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Great article i just found!
Weightlifting is Life.
(The rest is just details!)
syntherolsyntherolIf you use the gym to:
* find a date
* scope the spandex scene
* invent new bedroom fantasies
Then you are reading the wrong page. This page is for people who go to the gym to work out.
If your style includes any of the following:
* lots of "definition" work
* a bazillion light sets per bodypart
* changing workout styles on a weekly basis
* or go mindlessly chanting one of the following mantras
* Jones/Mentzer/Darden HIT mumbo-jumbo (or if you have to ask what HIT is...)
* The latest, greatest "get big" routine, "written" by the latest [insert federation here] champ
* militant vegetarianism
* steroids are evil
This page is ALSO NOT for you. Leave. Now. (So what if I pissed you off? It's MY page, dammit!)
If, on the other hand, you actually think about how you train, work hard, and have a life outside the gym, Welcome to what most would call insanity. We hope you like your stay.
This page is directed at people who are trying to put on quality body mass in the least amount of time.
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Some useful rules of the gym:
1. Go to the gym to work, not play.
2. Use music. If the gym doesn't play music you like, take your own.
3. If you use a workout partner, make sure he/she is focused.
4. Leave your ego at the door.
5. Leave the most of the rest of your life at the door.
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1. When you go to the gym, you should be there to work, and work hard. If you go and just dabble or play, then you're wasting both your time and money. Go spend both of them somewhere else more useful.
Don't screw around at the gym. Go to work out. Go focused, go aggressive, go get big. Don't joke around, don't waste time. On the other hand, this does NOT mean be rude. It's o.k. to chat with the guy on the next bench or the guy behind the desk. But go to the gym to work. Don't go to participate in social hour. Be careful that that 2 minute rest between work sets doesn't turn into a 20 minute rap session about the latest centerfold. Leave that until after the workout, when you can concentrate on the centerfold, instead of your bench press... My suggestion is that if your workout partner insists on keeping you distracted with idle chatter, jokes, or stories, ditch 'em. At the very least, ask them to refrain until after the workout when you can actually laugh at the joke without dropping a dumbbell in your face (or a plate on you foot... OUCH!).
2. Music is a wonderful creation. It can help focus your moods, direct your emotions, and distract that part of your mind that is not actively being used. Additionally, music properly used can accelerate the transition into that wonderful "Zen" state where your workouts reach new heights in excellence. Trust me, you'll know when you get there.
Note that you may find that the best music for your workout may not be the type of music that you can't do without outside the gym.
3. If you use the benefit of a workout partner, MAKE SURE he or she is ALSO there train hard. If he or she is distracting you to ogling or discussing theirs or your latest bedroom escapades (or fantasies) then ditch this person as FAST as you possibly can. Remember that you are there to work; someone not in the same mindset can possibly lead to lackluster workouts, or worst case scenario, you or them getting hurt. This sometimes means that your best friend is NOT your best workout partner. So be it. They ought to be able to handle being without you for a couple hours per day.
4. LEAVE YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR. Taking an ego into the gym is one of the all-time worst things you can do. Why? Because your ego causes you to do Stupid Things(tm). Stupid Things(tm) cause you to be embarrassed at best, and badly injured, at worst. An example of this is when you see someone you want to impress; you decide to set a new PR in bench, which is 30 lbs greater than your current PR. This is a Stupid Thing(tm), ESPECIALLY if you're training alone. PR's are just that: PERSONAL Records. They aren't for that person you want to impress. (Besides, remember we aren't here to impress people.)
An important distinction here is that ego is different than attitude. Keep your attitude with you. It is what you can direct into the weights to help you move them.
5. Leave the rest of your life at the door. Worrying about what you didn't finish at work or at school will distract you from working out. These are what are known as stressors. An important part of working out is using your workout as stress relief. When you stress yourself, your body prepares itself for a fight. Learn to direct this energy into your workout. It takes practice, but it can be done. At the same time, don't concentrate on what is stressing you. By doing that, you're continuing the body's reaction of preparation for fighting. Which, of course, leaves you with a net change of ZERO.
Something should be mentioned here about working out when TOO stressed; you may wind up hurting yourself. If your stress levels are such that you find coherent speech difficult, STAY OUT OF THE GYM. Go run, take a walk, listen to some "soothing" music, but get yourself calmed a bit before your workout.
