source: https://pixabay.com/photos/man-weight-lifter-muscular-strength-3263324/
Nothing has changed in the world of lifting. The professors still sell the same old dreams directly and indirectly. The only difference is that the buyers are new. What happened to the previous crowd? They did their squats and ascended? Yeah, right. They just left.
One of the biggest scams ever told to any natural is that they should be lifting heavy. Natty brahs have been misled into believing the lie that heavy weights equal insane hypertrophy. They do not.
All my lifts, aside from my deadlift, have never been impressive and never will be. But what will shock most of you is that I actually regret lifting even that heavy. Looking back, I can say with certainty that overclocking myself to push or pull a lot of iron was a major waste of time and a fruitless activity overall.
The main benefit that I got had nothing to do with a physical transformation. It was mental. I forced myself to do something difficult. The test was hard and maybe useful, but at the end of the day, you can spend your central nervous system juice on more meaningful priorities.
Why does lifting heavy fail so bad?
It is incapable of catalyzing the growth that the gurus are alluding to. From Pavel Tsatsouline to Mark Rippetoe or even Jason Blaha – they are all leaving you with the impression that you will become some sort of mammoth if you “lift like a real man”. They even shame you if you don’t invest serious dedication into increasing the numbers that you are fighting against.
And so do many other strength fetishists. The scholars constantly come up with arbitrary numbers that you have to reach or else. And you buy it…because you don’t want to let yourself see the truth.
So, what is the truth?
Lifting heavy is never going to deliver the benefits you are expecting. It will only put your sanity at risk.
Below are a few fundamental principles that the mainstream narrative wants to reject and yet they are correct:
1. Lifting heavy is not healthy.
Moving big weights is a form of masochism which only trains your ego while draining your mental energy and adrenal glands.
Additionally, when the weight is heavy, your form always suffers. This creates unnecessary stress on the joints. Stress that brings you absolutely nothing other than the perception of envy from strangers in the gym.
2. Gym strength is useless.
Beyond a certain point, which is far lower than one would want to believe, gym strength becomes useless.
The weight room is a sterile environment where everything is perfect and designed specifically to allow us to lift more weight – knurling on the bars, straps, mixed grips…etc.
Don’t listen to professors like Rippetoe who say that strength can cure everything. It can’t.
3. You are delusional.
People listen with fascination about men like Doug Young. Let me tell you something. You are not Doug Young, Mr. GOMAD boy. And you will never be because the path to becoming a man in that weight class is different. You can’t do it naturally.
It’s funny how powerlifters and their teachers make fun of bodybuilders for spending too much time analyzing the body parts of other men and yet they do the exact same thing. The only difference is that the bodybuilding disciples focus on shaved men whereas the powerlifting crowd prefers their men hairy.
Honestly, I am tired of both groups. If you want to spend your time worshiping a man just because he has lifted heavy weights and injected steroids, be my guest. I am no longer interested.
But don’t think that you will become a man of that magnitude by eating steak and chaining yourself to a squat rack while following some mythical programming.
4. Strength will not make everything better.
Have you ever wondered why the gurus promote strength and lifting heavy as a solution? Two reasons – business incentives and the illusion of control.
They want you to worship strength. They want you to be a slave to some ridiculous numbers that actually do not matter at all outside of a powerlifting competition. Ironically, the numbers don’t matter even if you compete because there’s little to be won in the sport unless you are doing it for the experience rather than the podium. In that case, the rule still applies – why kill yourself?
They make it their mission to turn you into a strength addict because they have established a position as strength experts who know the path to your dreams. Hence their solution to everything is “get stronger”.
Well, that’s nonsense. Most sports and activities are not decided solely by strength.
5. Strength cannot replace PEDs.
Rippetoe claims that barbell lifting could replace steroids, but it cannot. He knows this very well but plays dumb and trolls because it makes the crowd of fatherless kids around him happy.
The sports that rely on steroids will continue to do so. They will not replace PEDs with squats and deadlifts because…wait for it….those are already a part of most programs anyway.
Who will be stronger?
The man who does squatz&deadliftz or the guy who does squatz&deadlifts and takes steroids?
The pros fall in the second category. If you tell them that they simply need to do more squatz&deadliftz, they will laugh at you.
Professional sports adopted steroids not as a replacement for barbells but as enhancement. Your average starting strength or 5×5 samurai will always get destroyed by the drugged bulls trained by high-level coaches. No amount of pure barbell love is going to help him. No amount of manly steaks will produce the 80 lbs of muscle he is missing in comparison to the steroid loaded linebacker who under Rippetoe’s logic can do it all naturally if he was to spend more time under the bar.
Those are nothing but stories for the kids who continue to write down their sets and reps in their blue pill book.
The Options
You have three main options:
A. Be a dreamer
I was once a dreamer myself. I would do various routines and never quit despite seeing mediocre or no results at all.
By the way, I am not talking bad about “naturalism” because I hate “successful people”. I do it out of anger that the dream does not actually work.
The dreamers love lying to themselves:
“If I finally come up with the perfect protein ratio for me….”
“If I finally find the number of sets and reps that result in unheard of hypertrophy….”
Yeah right. This is no different than believing the pickup scammers telling you that a new opener will make you a slayer. It won’t.
The room for error isn’t that narrow. You are not small because your protein intake is off by 20 grams or so. You are not small because you did 3 instead of 4 sets. Stuff like that is irrelevant.
But you don’t have to believe me. You can keep lying to yourself only for so long.
B. Inject
If your goal is to have a truly impressive physique, you might just as well become a needle samurai. After all, this is what the posters boys are doing. Make no mistake about it – those in the ads are not natural.
Drugs are the backbone of the industry. End of story.
C. Maintain
A very intelligent solution is to maintain what you have built and focus on something else in life.
Let’s say that you maintain the following:
15 pull-ups in a row
20 dips in a row
2 BW Deadlift
1.2 BW Squat
1 BW Bench Press
Those are incredibly low numbers, right?
Not really. If you maintain them for life, you would be in a better condition than the majority of the population while focusing on something else other than saving the world by chasing another mindless 5 pound PR that requires you to play human crane for hours in a gym.
The Illusion of Progress
What may come as shock to many is that even the experts do not really progress that much. Look at Jason Blaha 3-5 years ago and today? He looks identical to me. The same applies to many other popular figures in the game – AthleanX, Rippetoe, Tsatsouline, Vegan Gains, Scooby…etc.
With all that knowledge and motivation, your heroes still haven’t upgraded that much or at all. They all look stuck in time to me.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It can actually be a positive. If you like what you have and maintain it, you are still winning. But many of the experts place a lot of emphasis on how hard they are trying. Well, if you are so knowledgeable and work like a mad man, where are the gains?
This brings me to a logical question – if all that overkilling keeps you at the same place, why do it?
Your maintain numbers… That’s me!!!
I’ve gradually switched to doing higher rep counts, partly because at 63 I’m beginning to discover all the bits of my body that weren’t made quite so well and they get peeved if I do low rep high weight workouts.
It took me a while before I realised that the reason I wasn’t progressing wasn’t diet, rep count or style of workout, it was just I’d got as good as I was going to get without additional chemical help…
This guy who wrote this is a twat. I came across this website a few times. Some good reads, but most of it is BS by some guy who hides in a bedroom with a computer. He is envious of juicers; the guys who take things to help them get better at lifting and look better than average. Myself included.
I have many buddies who juice and they have decent to good lives who have plenty of lays and girlfriends and just fun lives in general. They also love lifting whether light or heavy and doing cardio. They don’t bitch around about this kind of nonsense. Even natties can have fun lives if they don’t read this miserable material and just do what they feel makes them happy.
