your triceps  at the bottom and getting the best possible contraction at the top. Likewise knowing the function of a muscle often reveals some simple things most people aren’t aware of. For instance we all know that the bicep is one of the prime flexors of the forearm, that’s why we do a ton of curls to train it. The slightly more inquisitive among you will know this muscle also spans the shoulder and that slight forward flexion of the shoulder when doing cable curls (doesn’t work with barbells since this motion reduces tension in the muscle due to a mechanically advantageous position) will increase contraction even more. The true students of the game will also know that in fact, a very large portion of the bicep is considered the prime forearm supinator (turning the hand up) whenever the arm isn’t completely stretched. But how many of you know how to employ that information in your weak point training, knowing that you can work the middle of the bicep very well by doing at least one variation of alternate curls starting from a hammer position by your side to a supine grip by the time you reach halfway through the range of motion, and that you can even finish off the inside bicep by holding a dumbbell in a hammer position and the arm flexed in a 45 degree angle with no weight on the top side of the dumbell and simply supinate the hand. All this is very simple information, and easy to come by, if you are just willing to spend 10 minutes learning common anatomical terms like supination, pronation, adduction, abduction, transversal, medial, lateral, flexion, extension, etc.

But proper form also means minimizing motion in joints that aren’t directly moved by the muscle, restricting momentum, proper placement of the body to place the weight directly on the working muscle etc. Keep in mind at all times that when you are working your biceps, there is no reason WHATSOEVER your back should be moving, let alone your legs. Although it will FORCE you to use a more apt weight, don’t let your ego get in the way of doing several movement that restrict your movement and help you maintain proper form. The aim is not to lift the biggest weight any way you can, the aim is to let EVERY FIBER in the WORKING MUSCLE use ITS biggest weight. And that’s logically going to be considerably less than your maximal weight you can handle. But those other muscles, they have their own day. So when, for instance, its shoulder day, your shoulders should be fatigued, lifting THEIR maximal weight. No one is going to remember what weight you lifted that day. But everyone will see your progress in a year if you are willing to train correctly.

One small tip to aid you on your way to better form is to form a better mind-muscle connection. The phrase itself is vague and elusive, but let me try and explain the concept to you as best I can. When you know where a muscle is located and what it does, you should be able to feel it work. Aside from that, if you have some muscle at all, you usually perform a motion placing one hand on the muscle to FEEL where it contracts more. Both of these techniques should help you a lot in visualizing the muscle, even when there isn’t a whole lot to see in the mirror (either due to lack of muscle or due to excess fat, or simply because you can’t view the muscle properly at all, like the back). When you visualize the muscle when you are working it, you need to really visualize the optimal stretch and contraction points. Feel free to exaggerate here and place yourself in the body of a ripped pro or some other person whose physique you admire, it lends a sense of purpose to your training. Now, whenever you lift a weight on the (explosive) positive think “squeeze” or “contract” and try to really feel that muscle. I recently picked this technique up myself watching a training video of Kai Greene. It makes a lot of sense. When you concentrate only on lifting the weight, you make the movement all about lifting the weight. Lifting weight is what weightlifters do, and it’s a process that is made to find the easiest and most efficient way to move an object from point A to point B. Bodybuilding, however, is all about maximally taxing the muscle you are working, recruiting the most muscle fiber within that muscle, and making it as hard as possible to lift the weight in order to fully deplete that muscle of its energy and strength. So don’t focus on LIFTING the WEIGHT, focus on CONTRACTING the MUSCLE. A ton of exercises are about subtle nuances, a certain intention in the movement. Those nuances become almost instinctive if your mind is continuously on the muscle you are working, trying as hard as you can to feel the muscle as you are trying to move the weight.

Principle #5: Take a load off (proper intensity) The intensity principle is directly related to load. In order to achieve hypertrophy you both need a minimal load to make sure you are taxing the muscle and training in an anaerobic, glycolytic range, but also a progressive increase in load to continuously stimulate the muscle to grow. This principle is well known and understood by most people who work out, and that’s really all there is to say about it. The reason I listed this principle last, even though it is likely the most critical and single most important factor,  is actually to stress that it shouldn’t become the full focus of your workout. The load has to be a function of the previous 4 principles, and be adapted to be the MAXIMAL amount of weight that lets you reach concentric failure in your rep range using proper form and range of motion. If someone is telling you that you need to be pushing 80% of your 1RM for 8 reps, and obeying all the above, you simply can’t do that, don’t be afraid to use 70%. At the lower end of your rep range, the weight you use when obeying these principles will always be the right weight for you, and they should be the prime determinant of your load/intensity. In fact the very concept of 1RM is flawed since the fiber-type make-up will skew any mathematical attempt to calculate a generalized 1 RM, and as a bodybuilder you really have no business factually performing 1RM’s. They simply do not contribute to your growth, only to your risk of getting injured.

Please remember that strength is in how you define it. Muscle size correlates VERY well with strength. When you see a strength athlete, you will notice he is typically smaller than the average bodybuilder. But you forget that a strength athlete uses momentum, mechanically advantageous positioning and practice in a particular motion to heave a large weight up in a fraction, stumbles for a few seconds to give a panel of judges the impression he is controlling the weight, only to hurl it back down. If that is your definition of strength so be it. But comparing one muscle to another directly, the bigger muscle is the stronger muscle. These 5 principles serve one purpose only : making sure the muscle you want to work is actually doing the most work it possibly can. And your average weightlifter will simply fail to lift the same weight in many of these exercises when performed the same way as the average amateur bodybuilder. The term “weightlifting” is just an excuse for people to look worse than they should, to do the work in the gym, but not have to do the work that comes the rest of the day, eating and resting, let alone dieting, evaluation, and adapting for symmetry.

Applying these principles As I stated at the beginning of this piece, it’s very likely your current workout is more than fine to learn and apply these principles and stir yourself to new growth. As are most of the available programs today, unless they are completely absurd and go against the basic principles of muscle growth. So for now, don’t concern yourself too much with your program, we will discuss ways to optimize that in the next parts of this series. Instead, take however much time as you need to apply these principles one by one, and stick to just one at a time until you master it and it becomes a second nature. For instance, starting immediately focus immensely on making sure your last two working sets of each exercise your perform are performed to concentric failure. Make sure you cannot possibly lift another rep, and if that takes you out of your rep range, adjust the weight up or down as needed to make sure the next set falls back in your rep range, still reaching concentric failure. When this has become a second nature, try and focus on a controlled negative. Each time you lower a weight back down, count to 4. Then perform an explosive motion to contract the muscle again, and slowly lower it again in 4 counts. You will notice as you do this, you will need to focus again the last 2 reps to make sure you absolutely go to failure since focusing on one thing, invariably makes it harder to focus on something else. When that too becomes more or less instinctive, try focusing on avoiding pauses at the top and bottom of the rep, making the whole set one fluent motion that keeps continuous tension on the working muscle. These three alone should probably occupy you for a good month before they become a second nature.

All the while your load should be in function of the three first principles, selected perfectly to reach concentric failure while performing controlled negatives and maximal time under tension. But after you master the first three principles, attempt to occasionally slightly increase the weight for your second or third set of an exercise. If you are successful in pushing that set into your designated rep range, stick with that weight from now on. If you fail, revert to your old weight and attempt it again on the second or third set next time you work the same muscle. Muscle gets stronger in increments, and especially in the early stages those increments won’t always amount to an extra 5 lbs each time. That doesn’t mean you should patiently wait it out every time, feel free to attempt a slightly higher weight once in a while to see how you do, your strength may have progressed further than you think.

Lastly, starting with those muscles that are most lagging, you need to start carefully examining proper form and range of motion for your exercises. I hope to provide you with detailed information on how to do that in the very near future, but in the mean time, heed the information in Principle #4, and you can probably go quite a ways yourself in figuring a lot of this stuff out. Remember that the aim isn’t for you to come here, read this, and follow it like you would just another program you found in a magazine. Instead the aim should be to get you thinking about each and every one of these  things and find solutions to YOUR problems. The best program for you, is the one tailored to you. And no one can make it better than you, if you are willing to take the time to learn how it all works.

Safety As an aside, a side effect of these 5 principles of optimal muscle growth is that they enhance your safety. When you stick to a proper rep range of 6-12 reps using TUT and a controlled negative, you should always be in perfect control of the weights you are handling, and proper form and execution will only enhance that. As such it would be a rare occurrence to injure yourself if you train properly.

Conclusions Some people seem to keep making improvements in the gym, where others seem to remain at a standstill for months or even years, trying to wrap their head around what that first group of people is doing that is making them more successful. The excessive focus this industry has placed on the importance of performing certain exercises or routine. Most people simply don’t understand that exercises, splits and routines only contribute minimally in your success in increasing overall growth. Those things are increasingly important in shaping a balanced physique and maximizing results in accomplished lifters but when it comes to actually putting on overall size it comes down to nutrion, rest, and training properly. And that last one can be summarized in the 5 principles above and applied to the majority of routines out there. Some routines will certainly be better than others, but when you seem to have difficulty putting on size and increasing strength despite having your ducks in a row with concerns to nutrition and rest, then copying Ronnie Coleman’s routine, succumbing to the latest training hype or shelling out cash for the latest workout book or training program will likely not be the answer for you. People have developed amazing physiques over time, with less access to current knowledge and equipment, and despite varying wildly in terms of diet, routine, split and approach, and the reason isn’t so much because of WHAT they were doing, but HOW they were doing it.

Many successful bodybuilders and strength athletes fail to grasp, let alone explain, why they are better. And surely some of it will be genetics. But truth is such people just naturally seem to find the right way to train without having to think about it. As a smart trainer you should pay close attention to how those people train, and you will find that regardless of what they tell you, they apply the principles above frequently to their training, oft without thinking about it. I’m not one of these people. It has been a long and arduous journey for me, not just in realizing the above, but applying it. It isn’t easy to accept that you aren’t on the right path. It’s even harder to take a step back to unlearn bad behaviours and learn new ones, but well worth it in the long run. Unless your sole aim is to impress people you hardly know at the gym, there is really no excuse that prevents you from applying these 5 principles. They work with pretty much any routine or split, for lifters of any age or level of experience, and will be of critical importance on your way to your actual goals. There is no room for ego in this game. I’m not selling you anything or telling you about the latest exotic research. This is what has worked for decades and continues to prove true now (and being corroborated scientifically time after time). There’s no shiny label here or training secret of the pro’s. Just a willingness to look at the core of everything and see it like it is.

Part 2 will take an in-depth look at what we know about Workout duration, exercise selection, rep range, training splits, rest pauses and all the variables that make up a training program. Most likely a lot more interesting to all of you, but I have to stress again, that all of that will be as pointless as copying routines from a magazine if you aren’t willing to be honest about yourself in regards to what was written in this piece. Honesty is key. So don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. Only in accepting your flaws now do you eliminate them later. Whatever your goal is, it doesn’t stop at your current level. So why stop improving ?

References :

1. Eliasson J, Elfegoun T, Nilsson J, Köhnke R, Ekblom B, Blomstrand E. Maximal lengthening contractions increase p70 S6 kinase phosphorylation in human skeletal muscle in the absence of nutritional supply. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2006 Dec;291(6):E1197-205.
2. Scott CB. The effect of time-under-tension and weight lifting cadence on aerobic, anaerobic, and recovery energy expenditures: 3 submaximal sets. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2012 Apr;37(2):252-6.