Directing your stress reaction into your workout is one of the most useful tools you will ever develop. For instance, if you have someone you'd really like to scream at, (a hated teacher, boss, or other person) one of the best ways to direct this energy is to pretend their head is between those dumbbells you're pressing... You might find that you get as many as three or four extra reps out of that set that you otherwise wouldn't.
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A personal pet-peeve: Don't sound like a wounded cow when you work out. Making noise on a new personal record attempt is one thing. Moaning and groaning on every rep of the workout is quite another, and is highly distracting. To say nothing of sounding like a complete idiot to everyone else in the gym. There are a number of these people at my gym, and every time I hear one, I shake my head and say to myself: "If that person would put as much effort into getting strong as they do into sounding strong, they might actually be worth something." Get the idea?
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Planning a workout
Workouts should be planned, at least to some extent. Also, you need to know what exercises to do; more importantly, you should know what exercises NOT to do. Wasting time on a useless exercise is A Stupid Thing(tm).
Start by thinking about what exercises work well for you. If you get excellent results from dumbbell bench presses and lousy (or no) results from normal barbell bench presses, then DON'T DO barbell bench presses, regardless if someone tells you that dumbbell benches suck.
Gaining mass is best accomplished by what are known as compound movements. These are also referred to as multi-joint exercises; that is, they use more than one body joint. Some excellent compound movements are:
* Squats
* Bench Press
* Deadlifts
* Barbell Rows
* Chins
* Shoulder Press
Compound movements give you the most bang for the buck. Use at least two in every workout, wherever possible.
Set up your workouts where you work antagonist muscle groups on the same day. This means work muscle groups that move a joint in opposite directions. An example would be working chest and back on the same day. Working biceps and triceps together is another good example. The principle here is that you're resting one group while letting another work. The end result is that you're pumped to the max on BOTH muscle groups, not just one. You can do the exercises such that you're doing one complete exercise then another complete exercise, or do "supersets," which are doing one set on one exercise, then one set of the antagonistic exercise until you run out of sets on either or both exercises.
Pick two exercises for every major muscle group. NO MORE!! More than two exercises just wastes time and keeps you from working any one exercise to it's full benefit. On the first exercise, do one LIGHT set for warmup, two moderate sets, and two to four work sets. On the second, do three work sets. There's no need to warm up since you're still working the same muscle group. Here's an example taking into account the two preceding paragraphs, using the weights I typically move:
Barbell Bench Press
* 1 x 12 x bar
* 2 x 12 x 135
* 2 x 10 x 225
* 2 x 4 x 315
Low Pulley Row
* 1 x 12 x 200
* 1 x 12 x 212.5
* 2 x 12 x 225
If you feel like you need more than two exercises to work one bodypart well, You're not working those two exercises hard enough. Period. Use some forced reps, or drop sets if you have to, but NO MORE THAN TWO EXERCISES PER BODYPART!!!
A word on time. Workouts should generally last no more than an hour an a half. There are two exceptions to this rule: If you're working squats or deadlifts, or if you're working in a crowded gym. Squats and deadlifts are HARD. If you do anything else with them, as I do, then it's going to take more time. Not necessarily four hours, but it'll take more time. If you're in a crowded gym, you may not have access to the equipment fast enough to get squeezed into an hour and a half.
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Post-Workout Feeding Frenzy
This is not an option. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS eat, and eat BIG, immediately after a workout. As cliche as it sounds, a good meat and potatoes dinner will NEVER do you wrong. Steak, baked potato, etc. Jason Burnell's Steak and Cake diet is a personal favorite, although I can't always indulge like that.
In the same vein, research has shown that insulin is an even MORE anabolic hormone than testosterone. One way to elicit a good insulin spike is to consume a heavy carb meal. The aforementioned meat and potatoes is usually pretty good at doing this. Insulin performs its actions by virtually ramming nutrients into the cells.
This can backfire, though, as insulin can promote the storage of fat as well as the building of muscle. Tissue anabolism via insulin is not as specific as that gained through testosterone. It's something you have to evaluate on your own. I find it works for me, although the resulting period of drowsiness is sometimes not so welcome..
