Question For Dante / DC Training

[FK86]

The only way I can see this being possible is through poor exercise selection and execution - training movements vs. actually training muscles.

Neurological adaptation, leverage from increased bodyweight.

 

[DOGGCRAPP]

It sounds though like you're feeling these new exercises are providing new muscle growth. I suppose with slight differences in angle, mechanics, etc muscles may be worked in a way they haven't been before and this could lead to a different emphasis. Why do you think it's the case then that the vast majority of bodybuilders stick with their tried and true exercises year after year after year?

My hesitation with dropping the main lifts is you lose your gauge for true progress. If I was doing 10xBW+90 pull ups and now a year later I'm doing 10xBW+100 pull ups that tells me I've at least made some true progress (after 15 years I'd be ecstatic with a true 10lb gain on an exercise I've been doing for 15 years). Alternatively, if I was doing 10xBW+90lb pull ups two years ago and then 10x280lb cable pulldowns last year and then 10x360 HS Pulldowns this year (even if it was progressed over the last few months), how do I know I'm making real progress and didn't just get better at the exercise?

This is coming from someone who does not blast gear, who sits around 190-200lb most of the year, but personally I can gain a lot of "strength" on random exercises and get no bigger at all because I just improve my efficiency at the exercise over weeks/months. It's when I've actually gotten stronger at the exercises I've done for many years that I see myself actually get bigger and can confirm that with the tape measure. That's always been my concern with too much variation while taking away the main movements you've done for years.

You make it seem like if you dont do the same exercises you have been doing for years you are no longer going to gain any muscle. What happens if your gym burns down tomorrow and you have to go to a new gym with all new and different equipment, with different brands and all new angles? Your screwed? I guarantee you the best thing you could do at this very moment is leave your current gym and travel to 2 other gyms and use their very varied equipment. Ever been on a belt squat? Ever been on a pendulum squat? Ever do a Watson unilateral leg press? there are so many mechanical positions you have not put yourself into but your hard headedness about "must stay doing these basics even if strength gains are minimal" is most likely what is keeping you back. Do barbell curls work for you? I bet they dont. Are you going to continue doing them because its a main core exercise for other people? What if some guy did "kickbacks" and "one arm reverse tricep extensions" and kept doing them because "well this is what I do and have always done".......the whole year that guy got down to grinding out close grip bench presses, reverse grip bench presses, dips and dead stop floor skull crushers, he would see his triceps transform....you are talking about weak bodyparts you have but you dont want to go outside that box that you need to go outside of

 

[danieltx]

You make it seem like if you dont do the same exercises you have been doing for years you are no longer going to gain any muscle....there are so many mechanical positions you have not put yourself into but your hard headedness about "must stay doing these basics even if strength gains are minimal" is most likely what is keeping you back. Do barbell curls work for you? I bet they dont. Are you going to continue doing them because its a main core exercise for other people? What if some guy did "kickbacks" and "one arm reverse tricep extensions" and kept doing them because "well this is what I do and have always done".......the whole year that guy got down to grinding out close grip bench presses, reverse grip bench presses, dips and dead stop floor skull crushers, he would see his triceps transform....you are talking about weak bodyparts you have but you dont want to go outside that box that you need to go outside of

God damn, such a fucking good post and a key reason the vast majority of guys never progress.

@MaconiDDS - you're stuck in the dogmatic bullshit that I mentioned in my post on page 1:

The biggest reason guys don't make progress in bodybuilding is they train MOVEMENTS, not MUSCLES. They get brainwashed into the idea that you must barbell squat / bench / deadlift, do pullups, close grip bench is the best triceps builder, all sorts of dogmatic bullshit. Regarding dumbbell shoulder presses, I once had a guy tell me, 'I can't feel them in my shoulders at all, but I know you're supposed to do them so just trust that they're working.' That's a person who will NEVER gain any significant amount of muscle.

