One of the biggest disappointments shared by many people, regardless of age, who take up the science of bodybuilding is that they never seem to profit quick enough.
Almost everybody who has ever attended a Mr. Olympia contest wants to seeimmediatelylike the competitors seen on stage. To this end some people even copy the champions precontest training routines in a misguided effort to somehow hasten this transformational process. After all, it worked for the champions, right? Wrong! Ive stated this before, but it bears repeating: the champions are the thoroughbreds of our species; its in their genesor, more specifically, its in their muscle belliesto be immense musclemen. Their physiques are inordinate due to their being genetically predisposed to carry a large musculature on their frames, and not because of any magic to be found within their training routines (e.g., triple split; push/pull; intensity or insanityI love that one!; up and down the rack; twenty sets per body part) or their secret dietary methods. Its time we, as a group, woke up to the fact that its not in the genetic cards for all of us to be massively muscled. Nor can we alter our reality by simply aping the training routine of a definite champion. In fact, the champions training routine, particularly his precontest routine, would have about as much bearing on our attaining his musclesize as would our wearing the same shoes
as he does.
Remember this point: the first rule of success in bodybuilding is to work within our genetic framework. Without this principle, most of the other rules have no application. Moreover, given the level of drugs that most of the champion bodybuilders take, probably very few of the rules that govern human physiology have much bearing on them. The drugs alter human physiology into something foreign to our species. Once these drugs enter the equation, and by drugs I specifi cally refer to steroids here, the act of emulating the training methods of the bodybuilder you see upon stage becomes pointless. The muscles of steroid users no longer make the similar amount of waste by-products, nor do they fatigue at the same rate; drugs have altered both processes beyond the confi nes of easy human physiology. Suffi ce it to say that unless you currently are upon steroids,
or are resolved to use them regardless of the potential consequences, youll experience tiny, if any, gains in muscle mass by training like the champions. Natural muscular gains arrive when you train intelligently, which means observing and understanding the economics of growth and recovery.
DECEPTIVE CLAIMS
Bodybuilding, like most other human endeavors, has had and continues to have its share of bizarre and wonderful claims, generally made by people who are all bit as wonderful as the claims they advance. As you are now entering your third month, its important that you be informed of just what deception awaits you upon your journey to physical perfection at this point in your training. Armed with this knowledge in advance, you will be better able to recognize and avoid quick-talkers who would have you believe and hold baseless and potentially harmful training, nutritional, and, most important, cognitive practices.
The most common error that youll encounter is the visualization or cognitive mind over matter arguments, replete with similes that involve biceps like mountains, backs like manta rays, or thesame nonsense. These are, in effect, mind-over-genetics arguments, or what the tardy philosophernovelist Ayn Rand would have called the I Wish versus It Is polemic. This premise, in essence, instructs you to ignore the fact that you are only fi ve foot two and have brown eyes, because, by God, if you really desire to be six foot six and have eyes of blue, then all you have to do is believe that its possible and it will happen!
The proponents of such irrational gibberish have their own nomenclature that features constructs such as mental imagery and, of course, visualization and its rampant throughout bodybuilding. Statements such as Believe and Achieve adorn the back of many a personally inscribed weight belt. This is chicanery straight out of The Flim-Flam Man. It wont put another inch upon your arms, no matter how Cartesianly sure and clear your mystical mental processes and thoughts about the size of your muscles may be. I mean, go aheadenvision your biceps the size of Mount Everest. Give me a call when they accomplish 29,028 feet above sea level. Its exactly the same logic as if I were to allegation that I could leap over an apartment complex; youd be justifi ed in thinking me deluded, regardless of how fi rmly I held to the vividness of the fantasy.
Likewise, if a bodybuilder of international repute should say you that he has peaks upon his biceps because he envisioned them as miniature mountains, and not because genetics put an egg upon his biceps the day his DNA took hold, you should be equally suspect about his cognitive faculties. Nevertheless, such claims are made almost daily regarding the mystical import of the mind in training. Sure, the mind is important; without it you couldnt even tie your shoes, let alone engage in barbell training, but its not approximately as omnipotent as some authorities would have you believe. The mind is important in keeping you motivated to profit into the gym and train intensely enough to stimulate your muscles to grow. As I conceded earlier, this training routine is not an easy one to adopt for the long term. In fact, its downright uncomfortableso much so that anyone who feels the inclination to engage in visualization or cognitive gymnastics involving mountain-peak biceps, manta-ray lats, or fl uffy clouds really isnt training. The person is simply going through the motions and relaxing, because relaxation, or sleep, is the time we are best able to engage in such fl ights of fancy. (We just refer to them as dreams.) And if such people also exhibit impressive physiques, its only further testimony to the supreme role that genetics played in their physical developmentas opposed to their mystical thought processes and inefficient training methods.
TRAINING
If genetics, then, is the be-every and stop-every of bodybuilding, and youre not the spitting image of Conan the Barbarian at the moment, should you just throw in the towel and write it off to a bad deal of the genetic cards? By no means! The fact that you dont have the muscle bellies of an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Mike Mentzer doesnt mean that you dont have the genetics of an equally impressive you when developed to the uppermost limits of your potential. After every, Steve Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Mentzer, Lou Ferrigno, Bruce Lee, Mike Tyson, and Lee Labrada didnt have identical genetics, and yet every went upon to fabricate very fabulous (and very muscular) physiques. If you train properly, you can realize your own unique physiological potential, which may even supersede any of the competitors upon the Mr. Olympia stage today! What, then, is proper training? Simply put, proper training involves stimulating muscle growth and then allowing your body sufficient time to realize that growth once its been stimulated. To achieve this, your workouts must be intense, and since intensity and duration exist in inverse proportion to one another, your workouts must also be brief. The more intense the workouts, the greater the muscle stimulation, and the briefer the workouts must be. One other factor that enters into this workout equation is recovery. This falls into the off time you have in between your workouts. My staff and I have conducted a series of tests and studies regarding this phenomenon at our Nautilus North fitness middle and have concluded that once you get stronger, it will take you approximately three days to recover the energy you expended during your workout. It will then take you another three to four days to over compensate, or grow bigger. In other words, as you grow stronger, you will require a full seven days off between workouts to permit the muscle you stimulated in your workout to grow. While you are yet a beginner, you must have at least two days of rest between high-intensity training sessions, and more if youre exceptionally strong. With any less than this amount, youll not progress at every, and you may even begin to regress. So, first train difficult to stimulate growth, which means that your workouts must be of brief duration (no more than thirty to forty-fi ve minutes per workout), and rest afterward for a minimum of forty-eight hours. If these precepts are followed, you will grow progressively larger muscles with every visit to the gym.
THE ROUTINE