Obviously, I'm not too concerned about fat percentages. Why not? To quote Garfield, "Food is Fun." I like to eat. I grew up on a farm. Farm boys learn to eat BIG at a VERY early age. According to my mother, I was out-eating my father at the tender age of 18 months. Plus, think about it for a minute; the only way you are gonna eat enough to gain mass is if you like to eat, and super-low-fat eating gets both bland and boring, both at a given meal, and over the long term. Eating slightly carelessly gives you variety, color, and friends. Not to mention that unless you're in the process of dying of a cardiac arrest at the moment, when you die, you're probably going to be saying "I wish I had eaten more cookies and ice cream, and had more sex!" instead of "I wish I had eaten less fat and more alfalfa sprouts." I DO, however, try to avoid fried foods and obvious refined sugars. I figure this alone will add many happy days to my life.
Not to mention that I have a reasonably efficient fat-burning metabolism. Being a mesomorphic body type has it's advantages...
I can go on for months on these... Let Me Know if you want to pick up the gauntlet of discussion...
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The Philosophy behind The Frankenbiker Workouts.
Since I've had these pages up, I have noticed something that's both pretty amazing and sad. It seems that everyone has forgotten what the essence of weight training is, and has jumped onto every bandwagon to come down the pike. Whatever the newest fad is, they heartily endorse it for a month or so, and then abandon it for something else new. (What's REALLY funny is to do a little checking of the archives and see just how many times this person has declared his latest fad as "the newest thing in bodybuilding...")
HELLO?!! WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!
The barest essence of weight lifting, that seemingly un-attainable goal of the bumbling masses, hasn't changed in a hundred years!! So what is this magic solution, you ask?
Lift the damned bar!!! There IS NO magic cure.
Successful weight lifting contains four basic components, in order: syntherol
1. eating
2. sleeping
3. training
4. living
These are the bare essence of weight lifting, and what's most important.
Or, put another way: Eat BIG; Sleep BIG; Train BIG; GET BIG!
1. You're going "Wait, isn't training the most important?" The answer is NO!! You don't grow in the gym. You grow at home, usually in bed. This growth is facilitated by the food you eat. There's a saying, "gaining is 10% training and 90% nutrition." This is pretty much true. If you don't eat, you don't grow. Eat whole, eat wholesome, eat big, yet eat cheap.
Supplements are generally a waste. They deflate your wallet and do little else (not to mention tasting hideous). Instead, spend the money on wholesome foods that are MUCH better for you, and cheaper. Not only that, but chances are that "super duper new mega tab" is last-years mega-multi-vitamin, and the year before that's weight-loss tab. If you have the access to a stack of old bodybuilding magazines ('88 or earlier), go back and take a look at the ads... You'll be surprised at what's there....
2. Sleep is the body's way of rest, repair, and recuperation. You tear things up/down when you train. The body's response to this damage is to build itself back up STRONGER and BIGGER than it was before, to adapt to the overload. This process happens when you sleep. THAT'S why it's essential you get lots of sleep.
Some people advocate getting up halfway through the night to grab a snack, in the name of keeping the nutrition going. I do not agree with this, because at least half of sleep's functions are related to the mind, not the body. As such, getting up halfway through your sleep cycle is a bad idea. It's way past the point of diminishing returns for the average lifter, and maybe even for the more advanced. Sleep for the entire eight hours straight, then eat when you get up. Just make sure that you DO eat when you get up, and don't skip the breakfast.
3. Training is the impetus of overload adaptation, but you've got to do it right FOR YOU. Out of some five BILLION people on the planet, there's not a SINGLE other person just like you. Even if you have a twin brother/sister, he or she is subtly different enough from you to effect each of your ability to build muscle. Take several weeks/months to figure out what's good for YOUR muscles. Then stick with it.
Again, the essence of weight lifting is WORK. A muscle grows if you work it. HARD. This is a biological mechanism that is still with us after ten thousand years.
Yes. It's that simple!
Think about it for a minute. Do you really work your muscles with so-called "shaping" exercises? Probably not. Yeah, you might get a good "burn" with them (*snort*), but you don't really work the muscle(s). When you see someone demonstrating strength, what are they doing? Working Hard! Farmers, construction workers, jobs doing any kind of manual labor are the ones that make strong people. So why in the hell are you in the gym doing endless sets of things like dumbbell flyes and concentration curls? These might work for the guys in the mags who are bloated up on drugs, and/or who possess genetics such that mere act of LOOKING at a weight will induce muscular growth. But they are a waste of time for the largest majority of trainers.
By the same token, there's something to be said for training SMART. Don't waste your precious training time on useless exercises.