He knows nothing about steroids or the life of steroid users. I’ve noticed how he thinks he does, but doesn’t given he has never poked a needle in his ass. This guy needs to get a life and find something more productive rather whining about how bodybuilding sucks! If you don’t like it then don’t do it. Better yet don’t even write about it. Twat!
Stop crying you steroid-addled twat. The fact that you cannot say what he’s wrong about reveals you for the nut-shrivelled troll that you are
Lol i like how you had to add that you get laid as if anyone was saying you didnt?
Yeah, this article reads of someone who is weak, physically and mentally and are writing walls of text to try to justify their own bs to others.
Weird, I’ve read the exact opposite on this site before. That extreme size is unobtainable , but strength is where you should focus. Seems like any bullshit can be put on this site
Do what you want. But I’ve focused on doing high and low volume training, slowly increasing weight over time. My high volume training has benefited from my low volume training and vice versa. I’ve had some injuries over time , but they have been from sprinting and carried over to weight lifting. I agree with most of what is on this website, this is some straight horse shit. Focus on compound lifts and increasing your weight over time and you will see both strength and size improvements
Jeff Cavalier (AthleneX) actually does look like he has made a lot of improvement in three last 5 year’s. Look at his videos from his old location.
Jeff has started using a higher dose of testosterone.
You are absolutely right!
Once I squatted 120 kg… the only thing i got was “muscle love handles” & a bulging stomach… RIDICULOUS.
Now I only focus on Aesthetics, and only do movements that put the body in an aesthetic position. Huge improvement since then.
Stil I got a question: how do we combine that with the “progressive overload principle”? To say the truth I never fully understood it: applied litterally it would mean that at some point I should be lifting my weight on every lift?
With heavy weight I’ve only injuried myself many times.
But with heavy weights my look is more rocky and with less water under the skin.
Probably the high rep training produces more inflamation, and more water retention?
If we take 2 twins and one use only high reps (15+) and the other one only low rep (3-5).. both woth perfect tecnique.
In the long term, which one will be bigger? And which one will have less pain in the joints?
The twin doing higher reps would be bigger and have less joint problems. 3-5 reps is not enough to stimulate all available muscle fibers. Bodybuilders train with higher reps (8-20) with lower intensity and more volume because of protein degradation (damage) They know what they are doing but unfortunately everyone on here seems to think it’s all ‘drugs’ and know nothing about how to build muscle. Naturals do better with higher volume training than they do with high intensity training.
Too true. Heavy weights don’t do anything for me in terms of muscle growth. I find anything under 8 reps doesn’t do much. I do Danny Padillas’s training method which is very similar to Serge Nubret’s way of training. 5 sets of 8 to 12 reps using moderate weight. Basically you use a weight where around 20 reps is your max but you stop at 12 reps on the first set. This is like a warm up. The second set is 12 again, a little bit harder than the first but still considered as a warm up. Third set is at 12 reps again but the fatigue is starting to kick in. The fourth set might be just about 12 reps or slightly less nearing failure. The fifth set is the hardest set, only getting 8 reps or so to failure or 1-2 reps shy of failure. The rest between sets is no more than a minute (or less). This is how most successful bodybuilders trained. They didn’t do max weights (only once a while) but for the most part they kept to moderate weight for 8-12 reps.
I completely agree that many people UNDERTRAIN as they get brainwashed by the con men Ellington Darden and Stuart McRobert who cry overtraining and natties are better off doing abbreviated routines. Such rubbish. Most hardgainers need more work, not less. More sets and reps are needed for the drug free bodybuilder, not heavy training low volume. That only works if you are a pure mesomorph body type. Yates is an example of this. He was pure mesomorph with little weakness who responded very well to power lifting type training (thick, robust joints, dominate fast twitch muscle fibres). While the hardgainers are smaller joint/frame and more slow twitch muscle fibre dominate.
Danny also trained only 3 days a week in the off-season.
Mon chest and back
Wed Legs
Fri shoulders and arms
2-3 exercises for each bodypart.
Good split for a natural trainer.
Great post
EXACTLY! Great comment Mark, absolutely agree. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell these low volume excuse makers on here. Most people trained that way – Danny Padilla’s style, Nubret, Ric Drasin, Arnold etc.
Yes Darden and Mcrobert were con artists telling everyone to do less. It is an agenda, it got them wealthy. You can also add Casey Butt to that list, every article I’ve read from him has ‘genetically typically average genetics’ in almost every paragraph, Give it a rest.
“Most hardgainers need more work, not less” Exactly what I say, Infact I don’t just say it, I know it. Glad someone else here knows what they’re doing and is well educated in bodybuilding.
Drew Baye, Doug McGuff, Ellington Darden, Stuart Mcrobert, Casey Butt (who’s not drug free even though he claims to be) are definitely all con men. That abbreviated, low volume heavy training that came out in the 90’s because of Yates. They all jumped on the hit band wagon. Fact is, Yates never did hit. He only took 20% of what Mentzer and Arthur Jones were spousing, the rest was conventional training.
I tried abbreviated training and it didn’t work. McRobert claims that you just have to put faith in his programs and it’ll work. What a tool. It does nothing. It’s probably why he’s never shown a pic of himself in all these years. And how can he claim that 99% of people are ‘hardgainers’ and should follow based on his recommendations? It’s ridiculous. He also claimed he wasn’t doing it for the money when Brawn came out, followed by Beyond Brawn, followed by Brawn second edition, followed by Beyond Brawn second edition also and so forth. Lose fat, look great was another plus his failed hardgainer magazine which is now defunct. Yeah Stu, you wasn’t in it for the money ?. Lying pos.
It takes a lot of sets and reps to break down muscle tissue. Just doing 2-3 sets of an exercise for a bodypart just isn’t enough unless you’re a total beginner. But soon enough the volume has to increase as your work capacity increases. You want big legs then do many sets of squats with a moderate weight. That’s how’s it done. Just doing 2-3 sets of squats isn’t going to give you the desired results.
Fact is HIT and variations of this training only work for those who have already built there bodies with volume and they’re on the juice. Abbreviated routines suck for drug free individuals.
Funny you mention Mcrobert not showing himself, Mentzer in his later writings looked like shit, for someone telling everyone to workout once a week and stay in shape…..The HIT crowd like to use the sprinter vs marathon runner ‘analogy’ – Volume training makes you look like a marathon runner? really? I don’t know any sprinter who does 1 sprint then disappears for 2 weeks, idiots.
I agree, I found at least 5 sets per exercise to give real benefit, Serge Nubret used 8 sets plus, it hurts but it works, some people are just afraid of the pain of volume training with short rest times.
Low volume is for maintenance, as times goes on you have to increase volume/work load or you won’t get any more size, no you haven’t ‘reached your genetic limit’ you just are not training correctly. Low volume is absolute dogshit for naturals, but hey everyone back in the Golden era, were all ‘wrong’, it’s steroids and ‘overtraining’ Zzzzz….
Dude posted with 2 usernames just to agree with himself lol
Yeah obviously….You’re another small loser. Back to your low volume training.