Do whatever weird movement, crazy ROM, wacky thing a machine isn't totally designed for that you like. As long as you feel the muscle squeeze and stretch throughout the movement, you'll make gains. The muscle only knows how hard it's working, not what tool it's working with.

 

[USMuscle9403]

I smell a podcast coming up...

Just sayin...

 

[DOGGCRAPP]

If i gained 40lbs of fat in 10 months and i made great strength gains the very last thing I would over analyze would be my training. The VERY FIRST THING i would do is march myself down to directlabs and get a full panel and especially expanded panel on
thyroid
estrogen
testosterone and free testosterone
shbg
Thats the very first thing I would do.
The very second thing i would do is chastise myself for gaining 40lbs of fat in 10 months...because if you are doing that, you are eating 100% wrong....and need to reaccess your physique, what its capable of and figure out a diet that works for you. Olive oil is a trick for people who have an incredibly tough time gaining any kind of weight..and people use it in meals and protein shakes for extra calories. You sure as hell dont need olive oil if you are putting on 40lbs of fat!

Ive said it before and Ill say it again "the greatest scientific study EVER done on the sport of bodybuilding is happening every single day in gyms across America....millions of people arent training hard, millions....and they are the same guys you see in the gym that look the exact same every single year" I dont care one bit how someone wants to train....I really could give two bits.....train exactly how you want to train but this whole pipedream of "you dont need to train hard anymore to make gains if you do enough volume"....again look around all the gyms in America at the greatest science experiment ever. Those guys are all natural too. Ive trained alot of natural guys....you got to push them hardcore to make gains! Do you know any (non genetically elite) natural guys that have some size that dont train hard? Ive been around for 35 years doing this stuff...I dont know one. I sure as hell know alot of guys who juice who will tell natural guys "you need to do this" when the reality of the situation is 'if you also took their juice away'...they would be in the same boat as the natural guy thinking "wow this gaining muscle mass stuff is 1000X harder when I take the 1000mg of test, 600mg of deca and 400mg of tren away".....

If you gained 40lbs of fat man im sorry that aint on my watch....that is your fault 100%...thats a hormonal and personal choice of diet problem 52 ways around the block. But you natural guys on this thread....the fact of the matter is unless you have (hey its the truth..usually black genetics or elite genetics) you are going to have to train extremely hard to make changes after 6-8 years of training and EVERYTHING has to be perfect....if your walking around with total test levels of 227 and correspondingly low free test levels....nothing you are going to do is going to amount to jack. You can overanalyze your training to the 19th degree...things dont come together with horrible testosterone levels and hypothyroidism.

Everyone has this preconcieved notion of what DC training is and they stick to these certain tenets when the real meat and potatoes of it all gets totally lost. Here ill wrap it up in nice little bow for everyone.

1) I dont believe in counting warmup sets, never have...I just dont believe in stating "Yea dude i did 6 sets of incline!" when the truth was it was
135x16
185x12
225x9
275x6
315x4
365x9+5+3=17rp....that to me is one workset but hey people can call it what they want.

2) DC training when i started talking about it back in the early 90's in print form and then on the net in the mid 90's it was about progressive training...that is the main cog of it. I wanted people to get back to the thought process of "if all you have is a squat rack and all you can do is squats.....and your beginning day is 135X20...you can spin around and do everything but and overanalyze it but the bottom line is the day you are squatting 500x20 deep in strict form will be the largest your quads ever will be if all you can do is squats. It was and is that simple......but that concept was lost on alot of people who were doing "blood volume training" and supersetting this and giant setting that.

3) People talk about the splits the AB split and the ABC split...that is how i had to set things up. I am not looking over people personally, I cant correct stuff. So I started everyone on those splits so they could learn that "you got to go to the well and back on your main set (after warmups) to beat what you did last time. And if you want to get a beginner big and put on the most muscular size on him in the quickest way possible....thats the way to do it...have him train bodyparts often but make darn sure he can recover so he can train bodyparts that often. What sucks is that I had everyone do those split to teach them the way to attack the main sets....but with the guys i trained personally I was able to personally see what to do with them and I switched things up when i saw how fast certain bodyparts reacted and what bodyparts lagged....but thats the curse of the inability to overlook everyones training and everyones diet.