The other part of training is to train "briefly." I don't advocate the classic HIT definition of "brief" (i.e. one set to failure). I advocate the position that it takes several sets, but NOT two dozen sets to properly work a muscle. The optimum range is 5-8 sets per bodypart. No more. I get a really good laugh out of the dorks I see in the gym who do ten sets of bench, four sets of inclines, four sets of declines, three sets of dumbbell flyes, AND a couple sets of something else, and then wonder why they're neither growing nor getting stronger! DUH!! (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why this is the case, but a little hint is ov-er-train-ing...)
4. Get a life outside the gym. The gym is a boring place. Trust me; I've been there too much. Go out, make friends, have a good time, enjoy life. You should spend a maximum of eight hours or so a week in the gym. That leaves you 160 hours in a week to do other things. Spending time elsewhere gives you so much more benefit than being "BMOC" will EVER give you, plus it gives you the satisfaction of being a whole, rounded individual. Leave the weights in the gym.
syntherol
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I have reviewed almost all of the commercially available literature. I can sum it ALL up in one word: GARBAGE. Every last one of them, with the exception of the books written by Fred Hatfield, are ghost-written by people who succeeded IN SPITE OF THEMSELVES. They usually are/were on drugs, and they had absolutely no methodology in their training; they simply trained what felt good. For them, this might have been a good way to train. Not so for the majority of trainers.
(Note hat I am not a Fred Hatfield devotee. It's more that his methods and his science are closer to whatever "real science" might be instead of the junk you find in most publications.)
In order to truly train effectively, you must transcend this bullshit; To to do this, forget everything you know, except the fact that it's largely wrong.
O.k. You're asking: "Why is it wrong?"
The answer is simple, and it has two parts:
1. Everyone trains until they only START to feel pain; that is, they do reps until they get "tired." And then they go do another exercise -- The same way. But this is where you START to stimulate the muscle. They never really reach maximum muscle stimulation. It is said that when you train properly, the last two reps are more effective than the preceding eight. Incidentally, this is where the exercise is the safest: When you've reached maximum stimulation, and maximum fatigue.
Think about it: If muscle were stimulated by only three or four reps, the entire planet would be populated by Mr. & Mrs. Incredible Hulk, Esq, right? But this isn't the case, is it?
Being Truly Huge(tm) requires that you define for yourself a totally new definition of pain. Now, note that this not the pain that tells you that you're fucking something up; this kind of pain is best described like someone's ripping a Klingon Dagger through a body part. The pain of intensity is a completely different pain. It's difficult to show/tell the difference, though, to the un-initiated, but try this: have a friend push you through three or four more reps of whatever exercise it is that you're doing. When you get there, THAT'S where you need to be on EVERY set you do. When you do figure out the difference for yourself, you will be quickly down the road to true intensity. True intensity requires that you push yourself to new limits. That means doing squats till you nearly pass out. That means doing deadlifts until you want to die. Sound hard? Damn straight!
That's the kind of dedication it takes to be Truly Huge(tm).
2. Everyone does the easy exercises. No one does the hard ones. Ever notice why the only guys who are Truly Huge(tm) are the either the ones on drugs, or the heavy powerlifters? It's because they train with intensity only dreamed of by 97% of the gym population. The heavy power exercises are the only way to get Truly Huge(tm). Just about everyone shuns these exercises because they're painful. But that's why they work.
Engaging in that kind of intensity requires an entirely new approach (well, to MOST people, anyway) to weight training. I am constantly amazed at people who don't believe me when I say I only do one or two exercises per bodypart. The reason I do that is because I have found the path to true intensity. I train above and beyond what most people think they're capable of. It's funny, too, because I have taken people on workouts where they discovered that they are indeed capable of such feats, but only if pushed. They simply don't want to go that hard for themselves.
The first thing you need to do is eliminate the idea that you have to work a bodypart from several angles. With the exception of the shoulder and hip, just about every joint (well, the ones WE'RE concerned about anyway) in the body functions like a hinge. That means that they only have one degree of freedom; they bend in one direction only. That means that one exercise, when done properly, is completely sufficient to turn any muscle or muscle group into putty. Note, HIT'ers, that I did not say one set, but one exercise. You generally need two to four work sets in order to do things effectively. But NOT three or four exercises. What does this mean? That means that all you silly folks who do four different exercises on chest day are WASTING YOUR TIME!!!! The ones you see doing one exercise and then moving on are the ones to watch. They have generally figured out how to "get Zen" in the gym, and they are rewarded for their efforts. The rest of you are just playing the game.