High volume suck shit, When I tried Increasing my sets from 10-15 to 25-30 I became weaker and smaller, and I was training only three times a week! And you want me to believe that I should do more? Yeah, I’m going to train with Arnold’s 6days a week routine, 2 times a day, 45 sets per workout, dumbass motherfucker, that’s stupid high volume bullshit from the 70s, always the same film
Here’s a reply to all your rambling comments. Myself and Mark have already put you sissy’s in your place ‘dumbass’, you only trained 3 days a week- ‘dumbass’ you increased your sets from 10-15 to 25-30 all at once – ‘dumbass’. Everyone trained with high volume back in the day and grew, hard work ‘snow flake’. Cunts like you deserve to be small.
High volume rules but you have to cycle it. No one is saying you have to do 25-30 sets or more. Arnold and those guys trained with moderate weights for most of the time with going heavy only here and there. Twice a day workouts are not needed. Once a day is good. I got my best results doing Danny Padilla’s training with his 5 sets of 12. It’s not easy but your body adapts to it. Volume also conditions you which low volume doesn’t. Many people need conditioning in their workouts especially when you get older. Also look at people like Danny and Serge Nubret (when he was alive) they had no joint pain, no torn muscles. Look at those who train heavy like Yates and Coleman. They’re both broken men as are many others who trained with heavy weights in their younger days. Heavy training has its place but should only be used here and there. Arnold in his Encyclopaedia states that you should only go heavy once every so often but certainly not in every workout. It burns you out.
It´s really interesting to read the posts of the Finisher-Clown.
45 lbs muscle mass within 6 month, blablabla. We all know: it´s bullshit. But o.k. No need to comment. His arm is juiced or fat like a leg of a pig. (Or: not existing. That´s MY favourite!) Then these youngsters normally show their photos in the Net and you see: possiblity 1 or 2 is fact. In many cases possibility 1 AND 2. But o.k. I´am fine with this.
But now his story gets much better! He claims that a natural arm of 18,5 inch is possible and brings people like Park and Reeves on the screen. Never forget: Park and Reeves were the top BBler of their time. Worlds best. Leave apart the discussion whether they juiced or not. To make the story easier and get some credit to the Finsiher let´s just say: they didn´t. O.k. Now theFinisher comes on the screen.
Park 19 inch! A huge guy. Top genes! Top training! Top nutrition ( I guess!) Idol of Arnold. Said to be a 500lbs bencher. Between Park and Reeves in this lineup: theFinisher with this 18,5. His own words: bad genes, bad nutrition, no need to move heavy weights. BUT: Serge Nubret training!!! And – last in line – the good old Steve Reeves. A legend for millions. BUT: smaller as theFinisher. What Park or Reeves needed 10 or 15 years for the Finisher managed within 6 month.
This kind of upcoming Superstar we are dealing with!
Another great comment Mark, I agree high volume needs to be cycled.
Btw ‘Glove’ is obsessed with me, look at his comment. He reads all my comments and still gets things wrong.
He’s bitter about our results because we’re big guys and he has 15 inch fat arms, that’s why he gave up his low volume ‘bodybuilding’ years ago, yet here he is calling ME a ‘clown’ Lol Fucking pathetic.
@TheFinisher “Everyone trained with High volume and grew” yeah apart that they were all juicing her asses like crazy ass motherfuckers,and hard work doesn’t necessarily means long work, dumbass . it’s simple logic, I was training only 3 times a week, I increased my volume and i get worse, and in your opinion I was training too little? I should have been training 6 times a week? Are you fucking kidding me? Progressive overload is what counts, not volume.
Yeah everyone was/is on steroids, any more excuses? Zzzz…. ‘Simple logic’ for you – Muscles recover in 48-72 hours, so you need to train them often. Increasing Volume IS progressive overload YOU DUMB CUNT. Now stop bothering me, you are clearly not intelligent enough. Stay small.
@Glove … 👍🏽
Enjoy your dry testicles.
As a soon to be 60 year old dude, I can tell you heavy weights took a toll on my joints and body. It’s nigh impossible to build more muscle at my age. I switched to biking because I love being outdoors and its easy on the knees. I lift light kettlebell at home, like 35 lbs, walk and ride. I wasted years in the gym getting a 400 pound bench press so my shoulders can ache the rest of my life. Women care about money and alpha males, not iron samurai slaves. Wake up, the strongest dude on every pro sports team rides the pine, so he has splinters in his ass next to the needle marks.
perhaps another option was simply to train lighter ?
Blaha actually looks worse than he did 3-5 years ago despite the roid use.
Blaha in nearly any commercial gym would be the strongest guy in there and he doesn’t use anything now.
He looks way better than he did a few years ago.
Blaha has horrible genetics for aesthetics, but I think he’ll eventually get it together.
If he switched to light weights, he’d be weak and still have subpar aesthetics.
Blaha looks way better than he did a few years ago? Did you see his shirtless video where he’s doing some retarded belt squat while looking like a melted ice cream cone?
That’s just how he looks but he lost 20lbs and doesn’t take TRT anymore so that’s pretty good.
He benches 315 for reps and overhead presses 225 and he’s over 40.
If he walks into any gym, nobody is laughing him out of the place.
The point of lifting weights is to be strong, there’s no other point because you are born to look how you look unless you want to take a lot of drugs.
Even then, it doesn’t always work out that well.
If Blaha did some high rep, garbage routine, he’d still look like that, only smaller.
99% of lifters will NEVER reach his level of strength.
> It’s nigh impossible to build more muscle at my age
It can be done, slowly. But a lot will depend on your trained state and genetics. But we’ll never know until we try.
I went back to training seriously about 5 years ago (at 58) and the first thing I did was to cut until I was around 10-12%BF. I don’t bulk. In the five years I’ve probably put on 3-5kg of muscle. So glaciers move faster, but progress can be made.
But, in any event, the main reason to train once you’re past 60 should be general fitness and to prevent sarcopenia.
10/10 a powerlifter fucked your girlfriend.
How tall are you?
Power lifters have penises – wow what a revelation
Is that a 44 lb plate? Oh wait, that’s your brain meathead.
Power lifter? The fat ball you mean…
Great Article as usual. I recently bought all your books but I’m planning to start reading them after I finish browsing through your website.
I am all about supporting what you’re doing cuz you’ve enlightened me about your perspective. Keep publishing and enlighten with new articles and book releases.
My ideal is this…
I’ve been in the game for one year and achieved a decent physique with a good amount of muscle mass along with 10 percent body fat thanks to the Prolonged Fasting routine that has become a lifestyle for me.
My routine is going once every two days with full body workout focused on progressed overload along with maintaining form. No other complexities
In the resting days, I do 1-2 hour of swimming mostly butterfly to burn more calories as I am like you 🙂 I work as an engineer 9 to 5 desk job.
Diet is one meal a day with a minimum of 20 hrs fasting including sleep. No junk food, no processed carbs, and no supplements. The meal is animal products most often with a natural banana, organic bitter cacao powder, strawberries, milk and a bit of cream after the meal.
My recommendation to everyone is to follow the same diet as it spares and builds muscle mass while maintaining the lowest body fat.
Actually Now I am having the most difficulties going down to 9% BF seems my body is holding on the last 10 pounds of fat so much.
Maintenance of my current physique and strength levels is my motivation to still be in the game.
I bought all of his books in the past.
2 of them I have read multiple times.
Just because you failed doesn’t mean others will. I’m 58 years old, have been powerlifting for many years and yes, you can build muscle at my age without needles. I have never touched a needle and can squat 450, bench sucks at 250, deadlift 485. Oh and by the way, I’m 5’-7” tall, and weigh 232 with a waist of 39”. Finally my joints are in perfect health despite many years of heavy lifting, as verified by x-rays and mri’s. So fuck off loser.