Crank It Up: 6 HIIT Cardio Workouts To Help Shred The Fat – By Chris Martinez

These days cardio machines are everyone’s choice of conditioning. Why? Probably because you hardly break a sweat, feel no pain, and you’re able to read the latest Gossip Magazine or text message while you’re at it. Yet as much as I do advocate using cardio machines, the correct way that is, there are other effective conditioning workouts out there.

As I discussed the science and the whole 9 yards regarding HIIT cardio in my last article, I wanted to present to you 6 HIIT cardio workouts that will be fun, exhausting, a true test of mental toughness, and most importantly beneficial to your health and body compositional changes.

The Energy Systems Before we pop the bottles of champagne, I want to educate you on some of the energy systems that are going to be used during these workouts. There are three energy systems that you will use.

#1 High Energy Phosphate System The first being the high energy phosphate system which provides energy for muscles in the initial 1 to 15 seconds of high intensity activity (1). ATP (quick burst of energy) will be activated during this system, which is great because that’s what causes the body to make metabolic changes.

#2 Anaerobic Glycolytic System The second being the Anaerobic Glycolytic System which the body relies primarily on anaerobic metabolism for the energy required to perform intensive exercise of greater than 12-15 seconds and less than 3 minutes duration (2). This system will be another way to overload your muscles, as you will be firing those muscle fibers so fast, you are going to recruit the fast twitch fibers and evidently you’re going to cause muscle damage (a good thing).

#3 Aerobic Oxidative System The third system being the Aerobic Oxidative System which consists primarily of exercises that are performed at an intensity lower than that of the anaerobic threshold (3). Meaning that you will not get any lactic acid (burning sensation) production when you’re in this system and it will be mainly a brisk to fast pace walk or light jogs to keep your heart rate elevated.

So as you can see with all three of the energy systems above, they will all be used in these 6 workouts. Alright, enough with all this science mumbo jumbo, let’s HIIT it!

#1 Car Pushes Yes you heard me… Car pushes! If you have never tried car pushes then you are missing out on one of the best HIIT cardio workouts around. This is one of the best ways to improve cardio conditioning, leg drive and power, some upper body pressing power and build a great physique. I’ve found that my squats and leg pressing power have improved since doing these because of the overload the car puts on your legs and you have to use a tremendous amount of lower body strength, as well as upper body strength to move the car. Car pushing is very underrated for strength training and power in my opinion. The cool thing about car pushing is that there are literally hundreds of yards of empty space around somewhere near you, so all you have to do is put it in neutral, drop your head down, arms straight, get low and push with all you’ve got for 10-30 seconds.

Now depending on if you’re a newbie or advanced trainee, choose the car you push wisely. If you weigh 100 pounds you probably don’t want to push a Hummer. If you’re 200 plus, you probably don’t want to push a slug bug. You get the point!

The Protocol

• 10 minute brisk walk or slow paced jog for warm up
• 4 intervals of 10-30 second all out pushes and 3-4 minute brisk walk in between intervals
• 10 minute brisk walk to cool down

#2 Sled Drags I’m sure some of you are saying what the hell are sled drags? Sled drags are very effective for the athlete, power lifter, or down-right bad ass that wants to get in tip top shape. Dragging a weighted sled by using a harness tied to your waist allows you to activate the core to work harder as well as your glutes and hams. The harness also forces you to keep a straight, stiff spine throughout the exercise, regardless of how tired you get. Rounding the back at anytime will immediately look and feel very awkward, giving instant feedback to straighten out or stop and rest. The great thing about sled dragging is it can have a carryover effect to many things, such as: Football, athletes learning how to explode when moving. Powerlifting, sled dragging strengthens your posterior chain and that can help with deadlifting. Track and field, overloading your waist and sprinting with weights can lead to more explosive movements when you train without them. If you aren’t sled dragging, then you are missing out on superior strength gains and conditioning.

If you decide to sled drag, a good rule of thumb is “you’ve got too much weight when you’re walking like you’re drunk.”-Louie Simmons

The Protocol

• 10 minute brisk walk or slow paced jog for warm up
• 5 intervals of 10-30 seconds all out sled dragging and 2-3 minute brisk walk in between intervals
• 10 minutes brisk walk to cool down

#3 Heavy Rope Training Heavy rope training was originally developed for specific combat sports such as Football and Mixed Martial Arts; it is now becoming very popular for conditioning work and HIIT cardio. If you’re looking for a new twist to your fitness routine or if you’re one of those that complain about other HIIT cardio workouts being too demanding on your legs the day after a leg session, then this is what you’re looking for. Along with increasing your strength, power, and endurance, the constant motion of rope battling will give you a hell of a workout. Some common movements include waves, slams, throws, spirals, and whips. These all involve swinging your arms up and down (or side to side) for timed intervals. With each of these exercises, you want to create a solid base by planting your feet in a shoulder width stance and stabilizing your core, think of an athletic stance.

You’ll quickly discover that these exercises engage not just your arms and shoulders, but your whole body.

The Protocol

• 5 minute moderate jump rope for warm up
• 3-5 sets of 10-30 second intervals (waves, slams, throws, spirals, whips) and 45-60 seconds of rest in between intervals
• 5 minutes of moderate jump rope to cool down

#4 Kettlebell Swings Believe it or not but kettlebells are starting to be increasingly popular. Specifically kettlebell swings have become a great HIIT cardio workout to activate your glutes and hamstrings. A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning found as the movement progressed from the bottom of the swing to the top of the swing, back muscle activation peaked first at around 50% of MVC (maximal voluntary contraction), followed by abdominal/oblique activation at around 20-30% of MVC, followed by gluteal muscle activation at around 75% of MVC (4). As you can see kettlebell swings stimulate your glutes, strengthen your back muscles, engage your core muscles and help strengthen the hip and knees. Muscle activation ramps up during a half-second interval in the concentric phase (top of the swing) and then transitions to almost complete relaxation during much of the eccentric phase (coming down with the swing) (5). So every time you are swinging that kettlebell you are firing muscle fibers and this could lead to overall muscle growth. If you’ve never tried kettlebells for HIIT then your booty and hamies are in for a long day!

Make sure to be wise when you choose the weight, you aren’t going for a 1 rep max, pick a comfortable weight that you can swing and use good form to really activate all the muscles.

The Protocol

• 5 minute moderate jump rope for warm up or 10 minute brisk walk/jog
• 5 sets of 10-30 second intervals (all out swings) and 45-60 seconds of rest in between intervals
• 5 minutes of moderate jump rope or 10 minute brisk walk/jog to cool down

#5 Boxing Here’s a HIIT workout you can do after your boss was on your ass all day or if you have one of those days when you feel a big weight on your shoulders…Hit the heavy bag! Hitting a punching bag is a great upper body workout and tailors well for those that have lower body injuries or limitations. One recommendation I will make is to not do a heavy upper body workout following this workout or the day after. Make sure to have an off day or lower body day. Your shoulders and arms will feel like you got in a bar fight with Mike Tyson after this workout.

The Protocol

• 10 minutes of jump rope for a warm up
• 5 rounds of 10-30 second all out (everything you’ve got beating the crap out of that bag)
• 2-4 minutes of jump roping in between rounds
• 10 minute brisk walk to cool down

Julien Greaux – Alex Ardenti Photography

#6 Sprints Last but not least how can I leave out good old sprints that have been tried and true for the longest time. Just look at sprinters legs compared to a long distance runners legs. Obviously the sprinter has more muscle mass on their legs because they’re activating fast twitch muscle fibers and creating muscle damage which leads to muscle growth. If you don’t believe me, go do sprints and you’ll see how sore you are the next day, it’ll feel almost the same as if you did an intense leg workout and that’s because you activated and broke down those muscle fibers. A recent study by Metcalfe et al. shows if you perform what Metcalfe and colleagues call the “minimal amount of exercise for improving metabolic health” a 3x per week 10min exercise regimen with no more than two (yes, I said it only 2 times!) all-out sprints, everything you’ve got, you will make changes to your metabolic rate (6). This 6 week exercise program was compared to the results of a 10 month intervention program in subjects who exercised 3x a week for 40min (steady state).

Metcalfe’s study goes to show that it’s a more efficient way to burn fat by doing 3x per week for 10 min with only 2 all out sprint intervals because the steady state endurance study was not only four times more time-consuming, but it also failed to improve the glucose tolerance test and produced no improvements in insulin sensitivity.

The Protocol

• 10 minute brisk walk
• 5 sets of 10-30 second intervals (all out, everything you’ve got) and 1-4 minutes of rest in between intervals
• 10 minute brisk walk to cool down

Wrapping it up Now don’t get all bent out of shape after this, but you must understand the pros and cons of doing HIIT cardio workouts. They should be used as a tool and not be overused. I wouldn’t recommend more than 3-4 HIIT cardio workouts a week and I would definitely not do them after a high intensity leg workout day. Also, you’re probably wondering why I keep saying 10-30 seconds of intervals and that’s because everyone’s AT (anaerobic threshold) is different. You have to build your tolerance and get conditioned for these types of workouts and the more you do it and push yourselves, the more your AT will improve. With that in mind, we are all different and respond differently to certain things. So experiment yourself and see what you like best and what works best for you. Start with 10 second intervals and see if you can eventually get to 30 seconds.

Just don’t overdo it or take that risk of injuring yourself. Now that you have these 6 workouts in your gym bag of tricks… go HIIT it!

Author: Chris Martinez

References: (1) Hultman E, Bergstrom J, Anderson NM. Breakdown and resynthesis of phosphorylcreatine and adenosine triphosphate in connection with muscular work in man. Scand J Clin lab Invest. 1967.
(2) Wilmore JH, Costill DL (eds). Physiology of sport and exercise 3rd edition. : Human Kinetics
(3) Wells GD, Selvadurai H, Tein I. Bioenergetic provision of energy for muscular activity. Paediatric Respitory reviews. 2009.
(4) McGill, SM. Marshall, LW. Kettlebell swing, snatch, and bottoms-up carry: back and hip muscle activation, motion, and low back loads. J strength Cond Res. 2012. Jan 26
(5) Contreras, Brett
(6) Metcalfe et al. Towards the minimal amount of exercise for improving metabolic health: beneficial effects of reduced-exertion high-intensity interval training. European J applied Physio. 2011.

"Was I in the right place?" I asked myself for the second time that day. The little street near Southern Methodist University in Dallas was an incongruous blend of old houses and new bars teeming with college kids. It was 9 p.m. and the sun had set, making it impossible for me to read the street numbers. Finally I pulled over next to a bar called The Green Elephant to look at my directions again.

And that's when I saw them, a handful of men and women lunging down a long corridor holding Olympic bars over their heads. A well-built young man held a timer and appeared to be either encouraging them or yelling at them.

I'd finally found CrossFit Dallas Central, one of 650 CrossFit affiliate gyms.

Later I learned that the athletes — which included members of the SMU lacrosse team — were performing what the owner of the facility called a "single-movement mindfuck." This group was on their 28th minute of overhead walking lunges, the only exercise in that day's workout. The record was 400 meters in 20 minutes flat. The sweat poured.

Earlier that day, at 6:45 a.m., I'd had the same experience, driving around an industrial-warehouse district in Plano looking for building numbers in the dark. That time, instead of lunging lacrosse players, I was clued in by a man running by my truck wearing a weighted vest. I followed.

Ripping the vest off, he walked through a door with me close behind. CrossFit Plano was small but well-equipped with the standard markers of the "CF" gym: bumper plates, Olympic bars, kettlebells, dumbbells, gymnastic rings, climbing ropes, tractor tires, bands, Concept II rowers, medicine balls, pull-up bars.