4) So if i got a big superheavyweight he is doing a boatload of warmup sets and a 2-4 exercises per bodypart...not exactly low volume...but alot of that is my fault because i was so resistant (and still am) on calling 135x16 which you get absolutely no muscle gains with.....a set.....I just looked at is as a journey necessary to get to the actual worksets that actually do something.

5) So thats it that is truly DC training...train progressive...if your a person that needs size desperately stop overanalyzing yourself to death and get yourself caught up in overall size as quickly as possible! (which means train bodyparts often but dont overdo the amount of volume/exercises so you can in fact train often and dont drive yourself into a hole)....if you have size, then do as many exercises as you want per bodypart with as many warmup sets as you want/need for each exercise, and try to do two things for weak bodyparts....try to train them twice a week with (most important thing Im going to say in this whole paragraph)--->key exercises that thru intuition, past experience, and deductive reasoning have proven to some extent to make that bodypart respond (nobody can tell you exactly what those exercises are....that is your job! Every person needs to figure that out.) That key mechanical position vs your unique genetic makeup of leverages and angles is the make or break of it and the reason why that guy over there gets so much out of an exercise and that guy over here gets nothing out of that exercise. Some guys do barbell curls and their arms blow the hell up. Alot of guys do barbell curls and get absolutely nothing from them. The second group of guys have to find the solution exercise for that.

 

[DOGGCRAPP]

and try to do two things for weak bodyparts....try to train them twice a week with

with one of those workouts being really low variety of exercise and workload for that bodypart but with a tremendously key exercise.

 

[DOGGCRAPP]

I smell a podcast coming up...

Just sayin...

If thats for me (and i dont know if it is my apologies if it isnt)...ill just say they ask me nonstop...I turn them all down...Dusty, Ron, JP etc etc etc Fouads asked me probably a dozen times....and currently Ill explain why. I got extremely popular in this sport in the late 90's and 2000's...and alot of people absolutely crave that. They want notoriety so bad. I couldnt stand it...I was getting pulled on all sides. It was the biggest pain in the ass for me... I like helping people but I like my life like it is...kind of in the background and with privacy. Alot of people dont understand that.... but when i told Muscle Mayhem in the late 2000's please take down all the DC training stuff, and I stopped training people in 2009, my life became so much easier and productive. I remember telling a pro bodybuilder in the late 2000's who asked me why I was so private....and we had a long discussion in which he stated "Ill take any kind of publicity, good bad...i dont care....just want to see my name blow up"...and i told him "be careful what you wish for".....We have talked about this since and he "gets it" now. I truly love to train, thats the greatest thing in all this endeavor to me. And I dont mind helping people who want to know my thoughts on something....but I would much rather build the engines and race the cars around the track when nobody was there than be Jeff Gordon. PS: Fouad asked me to call him a few months ago and i did and then about 30 seconds in it came to me and I said "Hey wait a second man, is this a trick, am I live on the podcast right now?" and he said "yea i got you" (he was joking)

 

[USMuscle9403]

Yes sir, that's for you. Trust me, I remember you going WAY out of your way back when you and Doug were just starting up. You weren't just training people, you were probably giving out way more for free if you felt like someone really needed guidance or had potential. Great things don't go forgotten, there's a reason you have the reputation that you do. Saw you climb from a struggling software engineer into a supplement game changer in a few years time. You deserve every bit of it.