The guy behind this page see the gym industry on a more deep way, and maybe youre not understanding the point, read more on nattyornot my friend. And dont fuck off to everybody.
You mean solely focused on lifting to get chicks, bodybuilding and ego lifting?
Yeah, they lied to you, you’re not going to get any pussy without having great genetics and taking steroids. Big deal.
I hurt my back ego lifting to impress girlz, lifting heavy weights sucks.
Some of us enjoy lifting and actually know how to do it without killing ourselves.
Here’s a tip, try doing it right and hire a GD hooker. lol
J B you are fat and weak, at 5 7 , lighter than you by dozens of pounds, my total was over 200lbs more as a masters lifter, natural. You are no exception.
Lol.
All jokes aside is not a near 500 pound dead lift strong, irrespective of body weight ?
Hi John – over 16.5 stone at 5’7″, you must be huge, built for moving heavy shit.
Maybe thats why your still in the game, and avoiding the juice which could have added 100 ponds to all your lifts
Hey truth, if youll take a suggestion, i for one would like an updated look on “alphadestiny.” Ive gotten pretty good at this, and contrary to seeming popular belief, i dont think he is
all-time full natty brah. Yet, his physique is one of if not the only one of these influencers that does admittedly make me second-guess.
Good for you, your obviously the unicorn sir, more power to you. My old gym buds are mostly on their second or third operations for shoulders, knee replacements and what not. All have stopped lifting heavy, or rather they had too due to injuries, operations and so forth. If you can still do it, again, hooray for you. Most of us cannot.
you’re the autistic loser
What relevance is this comment ?
>calling someone a loser and tell him to fuck off
That’s why you lie on the internet, lol.
If you read natty or not you’d know that the weights you are lifting for your height and body weight are well within the range of what can be accomplished naturally. Honestly at your age, I would try to get your weight and waist size down, it’ll be more healthy for you in the long run.
5′-7″ and squats 2x of BW with dead lifts of 2.1x; like seriously? Post a video or pic of yours… no video; it didn’t happen.
People just need to know that virtually everything ever written as it relates to realistic expectations as to what drug free people can get out of weight training is almost all pure unadulterated horseshit.
Let me just give an example as to just how little size one can expect from increasing poundages. Twenty some odd years ago when I first started doing calf raises my calves were about 13.5 inches and my best 20 repset phrase was around 200 for 20. Over the next eight to 10 years or so I eventually progressed to the point where I was actually able to do 600 for 20 in the calf raise, as well was 705 or 5.
As a result of putting 400 lbs on my top 20 rep set my calves went from 13.5 inches to 14.25 inches. Yes, putting over 400 pounds on my top set enabled be to gain a whopping three quarters of an inch on my calves. To this day if you were to look at my calves it does not even look like a train them.
There is only so much size a small boned drug-free trainee can gain without becoming fat and it’s relatively speaking quite small.
Increasing your volume won’t make a difference. Increasing your frequency won’t make a difference. Changing your set rep scheme won’t make a difference. altering the time between sets won’t make a difference. Adding more poundage won’t make a difference. Doing high Reps instead of low Reps won’t make a difference. Doing time controlled reps rather than regular cadence reps won’t make a difference. Doing incline presses rather than bench presses, or front squats rather than back squats, or dumbbell curls rather than barbell curls, all will not make one fucking difference.
Just pick a handful of exercises that work your whole body, go all out for one or two sets a piece in each of them, for the rep range of your choice, and do this every five to seven days, and within two to three years whatever size you can possibly get out of training you will have. That’s it there’s nothing really more to the story.
I concur with E.
Me too.
Calfs are interesting muscles. If you are born with thin calfs you’ll die with.
I saw guys with absolutely untrained physiques but world class calfs.
Or you could train them with high volume, high reps and a good amount of frequency so you actually build calves. If you don’t have natural calves you have to do A LOT of sets, If you have great calves you can get away with doing less.
Oh yes! Many sets with many reps will build 22 inch calfs within a year. Even heavy juicers turn up with mediocre calfs because they don´t know this recipe.
Leave me alone with this nonsense…
really my calves grow over 0.5″ when i stop training them direct , and ive tried every everything from high vol to high intensity and combined and everything in between, with near to zero results.
What is your current calves routine? List sets, reps and how often you train them, failure or non-failure sets?
Unless you gain a lot of weight, your calves won’t grow much from exercises, that’s just the truth.
My calves aren’t huge (like 16.5) but they’re WAY bigger than what I was born with.
I lot of it came from doing martial arts and skipping rope after I gained a shit ton of weight from doing prohormones and steroids. lol
The steroids didn’t really make my calves grow much because the receptors aren’t numerous down there but years of bouncing around on the balls of my feet at that weight did.
Calf raises simply aren’t how the calves work, especially not the way most people do them bouncing around relying on the spring from the tendon so they don’t work very well but they can help.
The calf is primarily a fast twitch fiber but it also needs high volume. Rope skipping and boxing training at a high bodyweight over time works well.
“virtually everything ever written as it relates to realistic expectations as to what drug free [genetically typical] people can get out of weight training is almost all pure unadulterated horseshit”
I agree. The amazing thing is, it is a scam that has been going since the 50s.
yeah, and people still believe this bullshit
One or two sets? And you expected to get big? Funny how I went from low volume HIT garbage to high volume training and grew like a weed, Even as a small skinny-fat ecto. If you want a muscle to grow you beat the shit out of it.
give us the specifics
Congratulations on the good muscle genes. Also your experience is purely anecdotal.
Oh here we go again, ‘genes’ ‘overtraining’ ‘steroids’ so many excuses and so many lazy people on here. I said skinny-fat, not mesomorph, that is not good ‘genes’. Carry on doing what isn’t working for you. Anecdote, experience and observation is what made bodybuilders train the way they do.
Why assume that people here are lazy?
I have “beat the shit out” of my muscle many times over the years, but that never brought any decent results. Actually I had better results with low volume training than any of this crazy 6 days a week training regimes.
The excuses on here are just laziness, tell these people to do a 15-20 sets shoulder workout they’ll scream steroids or ‘overtraining’ lol whatever. They don’t want it bad enough, they want to their 5 sets of chest and call it a workout.
Did you cycle your high volume training with lower volume phases? Did you use moderate weights? Did you use short rest times between sets? Did you train to failure? failure causes burn out. There could be reasons why you didn’t get great results with high volume.
Won’t go to detail, because there is no point. With 10 years of lifting experience I have tried everything and low volume works best for me. I don’t even care anymore why these silly high volume workouts doesn’t work for me. Actually here are a lot of natty guys who have good to great results with low volume and shit results with high volume.
Go fuck yourself, what do you think you are? Special? A special snowflake? there are a lot of people that “beat the shit out of the muscles” without getting good results or even mediocre results. i’m tired of that shit, people that get results always think that they are somehow “special” ,that they know better and that they train better than the others,bullshit, it’s your genes buddy, your genes and nothing more, you are not special, your are not training harder than the others do.
This is 100% true! This is why I quit punishing my calves. I do nothing for calves alone and they are still the same as they have always been…and I am still natural as I have always been…
Punishing? list your sets, reps and frequency. Not training them is not the answer. All body parts can be improved, including stubborn calves.
Come on, everyone know that calves are 95% genetic and that they don’t respond much to strength training, as evidenced by your example. In other words, you proved nothing. Can you go from empty bar to 300 pounds on bench press without your chest getting huge?
I usually agree with you, but in this article I will have to disagree.
Look, if you approach the gym in an healthly mental state, of course it is going to be detrimental. As with anything you do.