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syntherol
Weightlifting is Life.
(The rest is just details!)
syntherolsyntherolIf you use the gym to:
* find a date
* scope the spandex scene
* invent new bedroom fantasies
Then you are reading the wrong page. This page is for people who go to the gym to work out.
If your style includes any of the following:
* lots of "definition" work
* a bazillion light sets per bodypart
* changing workout styles on a weekly basis
* or go mindlessly chanting one of the following mantras
* Jones/Mentzer/Darden HIT mumbo-jumbo (or if you have to ask what HIT is...)
* The latest, greatest "get big" routine, "written" by the latest [insert federation here] champ
* militant vegetarianism
* steroids are evil
This page is ALSO NOT for you. Leave. Now. (So what if I pissed you off? It's MY page, dammit!)
If, on the other hand, you actually think about how you train, work hard, and have a life outside the gym, Welcome to what most would call insanity. We hope you like your stay.
This page is directed at people who are trying to put on quality body mass in the least amount of time.
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Some useful rules of the gym:
1. Go to the gym to work, not play.
2. Use music. If the gym doesn't play music you like, take your own.
3. If you use a workout partner, make sure he/she is focused.
4. Leave your ego at the door.
5. Leave the most of the rest of your life at the door.
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1. When you go to the gym, you should be there to work, and work hard. If you go and just dabble or play, then you're wasting both your time and money. Go spend both of them somewhere else more useful.
Don't screw around at the gym. Go to work out. Go focused, go aggressive, go get big. Don't joke around, don't waste time. On the other hand, this does NOT mean be rude. It's o.k. to chat with the guy on the next bench or the guy behind the desk. But go to the gym to work. Don't go to participate in social hour. Be careful that that 2 minute rest between work sets doesn't turn into a 20 minute rap session about the latest centerfold. Leave that until after the workout, when you can concentrate on the centerfold, instead of your bench press...
My suggestion is that if your workout partner insists on keeping you distracted with idle chatter, jokes, or stories, ditch 'em. At the very least, ask them to refrain until after the workout when you can actually laugh at the joke without dropping a dumbbell in your face (or a plate on you foot... OUCH!). 2. Music is a wonderful creation. It can help focus your moods, direct your emotions, and distract that part of your mind that is not actively being used. Additionally, music properly used can accelerate the transition into that wonderful "Zen" state where your workouts reach new heights in excellence. Trust me, you'll know when you get there.
Note that you may find that the best music for your workout may not be the type of music that you can't do without outside the gym.
3. If you use the benefit of a workout partner, MAKE SURE he or she is ALSO there train hard. If he or she is distracting you to ogling or discussing theirs or your latest bedroom escapades (or fantasies) then ditch this person as FAST as you possibly can. Remember that you are there to work; someone not in the same mindset can possibly lead to lackluster workouts, or worst case scenario, you or them getting hurt. This sometimes means that your best friend is NOT your best workout partner. So be it. They ought to be able to handle being without you for a couple hours per day.
4. LEAVE YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR. Taking an ego into the gym is one of the all-time worst things you can do. Why? Because your ego causes you to do Stupid Things(tm). Stupid Things(tm) cause you to be embarrassed at best, and badly injured, at worst. An example of this is when you see someone you want to impress; you decide to set a new PR in bench, which is 30 lbs greater than your current PR. This is a Stupid Thing(tm), ESPECIALLY if you're training alone. PR's are just that: PERSONAL Records. They aren't for that person you want to impress. (Besides, remember we aren't here to impress people.)
An important distinction here is that ego is different than attitude. Keep your attitude with you. It is what you can direct into the weights to help you move them.
5. Leave the rest of your life at the door. Worrying about what you didn't finish at work or at school will distract you from working out. These are what are known as stressors. An important part of working out is using your workout as stress relief. When you stress yourself, your body prepares itself for a fight. Learn to direct this energy into your workout. It takes practice, but it can be done. At the same time, don't concentrate on what is stressing you. By doing that, you're continuing the body's reaction of preparation for fighting. Which, of course, leaves you with a net change of ZERO.
Something should be mentioned here about working out when TOO stressed; you may wind up hurting yourself. If your stress levels are such that you find coherent speech difficult, STAY OUT OF THE GYM. Go run, take a walk, listen to some "soothing" music, but get yourself calmed a bit before your workout.