The runner dashed into the next room and began to do kipping pull-ups. I learned later he was doing "Murph": a one-mile run in a vest followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 body-weight squats, and another one-mile run, all done against the clock.

This "WOD," or Workout of the Day, was named after a Navy Lieutenant and CrossFit enthusiast killed in Afghanistan. Most other WODs are given girl names, like they used to do with hurricanes.

I was there to learn the truth about CrossFit, the training phenomenon dubbed "one of the fastest-growing fitness movements on the planet" by the Business News Network. Later, I'd do interviews with CF fans and critics, make phone calls, and read everything I could find online. But I'd start by driving to Dallas and doing CrossFit ... twice in one day.

This is what I learned. This, as I see it, is the truth about some of the most controversial aspects of CrossFit.


The Truth About CrossFit's Training Goals

"CrossFit is not a specialized fitness program, but a deliberate attempt to optimize physical competence in each of 10 recognized fitness domains," says founder Greg Glassman in the Foundations document. Those domains are: cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy.

CrossFit coaches like to point out that even champions in certain sports have huge gaps in their fitness, as defined by the above 10 domains. Ironman competitors score high in some areas, low in others. The marathoner dominates cardio endurance but he isn't strong. The powerlifter is strong, but often has very low endurance and can't do a single pull-up.

If your goal is to specialize and compete in one sport, then CrossFit isn't for you. Instead, the goal of the CrossFitter is to become "competent" in all 10 domains. He may never be a top gymnast but he will develop great body control. He may never win a marathon, but he can enter a 5K without training for it and finish near the top.

Troy Dodson, owner of CrossFit Plano, says that for the CrossFitter, fitness itself is the sport. Indeed, CrossFit draws a lot of ex-athletes, and the CrossFit Games are growing in popularity and pulling big-time sponsors. If it sticks, CrossFit competition will join a distinguished list of training methods that eventually became competitive sports, including Olympic lifting, powerlifting, and strongman.

The CF goal of overall fitness, "functional" strength, and all-around preparedness has attracted many law-enforcement agencies, military and firefighting units, and martial artists who like the "train for the unknown and unknowable" philosophy.

According to the CrossFit website, "Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist."

Experienced CrossFitters aren't the strongest athletes out there, but they're stronger than most. They're not the fastest either, but they're fast. Their claim to fame is their completeness.

And it's easy to see the appeal: Why be big if you're not functional? Why have great endurance if you have no strength and power? Why not be competent in all of those things?

Critics point out that being "competent" at everything makes you great at nothing. It's a valid criticism, but it doesn't bother the CrossFit community. They revel in their versatility and believe strongly that being skilled in every aspect of fitness makes them, as their T-shirts proclaim, "unfuckwithable."


The truth? If you're not competing in a specific sport that measures only a few athletic qualities, then why not become fully rounded? Why be the guy with the big bench who can't run up a flight of stairs? Why be the guy who can run 10 miles on the treadmill but who can't help someone move a couch?

Perhaps CrossFitter Richard Doughty summed it up best when he wrote on a CF forum, "Does CrossFit make sense for an NFL linebacker? No. Does an NFL linebacker's program make sense for regular people who want to be able to do everything well? No."

If you have a specific goal in your training — top-level competitive mountain biking, bodybuilding, a 600-pound deadlift — then CrossFit isn't for you. You need to specialize. If you want to be good, but not great, at a variety of athletic qualities, then CrossFit is a good option. And that's the truth.


The Truth About Greg Glassman

Greg Glassman is the founder of CrossFit. A former gymnast, the 49-year-old Glassman is credited with "creating" CrossFit in the 1980s, though the mix-and-match training system wasn't officially named until much later. The first CrossFit gym was opened by Glassman in 1995 and the website was launched in 2001.

Glassman is a controversial figure, quick to make enemies. While he's revered by some in the CrossFit community (many of whom clamor to get their photos taken with him), he's also been called a "lunatic" by at least one former CF coach. "The major problem with CrossFit is Glassman himself. His personality, his ego ... he's now doing CrossFit more harm than good," said the former coach, who asked not to be identified by name because of ongoing friction.

Glassman is frequently confrontational to those who question his protocols. A couple of years back, TC wrote the following snarky lines in one of his Atomic Dog columns:

"...and screw Crossfit and their like. What, you have so little imagination that you need a website for housewives and pampered stockbrokers to give you your daily, completely arbitrary workout?

Friday's workout:

Run 400 meters

Do 20 push-ups

Dance like a cast member of the Broadway musical Cats for 15 minutes

That's a workout! You're all winners!

Jesus!"

In retaliation, Glassman publically challenged to a $10,000 competition against a female CrossFit athlete. When he received no reply, he called TC a "T-Nation clown."

Oddly, he didn't challenge TC himself. Perhaps this is because Glassman is admittedly overweight and no longer does CrossFit WODs, according to a 2005 New York Times article. Sure enough, photos of Glassman show a man who looks out of shape.

In addition, when Glassman asked Testosterone contributor Dan John to defend CrossFit and Dan refused, Glassman referred to him as a coward and cut ties. Still, Dan, who trained two years in the CrossFit style, is acknowledged by many CrossFitters for his contributions to the training philosophy.

One important aspect of CrossFit is the Tabata method, a protocol that involves training the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems simultaneously, using short sets of all-out effort followed by even shorter rest periods. Dan is credited with introducing the Tabata method — first used in Japanese research, and later tested with elite athletes in a variety of sports — to regular gym rats looking for quick fat loss.

Despite the cutting of ties, most CrossFitters still give Dan a lot of credit for their training protocols. Dan, by the way, tells me that he's never made a penny from his CrossFit contributions.

Another example of Glassman's reportedly heavy-handed style: A master of "Google spanking," Glassman responded to a lawsuit filed by Makimba Mimms, a former Navy CrossFitter who claims he suffered permanent disability from a CrossFit workout, by posting a video of children doing the allegedly dangerous workout, which was sarcastically renamed "Makimba." (CrossFit and Glassman were not named as defendants in the suit; Mimms was ultimately awarded $300,000 for his injuries.)

The truth about Glassman? He's a leader, an innovator, and, it seems, a man who's not easy to get along with.

For the record, Testosterone requested an interview with Glassman to get his side on these issues, but we were ultimately refused after Glassman read a list of our proposed questions.


The Truth About those Clowns

Hang around long enough in the CrossFit world and you'll no doubt hear about "Pukey the Clown" and "Uncle Rhabdo," mascots, of a sort, for CrossFit.

It goes like this: You puke during a CrossFit workout, you get an "I met Pukey" T-shirt featuring a clown losing his lunch. "Our goal isn't to make you throw up, of course," said Dodson, the Plano CrossFit coach, "but it happens sometimes. The clown T-shirt is just to lighten things up and let the person know they've pushed themselves hard."

The walls of Dodson's facility are covered in photos, many of them showing people lying on the ground or on their hands and knees after a CrossFit workout. Throwing up, of course, doesn't lead to increased fitness in any domain, but the lightheartedness of Pukey is forgivable. Uncle Rhabdo, on the other hand, may not be.

Rhabdo, or rhabdomyolysis, is caused when muscle fiber breaks down, gets released into the bloodstream, and poisons the kidneys. On a CrossFit FAQ for affiliates, in a section titled "Ten Tips for Successful Affiliation (AKA Our Business Plan)," tip number four reads:

"Don't kill anyone. Rhabdomyolysis is a potentially lethal threat to newcomers; be very careful. This is a very real and present danger. Avoiding 'rhabdo' should be the primary concern of first- and second-time workouts. Throwing [an] unknown newbie into an established group class is an invitation to rhabdo."

That's the official line, at least. Hardcore CrossFitters sometimes have a different opinion. On CrossFit's forums, those who claim to have developed rhabdo from standard WODs are called "pussies." Others claim that rhabdo is almost impossible to get from any type of training and is found more often in car-accident victims and the occasional ill-prepared marathon runner. One CrossFit critic has said that the warnings about rhabdo were more of a marketing gimmick to show how tough the workouts can be.

Whatever the case, it's not the potentially injurious nature inherent to all intense forms of athleticism that garners criticism; it's the sometimes flippant response by CrossFit, symbolized by the T-shirt with the image of a dying clown.

Glassman dismisses most of the "CrossFit is dangerous" criticisms with the macho posturing for which he's become known: "If you find the notion of falling off the rings and breaking your neck so foreign to you, then we don't want you in our ranks," he said in that 2005 New York Times article.

A CrossFitter dresses as Pukey at a CrossFit event.

The truth about the clowns? Pukey is silly fun. Uncle Rhabdo is in poor taste, to say the least. Glassman? As charming as ever.


The Truth About CrossFit Women

It's said that CrossFit makes men small and women hot, and every female CrossFitter is a stunning example of female athleticism and sexuality.

We can't argue with the second half of that statement.

The Truth About CrossFit Being Anti-Bodybuilding and Anti-Powerlifting Is CrossFit "anti-building" or "anti-powerlifting"? Yes ... and no. The biggest criticism CF has of bodybuilding is that bodybuilders aren't "functional."

Remember, CrossFit is anti-specialization. Bodybuilding and powerlifting are all about specialization. In that sense, CrossFit is also anti-endurance and anti-anything else that focuses too much on any one of the 10 domains of fitness. CrossFit advocates, however, do state that CF can be used to supplement sport-specific training for competitive athletes. In that sense, CrossFit functions as GPP, or General Physical Preparedness.

Whether someone chooses to specialize in hypertrophy or pure strength, or chooses to build some muscle while simultaneously chasing cardio endurance, flexibility, power, and other goals, is a matter of preference. The powerlifter chooses to chase one domain and would rather be able to do one heavy rep for a PR than 300 "air squats" for time. Controversy arises, however, when Glassman states that CrossFit leads to better hypertrophy than natural bodybuilding.

Specifically, he offers this hierarchy of effective mass-gaining strategies, ranked from most to least effective:

1. Bodybuilding on steroids

2. CrossFitting on steroids

3. CrossFitting without steroids

4. Bodybuilding without steroids

In other words, Glassman claims that natural CrossFitters have more muscle mass than natural bodybuilders, based on this argument:

"The bodybuilding model is designed around, requires, steroids for significant hypertrophy. The neuroendocrine response of bodybuilding protocols is so blunted that without 'exogenous hormonal therapy' little happens. The CrossFit protocol is designed to elicit a substantial neuroendocrine wallop and hence packs an anabolic punch that puts on impressive amounts of muscle, though that is not our concern. Strength is. Natural bodybuilders (the natural ones that are not on steroids) never approach the mass that our athletes do. They don't come close."

When challenged, CrossFit likes to roll out their token bodybuilder, Josh Bunch.

But Bunch had used traditional bodybuilding methods for years before adopting CrossFit. He has also said, in interviews, that he modified CrossFit to fit his bodybuilding goals, adding "hypertrophy-inducing and muscle-shaping isolation exercises on top of core CrossFit programming."

Likewise, some of the most well-developed female CrossFitters had great bodies before they ever discovered CrossFit; some even competed in figure and bodybuilding pre-CrossFit.

The truth? In my research, the only CrossFitters I've seen who display the hypertrophy of a natural bodybuilder built their bodies with traditional bodybuilding techniques first, then adopted CrossFit.

Yes, CrossFit can build muscle, especially in the newbie or even the experienced trainee who hasn't changed his program in years. And there are some impressive physiques to be seen in CrossFit gyms. But no one is ever going to win a bodybuilding contest, natural or otherwise, by using only CrossFit workouts.