 

[IronLion2]

Let's get @DOGGCRAPP an intern to type all this out for him, lol we don't deserve the time he gives still

 

[thethinker48]

If thats for me (and i dont know if it is my apologies if it isnt)...ill just say they ask me nonstop...I turn them all down...Dusty, Ron, JP etc etc etc Fouads asked me probably a dozen times....and currently Ill explain why. I got extremely popular in this sport in the late 90's and 2000's...and alot of people absolutely crave that. They want notoriety so bad. I couldnt stand it...I was getting pulled on all sides. It was the biggest pain in the ass for me... I like helping people but I like my life like it is...kind of in the background and with privacy. Alot of people dont understand that.... but when i told Muscle Mayhem in the late 2000's please take down all the DC training stuff, and I stopped training people in 2009, my life became so much easier and productive. I remember telling a pro bodybuilder in the late 2000's who asked me why I was so private....and we had a long discussion in which he stated "Ill take any kind of publicity, good bad...i dont care....just want to see my name blow up"...and i told him "be careful what you wish for".....We have talked about this since and he "gets it" now. I truly love to train, thats the greatest thing in all this endeavor to me. And I dont mind helping people who want to know my thoughts on something....but I would much rather build the engines and race the cars around the track when nobody was there than be Jeff Gordon. PS: Fouad asked me to call him a few months ago and i did and then about 30 seconds in it came to me and I said "Hey wait a second man, is this a trick, am I live on the podcast right now?" and he said "yea i got you" (he was joking)

If you were to do Fouad's podcast once, and never do another again; I'll be damned if it wouldn't help thousands of people long term.

Message boards aren't the go to social media platform, people that know you through the boards or having emailed you know the impact you've had health wise and training wise in the community. The rest are finding out these miraculous concepts of extreme stretching, astragalus, frequency training; and going: "wow look at this ground breaking finding". A lot of which was shared on here by you and others decades ago

But I understand the privacy and notoriety concerns; the guys who stay away from this stuff are the most sane people you meet in real life.

Just some thoughts

 

[FK86]

If i gained 40lbs of fat in 10 months and i made great strength gains the very last thing I would over analyze would be my training. The VERY FIRST THING i would do is march myself down to directlabs and get a full panel and especially expanded panel on
thyroid
estrogen
testosterone and free testosterone
shbg
Thats the very first thing I would do.
The very second thing i would do is chastise myself for gaining 40lbs of fat in 10 months...because if you are doing that, you are eating 100% wrong....and need to reaccess your physique, what its capable of and figure out a diet that works for you. Olive oil is a trick for people who have an incredibly tough time gaining any kind of weight..and people use it in meals and protein shakes for extra calories. You sure as hell dont need olive oil if you are putting on 40lbs of fat!

Ive said it before and Ill say it again "the greatest scientific study EVER done on the sport of bodybuilding is happening every single day in gyms across America....millions of people arent training hard, millions....and they are the same guys you see in the gym that look the exact same every single year" I dont care one bit how someone wants to train....I really could give two bits.....train exactly how you want to train but this whole pipedream of "you dont need to train hard anymore to make gains if you do enough volume"....again look around all the gyms in America at the greatest science experiment ever. Those guys are all natural too. Ive trained alot of natural guys....you got to push them hardcore to make gains! Do you know any (non genetically elite) natural guys that have some size that dont train hard? Ive been around for 35 years doing this stuff...I dont know one. I sure as hell know alot of guys who juice who will tell natural guys "you need to do this" when the reality of the situation is 'if you also took their juice away'...they would be in the same boat as the natural guy thinking "wow this gaining muscle mass stuff is 1000X harder when I take the 1000mg of test, 600mg of deca and 400mg of tren away".....

If you gained 40lbs of fat man im sorry that aint on my watch....that is your fault 100%...thats a hormonal and personal choice of diet problem 52 ways around the block. But you natural guys on this thread....the fact of the matter is unless you have (hey its the truth..usually black genetics or elite genetics) you are going to have to train extremely hard to make changes after 6-8 years of training and EVERYTHING has to be perfect....if your walking around with total test levels of 227 and correspondingly low free test levels....nothing you are going to do is going to amount to jack. You can overanalyze your training to the 19th degree...things dont come together with horrible testosterone levels and hypothyroidism.