When you put sane people strenght trainning its an addition to a healthy lifestyle. Of course you don t have to push the bleeding edge with the weights, or obsess about it like its even important.
But its the kizen principle; a little more today than yesterday and you will be better off.
The weightz are the best time investement you can do for your health and longevity, as well as physical capacity. With a few hours weekly you will become much healthier and stronger.
From everything from lipid profile to insuline resistance.
Plus you DO became stronger.
Will you lift an elephant? Of course not.
Will you be able to lift yourself from the ground easily again even if you are 70 y.o? Yes. So keep lifting. As heavy as you can
Squatting only 60% of your deadlift isn’t normal, dude, and neither is benching 80% of your squat. Stop skipping leg day.
problem with all these debates here and generally on line is based near solely on personnal results
hard gainers say easy gainers prosper cos of good genes and all the rest…..
easy gainers say hard gainers don’t train hard enough and all the rest…………..
TheFinsher – nothing for calves at the moment. Started with 14″, now 16.5″, max was a shanker under 17″, at a heavier bodyweight
I’m 6’6″ with high{ish} insertions so 16.5″ still chicken leg like.
If you dont mind would you suggest a calf rotine for me to try. Always receptive to new ideas.
Chris, I too have high insertions, mine were also stubborn. It seems people with small/short muscle bellies often struggle to make these types of muscles grow.
Firstly, what have you tried?
Have you tried high reps (15-20) per set?
Short rest times between sets?
A lot of volume?
High frequency?
Remember, the calves have a high percentage of ST (slow twitch) muscle fibers, meaning they respond to high reps and volume to actually fatigue muscle
im 55, 56 in a few months, been lifting since i was 14.
14 to 30, Arnold inspired high vol, although more more like 10 sets x 15 – 20 reps per workout not 20sets ala Arnold, roughly 2x per week, and near all standing work.
That got me to 16″ by 21/22, and after a bulk in my late 20’s, i hit 17″.
From then to around 50, 1 x per HIT style 1 – 3 sets, again mainly standing work, but with toe press and seated sated in. 20 – 50 rep sets.
from 50 to know, much the same, but with periods ranging from a few weeks to a few months – nothing for the reasons i outlined before.
I.E – 16.5″ versus 16 at a similar bw
1
I would ask how much heavy is too much heavy.
People indeed ego and macho to chase weights up.
I also progressive overload, I successfully have my physique transformed this way, its maybe my diets, its maybe something, its maybe training, I don’t know.
I keep do it for a whole life, that’s my plan. So I would not go overboard.
But this article discouraged me, if you ask me hah. Better stick with thing you could do it forever and benefit you.
It’s all opinion. Yeah if you train hard you are probably at your limit 4-5 years in….that’s it. Maintain, get leaner,,,be happy.
Once at maintenance you only need to train once a week. 3x week does not mean 3X gains….
Why did you stop and switch to HIT style? did your calves stop growing at that point? HIT is useless, seriously.
Reading this so far i would suggest more volume as it seems your body became accustomed to the 10 sets twice per week.
Try 3 times per week, standing work, 8 sets of 15-20 toes point IN then 8 sets of toes pointed OUT, 16 total sets done every 48 hours
Important: Do NOT train to failure. use moderate weight with rest times of no more than 20 SECONDS. Do NOT walk about, stay in the same position until all sets are complete, then sit down for 15-20 minutes to keep the blood in the calves.
from memory , remember this was 30 years back, it was because –
1/ the vol was starting to beat me up
2/ i started being influenced by Menzter and McRobert, rather than Schwarzenegger and Weider.
This was not a mistake generally, but application was.
I should of looked more into alternating periods of vol and HIT, improved conditioning, stopped lifting low rep heavy all the time etc etc
With calves – heavy meant simply that – moving load, not training muscle.
Schwarzenegger’s 1000 pound calve work was an influence, but again i was not thinking about performance, execution and proper stimulation, but just moving load.
Going forward on calves, i will take you lead/suggestion – more vol, more frequency – Thanks for the prompt
Unfortunately you are not the only one who was conned by Mentzer, I wasted 3 years on HIT. As for McRobert, he is another fraudster with his cry baby ‘hardgainer’ crap.
I see what you’re saying – ‘heavy’ for lagging body parts is a mistake, it actually compounds the problem.
Get a good squeeze for 1 second at the top of the movement, full range of motion. With the short rest times, you should feel the pain lol
Good luck, I hope it works out
Thanks again.
If you don’t mind {again} how do you currently train.
Bro split, push pull legs, other ?
sets, reps
No problem, I train using Serge Nubret’s routine.
20 – 30 sets per body part, every body part 2x per week, Amazing results.
Serge was a Genius.
The title should not read Lifting Heavy Weights is Still a Major Waste of Time but Lifting Maximal Weights is Still a Major Waste of Time. That one word makes a whole lot of difference. Lifting heavy weights is the only thing that will produce any results, while lifting maximal loads is not neccesary to achieve good size.
Also, even though i generally enjoy reading this blog, I have to roll my eyes every time the author negates that any noticeable hyperthrophy is possible in a natural lifter, which is obviouly false. No, you won’t look like a juiced up instagram model, but you can achieve significant muscle growth. I would suggest to the author to just accept the fact that he’s a non-responder (I’m citing the number from my head, but I believe that the studioes have shown that 2-3 percent of people don’t respond to strength training in terms of hyperthrophy), which does not mean that all other people are non responders.
I agree with you.
Lifting heavy weights isn´t neccessarily a waste of time. The question is: is it done in a proper way or not? I would go a step further: even lifting maximal weights can be done proper or in a stupid way.
It´s clear that the risk to injure is higher as heavier the weights are you train with. If you are in competitive sport it´s very seldom “healthy”. If you want to be better than others at any price the chance to harm yourself is very high. Of cause everybody understands after a while that max-reps are not “neccessary”. If you do it you do it for personal fun. Or for “your ego”. Bytheway: all the lifting is an ego matter, whether you do max reps or 20rep sets. Doesn´t matter whether you want to have a six pack or 250kg deadlift.
Lifting is – compared to other sports – relatively safe. As a natural your pec normally will not tear out of the blue sky. Heavy injuries most of the times have a long history. Training under pain for a longer period of time is… stupid.
But it´s clear: some are born for lifting and will never have an injury. Others definitely not. The can do everything “correctly” and nevertheless they´ll get problems with their joints. This happens seldom but it happens.
Second point. As a natty you can gain visible muscles. No doubt. You can double or even triple the strength you have started with. Is that “nothing”? No! It´s a lot.
The problems begin if you are not able to understand where you natural limits are.
Then you start to think about “programs” and stuff like “do I train too much or not enough” or “should I do more reps or this and that exercise?” People who want to sell their products want to think you this or that way. They make an easy matter a complicated one.
Every experienced lifter knows after a while what´s best for him. It´s a matter of personal preferences and not the question whether this or that is better or not.
What happened to the previous crowd? They all took the Red Pill and went MGTOW! No more scams and lies! Take Steroids if you want unrealistic gains!
So at point after intermidiate numbers there is a point of dimnishing returns?
Yes, and stop using my name.
TO – TheFinnisher
Serge Nubret arguably the best physique ever, black marble
Over the years ive read many success stories of others using his and Gironda’s methods.
can you define your results – size wise and effect on strength if/when tested ?