The Truth About Cookie-Cutter Routines and Bad Programming Talk to enough CrossFit coaches and you'll hear about how members of elite military units train right beside housewives and grandmas at CF gyms, all of them using the same workouts. For the most part, this is true.

CrossFitters talk a lot about "scalability." In other words, people in various stages of fitness can perform the same WOD but scale it to fit their ability level. Workouts are scaled by altering load, rest, and intensity. One person in a group class may be doing thrusters with a PVC pipe; another may be using a 135-pound barbell.

The CrossFit philosophy is that every athlete and every regular guy or gal needs to develop the same 10 fitness qualities. The seemingly random WODs do this. "We're asked for workouts for baseball, karate, swimming, dance, boxing, but they all get the same thing: CrossFit," Glassman wrote in a CrossFit Journal article.

This is where you often see a disconnect between Glassman and owners of CF-affiliated gyms. The ones I spoke with are more open to specificity. In fact, many of them check out the online Workout of the Day but then go with their own workouts instead. They've drunk the Kool-Aid, but they choose their own flavor.

Strength and conditioning coaches often describe CrossFit's programming — or lack thereof — as senseless and random. Alwyn Cosgrove notes that this "all over the place" programming can be dangerous:

"A recent CrossFit workout was 30 reps of snatches with 135 pounds. A snatch is an explosive exercise designed to train power development. Thirty reps is endurance. You don't use an explosive exercise to train endurance; there are more effective and safer choices.

"Another one was 30 muscle-ups. And if you can't do muscle-ups, do 120 pull-ups and 120 dips. It's just random; it makes no sense. Two days later the program was five sets of five in the push jerk with max loads. That's not looking too healthy for the shoulder joint if you just did 120 dips 48 hours ago."

Mike Boyle adds, "I think high-rep Olympic lifting is dangerous. Be careful with CrossFit."

And here's Charles Poliquin: "If you try to do everything in your workout, you get nothing. CrossFit is different, and maybe even fun for some people, but it's not very effective. No athlete has ever gotten good training like that."

The WODs come straight from CF headquarters, but it's up to individual trainers to decide how they're used. Many of these trainers are officially certified by CrossFit, but that means less than it seems. For $1,000, you can earn CrossFit's Level 1 certification in a single weekend course. (Level 2 costs $500, and subsequent certifications cost $250.) That includes lectures and hands-on demonstrations, but no written test.

No one argues that CrossFit workouts aren't challenging. They sure as hell are. The question is over the disconnect between "hard" and "smart." The truth is that every veteran strength coach I interviewed who's familiar with CF had serious reservations about its programs.


The Truth About the CrossFit "Cult"

CrossFit has been called the fitness equivalent of the Taliban. "CultFit" is a term of derision frequently used in heated forum discussions. And it's easy to compare the doe-eyed devotion to CrossFit to similarly disparaged "HIT Jedi" or members of "Pavel's Kettlebell Kult." In fact, more than one strength and conditioning coach I spoke with compared Glassman to Arthur Jones, which could be a compliment, a condemnation, or a bit of both.

Again, there's a disconnect here between CrossFitters and their charismatic leader. CrossFit affiliates are often more open-minded about other training styles and sport-specific goals. Glassman is more of a hardliner.

But is CrossFit a "cult?" This is subjective, but to my way of thinking CrossFit is no more a cult than Westside-style powerlifting, or training with kettlebells, or pursuing a sport like Brazilian jiujitsu. Sure, there's a sense that CrossFitters seem to enjoy being invested in a training system that's different from — and, in their eyes, vastly superior to — competing systems. But you can say that about lots of people you know who're serious about training.

That said, Glassman sometimes comes off as a classic cult leader, charismatic and single-minded and perhaps not 100 percent grounded in the same reality the rest of us perceive. But as long as he avoids putting cyanide in the Kool-Aid he serves his trainees, it's difficult to see a problem with that.


The Truth About the Kipping Pull-Up

Of all the controversial aspects of CrossFit, it's their pull-up variations that often cause the most outrage.

CF uses a kipping pull-up and chin-up. This is a pull-up initiated by a body swing and a hard pull to the chest. In other words, it's much different from strict pull-ups from a dead hang, which are often used by CrossFitters as warm-up exercises. Kipping pull-ups, with the momentum and body English, allow for higher reps.

Critics are quick to attack: "That's cheating! CrossFit encourages poor form!"

At least, that's what I said, when I considered myself one of those critics. But after learning how to do it and applying it in a CF workout, I reject my own criticism. It's like comparing a traditional shoulder press to a push press. The latter isn't just a "cheat" version of the former. It's a different exercise, one that perhaps offers more carryover to real-life challenges.

Then there's the jumping pull-up.

Again, it seems easy, like a pull-up shamelessly cheated. But if you do it right, with an explosive drive to the bar, followed by an effort to actively push yourself back down, it's a whole new exercise.

Am I going to forgo the dead-hang pull-up in favor of these cool new variations I just learned? No way; I think the strict pull-up is better for hypertrophy. But the others are nice variations to keep in the toolbox, along with jump squats, push presses, and other explosive variations on traditional exercises.


The Truth About CrossFit and 300

When the movie 300 hit the big screen, people marveled over the actors' physiques. Some credited CrossFit for these transformations, and sure enough, some CrossFit gyms quickly put up 300 movie posters. But did CrossFit really develop those Spartan bodies? Yes and no.

The cast was trained by Mark Twight, founder of Gym Jones. The workout videos released do resemble CrossFit, and Twight was, at one time, affiliated with CrossFit.

From there, the story gets complicated, with a lot of "he said, she said." But the gist seems to be this: CrossFit claims Twight stole their intellectual property, with a training system that seems as if it could have been cut-and-pasted from the CF playbook.

Twight says he'd already severed ties with CrossFit and had created his own training style by the time he worked with the 300 actors. In an essay on the Gym Jones site, Twight seems to address the controversy without mentioning any names:

"I learned and practiced several different types of training during the 15 years I earned my living as an athlete. I benefited from relationships with many mentors and coaches. I repay those teachers by not remaining a student. Instead I add their teachings to my own experience and knowledge to create my own way."

The truth here is muddled. The training styles are similar, but how do you copyright a training style that fully admits to being a mish-mash of other disciplines?

One pattern does become clear though: Where Glassman and CrossFit go, bad blood and broken ties follow.


The Whole Truth, Nothing But

Will CrossFit be a fad that fades within the next few years? Maybe. But right now it's going strong, with no shortage of new gym owners willing to pay $1,000 for the annual affiliation fee. (That's on top of the $1,000 for Level 1 certification, which is a prerequisite to becoming an affiliate in North America.)

Some of these affiliates are expansive, high-dollar facilities; others are simply garages in suburban neighborhoods. One CrossFit coach, after I promised him anonymity, said that he worries about the fast growth of CrossFit. "Let's just say that quality control is down," he told me.

But let's step back from the Internet pissing contests, politics, lawsuits, and internal drama just a moment and look at the big picture. Right now in America, more than 65 percent of the population is overweight or obese. Kids are dying from adult diseases largely brought on by the basic lack of movement. With those dreary facts in mind, it seems silly to get into bitter debates over any single style of exercising. Allegiances and preferences aside, I'm just glad to see people getting into a gym, whether it's Gold's, Curves, or a CrossFit gym in some city's warehouse district.

Still, I know as well as anyone that "can't we all just get along?" leaves everyone unsatisfied. We need closure.

Is CrossFit the only training system you'll ever need, as its founder and its most enthusiastic members claim? No. And most CrossFitters I've communicated with will acknowledge that. Is CrossFit a fun, challenging, effective training method? Yes ... but only if the benefits it offers are the ones you seek. As long as its goals match your goals, I recommend it.

Note: Special thanks to Troy at The Pound; if you're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, I highly recommend a visit. Also, thanks to Sam at CrossFit Dallas Central.

Updated 3/21/07

IA


Someone asked me the other day that even though I trained people so many different ways I must have a favorite way to train. And I told them that I do have a favorite way to train myself, but not a favorite way to train everyone because everyone is quite different and there truly is no “one size fits all” when it comes to training protocols, since what may be absolute magic for one guy, will be the worst possible option for another. That said I do have 5 different formats (and sub routines within them all) that fit an extremely large percentage of the lifters out there. Here they are if anyone is interested.

Hardgainer/Low Volume/Frequency Routine

This format is one that after everyone reads the routines, not one in 20 will pick this one, and the truth is, many of the 20 will do better on this one than any of the others. Why will no one pick it? It’s not “flashy” it doesn’t have a fancy name, nor will most guys ever believe it could be “enough” work after reading “Flex” and the like seeing the “routines of the pro’s”. Well the truth is those damn routines of the “pro’s” work for a select few and most guys reading this are not likely to one of those guys.


Day One:

Dips or Bench Press 2-3 x 6-8

Incline Press, or incline Fly 2 x 10-12

Military Press, Or Hammer Shoulder Press 2-3 x 6-8

Tricep (skull crushers) Extensions or Tricep Pushdowns 2-3 x 10-12

Heavy Abs 3 x 10

Day Two:

Pull-Up 3 sets to failure

Barbell Row 2-3 x 8

EZ-Bar Or Dumbell Curl 1-2 x 10

Squats 2 x 10

Deadlifts, or Stiff-Legged Deadlift 1 x 10

Sub-Routine:

Here is another Hardgainer Style Routine done three days a week. TRUE hardgainers will do MUCH better on the two-day, as will many lifters with fairly good recovery.


Day One:
Dips or Bench Press 2 x 6-8

Incline Press, or incline Fly 2 x 10-12

Military Press, Or Hammer Shoulder Press 2 x 6-8

Tricep (skull crushers) Extensions or Tricep Pushdowns 2 x 10-12


Day Two:

Pull-Up 3 sets to failure

Barbell Row 2 x 8

EZ-Bar Or Dumbell Curl 1 x 10

Heavy Abs 3 x 10


Day Three

Squats 2 x 10

Deadlifts, or Stiff-Legged Deadlift 1 x 10

Pull-Troughs, Glute/Ham Raises, or Reverse Hypers



Here is a routine that most anyone can pull off except for real hardgainers, that rotates every week. This allows more lifts to hit, allowing less monotony, and longer progress before a wall is hit from recruitment pattern burnout. You can also add a 3rd rotation of lifts if you like. This is an extremely solid way to train and is effective for a large variety of lifters. Again, many variations of this basic format are possible, and used dependent on the individual trainee.


Day one, week one

Dips 3 x 10

Incline Bench Press 3 x 6

Lateral Raise 4 x 10

Laying Tricep Extensions 3 x 8-10


Day two, week one

Wide Grip Pull-Down/Up 3 x 8

Chest Supported Row, or Barbell Row 3 x 8-10

Barbell Curl 3 x 10

Resistance Abs 3 x 10


Day three, week one

Squat 3 x 6-10

Leg Press 2 x 15

Good-Morning or Stiff-Legged Deadlift 2 x 8

Calf Raise RP 2 x 15/30


Day one, week two

Bench Press 3 x 6-10

Incline DB Press 2 x 10-12

Military Press 3 x 10

Tricep Pus-Downs 3 x 8-10


Day two, week two

Supinated Grip Pull-Down/Up 4 x 8

Dumbbell Row 3 x 10

Dumbbell Curl 3 x 8

Reverse Curl 2 x 10

Hanging Leg Raises

Day three, week two

Deadlift 1 x 8

Safety Squat, or hack squat, 2 x 6-10

Glute/Ham Raise 3 x 8

Leg Press Calf Raise


DC (Dogg Crap, AKA Dante) Training. You would have to be hiding under a rock to not know about Dogg’s training system. Here are a few reasons why it is so productive.