Everyone has this preconcieved notion of what DC training is and they stick to these certain tenets when the real meat and potatoes of it all gets totally lost. Here ill wrap it up in nice little bow for everyone.

1) I dont believe in counting warmup sets, never have...I just dont believe in stating "Yea dude i did 6 sets of incline!" when the truth was it was
135x16
185x12
225x9
275x6
315x4
365x9+5+3=17rp....that to me is one workset but hey people can call it what they want.

2) DC training when i started talking about it back in the early 90's in print form and then on the net in the mid 90's it was about progressive training...that is the main cog of it. I wanted people to get back to the thought process of "if all you have is a squat rack and all you can do is squats.....and your beginning day is 135X20...you can spin around and do everything but and overanalyze it but the bottom line is the day you are squatting 500x20 deep in strict form will be the largest your quads ever will be if all you can do is squats. It was and is that simple......but that concept was lost on alot of people who were doing "blood volume training" and supersetting this and giant setting that.

3) People talk about the splits the AB split and the ABC split...that is how i had to set things up. I am not looking over people personally, I cant correct stuff. So I started everyone on those splits so they could learn that "you got to go to the well and back on your main set (after warmups) to beat what you did last time. And if you want to get a beginner big and put on the most muscular size on him in the quickest way possible....thats the way to do it...have him train bodyparts often but make darn sure he can recover so he can train bodyparts that often. What sucks is that I had everyone do those split to teach them the way to attack the main sets....but with the guys i trained personally I was able to personally see what to do with them and I switched things up when i saw how fast certain bodyparts reacted and what bodyparts lagged....but thats the curse of the inability to overlook everyones training and everyones diet.

4) So if i got a big superheavyweight he is doing a boatload of warmup sets and a 2-4 exercises per bodypart...not exactly low volume...but alot of that is my fault because i was so resistant (and still am) on calling 135x16 which you get absolutely no muscle gains with.....a set.....I just looked at is as a journey necessary to get to the actual worksets that actually do something.

5) So thats it that is truly DC training...train progressive...if your a person that needs size desperately stop overanalyzing yourself to death and get yourself caught up in overall size as quickly as possible! (which means train bodyparts often but dont overdo the amount of volume/exercises so you can in fact train often and dont drive yourself into a hole)....if you have size, then do as many exercises as you want per bodypart with as many warmup sets as you want/need for each exercise, and try to do two things for weak bodyparts....try to train them twice a week with (most important thing Im going to say in this whole paragraph)--->key exercises that thru intuition, past experience, and deductive reasoning have proven to some extent to make that bodypart respond (nobody can tell you exactly what those exercises are....that is your job! Every person needs to figure that out.) That key mechanical position vs your unique genetic makeup of leverages and angles is the make or break of it and the reason why that guy over there gets so much out of an exercise and that guy over here gets nothing out of that exercise. Some guys do barbell curls and their arms blow the hell up. Alot of guys do barbell curls and get absolutely nothing from them. The second group of guys have to find the solution exercise for that.

Never said it was only fat
Never said I was counting warm-up sets
Never said you don't have to train hard
Never said progressive overload isn't of the utmost importance
Never blamed you or your methods

All I said was frequency and volume aren't black and white for each individual.