Gironda was also way ahead of his time,
Off the top of my head – I gained around 30lbs to my frame in 6 months, majority was muscle. Just shy of 3 inches to my arms, around 4 or so inches to my legs. I even got accused of taking drugs. It completely changed my outlook on training and what ‘experts’ say is possible or not. Strength – I have never tested it as it’s not important to me.
You will find on here people only do low volume with crap results. Their favourite description of themselves is ‘genetically typical average genes’ LOL it’s called UNDERTRAINING.
wow that’s off the charts gainz
im sure others here will question you on this, but i’m open minded and take people at face value, unless proved different of course – lol
can i ask did you change your diet – Nubret style as well {4/5 pounds of house meat or beef}, or where they gainz a direct result of the stimulus alone.
Secondly im big believer i the X look for a better physique- I.E – calves, shouders, abs
Abs – obviously diet/leaness, but do you think one could specialise Nubret/Gironda style on delts and calves alone or is the magic in stimulating the whole ?
Seriously, my results were good, but some people made spectacular gains. Serge knew what the fuck he was doing. Legend.
I actually didn’t follow his diet, at the time my diet was pretty rubbish, just lots of calories. The results were from the routine, absolutely. But ‘science’ will say it doesn’t work lol
Yes you could specialise particular muscle groups, Vince Gironda had courses to bring up body parts fast. The good thing about calves and delts is they recover fast and can take a lot of punishment.
With Delts – try some higher rep sets if you haven’t already, sets of 15. Also keep rest times short, 20-30 seconds rest between sets. They seem to really respond to it, probably because they are slow twitch dominant.
Lagging body parts in general need more reps.
Thanks
I have read your comments and you talk a lot of gibberish. Delts recover fast and are slow twitch dominant? Where have you read that? Give is some links, but please no t-nation articles 🙂
Call my comments ‘gibberish’ then expect me to provide articles which you would probably dispute because ‘gibberish’. Go to http://www.hardgainer.com . Hope this helps Lol.
Trololo!
Gironda used testosterone, Serge died from being on the sauce. I know the “truth” about these guys not the “myths” stories you read about.
Of course you do, Please tell us more. Wait, you’re gonna tell us all they did low volume too? right? Give us a laugh.
Finisher, the only person people laugh about here is you.
Supposed I would have taken you seriously for only one second I would summarize as follows: you wasted 3 years with HIT. You had crap results. Your words, not mine. How is it possible? If young people start to lift they start to grow. If they don´t miss the topic completely they grow. Which “progarm” or “sytsem” they use doesn´t matter. How is that POSSIBLE that somebody lifts for 3 years and nothing happens??? How did you perform HIT? Did you choose a heavy weight could not lift it up and went home? What the hell did you do???
Later you told us that you are not very gifted for the iron Game. Your words, not mine. And then the miracle happened. After 3 years where 99% of people training ambitiously made their biggest gains you start to grow “like weed”. Only this makes your story – and it is nothing more than that – suspicious. Till this point no reason to comment. Somebody tries a system. And fails. o.k. He blames the system. Not himself. o.k. I don´t mind. I´am not interested in. His problem. Not mine. If somebody failed in lifting – let´s say heavier weights – and is changing to a pump and flush routine – which is used by other BBler to regenerate – and claim big gains… I have – let me say it politely – a funny feeling.
The problem with you began when you started to insult members of this forum directly or indirectly. Did you ever met somebody from this forum in real life? What makes you so sure that you can blame others for “crap gains”??? What makes you drivel from “no excuses” ??? (CT. Fletcher or Rich Piana bullshit which you saw on Youtube bytheway)
You drop some names like Nubret and Gironda but this only shows how naive you are. You read a few old magazines and you listen to Youtube videos and ready is the Golden era expert.
18 1/2 inch arm. As a natural? Lean? My goodness how uninformed do you think the peolpe are here?
But not enough: “my results are good but others had spectacular gains” It gets worse and worse. Sorry but are you crazy???
People don’t laugh at me at the gym that’s for sure. My ‘insults’? you mean calling people lazy? how terrible.
I’ve been back and forth with you before, your comments of it being impossible to make zero gains on HIT yet make more gains on volume, goes to show your lack of knowledge of bodybuilding. ‘Regenerate’ you mean muscle memory? like the Colorado experiment done on Casey Viator which was used to promote HIT by Arthur Jones, funny that.
They are making crap gains because they are on here with a bunch of excuses, like the fact you excepted your calves won’t grow, defeatist attitude. Maybe increase your damn volume, exercise selection and rep range, try something different. Every lagging muscle can be improved.
Your ‘99%’ is completely arbitrary, you stopped growing after 3 years so no one else can? the reason you and JoeSantos just ‘maintain’ after years is because you didn’t increase your volume. JoeSantos admitted himself that his best gains was when he was doing up to 10 sets per body part then he reduced it, big mistake. His gains halted.
I won’t mention Nubret or Gironda here because you will spout out the same excuses of steroids and genetics. Sorry that i busted my ass and got results and you haven’t.
But hey ‘less is more’ because every sport/endeavour in the world you don’t need to do much, right. Now back to being a ‘hardgainer’ like that cry baby Stuart McRobert and the rest of the ‘typically genetic average genes’. This has run it’s course, we will never agree.
Which results do you have which I haven’t??? Do you know how my look was like?
What do you think is true you red about Nubret? 225kg Bench Press? The horse meat story?
What do you think is true in Arnolds biographie?
What do you think is true in an article in the Flex for instance?
Where is a proove that a Natural dramaticly improved the look of his calfs? One before/after photo-serie. Only one. Please.
Where is a proove that a Natural improved the look of his biceps by this or that exercise? Only one proove.
All this rubbish we older ones red in the Weider magazines 40 years ago. Some of them are here. They don’t tell their story because of the Truthseeker or Stewart McRobert or any other. They tell it because it is reality.
For me you are living in a BB dreamworld. All this brainwashed stuff. What do you think? That one day you look like a fitness model because you use the Serge Nubret program?
You have not once said how you built your physique, or what size you were but I can tell you wasn’t big from your lack of experience, your novice questions and the fact you think it’s impossible to build 18 inch arms naturally….Steve reeves 18.5, Reg park 19, Leroy Colbert 21.
But no, you are right, Serge was a liar, even though the pics of him benching 225kg’s wide grip are everywhere, even though he stood on stage with Arnold, must be all fake Zzzz.
If i showed you pictures of Natural Mr Universe John Hansen, ex pro Skip Lacour or fitness model Rob Riches transformations of muscles etc you would still say steroids so this is pointless, again.
What does a preacher curl do?
what does a concentration curl do?
How do they affect the bicep? let’s hear it, Not sure you even have the basic knowledge.
How do you expect to improve aspects of a muscle with low volume?
You ignored my last comment, you ignored how I told you what happened to you and JoeSantos. You think everyone should suffer because you labelled yourself a hardgainer with shit ‘genes’.
You keep spouting out the same shit. You have no rebuttal.
I labeled myself with shit genes? Where?
Nubret was a fantastic BBler. No doubt about. You saw a photo with 5 plates where he benchpressed. I know this photo. Says nothing. Hansen clean, Colbert clean, do you want to fool me???
You definitely prooved that you know nothing.
You only parroting what you red somewhere.
Do us and yourself a favour: do that what you name stands for: finish here.
You are a troll. And not a clever one. Every word is too much
Oh and I was right, you think everyone is on steroids Zzzz
why did you ever bother lifting? Your arms are 15 inches.
Again ignored my comment
HOW DO CONCENTRATION CURLS AND PREACHER CURLS AFFECT THE BICEPS DIFFERENTLY?