Directing your stress reaction into your workout is one of the most useful tools you will ever develop. For instance, if you have someone you'd really like to scream at, (a hated teacher, boss, or other person) one of the best ways to direct this energy is to pretend their head is between those dumbbells you're pressing... You might find that you get as many as three or four extra reps out of that set that you otherwise wouldn't.
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A personal pet-peeve: Don't sound like a wounded cow when you work out. Making noise on a new personal record attempt is one thing. Moaning and groaning on every rep of the workout is quite another, and is highly distracting. To say nothing of sounding like a complete idiot to everyone else in the gym. There are a number of these people at my gym, and every time I hear one, I shake my head and say to myself: "If that person would put as much effort into getting strong as they do into sounding strong, they might actually be worth something." Get the idea?
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Planning a workout
Workouts should be planned, at least to some extent. Also, you need to know what exercises to do; more importantly, you should know what exercises NOT to do. Wasting time on a useless exercise is A Stupid Thing(tm).
Start by thinking about what exercises work well for you. If you get excellent results from dumbbell bench presses and lousy (or no) results from normal barbell bench presses, then DON'T DO barbell bench presses, regardless if someone tells you that dumbbell benches suck.
Gaining mass is best accomplished by what are known as compound movements. These are also referred to as multi-joint exercises; that is, they use more than one body joint. Some excellent compound movements are:
* Squats
* Bench Press
* Deadlifts
* Barbell Rows
* Chins
* Shoulder Press
Compound movements give you the most bang for the buck. Use at least two in every workout, wherever possible.
Set up your workouts where you work antagonist muscle groups on the same day. This means work muscle groups that move a joint in opposite directions. An example would be working chest and back on the same day. Working biceps and triceps together is another good example. The principle here is that you're resting one group while letting another work. The end result is that you're pumped to the max on BOTH muscle groups, not just one. You can do the exercises such that you're doing one complete exercise then another complete exercise, or do "supersets," which are doing one set on one exercise, then one set of the antagonistic exercise until you run out of sets on either or both exercises.
Pick two exercises for every major muscle group. NO MORE!! More than two exercises just wastes time and keeps you from working any one exercise to it's full benefit. On the first exercise, do one LIGHT set for warmup, two moderate sets, and two to four work sets. On the second, do three work sets. There's no need to warm up since you're still working the same muscle group. Here's an example taking into account the two preceding paragraphs, using the weights I typically move:
Barbell Bench Press
* 1 x 12 x bar
* 2 x 12 x 135
* 2 x 10 x 225
* 2 x 4 x 315
Low Pulley Row
* 1 x 12 x 200
* 1 x 12 x 212.5
* 2 x 12 x 225
If you feel like you need more than two exercises to work one bodypart well, You're not working those two exercises hard enough. Period. Use some forced reps, or drop sets if you have to, but NO MORE THAN TWO EXERCISES PER BODYPART!!!
A word on time. Workouts should generally last no more than an hour an a half. There are two exceptions to this rule: If you're working squats or deadlifts, or if you're working in a crowded gym. Squats and deadlifts are HARD. If you do anything else with them, as I do, then it's going to take more time. Not necessarily four hours, but it'll take more time. If you're in a crowded gym, you may not have access to the equipment fast enough to get squeezed into an hour and a half.
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Post-Workout Feeding Frenzy
This is not an option. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS eat, and eat BIG, immediately after a workout. As cliche as it sounds, a good meat and potatoes dinner will NEVER do you wrong. Steak, baked potato, etc. Jason Burnell's Steak and Cake diet is a personal favorite, although I can't always indulge like that.
In the same vein, research has shown that insulin is an even MORE anabolic hormone than testosterone. One way to elicit a good insulin spike is to consume a heavy carb meal. The aforementioned meat and potatoes is usually pretty good at doing this. Insulin performs its actions by virtually ramming nutrients into the cells.
This can backfire, though, as insulin can promote the storage of fat as well as the building of muscle. Tissue anabolism via insulin is not as specific as that gained through testosterone. It's something you have to evaluate on your own. I find it works for me, although the resulting period of drowsiness is sometimes not so welcome..
Obviously, I'm not too concerned about fat percentages. Why not? To quote Garfield, "Food is Fun." I like to eat. I grew up on a farm. Farm boys learn to eat BIG at a VERY early age. According to my mother, I was out-eating my father at the tender age of 18 months. Plus, think about it for a minute; the only way you are gonna eat enough to gain mass is if you like to eat, and super-low-fat eating gets both bland and boring, both at a given meal, and over the long term. Eating slightly carelessly gives you variety, color, and friends.