 

[tokon]

If thats for me (and i dont know if it is my apologies if it isnt)...ill just say they ask me nonstop...I turn them all down...Dusty, Ron, JP etc etc etc Fouads asked me probably a dozen times....and currently Ill explain why. I got extremely popular in this sport in the late 90's and 2000's...and alot of people absolutely crave that. They want notoriety so bad. I couldnt stand it...I was getting pulled on all sides. It was the biggest pain in the ass for me... I like helping people but I like my life like it is...kind of in the background and with privacy. Alot of people dont understand that.... but when i told Muscle Mayhem in the late 2000's please take down all the DC training stuff, and I stopped training people in 2009, my life became so much easier and productive. I remember telling a pro bodybuilder in the late 2000's who asked me why I was so private....and we had a long discussion in which he stated "Ill take any kind of publicity, good bad...i dont care....just want to see my name blow up"...and i told him "be careful what you wish for".....We have talked about this since and he "gets it" now. I truly love to train, thats the greatest thing in all this endeavor to me. And I dont mind helping people who want to know my thoughts on something....but I would much rather build the engines and race the cars around the track when nobody was there than be Jeff Gordon. PS: Fouad asked me to call him a few months ago and i did and then about 30 seconds in it came to me and I said "Hey wait a second man, is this a trick, am I live on the podcast right now?" and he said "yea i got you" (he was joking)

so how about a blog?

just post your thoughts on whatever you feel like. (not word limited like Insta)

subscription if necessary.

there's probably a way to filter and/or disable "replies" etc so you don't have to deal with endless Q's or irrelevant input?!

your knowledge needs to be preserved somewhere!

thanks for your posts.

 

[Swifto]

so how about a blog?

just post your thoughts on whatever you feel like. (not word limited like Insta)

subscription if necessary.

there's probably a way to filter and/or disable "replies" etc so you don't have to deal with endless Q's or irrelevant input?!

your knowledge needs to be preserved somewhere!

thanks for your posts.

Dante could have a blog/page on Steroidal.com if he wants? He could also decide what ads go on that page. TN, The Lab and anything else could all feature. I know thats not the point but it would be up to Dante only!

 

[homonunculus]

so how about a blog?

just post your thoughts on whatever you feel like. (not word limited like Insta)

subscription if necessary.

there's probably a way to filter and/or disable "replies" etc so you don't have to deal with endless Q's or irrelevant input?!

your knowledge needs to be preserved somewhere!

thanks for your posts.

Before reading the below, just know I'm not trying to pick on anyone, but the below is indicative of the state of affairs of bodybuilding information dissemination to some degree.

------------

Dante posted his thoughts for for years in Intensemuscle.com A bit of googling will reveal a MASSIVE amount of posts there.

Just yesterday, someone tagged me on a post on IG and another person chimed in saying he'd just started DC. He wrote:

"I'm doing this type of training now <referring to cluster sets> it's called DC training or something i never know how many sets to do through.... I just learned about it a week ago. So it must be new. I've tried it all so it will be interesting to see the results from it."

I pointed him in the right direction.

He looks to be about 30 or so and has 14.4k followers on IG. He is somehow following a program he seems to know very little about (how many sets, it's origin, likely the principles if he doesn't know how long it's been in existence).

He's "tried it all" and and somehow things he's going to see results from a program he can't even decipher. I just don't see this working out for him... (Call me crazy!!! LOL)

------------

My take here is that Dante has led the horses to water for years and years and years. Some will drink and others not. Some may even drink from his pool of knowledge and try to train like his / her life depends on it and eat like a machine, and find it too difficult (for various reasons). Those who are willing to drink and really buckle down will also be those (generalizing here) who are motivated to dig in and research the program a bit more, too (and may also be those who gravitate to training that requires grit, knowing intuitively that the harder something is, the more likely it is to produce results to some degree).

But I agree, it would be great if somehow the truth of Dante's programming could sink in more, but this is a daunting task (as D knows) and probably even more so amongst "millennials."