It’s obviously very low volume. Say what you will about HIT, it works wonders for MANY, MANY trainees. Most lifters simply do too many sets, of too many lifts way too often. They overtrain horribly, and don’t grow. DC’s system has you doing 4-6 WORK sets a session, usually no more than 3 days a week. That is a great formula for success for the previously perpetually overtrained.

For those that can take it, the rest-pause sets provide the fastest path to hit the muscle fibers deeply with the least amount of sets (one). The system has a built in intensity cycling schedule. These are the so-called “cruise weeks”. I believe they were originally built in the system primarily to scale back the androgen use for a short time (four or more weeks heavy, two weeks low dose with clomid to help HPTA recovery) and were then also used to scale back the intensity, and take a slight break from the grueling chore of the extreme eating required to build extreme mass. What is beautiful about this system is that it works wonders for both the gear user, and ESPECIALLY well for those training clean. Most people’s bodies just don’t stand up well to a constant high intensity pounding and this system provides just the active rest break that so many need, but so few get on other systems.

The loading changes every week. Dogg’s system of picking 3 different lifts for each bodypart and rotating them each week stops the neural adaptation burnout that occurs when doing the same lifts week-in, week-out. On the down side people that don’t recruit well sometimes don’t progress on individual lifts as fast as they would when the neural adaptations are allowed to progress on a weekly basis. But this is offset by the fact that most people get better size gains when the load is varied, and it takes quite a while for most people to hit a wall with this type of loading.

DC’s routines are setup a variety of ways, with perhaps the most popular and appilicale being splitting the body up like this:

a)
Chest
Shoulders
Triceps
Back width
Back thickness

b)
biceps
forearms
calves
hams
quads

Three lifts are picked for each bodypart, and each training day you do ONE of the lifts in either rest-pause, or strait set fashion. That means after warm-ups, you do ONE lift per body-part for a total of 5 sets per workout. If you are not familiar with the details of this system do NOT attempt it based only on the routines presented here. The extreme stretching and other details are part and parcel of the system and must be used as a whole.

Here is a list of DC approved lifts. I do NOT approve of all of the lifts myself, but know they work well for many people:

CHEST
incline smythe
decline smythe
hammer strength press (incline and decline)
other good machine press
incline barbell
decline barbell
incline dumbbell press
flat dumbbell press
decline dumbbell press

SHOULDERS
smythe presses to front
smythe presses to back of head
hammer strength press
other good machine press
barbell press to front
barbell press to back of head
dumbbell shoulder press

TRICEPS
close grip bench in smythe
reverse grip bench in smythe
skull crushers
dips (in upright position)

BACK WIDTH
rack chins to front
rack chins to back of head
reverse grip rack chins (close grip)
assisted pullups
hammer strength "pulldown" machines
other good "pulldown" machines
pull downs to front
pull downs to back of head

BACK THICKNESS
deadlift
rack deadlift
T-bar rows
smythe rows
barbell rows

BICEPS
barbell curls
alternate dumbbell curls
barbell preacher curls
hammer strength machine curls
other good machine curls
cable curls
incline db curls
close grip ez-bar preacher curls
standing medium grip ez-bar curls

FOREARMS
hammer curls (alternated)
pinwheel curls (alternated)
reverse grip one arm cable curls

CALVES
calves on a leg press
standing calf raises
calves in hack squat
seating calf raises
any calf machine with a good range of motion

HAMSTRINGS
seating leg curls
standing leg curls
lying leg curls
stiff leg deadlift
sumo presses

QUADS
squats
smythe squats
hack squat
leg press

Here is a sample routine:

Monday
Hammer Bench Press x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Military Press in Rack x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Skull Crushers x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Wide Grip Pull-Down x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Bent Row x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause

Wednesday
Barbell Curl x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Hammer Curl x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Leg Press Calf Raise x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Glute/Ham Raise x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Leg Press x 1 set 10/20 Rest-Pause

That would be considered the first rotation. Now using a DIFFERENT set of lifts, the next is done. Again, there are three sets of lifts, and after the third rotation, you start again, such as:

Friday
Incline Bench Press x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Hammer Shoulder Press x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Dips x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Supinated Grip Pull-Ups x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Rack Pull x 1 set 10 reps

Monday
Dumbbell Curl x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Grip Machine x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Standing Calf Raise x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Leg Curl x 1 set 8/15 Rest-Pause
Squat x 1 set 10/20 Rest-Pause

Here is another variation of the format that I have used with great success myself, and with trainees of mine.

DC, IA style with all weights
Day One, Week One
Dips Reps 8/16 Rest-pause
Incline Fly Reps 8/16 Rest-pause
Lateral Raise Reps 15/30 One 15/30 rest-pause
Skull Crushers Reps 8/16 Rest-pause

Day Two, Week One
Wide Grip Pull-Down Reps 8/16 Rest-pause
Chest Supported Row Reps 8/16 Rest-pause
EZ- Bar Curl Reps 8 Both sets done with same weight
Resistance Abs Reps 10 Machine of your choice as long as it fits you well and you can go heavy, or see my ab article


Day Three, Week One
Leg Press Calf Raise Reps 20 2 Straight sets to failure
Deadlift Reps 10 1 set of 10 to one rep short of failure
Leg Press Reps 10/20 Rest-pause


Day One, Week Two
Dumbell Bench Press Reps 10 Both Sets Done with same weight
Incline Press, in rack Reps 8/16 Rest-pause
Machine Lateral Raise Reps 10/20 Rest-pause
Tricep Pushdown Reps 8 Both sets done with same weight


Day Two, Week Two
Supinated Grip Pull-Down/Pull-Up Reps 8/16 Rest-pause
Dumbell Row Reps 8/16 Rest-pause
Incline Bench Dumbell Curl Reps 8 Both Sets Done with same weight
Resistance Abs Reps 10 Machine of your choice as long as it fits you well and you can go heavy


Day Three, Week Two
Leg Press Calves Reps 15/30 2 rest pause sets. One to 15, the next to 30, fail at 8 for the first, 15 for the second
Leg Curl Reps 10 1 straight set to failure
Leg Extension Reps 10 1 straight set to failure
Squat Reps 20 Rest-Pause, Puke, go home


Here is a sample of ONE of my 4 different Westside Barbell modifications. This is may all time favorite way to train as it gives SUPERIOR strength gains, and size gains are great also. I have been working on the modification of the basif WSB format for a couple of years now and have FINALLY got all the pieces together to make this system work WONDERFUL for trainees at all levels. The format shown is for guys that have average to above average recovery ability. If you are a hardgainer or extreme hardgainer this is not the format to attempt. I will post a sample of that soon. What will this type of routine do for many if not most of you? Build strength faster than any BB program you have ever tried by a long shot. Just strength? Nope! For most of you, size will be awesome to. It may be the fastest way for many of you to reach your lifting goals, .Whether you are a BB’er or PL’er. I CHALLENGE ANY OF YOU THAT ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH YOUR CURRENT LEVEL OF PROGRESS TO TRY THIS FOR 4 WEEKS! If it works, you can do more studying and put together something on your own, or have me design a full routine and diet for you. A few things to keep in mind:

It is only a SAMPLE and is not laid out exactly like I write them for clients for a few reasons. I wanted to make sure EVERYONE had access and ability to do the lifts listed, and everyone that has even a modest gym can do these. I used a 3-week (it ends up being closer to 4 actual weeks because of the rotating format) on the ME lifts for simplicity sake. SOME lifters do get a 3 week rotation on ME lifts and other get 2 weeks, or even one. There is no waving of the weights or volume for either the DE work or the repetition work. Again this was done for simplicity sake, and I also can’t give it all away-lol. And last but not least, not knowing who will be attempting it, it is quite generic. But I will bet that anyone that recovers even remotely well will do extremely well on it. After just 4 weeks you WILL have a higher bench, squat and deadlift.

Monday ME Squat,
Arched Back Good Morning in Rack, 2 inches above parallel, 1 max set of 3 reps
Box Squat 2 x 8 at parallel, should have 2 reps left in you for all sets.
Glute/ham raise 3 x 8 to failure
Barbell Row 3 x 8, NTF
Dumbbell Curl 3 x10, NTF

Tuesday Off

Wednesday ME Bench
CG bench press in rack 4 inches from chest, 1 max set of 1 reps
Skull Crushers, straight bar 3 x 10, only last set to failure
Dumbell bench press 2 x 10, only last set close to failure
Lateral raise 4 x 10, NTF
Abs, HEAVY 3 x 10

Thursday Off

Friday DE Squat
DE Box squat at parallel 2 reps x 6 sets, 45 TIMED seconds between sets
Pull-Throughs 3 x 10 Only Last set close to Failure
Glute/ham 3 x to failure, or reverse hyper 3 x 8
Lat Pulldown, wide grip 4 x 6, NTF
BB Curl 3 x 6, NTF

Saturday Off

Sunday Off

__________________________________________________ __________

Monday DE Bench
Speed Bench press 3 reps x 6 sets, 45 TIMED seconds between sets
JM Press 3 x 6, NTF
Tricep Pushdowns 3 x 8, NTF
Dumbell Shoulder press 3 x 8 OR lateral raises, NTF
Hanging leg Raises 3x 10

Tuesday Off

Wednesday ME Squat
Arched Back Good Morning in Rack, 2 inches above parallel, 1 max set of 3 reps
Box Squat 2 x 8 at parallel, should have 2 reps left in you for all sets.
Glute/ham raise 3 x 8 to failure
Barbell Row 3 x 8, NTF
Dumbbell Curl 3 x10, NTF

Thursday Off

Friday ME Bench
CG bench press in rack 4 inches from chest, 1 max set of 1 reps
Skull Crushers, straight bar 3 x 10, only last set to failure
Dumbell bench press 2 x 10, only last set close to failure
Lateral raise 4 x 10, NTF
Abs, HEAVY 3 x 10

Saturday Off

Sunday Off

__________________________________________________ __________

Monday DE Squat
DE Box squat at parallel 2 reps x 6 sets, 45 TIMED seconds between sets
Pull-Throughs 3 x 10 Only Last set close to Failure
Glute/ham 3 x to failure, or reverse hyper 3 x 8
Lat pulldown, wide grip 4 x 6, NTF
BB Curl 3 x 6, NTF

Tuesday Off

Wednesday DE Bench
Speed Bench press 3 reps x 6 sets, 45 TIMED seconds between sets
JM Press 3 x 6, NTF
Triceps Pushdowns 3 x 8, NTF
Dumbbell Shoulder press 3 x 8 OR lateral raises, NTF
Hanging leg Raises 3 x 10

Thursday Off

Friday ME Squat
Arched Back Good Morning in Rack, 2 inches above parallel, 1 max set of 3 reps
Box Squat 2 x 8 at parallel, should have 2 reps left in you for all sets.
Glute/ham raise 3 x 8 to failure
Barbell Row 3 x 8, NTF
Dumbbell Curl 3 x10, NTF

Saturday Off

Sunday Off
__________________________________________________ _________________

Monday ME Bench
CG bench press in rack 4 inches from chest, 1 max set of 1 reps
Skull Crushers, straight bar 3 x 10, only last set to failure
Dumbbell bench press 2 x 10, only last set close to failure
Lateral raise 4 x 10, NTF
Abs, HEAVY 3 x 10

Tuesday Off

Wednesday DE Squat
DE Box squat at parallel 2 reps x 6 sets, 45 TIMED seconds between sets
Pull-Throughs 3 x 10 Only Last set close to Failure
Glute/ham 3 x to failure, or reverse hyper 3 x 8
Lat pulldown, wide grip 4 x 6, NTF
BB Curl 3 x 6, NTF

Thursday Off


Friday DE Bench
Speed Bench press 3 reps x 6 sets, 45 TIMED seconds between sets
JM Press 3 x 6, NTF
Tricep Pushdowns 3 x 8, NTF
Dumbbell Shoulder press 3 x 8 OR lateral raises, NTF
Hanging leg Raises 3 x 10

* NTF means NOT to Failure


If you have just read this and are totally unfamiliar with WSB DO NOT POST A BUNCH OF BASIC QUESTIONS. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT DE OR ME MEANS, OR OTHER SIMILAR STUFF YOU DO NOT HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE TO ATTEMPT THIS. YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF WESTSIDE BARBELL PRINCIPLES BEFORE ATTEMPTING THIS. Go to the WSB section of my site:


Many people do WONDERFUL on volume routines. Many have never been able to get volume to work for them in the least. By waving the volume you can get a volume responder to do MUCH better both in terms of size, and strength. And can very often get guys that have NEVER been able to make gains using volume do extremely well. This is only one of an endless number of possible variations, and one that is not the best wave for guys with poor recovery ability. For guys with less than good recovery more weeks should be spent on lower volume and the ramp up should be fairly steep, and only held a few weeks. If you are creative you can do a lot with this system and get size gains you were never able to gat on lower volume in some cases. I could post 10 sub-styles. But you probably get the basic idea. The wave loading can be peaked, and dropped back down immediately, or waved back down slowly. Waving it back down slowly is best done with a shorter, steeper duration ramp.