Not to mention that unless you're in the process of dying of a cardiac arrest at the moment, when you die, you're probably going to be saying "I wish I had eaten more cookies and ice cream, and had more sex!" instead of "I wish I had eaten less fat and more alfalfa sprouts." I DO, however, try to avoid fried foods and obvious refined sugars. I figure this alone will add many happy days to my life. Not to mention that I have a reasonably efficient fat-burning metabolism. Being a mesomorphic body type has it's advantages...
I can go on for months on these... Let Me Know if you want to pick up the gauntlet of discussion...
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The Philosophy behind The Frankenbiker Workouts.
Since I've had these pages up, I have noticed something that's both pretty amazing and sad. It seems that everyone has forgotten what the essence of weight training is, and has jumped onto every bandwagon to come down the pike. Whatever the newest fad is, they heartily endorse it for a month or so, and then abandon it for something else new. (What's REALLY funny is to do a little checking of the archives and see just how many times this person has declared his latest fad as "the newest thing in bodybuilding...")
HELLO?!! WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!
The barest essence of weight lifting, that seemingly un-attainable goal of the bumbling masses, hasn't changed in a hundred years!! So what is this magic solution, you ask?
Lift the damned bar!!! There IS NO magic cure.
Successful weight lifting contains four basic components, in order: syntherol
1. eating
2. sleeping
3. training
4. living
These are the bare essence of weight lifting, and what's most important.
Or, put another way: Eat BIG; Sleep BIG; Train BIG; GET BIG!
1. You're going "Wait, isn't training the most important?" The answer is NO!! You don't grow in the gym. You grow at home, usually in bed. This growth is facilitated by the food you eat. There's a saying, "gaining is 10% training and 90% nutrition." This is pretty much true. If you don't eat, you don't grow. Eat whole, eat wholesome, eat big, yet eat cheap.
Supplements are generally a waste. They deflate your wallet and do little else (not to mention tasting hideous). Instead, spend the money on wholesome foods that are MUCH better for you, and cheaper. Not only that, but chances are that "super duper new mega tab" is last-years mega-multi-vitamin, and the year before that's weight-loss tab. If you have the access to a stack of old bodybuilding magazines ('88 or earlier), go back and take a look at the ads... You'll be surprised at what's there....
2. Sleep is the body's way of rest, repair, and recuperation. You tear things up/down when you train. The body's response to this damage is to build itself back up STRONGER and BIGGER than it was before, to adapt to the overload. This process happens when you sleep. THAT'S why it's essential you get lots of sleep.
Some people advocate getting up halfway through the night to grab a snack, in the name of keeping the nutrition going. I do not agree with this, because at least half of sleep's functions are related to the mind, not the body. As such, getting up halfway through your sleep cycle is a bad idea. It's way past the point of diminishing returns for the average lifter, and maybe even for the more advanced. Sleep for the entire eight hours straight, then eat when you get up. Just make sure that you DO eat when you get up, and don't skip the breakfast.
3. Training is the impetus of overload adaptation, but you've got to do it right FOR YOU. Out of some five BILLION people on the planet, there's not a SINGLE other person just like you. Even if you have a twin brother/sister, he or she is subtly different enough from you to effect each of your ability to build muscle. Take several weeks/months to figure out what's good for YOUR muscles. Then stick with it.
Again, the essence of weight lifting is WORK. A muscle grows if you work it. HARD. This is a biological mechanism that is still with us after ten thousand years.
Yes. It's that simple!
Think about it for a minute. Do you really work your muscles with so-called "shaping" exercises? Probably not. Yeah, you might get a good "burn" with them (*snort*), but you don't really work the muscle(s). When you see someone demonstrating strength, what are they doing? Working Hard! Farmers, construction workers, jobs doing any kind of manual labor are the ones that make strong people. So why in the hell are you in the gym doing endless sets of things like dumbbell flyes and concentration curls? These might work for the guys in the mags who are bloated up on drugs, and/or who possess genetics such that mere act of LOOKING at a weight will induce muscular growth. But they are a waste of time for the largest majority of trainers.
By the same token, there's something to be said for training SMART. Don't waste your precious training time on useless exercises.
