MY huge problem with that article and anyone who argues against heavy training is they think its about a certain rep range......HUH? Who made the law that heavy = anything below 6 reps?
Heavy can be as heavy as you can use for 8 reps, 10 reps, 12 reps, 15 reps, 20 reps.
I cannot stand the guys who need to put things in these neat little boxes in bodybuilding, heavy has to go here, HIT has to go here, volume has to go over there, etc etc etc.
My guys train heavy as a MF and you would probably be hard pressed to find many seriously advanced guys that go to failure anywhere before their 8th rep on the first rest pause.
Ive seen this repeatedly over the years where various people on the boards associate heavy with doing 2-3 reps......where did you get that idea? Thats your own idea of it.....and in my opinion its wrong!
If you are doing 405 for 20 in a deep squat.....thats downright heavy......if you are doing a 365 reverse grip bench press for 20 reps rest paused (12+5+3) thats downright heavy.....but alot less dangerous than some guy doing 375pounds in this forum for 7 reps to failure on the reverse bench press who thinks he is doing moderate reps.
I never have understood why people get so confused on what makes a person larger muscularly. Do you really think if Ronnie Coleman in his 4th week of lifting thought "hey this is pretty comfortable I think Ill stay with 185 benches, 225 squats and 185 deadlifts the rest of my career" that you would see this below in the black and white picture? If weight doesnt matter at all....then why the heck take a chance....take the EZ chair recliner route and lift comfortably.
Three bodybuilders with similiar genetics and roughly the same height....Flex Wheeler, Chris Cormier, Ronnie Coleman. And I would venture to say that Flex had the best bodybuilder genetics out of those three. Now what were they known for.
Flex = comfortable training and competed at 218 to 228 onstage with 236 I believe his highest ever
Chris Cormier = Heavy training with bigtime weights and even with a beginning silhouette like Wheelers he was able to compete at 240 to 258 onstage with 262 I believe being his highest. So he got onstage roughly 25-30 pounds more muscle mass past Flex Wheeler.
Ronnie Coleman = forkift training....strongest bodybuilder in the world, used training poundages that were ridiculous....competed at 302 pounds at the Russian Grand Prix and won Olympias at 296 and 287 pounds respectively.........you make the call.
I see guys on other threads saying various things about random bodybuilders "oh they should of trained like Shawn Ray or Flex Wheeler and gotten the classical physique".....what?!?! Please post your pic so i can see what that classical physique training is all about and we can as a forum make the decision that you now have a carbon copy physique of Flex or Shawn Ray.
Do you really think Markus, Nasser, Dorian, and others could possible change their genetics and create a wasp waist ala doing Flex/Shawn's training? Please.....
Mike Mattarrazzo and Mike Francoise are 2 prime examples of people who knew they didnt have the god given shape of Flex Wheeler and decided to go at him like a sledgehammer. Both those guys got so big that they made the judges decide to give them the call over Flex. Mattarrazzo at the USA's and Francoise later on at the Arnold Classic. Nothing they could of done training wise would of ever made them ever have the physique of Flex Wheeler so Francoise rack deadlifted and powerbuilt his way to a massive contest winning physique.
400 pro bodybuilders out there using the same drugs and all with god given genetics and who are the continual ones that rise to the creme of the crop in thickness? Power bodybuilders......Johnny Jackson, Branch Warren, the aforementioned Francoise, Coleman, Cormier, Ruhl, Yates, Dennis James. etc etc etc etc
Then you get the lone knight in the dark yelling the Paul Dillett and Vince Taylor card.......great lets hope you had the same mom and pop as Paul and Vince then because millions of people across America are taking the "comfortable training" route and they sure dont look like Paul or Vince.
I dont get why this is so hard......forever increase intensity? Ok today your going to do super sets....tommorow you need to beat that intensity to get better....what are you going to do four years from now? Giant sets that are rest paused, staggered and then drop setted and then forced reps and then partials followed by static holds followed by negative only reps? Youll be a psychotic mess trying to forever beat your last intensity session.
Increase the weight and beat what you did yesterday and you took care of the problem.
Its pretty darn easy to be honest with you this whole hypertrophy thing. If today in your first workout you can do (after warmups)
incline presses 135 x 12
military presses 95 x 12
reverse grip bench presses 95 x 12
barbell curls 55 x 12
reverse curls 20 x 12
pulldowns 110 x 12
deadlifts 135 x 12
squats 135 x 12
leg curls 90 x 12
standing calves 90 x 12
and you train for the next 5 years using intensity techniques and semi comfortable training and you see that your doing
incline presses 155 x 12
military presses 115 x 12
reverse grip bench presses 120 x 12
barbell curls 70 x 12
reverse curls 30 x 12
pulldowns 140 x 12
deadlifts 185 x 12
squats 185 x 12
leg curls 115 x 12
standing calves 110 x 12
You sure as hell aint going to be that big.
But if you went down a path of progressive strength training switching out exercises at plateaus and plotted out a gameplan of pushing yourself along with the proper eating and 5-6years later found yourself doing
incline presses 365 x 12
military presses 275 x 12
reverse grip bench presses 365 x 12
barbell curls 225 x 12
reverse curls 90 x 12
pulldowns 350 x 12
deadlifts 500 x 12
squats 500 x 12
leg curls 225 x 12
standing calves 450 x 12
You are going to be a big MF.
Almost seems to easy doesnt it to the chronic OCD overanalyzers that make up the majority of the bodybuilding world
I hate to be a dickhead and use one of my guys .......but for example im going to. Dusty Hanshaw ....heck when i first joined this board around 2004 or so, nobody ever heard of him. Do you know why? Because he was a ex hockey player just kind of getting into the swing of this bodybuilding thing and he was smaller than the majority of the guys on this board right now.
That guy has never used GH, has never used insulin, and a huge amount of ego's on this board would be red faced and embarrassed if they ever compared what they themselves do ergo wise to him.
What separated him from the pack to where he is one of the biggest of the big on these boards and his name is being mentioned now nationally?
He ate his way up progressively, and trained his way up progressively to become the big dog on the block and flew right by thousands of bodybuilders on these boards in doing so where he now shakes floorboards at nearly 300 offseason and walks onstage at 242-255 at 5'11"
http://www.chadnicholls.net/forums/showthread.php?t=56653
It pains me to see the same guys on these boards year after year jumping around like a chicken with your head cut off when "how to get it fucking done and getting it fucking done" is right there in front of you.....yet it is a continual clusterfuck of mindgames of "is there a secret? Is that guy using a secret compound? He must be doing something secretive that I dont know about, he must be abusing himself because he used to be smaller than me and now he is 2x my size"
No he just stopped overanalyzing everything and got down to brass tacks. This endeavor is about beating today what you did yesterday and beating tommorow what you did today and being 2x better than you were last year at this time.....and if more people developed a gameplan about where you need to be next year on April 6th compared to where you were this year on April 6th......they would be alot more successful. But bodybuilders with the mentality they have dont think in that concept and think of todays workout only. You can mindmuscle connection 35 pound dumbells for 11 reps all you want till the cows come home....but ill give you some factual reality.......if in 10 years you are still mindmuscle connection repping 35 pound dumbells for 11 reps make sure you also make the connection of the tape measure around that bicep because its going to have the same reading it did a decade ago.
Thats my rant for the day......I cant get rid of this cough and im bitchy.
.gif "IP Gear")
Thanks a lot!