Waved Volume
WEEK 1-2
Day one Sets Reps
Bench Press 2 sets 8 reps
Low Incline Dumbell Press (15-30 degree) 2 sets 8 reps
Dips 2 sets 10 reps
Lateral Raises 2 sets 12 reps


Day Two
Overhand Grip Pull-Down/pull-up 2 sets 8 reps
Chest Supported Row, or Cable Row 2 sets 8 reps
Dumbell Curl 2 sets 8 reps
Grip Work Your Choice 2 sets 10 reps


Day Three
Rack Deadlifts 2 sets 6-12 reps
Leg Press 2 sets 15 reps
Resistance Abs 2 sets 10 reps
Leg Press Calves 2 sets 10/15, 15/30 reps



WEEK 3-4
Day one Sets Reps
Bench Press 3 sets 8 reps
Low Incline Dumbell Press (15-30 degree) 3 sets 8 reps
Dips 3 sets 8 reps
Lateral Raises 3 sets 8 reps


Day Two
Overhand Grip Pull-Down/pull-up 3 sets 8 reps
Chest Supported Row, or Cable Row 3 sets 8 reps
Dumbell Curl 3 sets 8 reps
Grip Work Your Choice 3 sets 12 reps


Day Three
Rack Deadlifts 2 sets 6-12 reps
Leg Press 2 sets 15 reps
Resistance Abs 2 sets 10 reps
Leg Press Calves 2 sets 10/15, 15/30 reps



WEEK 5-6
Day one Sets Reps
Bench Press 3 sets 8 reps
Low Incline Dumbell Press (15-30 degree) 3 sets 8 reps
Fly 3 sets 10 reps
Dumbell Overhead Press 3 sets 8 reps
Lateral Raises 4 sets 8 reps
Skull Crushers 3 sets 8 reps
Tricep Extensions 3 sets 8 reps


Day Two
Overhand Grip Pull-Down/pull-up 3 sets 8 reps
Supinated Grip Pull-Down/pull-up 3 sets 8 reps
Chest Supported Row, or Cable Row 3 sets 8 reps
Barbell Curl 2 sets 8 reps
Dumbell Curl 2 sets 8 reps
Grip Work Your Choice 4 sets 12 reps


Day Three
Rack Deadlifts 2 sets 6-12 reps
Squats 2 sets 6-12 reps
Leg Press 2 sets 15 reps
Resistance Abs 2 sets 10 reps
Leg Press Calves 2 sets 10/15, 15/30 reps



WEEK 7-8
Day one Sets Reps
Bench Press 4 sets 8 reps
Low Incline Dumbell Press (15-30 degree) 4 sets 8 reps
Fly 4 sets 10 reps
Dumbell Overhead Press 4 sets 8 reps
Lateral Raises 4 sets 8 reps
Skull Crushers 4 sets 8 reps
Tricep Extensions 4 sets 8 reps


Day Two
Overhand Grip Pull-Down/pull-up 4 sets 8 reps
Supinated Grip Pull-Down/pull-up 4 sets 8 reps
Chest Supported Row, or Cable Row 4 sets 8 reps
Barbell Curl 4 sets 8 reps
Dumbell Curl 3 sets 8 reps
Grip Work Your Choice 4 sets 12 reps


Day Three
Rack Deadlifts 2 sets 6-12 reps
Squats 3 sets 6-12 reps
Leg Press 2 sets 15 reps
Resistance Abs 2 sets 10 reps
Leg Press Calves 3 sets 10/15, 15/30



5 x 5’s are a classic way to add size and strength and have been in popular use since the 50’s. There are many, many variations of them, some very good, some….well, not so good—at least for the average lifter. I experimented with quite a few volunteer trainees looking for a “sweet spot” that had peanty of loading, but not the crushing 3 x a week squatting/benching many of them use. Here is the basic outline:

Monday
A chin or lat pull-down using 5 x 5, 4 x 6, or 10 x 3 No rowing done this day as deadliftts follow
A curl—because, well, everyone expects them—lol.
Deadlifts 5 x 5 using either a pyramid or fixed weight. Fixed weights are better tolerated by people with good/great recovery
Ab or calf work

Wedesday
Bench press 5 x 5 using a periodized model starting light on week one working to a peak and unloading. Uses a pyramid starting light and working to a top set. Also done s a reduced ROM bench movement for 1 x 3- 3 x 4
Shoulder rep work
Tricep rep work

Friday
Rowing movement using a static weight 5 x 5—VERY demanding during the latter weeks.
Squatting using a static weight 5 x 5—VERY demanding during the latter weeks.
Glute/hams for some lifters.
Ab or calf work if desired

Sunday
Bench press using a static weight for 5 x 5
Shoulder rep work
Tricep rep work
Can do additional chest rep lift if needed.

After 3-5 weeks a deload is done for all 5 x 5’s, either reducing reps or sets. Rep work can stay the same but at my discretion may be reduced.

Simple as shit huh? Works REALLY good though. There are more variables to it than listed here in this simple description but it will give you an idea if you want to toy with it.

I also have a 3 day version that is used with people that simply don’t have time to hit the gym 4 days a week. This version has them benching 2 x a week, and squatting and deadlifting 1 x on the same day, or spread out over two different days. Both versions work well.

10 X 3

Here is an overview of the way my 10 x 3 routines are USUALLY laid out. I am not going to give it all away and go into set percentage, and performance or intensity cycling or any of the finer details, but it will give many of you curious guys a starting point on which to make mistakes or improvements


Day one Legs/back/posterior consists of a:
Horizontal or vertical lat movement done for 5 x 5, 10 x 3, 4 x 6, or 2 x 8-10
Isolation Bicep lift (humoring everyone) for 1-6 sets of 5-12 reps (one rep range picked
A squat/deadlift variation for 10 x 3, 8 x 3 (I like 8 sets for squat and deads) or a low (1-3) rep set
An posterior chain movement that has less CNS and metabolic fatigue than a heavy bar lift. Examples are reverse hypers, glute/ham raises, pull-trus
Calf work if desired

Rest

Day Two:
Chest/shoulders/tri
A bench press variation for either 10 x 3, or a 1-3 rep max-effort lift
If low reps are done, a repetition bench assistance exercise is used for 5 x 5, 4 x 6, or 3 x 10
An isolation or compound tricep lift
A delt lift, usually an isolation, but presses are done also
HEAVY Abs

Rest

Day three Legs/back/posterior consists of a DIFFERENT SET OF LIFTS THAN DAY ONE FOR THE SAME MUSCLES than day one

Differences on this day may include some non-bar squat leg work such as leg presses, hack squats, or possibly using the bar and doing front squats. Only 2-4 sets of these for 6-15 (one rep range only).
Horizontal or vertical lat movement done for 5 x 5, 10 x 3, 4 x 6, or 2 x 8-10
Isolation Bicep lift (humoring everyone) for 1-6 sets of 5-12 reps (one rep range picked
A squat/deadlift variation for 10 x 3, 8 x 3 (I like 8 sets for squat and deads) or a low (1-3) rep set
An posterior chain movement that has less CNS and metabolic fatigue than a heavy bar lift. Examples are reverse hypers, glute/ham raises, pull-trus
Calf work if desired

Rest, either take off two days and start with day four on monday (how I usually lay it out) or take a day off and continue.

Day four Chest/shoulders/tri consists of a DIFFERENT SET OF LIFTS THAN DAY ONE FOR THE SAME MUSCLES than day two:

Differences are a bit of limited weak point training ( example, flys done for chest) or a few higher rep sets of a different compound lift in addition to the major lifts.

A bench press variation for either 10 x 3, or a 1-3 rep max-effort lift
If low reps are done, a repetition bench assistance exercise is used for 5 x 5, 4 x 6, or 3 x 10
An isolation or compound tricep lift
A delt lift, usually an isolation, but presses are done also
HEAVY Abs

I also have some frequency abbreviated versions for the recovery challenged, but almost everyone is doing well on this version.

4,3,2

This is as simple as doing routine with a volume/intensity level that is suitable for the individual lifter, and instead of using fixed number of days per week, it varies. Some lifters get two weeks at 4 days a week, two at 3, and 1-2 at 2 daya a week and then repeat. The theory is much like dual-factor, you load the lifter heavy, in fact heavier than they can handle on a long-term basis, then as they are unloaded from the volume/frequency, delayed super compensation occurs. It works wonders for many lifters, and I frequently have trainees tell me they have finally found the frequency that works best for them—a varied one, and the results are often extremely good.

German Volume.

I use this for various reasons. Either to unload the joints from the heavy pounding of low reps, or to get some fast growth. Works for both. I only use ONE lift when doing the 10 x 10 version and it looks something like this most often:

Monday
Dumbbell Bench Press 10 x 10
Chin-up 10 x 10

Wednesday
Squats 10 x 10
Calf 5 x 10

Friday
Dips 10 x 10
Incline Dumbbell Curls 10 x 10

Strength Volume
This is done by running a volume style BB’ing routine with lots of sets and reps and high TUT, for 3-4 weeks, then switching to a WSB variant for 3-4 weeks. Strength goes up and the lifter is unloaded while doing the WSB variant, size goes up along with some strength gains when doing the volume work. BTW, it is not “Flex” magazine level volume. 9-12 sets a bodypart, 3-4 days in the gym maximum.

Iron Addict

Below is an email I was asked to post in my log by several team members of elitefts. This is an email I sent to them late Wed night...


From: Dave Tate
Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 00:29:49 -0400
Subject: Has Powerlifting Turned Negative?
To: Team elitefts™ Powerlifters



To Team elitefts™ Powerlifters,

Over the past few days I have received close to a dozen emails asking about or informing me of all the negative stuff that "seems" to be surrounding the sport of Powerlifting. I have written the same replay in several different ways over the past few days. Today I went and looked to see what all this negative stuff really was so I could see how bad it really was.

Twice today I was asked about a couple of the items and twice more I sent two other replays -- each saying close to the same thing.