The other part of training is to train "briefly." I don't advocate the classic HIT definition of "brief" (i.e. one set to failure). I advocate the position that it takes several sets, but NOT two dozen sets to properly work a muscle. The optimum range is 5-8 sets per bodypart. No more. I get a really good laugh out of the dorks I see in the gym who do ten sets of bench, four sets of inclines, four sets of declines, three sets of dumbbell flyes, AND a couple sets of something else, and then wonder why they're neither growing nor getting stronger! DUH!! (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why this is the case, but a little hint is ov-er-train-ing...)
4. Get a life outside the gym. The gym is a boring place. Trust me; I've been there too much. Go out, make friends, have a good time, enjoy life. You should spend a maximum of eight hours or so a week in the gym. That leaves you 160 hours in a week to do other things. Spending time elsewhere gives you so much more benefit than being "BMOC" will EVER give you, plus it gives you the satisfaction of being a whole, rounded individual. Leave the weights in the gym.
syntherol
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I have reviewed almost all of the commercially available literature. I can sum it ALL up in one word: GARBAGE. Every last one of them, with the exception of the books written by Fred Hatfield, are ghost-written by people who succeeded IN SPITE OF THEMSELVES. They usually are/were on drugs, and they had absolutely no methodology in their training; they simply trained what felt good. For them, this might have been a good way to train. Not so for the majority of trainers.
(Note hat I am not a Fred Hatfield devotee. It's more that his methods and his science are closer to whatever "real science" might be instead of the junk you find in most publications.)
In order to truly train effectively, you must transcend this bullshit; To to do this, forget everything you know, except the fact that it's largely wrong.
O.k. You're asking: "Why is it wrong?"
The answer is simple, and it has two parts:
1. Everyone trains until they only START to feel pain; that is, they do reps until they get "tired." And then they go do another exercise -- The same way. But this is where you START to stimulate the muscle. They never really reach maximum muscle stimulation. It is said that when you train properly, the last two reps are more effective than the preceding eight. Incidentally, this is where the exercise is the safest: When you've reached maximum stimulation, and maximum fatigue.
Think about it: If muscle were stimulated by only three or four reps, the entire planet would be populated by Mr. & Mrs. Incredible Hulk, Esq, right? But this isn't the case, is it?
Being Truly Huge(tm) requires that you define for yourself a totally new definition of pain. Now, note that this not the pain that tells you that you're fucking something up; this kind of pain is best described like someone's ripping a Klingon Dagger through a body part. The pain of intensity is a completely different pain. It's difficult to show/tell the difference, though, to the un-initiated, but try this: have a friend push you through three or four more reps of whatever exercise it is that you're doing. When you get there, THAT'S where you need to be on EVERY set you do. When you do figure out the difference for yourself, you will be quickly down the road to true intensity. True intensity requires that you push yourself to new limits. That means doing squats till you nearly pass out. That means doing deadlifts until you want to die. Sound hard? Damn straight!
That's the kind of dedication it takes to be Truly Huge(tm).
2. Everyone does the easy exercises. No one does the hard ones. Ever notice why the only guys who are Truly Huge(tm) are the either the ones on drugs, or the heavy powerlifters? It's because they train with intensity only dreamed of by 97% of the gym population. The heavy power exercises are the only way to get Truly Huge(tm). Just about everyone shuns these exercises because they're painful. But that's why they work.
Engaging in that kind of intensity requires an entirely new approach (well, to MOST people, anyway) to weight training. I am constantly amazed at people who don't believe me when I say I only do one or two exercises per bodypart. The reason I do that is because I have found the path to true intensity. I train above and beyond what most people think they're capable of. It's funny, too, because I have taken people on workouts where they discovered that they are indeed capable of such feats, but only if pushed. They simply don't want to go that hard for themselves.
The first thing you need to do is eliminate the idea that you have to work a bodypart from several angles. With the exception of the shoulder and hip, just about every joint (well, the ones WE'RE concerned about anyway) in the body functions like a hinge. That means that they only have one degree of freedom; they bend in one direction only. That means that one exercise, when done properly, is completely sufficient to turn any muscle or muscle group into putty. Note, HIT'ers, that I did not say one set, but one exercise. You generally need two to four work sets in order to do things effectively. But NOT three or four exercises. What does this mean? That means that all you silly folks who do four different exercises on chest day are WASTING YOUR TIME!!!! The ones you see doing one exercise and then moving on are the ones to watch. They have generally figured out how to "get Zen" in the gym, and they are rewarded for their efforts. The rest of you are just playing the game.
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syntherol