You don’t know. You know absolutely fuck all. Are you foreign or just retarded? Anyway I am not replying to someone below my knowledge anymore. Good riddance. 15 inch arms.
I am the Finisher and you have been Finished.
Go play with your dolls.
Santa Claus will bring you some muscles.
blub blub blub little mouse
I like how your article is all “Rippetoe is a liar” but then in your maintenance example list squats, deadlifts, and bench presses.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, and you’re closer to Rippetoe than you probably care to admit. Compound movements with barbells are indeed effective but you don’t need to keep trying for bigger numbers for the rest of your life. You do need to eat more but you don’t need to GOMAD (and Rippetoe has never recommended GOMAD for anyone other than underweight young males).
I started out with a BMI medically considered underweight with a skeletal frame characterized by a small wrist circumference. The barbell programming of Starting Strength worked for me – mass and size increased even though the programming focused on strength. I finally look like an adult male and people stopped asking me if I’m a student. Women touch my shoulders more often. Of course GOMAD is ridiculous and so is mindlessly increasing the squat until your butt reaches Kardashian-like dimensions. But Rippetoe got it 85% right, so I give him credit for that rather than criticize him for 15% that was off the mark.
I stopped increasing squat number at 1.3 BW, similar to your maintenance example, but I still do them, and do them low-bar according to Starting Strength.
I don’t binge-eat like the book says, but rather increased my protein intake to 80% of pound body weight in grams. I increased my carb a little bit, and even that later was just replaced with a smaller amount of extra fat in my meals (avocado, olive oil).
It’s all about moderation and tailoring someone else’s advice to your own situation.
The fact remains that I got a lot of mileage just doing a small number of different types of compound barbell movements and with a small change in diet, largely following the spirit of Starting Strength even if not the exact letter.
When you start from nothing, it is true that anything works, but Starting Strength simplifies programming and explains the barbell movements like no other program does. Rippetoe profits from you, but only to the extent of the low price of his book (and you only pay once), and is well worth the detailed explanations of good form and common mistakes, and the illustrations. And all his online videos are free and actually useful.
Gentlemen, I would ask you–“Do you want to look strong or be strong?” That’s a quote I heard from Valery Federenko, a world champion Kettlebell Sport Lifter from Kazakhstan. He pressed a 32kg kettlebell 911 times (alternating hands every 10 reps or so) for Sept 11th. He’s run marathons. His first job in the US was with Sears in Manhattan delivering refrigerators–he was the only guy able to go up the flights of stairs with a refrigerator on his back. In person, Valery looks muscular and lean–not massive like a bodybuilder–yet he is WAY stronger than them.
Pavel knows nothing about Kettlebell Sport and “his system is sh**t” (another quote from a Russian Kettlebell World record holder.
I have been involved in Kettlebell Sport Lifting for over 6 years (while in my 40’s). I haven’t gained muscle size–but I have gained strength, endurance & power….and burned off body fat. I take no supplements, eat real food & drink wine.
I’ve been reading many of the articles and responses here… there are guys here that are frustrated with the bodybuilding bs …and rightfully so. Who wants to take drugs that make your muscles big but your masculinity small?
In Kettlebell Sport, the focus is on developing technique of the lifts (snatch, jerk and clean+jerk) with lighter weights (4kg-8kg) and then build the repetitions. In KB Sport world, high reps=100-200 or more. Not 12.
So you don’t create bulky big balloon-like muscles. In KB sport, you create powerful muscles that can go fast for a very long time…with tendons, ligaments and joints that can sustain the work. So a guy can bench 300lbs 3 times. That’s 900lbs total. I can snatch a 16kg kettlebell overhead 168 times… that’s 5913.6 lbs.
In life–when will anyone lift 300lbs? I bet you do lift 35lbs often.
It is an illusion that all women are attracted to these bodybuilder guys. Bodybuilders are useless when you need help moving all your stuff.. They can’t last. Not lasting…well that can apply elsewhere 😉
Plus, kettlebell sport lifting is growing among women. The USA National meet had 65% women & 35% men. If you guys want to go where the ladies are… find a kettlebell sport gym. Yeah, the ladies may be lifting heavier than you right now… but they will help you get strong. And the sport needs men!!
All ages…all physical conditions can start Kettlebell Sport Lifting. We have competitive lifters in their 70’s.
I have a kettlebell-sport specific gym in Las Vegas…and know of other in the US & the World. Happy to help anyone interested to connect.
thanks for all these infos!
Valery obviously is fit. Congrats.
Whether he is a way stronger than a bodybuilder is the question! When it comes to swing the bell yes when it comes to progressive weights probably not.
One word to BB: the BBler is training to get bulky balloon like muscles. This is his goal. If you ask him for help to move your furniture he probably will give you one of these two answers:
– I have no time. I have a session in the gym
– I have been in the gym yesterday. I have to regenerate
One tip from my side to be in society of women: book a yoga session!
Besides of that: typical kettlebells movements are good. If one is not fixed on growing muscles it´s not a bad method to stay strong and fit.
I’d like to see you challenge Mark Bell or Silent Mike to a kettlebell contest.
Bet they beat you for one simple reason.
There’s no such thing as muscular endurance.
A man who can press 300lbs over his head can press 100lbs more times than you if your max is 150lbs.
They’ll lift that kettlebell more than you, the only limiting factor would be cardio and genetics – fast vs slow twitch makeup although the fast twitch guy still beats you because he’s way stronger.
Kettlebells is just cardio it doesn’t build strength well. It doesn’t do much of anything.
No such thing as muscle endurance? I’m afraid there is such a thing—ask any long distance runner or soccer player.
A man that can lift 300lbs over his head ONCE probably cannot press 35lbs over his head 200 times.
I doubt those guys would beat me—and I’m a 120lb female in her 40’s.
Kettlebells are an amazing tool to build real strength (not the appearance of..) if you know how to train with them. Most trainers are stuck in that body-shaping mentality and use them incorrectly.
Marathon runners are BORN with an abnormally large amount of slow-twitch muscle fibers.
It can’t be trained beyond a small percent.
You can’t take a man born to be an Olympic lifter and make him a marathon runner, it doesn’t work.
Blaha, never said promised anyone they’d be a mammoth and he hates bodybuilding
He said if you bench chin 100, press 200, bench 300, squat 400 and dead 500, you’d probably “look like you lift”.
And that is absolutely right, although a lot of people might not even realize that because everyone is using steroids now and you’ll still look unimpressive compared to them.
He didn’t say you’d look like a roided out bodybuilder and get all kinds of ass.
Stop lying man, can you even bench 275 after decade of training? 225? Do you even weigh 190lbs at 6’0 tall or so? If not, then your training was crap.
Blaha is probably one of the best lifting channels on YouTube with the best info.
I respect kbell training, but I think all these different pursuits train different systems, you have to do the activity to be good at it, and comparing, lifters, runners, kbell athletes is not very useful. Combining them in some sort of general approach is an alternative. I shift emphasis between kbells, running, bike, rowing, lifting. This crossfitesque route may be a suitable solution for those who are not particularly great at lifting sports, but want to train.
Personally I lifted raw, ipf, under 100k 147.5, 212.5, 265kg. Pretty good, but nothing exceptional. I saw it as a short term thing, too heavy to be healthy. General fitness involving multiple components, not necessarily going full crossfit, seems a very reasonable option for the majority.
“If your goal is to have a truly impressive physique, you might just as well become a needle samurai.”
Let me “red pill” you about steroids.