I decided I would clean these emails up and create one that I would send to anyone else who emails me - then I figured why not just be proactive and send this to you all because I REALLY think people are missing the big picture and would like to share what that means to me with you.

So here you go. This is as cleaned up as my writing will get without having someone edit it. So if soothing looks off - ya, I spelled it wrong, forgot a word, or made some other error. The meaning of the message is still the same.

As always Thank You all for what you do for elitefts.com, your team and myself.

Dave Tate

---

Go with wise men and be wise: but he who keeps company with the foolish will be broken.
Proverbs 13:20


Follow me, this proverbs quote does have meaning here.


It's all "a matter of perspective"

When I tell people that I think the sport today is BETTER than it has ever been in the entire history of the Iron Game they look at me like I am insane but I honestly believe it's true. Nothing you see today, in the negative tone, didn't also exist years ago. The difference is the speed of communication. I can remember being told a lift was high at a meet when I was in the gym back in 84. This lift would have been at a meet the weekend earlier and the news came from a phone call - but in my gym the lift was high as a kite! Or a lift would be in PLUSA and showed the lifers squat high (in a picture) and BAM! it was "skyscraper high", the meet director was giving away gifts! The worst was when the meet write up in PLUSA stated the judging wasn't good and the guy who did the write up was at the pool all day flirting with all the lifters girlfriends - never even seeing the squats.

All the same crap you see today just different means of communication. Way slower - but the same. An interesting point here (due to speed of communication) was the news latest longer. That high lift in the picture was high until the next months PLUSA came out -- when you got to see the next high squat. If the write up said your squat was a tad high… well… you were a high squatter until the next write up hoping it said your squats were good. Most of the time there wasn't a follow up saying your squats were good so you were listed in the high squat club for life. Today the high squats will be completely forgotten within 2-3 days.

Here are a few other things from "the PRIME years of Powerlifting" that I remembered and confirmed when one of my old training partners stopped out a few weeks back and with Ed Coan and Steve Goggins at this last last seminar (we actually did a video interview on this very topic that will post soon)

1. The one federation politics wee brutal. People would qualify for worlds and then travel only to be told they can't lift for some dumb ass rule they just made up. The judging was also very inconsistent and favoritism was really bad. While all the same things exist today the lifters have a choice - before you didn't and if you were not on the A list you were fucked. There are many stories that I can tell and write in here but another key point to keep in mind is unless you knew the parties involved ALL the information was filtered through PLUSA or the select few people who spoke for the sport (authors in PLUSA, Federation Committee Members, and just people in the know). Meaning, the bad shit had to be FAR worse and I am sure we didn't hear about the majority of the shit that was going on. There are many people out there right now who are reading this nodding their heads because it wasn't what people think it was (those people who were not even born yet). There is a reason why other federations were born. Actually not A reason but MANY reasons.

2. The comradery was OK but not great. You knew some guys because you were in the same meets but you were also competing against them so you never really hung out at all. As a beginner or amateur lifter unless you had big balls you never spoke to a big name lifter and if you did for the most part they would blow you off. I was blew off by a shit load of them but there were stand outs like Louie, Bob Wahl, John Black, Ed Coan, Steve Goggins, John Florio and a few others who did help me out - there were 10x as many that were assholes to you unless you were at their level. They were also rarely seen unless you went to a national meet or they happened to be qualifying in the state meet you were in. At the same time they were intimating as hell. THESE were the guys in PLUSA! All you knew about them was what you saw in the mags (pictures and numbers) and what you saw on meet day.


3. NOBODY shared shit for training advice. All we had was PLUSA and most of those programs were made up by the writers for the magazine and not what the guys were really doing. - or - if the guys did send it into PLUSA they just made some shit up so they could get the exposure in the mag. They did not share how they trained. This was like a cardinal sin. It just didn't happen because they didn't want their competition to know and then beat them.

This is not shit I'm just making up because like so many readers online I was a beginner at the time and this is what I saw (the perception of a beginner). I wounder if this is the same perception beginners have today? Keep reading...



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Today…

1. Lifters know meet results AS THEY HAPPEN. We used to have to wait 4-6 weeks to see meet results.

2. Lifters know and can access the best lifters in the world no matter WHO you are - and the majority will respond in kind. They have been "humanized" by being online. They are seen as "real people" and not superhuman beings that you only saw on meet days and in the magazines. They are just like everybody else, just stronger and wiser about their training.

They are also willing to help!

3.The comradery is WAY better than it has ever been - Think of how many top lifters you know, email and hang out with. When you go to a meet you know almost everyone and everyone gets along (key point) AT THE MEETS - where is REALLY MATTERS everyone gets along great albeit Raw, Multiply, Training Style, etc. This is because the ones who create the most noise are so few and/or do not compete. This is not to say there are still not assholes at meets and egos that are out of control but if they stay with it those egos will fade - the weights eventually will humble everyone.

3. Training knowledge and information is insane right now. There is so much of it that it can be argued that there is to much. I think it's better to have to much than not at all - or just made up BS. With very little money and/or effort you can find great training information, programs and advice that can help a beginner all the way up to the most advanced lifters. In many cases you can have advanced lifters (or just friends in the sport) look a video of your lifts and tell you want you are doing wrong -- and have all this done in less than one hour. I used to have to drive 2 hours to have someone look and help me with technique. So technical advice today can be gained for free within minutes while when I was coming up it took an entire day to get the same advice (assuming you knew the right people and were within a couple hours driving distance).

4. There are also WAY more lifters than ever before. There were some years that PLUSA couldn't run 100 lifters deep in the top 100 and the women's were always hard pressed to fill a top 20 list. There are now top 100 lists for raw, multiply and single ply. Meets are now within driving distance for almost any beginner - multiple times per year. I was lucky to come up in Ohio where the sport has always been popular. This wasn't the case with many other states.

Today there are more lifters who have greater access to training info and top lifters than ever before. They ALL get along at meets GREAT with better comradery than ever before and to be dead honest - maybe better than any other sport in the world! The ease of entry to the sport has also never been better. Finally you know how your friends are doing in their meets while the meet is going on. When you step back and look at the forest instead of the tree the sport is bigger and better than it has ever been in the entire history of the iron game.

What I am trying to say is step back and look at all the GREAT things there are in the sport. They are ALL right there in front of you. For many I think they are so close to them they can't see it. Maybe it's just being taken for granted because they think it's just the way it's always been.

Well… it hasn't.

There will always be critics, negative BS, and those who want to toss others under the bus. This is part of sport, business and life. I choose not to be a part of it. This is why I will not watch the news on TV, rarely read my newsfeed or forums. I only visit sites that will help me or elitefts become better. I honestly do not have the time to waste with stupid shit I have no control over anyhow. I'd rather spend my time making sure elitefts is living up to the vision we've (YOU) have all worked so hard to establish. You have built a team known for it's strength and for helping others and passing on. This has been done through your lifting but more importantly through your Character, Integrity, Sportsmanship and Teamwork.

I know that most of you don't even read the negative crap anymore and are now wondering what the hell this is all about (no need to look) but I felt compelled to send this anyway because there is another side of this entire email. That is, when I do get emails about this stuff I always know it's never one of you who started it because you are better than that. You know it's better to spend the time helping others than tearing them down.

This makes me proud to have you all representing elitefts!

Dave Tate
Founder Elitefts.com Inc.

FST-7 (Fascia Stretch Training 7) Workout Routine & Nutrition Guide

FST-7 is a training principle created by Hany Rambod, the Pro Creator. He has been using this training principle for many years exclusively with his clients to create physiques that win.

FST-7 is a training system I devised after years of research and a great deal of trial and error with many clients. FST stands for Fascia Stretch Training, and the seven refers to the seven sets performed for the final exercise of a target bodypart. I have had many clients use this system for overall growth and especially to improve stubborn bodyparts that were seemingly resistant to just about anything else the person had tried.

FST-7 encompasses several factors both inside and outside the gym.

Is fascia limiting your muscle growth? There are three types of fascia in the human body, but the type bodybuilders should be concerned about is deep fascia. This is dense fibrous connective tissue that interpenetrates and surrounds the muscles, bones, nerves, and blood vessels of the body. The high density of collagen fibers is what gives the deep fascia its strength and integrity. The amount of elastin fibers determines how much extensibility and resiliency it will have. In other words, some of us have fascia that is thicker and tougher than others. The most genetically blessed bodybuilders have thinner fascia, which is why their muscle bellies appear to be larger and fuller, with that round ‘bubbly’ look that all bodybuilders covet. Ronnie Coleman and Phil Heath would be two prime examples of individuals blessed with thin fascia. Their muscles expand easier. Think of it in terms of it being easier to blow up a balloon as opposed to one of those water bottles that strongmen like Franco Columbu used to.

Jay Cutler and Nasser El-Sonbatty are two men that clearly have thicker fascia.

This didn’t prevent them from building substantial muscle mass, obviously, but neither man ever had that round ‘Marvel Comics’ appearance to their muscles. Yet the average bodybuilder has thicker fascia than either of those two champions. In an effort to expand their fascia and allow growth to occur, some have turned to Synthol and other items that are injected deep into the muscle belly. There have even been some advisors, mainly online, that make it seem as if this is the only solution and must be done. They will also try and insist that all the pro’s use Synthol and site inject, which I can assure you is not true. Synthol and related products are foreign substances, and you can never be certain how they will metabolize in the body. We are starting to see various health issues with bodybuilders that are more than likely related to site injecting. Yes, you do need to stretch the muscle fascia to experience optimal growth, but that is not the way to do it.

All stretching is not the same I am not the first person to recognize the importance of stretching the muscle fascia. First John Parrillo, then more recently Dante Trudel of DC Training fame, incorporate aggressive stretching during workouts as part of their training programs. They had the right idea, but stretching the fascia by elongating the muscle is not the best method. FST-7 is based on stretching the muscle from the inside out by volumizing it. This is accomplished by getting the greatest pump possible while training.

Do I still train heavy, or can I just pump up with light weights? One thing I don’t want anyone misconstruing is that FST-7 is all about pumping. That’s just one component. I also believe that a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle, and you absolutely must train with heavier weights in the 8-12 rep range. I have tried many variations of heavier and lighter training with clients over the years, and discovered that both types are needed. Heavy weights will build thickness and density, but they will not give you that round, full look. Similarly, getting incredible pumps all the time can impart some of that roundness, but you won’t ever get extreme muscle size without training with heavy straight sets. So you need to focus equally on maximizing both your strength and your pump in the same workouts to see optimal results. Here’s an example of a biceps workout, FST-7 style, that shows you how to incorporate both:

Bicep Workout Example

• Alternate dumbbell curls 3-4 x 8-12
• Machine preacher curl 3 x 8-12
• EZ-bar curl 7 x 8-12 (rest 30-45 seconds between sets while sipping water )

I don’t typically like to use very high reps, because too often you will experience general fatigue and get short of breath before you have built the maximum pump in the muscle. I also don’t like the weight to be too heavy and limit the reps any lower than eight, because this is when you see form breaking down and ancillary muscles kicking in and robbing the target muscle of the proper stimulation. You can think of the ‘7′ set as blowing up a balloon. We keep the rest periods fairly short, because as you pump up the muscle, a little blood escapes in that time. You can think of it as blowing up a balloon with a slight leak in it – even though the balloon is being inflated, some air is escaping. The key is to build on the pump sets by set, exponentially, so that it reaches its maximum state by the final set. If the rest periods were too short, you wouldn’t have enough energy to do justice to the seven sets. Another question I often get is, should the weight be constant as the seven sets go on? It can be, but it’s perfectly fine to reduce the weight one or two times as needed to stay in the proper rep range. There may also be times when you need to increase the weight, but this happens less often.