-S

 

[Mountolympus]

pec deck push press - kind of guessing at this exercise I have seen mentioned in this thread. anyone have details on performing it?

from Dante himself

 

[DOGGCRAPP]

Wow 10 years ago already? No doubt time flies by fast

 

[Mountolympus]

Wow 10 years ago already? No doubt time flies by fast

Dante i have a question for u, i'm using the DC 2way, periodically my knees give me pain (i think for the cartilage consumption). Now how i may to do with exercises like squat and front squat ,where i do one set of 6-10 followed by 1 set of 20. I do one set of high rest pause instead a set of 6-10? thanks

Dante it's possible that i have lost strenght with the time passing? in 2016 i was in San Diego, in vacancy and i remember that at the world gym i had done one set of incline bench with 55kg x sidex 10reps, for me a considerable weight. But now i'm sure that i couldn't lift this weight.
at the time i was under 250 test and 250 tren....i think that in 4 years i have do some gain but the strenght in some exercises is lower than before. From 2 years i train with dc but i had mistaken some things, for example i had start with dc advanced for my fear with do low volume workout. Now, after the quarantine i had start with classic dc 2 way and I realize that my fears were completely unfounded.
Last things , between 2016 and 2020 i had some little injury and one a little more serious, i rupture my left bicep tendon totally with supine grip deadlift...in 2019 i had partially broken my right bicep tendon at bowling ahah

thanks

 

[MaconiDDS]

You make it seem like if you dont do the same exercises you have been doing for years you are no longer going to gain any muscle. What happens if your gym burns down tomorrow and you have to go to a new gym with all new and different equipment, with different brands and all new angles? Your screwed? I guarantee you the best thing you could do at this very moment is leave your current gym and travel to 2 other gyms and use their very varied equipment. Ever been on a belt squat? Ever been on a pendulum squat? Ever do a Watson unilateral leg press? there are so many mechanical positions you have not put yourself into but your hard headedness about "must stay doing these basics even if strength gains are minimal" is most likely what is keeping you back. Do barbell curls work for you? I bet they dont. Are you going to continue doing them because its a main core exercise for other people? What if some guy did "kickbacks" and "one arm reverse tricep extensions" and kept doing them because "well this is what I do and have always done".......the whole year that guy got down to grinding out close grip bench presses, reverse grip bench presses, dips and dead stop floor skull crushers, he would see his triceps transform....you are talking about weak bodyparts you have but you dont want to go outside that box that you need to go outside of

You're assuming quite a bit about me Dante. I just talked to Scott Stevenson yesterday, who I know you respect a lot (and he clearly respects you a lot as well), for a few hours and he said to me "(if it weren't for the genetics) you'd probably be the biggest bodybuilder on the planet. I don't know anyone who has put in more effort than you". I have a great deal of respect for Scott, so in a way I appreciate the comment as validation given I don't quite have the results one might expect for my effort level. You're speaking here as if I haven't pushed myself over the years or tried many many different methods over my 15 years of training. I have, including many of your own techniques.

Curious, why do you assume barbell curls don't work for me? I ask because I'm wondering if you're saying that based on my height / long limbs, or you just feel it's an exercise that doesn't work great for many. I've tried many curl variations of course. You actually liked my Instagram post where I demonstrate alternating supinating DB curls with the weight emphasized medially for more difficult supination. That's been my staple over the years.

This is all meant to be enjoyable conversation, so again Dante I hope you don't think this is me arguing. Given what you said about naturals though, I'll make a bet with you. If you can work with me to put 1/2in on my arms at the same leanness naturally (which can mean bulking up then cutting down) in a reasonable time frame, proving I'm not really maxed out, I'll pay you $1000

Ironically, Scott and I talked for quite a while about giving DC training a full shot soon. It's on the podcast, I can send it to you when it goes up in a week or so if you'd be interested to hear it.

Again, really want to emphasize my tone here is meant to be friendly. The internet / text can make things come across the wrong way. I also realize there's built up frustration on your end after explaining the same stuff for 20 years, I get it.

 

[MaconiDDS]

Here's my progress pics for reference. I've made substantial progress, but I'm obviously far from a big guy.

 

[MaconiDDS]

So I share the same view with you that getting better neurologically at an exercise isn't really gaining muscle. Christian Thibaudeau talks about that here: **broken link removed**

Yes I agree with Christian's article for the most part