How often can I train bodyparts this way? Generally speaking, this type of training is too traumatic on the larger muscle groups to use more than once a week. Due to the sheer volume of muscle cells, soreness tends to linger too long to allow for more frequent workouts.

For instance, Phil Heath recently completed a back workout and was sore for four days. Since he is supposed to be training back and chest twice a week in preparation for the Arnold Classic, this threw him off his schedule somewhat. The higher than normal amount of microscopic tears in the muscle caused by FST-7 training necessitates a bit more recovery time than standard training protocols. However, smaller bodyparts like arms and calves certainly can and should be trained twice a week. This gives you twice as many opportunities to stretch the fascia in what are often exceedingly stubborn bodyparts. Here’s a sample split that displays how you could arrange this:

• Day one: Biceps and triceps, calves
• Day two: Legs
• Day three: OFF
• Day four: Chest and triceps
• Day five: Back and calves
• Day six: Shoulders and biceps
• Day seven: OFF

This is a split geared toward someone with the goal of improving stubborn arms. There are many other variations depending on what the individual’s goals might be.

Which exercises are best suited to the ‘7′ sets? Certain exercises are more appropriate than others for the ‘7′ sets. The big compound free weight movements like squats and deadlifts usually are poor choices, for two reasons. For one thing, they involve several other muscle groups and don’t do a good job of isolating a target muscle. Also, they require technique and balancing, which tends to break down if one attempts to perform multiple sets in such a short time span. Machines are a good choice in many instances because they keep you in a fixed plane of movement and thus make it easier to isolate a given muscle. Those with selectorized stacks also make it very fast and convenient to increase or decrease the resistance as needed. Here are some suggested movements that I have found work very well:

• Back width: Machine pullovers (Hammer Strength, Nautilus) or cable pullovers
• Back thickness: Seated row machines with chest support
• Chest: Pec deck or peck flye machine*, cable crossovers

I find that the pec decks with the pads for the elbows usually work very well for shorter trainers, while the pec flye machines with handles seem to be better for tall guys. Try both – you will know by the pump and range of motion you achieve which one is a better choice for you.

• Shoulders: Machine lateral raises with pads – my favorite is made by Bodymasters. Hammer Strength, LifeFitness, and Cybex also produce similar models.
• Quads: Leg extensions, leg presses
• Hamstrings: Seated or lying leg curls
• Biceps: EZ-bar curls, machine curls, cable ‘front double biceps curls’
• Triceps: Cable pushdowns using rope attachment, Overhead cable extensions, Skull crushers (for advanced trainers)
• Calves: Standing and seated raises, calf raises using leg press (alternate between these three)

When should I do my ‘7′? The best time to do your ‘7′ is as the final exercise for a muscle group. You don’t want to do it first, as this would take away from your performance on the heavy straight sets that are also a critical factor in building muscle mass. Finishing off a bodypart with a great pump is something many top bodybuilders have been doing instinctively for years, not knowing that they were expanding their fascia and maximizing growth. It may be tempting to do your pumping sets earlier on if you can’t seem to get any kind of pump going, but I would urge you instead to do something like a set or two of 21′s to get the blood flowing and then proceed with your heavy sets before capping it all off with your ‘7′ set for that bodypart. Remember, ‘7′s’ are done at the conclusion of each bodypart, so if you are working multiple bodyparts in a given workout, you will be doing two or more of these extended pumping sets.

Sample FST-7 (Fascia Stretch Training 7) Routine Triceps

• Close-grip bench press 3-4 x 8-12
• Weighted or machine dip 3 x 8-12
• Overhead cable extension 7 x 8-12
• Skull crushers 7 x 8-12

Biceps

• Alternate dumbbell curls 3-4 x 8-12
• Machine preacher curl 3 x 8-12
• EZ-bar curl 7 x 8-12 (rest 30-45 seconds between sets while sipping water)

Quads

• Leg extensions 3-4 x 8-15
• Squats 4 x 8-12
• Hack squat or leg press 3 x 8-15
• Leg extension or leg press 7 x 8-15

Chest

• Incline dumbbell press 3-4 x 8-12
• Incline dumbbell flye 3 x 8-12
• Flat Hammer or dumbbell press 3 x 8-12
• Pec deck or cable crossover 7 x 8-12

Shoulders

• Seated dumbbell press 4 x 8-12
• Barbell or dumbbell front raise 3 x 8-12
• Dumbbell lateral raise 3 x 8-12
• Lateral raise machine 7 x 8-12

Back Warm-up:

• Neutral-grip chin-ups 3 x failure
• Wide-grip pulldowns 3 x 8-12
• Barbell row 3 x 8-12
• Hammer Strength row 3 x 8-12
• Machine or cable pullover 7 x 8-15

Hamstrings

• Lying leg curls 3-4 x 10-15
• Stiff-leg deadlift 3-4 x 10-12
• Single leg curl 3-4 x 10-15 each leg
• Seated leg curls 7 x 10-15

Traps

• Dumbbell shrugs* 3-4 x 8-12
• Machine shrugs 7 x 8-12

Proper form consists of leaning head and torso slightly forward and shrugging up to an imaginary point behind your ears – do not roll shoulders. Reps should be done slowly with an emphasis on squeezing the contraction point for a full one-second count.

Rear delts

• Dumbbell rear lateral raise 3-4 x 12-15
• Reverse pec flye or cable 7 x 12-15
• Rear laterals

Calves

• Standing calf raise 4 x 10-12
• Seated calf raise 4 x 15-20
• Leg press or calf sled raise 7 x 10-12

IFBB Pro Jay Cutler

Nutrition Now we will be explaining how to structure your nutritional intake around your workouts to ensure that your muscles will have all the necessary nutrients to fuel a superior pump, thus stretching out your fascia tissue and permitting growth to occur. Bodypart routines for the rest of your muscle groups will also be provided so that you can get started immediately on your own FST-7 growth experience.

Pre-workout nutrition: Priming the pump Hopefully most of you grasp the importance of solid pre-workout nutrition. This provides the body with all the raw materials it will need to fuel an intense and productive weight training session. I like to see my clients get in a minimum of two solid-food meals containing both lean proteins and complex carbohydrates prior to training. The protein source can be chicken or turkey breast, white fish, or even leaner cuts of red meat such as filet or top sirloin if one is training later in the day. Good carbohydrate sources would be oatmeal, sweet potatoes, or brown rice. These are all slow-burning carbs that will deliver time-released energy, as opposed to fruits and other simple sugars that digest too quickly and can leave you with an insulin crash while training. Equally important to the food intake is adequate hydration. This is particularly applicable to anyone using thermogenic products. Most of these have a diuretic effect, which means you need to take care to drink a bit more water to compensate for the fluid loss. Notice that I said water and not diet soda. Carbonated drinks tend to be too filling and hence you don’t drink enough. A common question I get is, how soon before the workout should my last meal be? Generally speaking, you want your last meal to end about one hour before your workout begins. The exception would be legs. Since heavy leg training is so metabolically demanding, the last meal should be a bit earlier – say ninety minutes. These are just guidelines. If you are the type of person that is starving an hour and a half after a clean meal, you probably don’t ever want to let more than an hour go by from the end of the pre-workout meal to the workout.

If you seem to digest your food more slowly and get nauseous when you eat too close to the workout, adjust your meal timing accordingly. Staying away from high-fat foods or sugary items should help stave off feelings of nausea while training.

During the workout While training, most people will only need plenty of water – roughly a liter. This also depends on your size, how much you tend to sweat while training, and the season. Obviously you need more water in the summer, particularly if you train at a place like MetroFlex Gym that doesn’t believe in air conditioning, or if you work outdoors. You can sip a carb drink or a thermogenic drink if you tend to ‘run out of gas’ while training, but neither takes the place of water. If you choose to have one of these beverages during your workout, you should also have a water bottle and alternate between the two to ensure proper hydration. I can’t emphasize this strongly enough – there is simply no way you can achieve a great pump if you aren’t drinking enough water before and during the workout. As you know, the human body and especially our blood supply is comprised of over seventy percent water, so you need to have a steady supply to stay hydrated.

Post-workout nutrition Within 15-20 minutes of the end of your workout if not immediately, it’s important to drink a shake to start the re-compensation and recovery process that ultimately leads to muscle growth. There are several different recovery powders I am currently testing with my clients, and I will have the results soon. But in the meantime, you can’t go wrong with a highly bio-available protein source such as whey protein isolate along with a rapidly-assimilated carbohydrate source like dextrose, waxy maize, or maltodextrin. If you are a hardgainer ectomorph type, don’t be afraid to mix two or more carb sources together. You can even add in something like fruit juice for flavor and additional simple carbs. If you are trying to lean out or you are simply a person that gains fat very easily, you will want to take it easy on the amount of carbs in this shake. You still want to always include at least some carbs in this shake, except in the case of the final stages of a pre-contest diet for those that are striving to lose the last vestiges of bodyfat.

1-2 hours later Roughly an hour or two later, you want to have another solid-food meal that should be similar in composition to the pre-workout meal. For the purpose of better absorption, you want to keep the fat content low, particularly saturated fats. The timing of this meal will depend on the size of your shake as well as your appetite. Obviously you can’t eat until you are hungry again. If you are drinking a large shake that is very filling for you, it might take two hours for your appetite to return substantially enough to allow you to eat a solid meal. Conversely, a lighter shake should digest faster and you should theoretically be ready to eat just an hour later. Also note that there tends to be more bloating and gas associated with lower-quality grades of protein powder. They tend to taste good, but contain large amounts of lactose. Do yourself and your loved ones a favor and spring for the good stuff.

A note on sodium Many bodybuilders have it in their heads that sodium is bad for them and should be avoided. They intentionally remain on very low-sodium diets year-round when the fact of the matter is, you only need to be concerned about sodium intake in the final few days before a contest when you are attempting to shed subcutaneous water. Without proper amounts of dietary sodium, you simply won’t be able to get a pump. Some of you may have experienced this when competing. If you are trying to pump up and haven’t had more than trace amounts of sodium for a couple days, your muscles will be totally flat and unresponsive, even if you are eating carbs and drinking some water. Then, if you go out and have a burger and fries after the judging, your muscles seem to magically inflate, and you are able to generate an excellent pump for the night show! Sodium helps transport carbs into the muscles, so by all means don’t be afraid to put a bit of salt on your food.

I actually encourage my clients to get their sodium from condiments like ketchup, mustard, and barbecue sauce in the off-season. It should be noted that for any of you with medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes that require you to adhere to strict low-sodium diets, always observe the guidelines set forth by your physician or your dietician.

Additional research If it seems odd that this discussion of nutrition as it applies to the FST-7 training system isn’t discussing supplements, that’s because I am currently in the process of experimenting with various types of products to see which ones enhance the pump, reduce soreness, speed up recovery, and other effects that would be beneficial. One of the major side effects of this type of training is extreme muscle soreness, so this in particular needs to be addressed. All I can say at this point is that even though all the results aren’t in and there is still more research to be done; we have already witnessed some intriguing and exciting effects.

Success stories – in progress! Although I have been developing the FST-7 system for several years and have been recommending it to my clients, only recently have I insisted that they consistently incorporate it into their own training. In the near future, I will have some impressive success stories to report.

In the meantime, you will be seeing some of the results of FST-7 on the pro stages this year.

Author: Hany Rambod
Website: http://www.fst-7.com