From what I’ve read about your training and progress over the years, you’d look absolutely normal on steroids even if you put on 50lbs. Then you’d have one more thing to bitch about, “the steroid industry lies”.
I know because I’m in the same category. You are on the low end of the genetic spectrum, no offense, that’s the way it is, you also under eat and think “lifting heavy” means lifting at RPE 100 every time, then complain that it hurts but that’s another matter.
Face it, you don’t have the genetics to look like a bodybuilder “like you lift” no matter what you took. There are men who have more muscle than you never lifting and straight out of high school and I’m sorry but they are getting jacked when they train any ole way.
Maybe you should try the needle to get to the size of a normal adult and get it out of your system. If you train like Blaha suggests, you’ll be able to keep a percentage of the muscle and it will be there for you the rest of your life via muscle memory.
Hate to break it to ya, but Blaha’s novice 2.0 program is just perfect for you. Use it with or without juice.
Nobody got more screwed than me, I was the smallest kid in my class all through school. I was never more than 135lbs at 6’1 until I was 27 or so.
Now I’m 215lbs, a little fat because it’s hard to keep the weight off at my age and constantly working, I’m 185-190 when I’m in really good shape but I’ve been there when I have enough time to train.
Lifting is still fun, at least to me and I don’t give a fuck about girls. I’m a middle aged man who likes to lift and gain muscle.
If you have to use a little something to get what you want, it’s a hell of a lot better than being bitter the rest of your life. I only used for a couple years 15 years ago and gained a ridiculous amount of size but I still only look sorta like I lift.
I even got up to 240lbs, was doing sets with 315 on the bench and just looked like a big lumberjack. Steroids are not a cure all either.
I do it 99% clean now, all I take is a little anti-e and some DHEA and it still works. And by works, I mean I look like an athletic male, not a little kid.
Sometimes, that’s all ya get.
What pure bullshit.
1. If you bench 350+ you will tear apart 99.9% of all humans like dinner rolls if they start shit INCLUDING moronic steroids gym bros.
2. Heavy lifting as MANDATORY to get big not just for naturals but also for gear users. You will always be a pussy faggot if you don’t lift heavy no matter what drugs you use. Just compare Dorian Yates and Ronnie Coleman to manlets like Dr. Tony Huge who don’t do jack shit in the gym just take gear til they get heart failure.
Sorry you didn’t get jacked in 90 days of lifting you entitled manbaby, but don’t start making up bullshit to explain your failure which is due to poor work ethic and poor planning ability.
Grundy, if allegedly being able to ‘tear up 99.9% of humans like dinner rolls’ as a rational argument for getting fat and wearing out your body by repeatedly lifting heavy weights every other day, that’s a tragic waste of life IMO.
Your shouty youtube-grade vocabulary exposes you to be another disillusioned victim of the fitness and lifestyle industry – protein powder manufacturers love people of your demographic.
is Grundy Malone your real name ?
Hi, interesting articles I’ve been reading here, I’m one of the more newer viewers of this site and what intrigues me the most is your outlook on genetic potential.
You seem to have this fixation on frame size in determining genetic potential and in particular wrist circumference, there is a particular I also sense when reading your articles on this particular topic. That caught my attention so I did some more digging and lo and behold you are 6’1 with 6.25 inch wrists, now it makes sense.
It appears that you overplay frame thickness on this topic and underplay all the many other factors that go into determining muscular potential, but here is the funny thing, your frame size isnt even most accurately measured by your wrists, or even your overall bone thickness, the research and studies have shown consistently that bone breadth is significantly more predictive in determining frame size, not bone thickness.
This includes: Wrist breadth, elbow breadth, ankle breadth, knee breadth, biacromial breadth and also chest breadth (which would also link to ribcage size).
Not to mention the various non-structural genetic factors which include: Muscle cell number, satellite cell number, signalling molecule sensitivity, response to training, androgen receptor sensitivity, fast-twitch muscle ratio, myostatin levels, follistatin levels, and the list goes on. The guys with wrists significantly larger wrists, such as those with 7.5+ inch wrists, are most likely predominantly endomorphs, as mesomorphy is characterized by middling proportions and middling height, thus a mesomorph will actually tend to have wrists somewhere between 6.5-7.5 inches.
The average person likely has average wrists, and after a few solid years of training will reach 22-23 FFMI, and such people are in the majority, having 6.25 inches is seen in the minority, and some US Army sources even say its less than 5th percentile.
Thus I cannot see how your reasoning accurately reflects the reality of the situation besides it simply being a projection of your inner resentment.
It’s simple – bigger frame = bigger muscles by default.
Not exactly, broader frame = more muscle, that’s what the research says.
Excluding the other dozens of non-structural genetic factors of course.
I enjoy reading the comments to your articles as much as the article itself. It’s always the people who have never entered a strength competion and never will, who seem to get upset with an article like this. I’ve been weight training for over 30 years now, and can find very little to disagree with you about. Keep up the good work.
I personally couldn’t care less about lifting heavy all the time, I’m more interested in the aesthetic/athletic/functional and lifestyle aspects, though a high level of strength is always welcome of course.
I concur. I have obtained the aesthetics/athletic/functional level I am satisfied with and have learned from my experience I don’t have to do too much to maintain it, thanks to years of work put into it. A part of me wished I could have learned this earlier on, but that’s ok. I still challenge myself every once and a while with heavier weight, but it’s no longer the norm.
test comment cause i feel like many of the comments here are faked. tes tes.
Aaaah awaiting moderation. That’s so fucking sketchy.
TruthSeeker -You should consider putting up a forum at this point. It’s obvious there’s a lot of people that have different stories/thoughts.
http://nattyornotforum.com/
Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t see this 🙂 Thanks!
So you failed miserably in Powerlifting and then proceed to trash everyone who enjoys the sport. You’re basically a pathetic little twat.
Bit strong ?
100th Comment I hope!
Lifting heavy works great, but you have to follow the right protocol of sets and reps…
Have you tried the Power 3-5-7-1-1 Shock workout?
In 6months, I gained 45lbs of muscle while losing fat.
Don’t be a hater and try harder to find the magical workout.
or don’t be a dick, and wreck every debate, every opinion that differs from yours, whilst rubbishing the achievements of others as being down to genetics and drugs, and not considering for a second that their approach may just be better than yours.
30 lbs – 6 months
45 lbs – 6 months
Do you think we are stupid? bad troll
You need to work harder
You only need 5 ‘intense’ sets, I know the ‘truth’ not your stories. Don’t overtrain! Also if your calves are small they will stay small forever…lol….
cope harder you fucking faggot tranny weakling
You are a fucking troglodyte. Maybe you should grow a pair of balls instead of feeling the contraction of your girlfriend’s dick in your anus. You are worse than the holocaust if it was real.
How much estrogen do I have to inject in my body to maintain the lifts that you noted above and not get too strong? Can I inject it in my bum? Can you do it? Just please don’t slap my ass with your 4 feet hanging man tits while doing it. And please stop munching on soylent above my ass, I don’t want my anal virginity to be taken that way.
It might help you moving from the cardio room into the weight room where there are actual weights instead of drooling all over the equipment from the excess of beta-soylanine in your body.
Kill yourself.
Triggered?
@Truth Seeker. With 38 years of experience under my belt, I can tell you that you are right ????
You know what is a waste of time, people that read these articles and believe it.. .. I’m not quite sure when misguided people began to demonize being bigger, stronger in contrast to the “get toned” nonsense— spout this off all you want, there are plenty of weight lifting competitions, body building competitions, professional athletes in positions where massive strength is required— and none of them are taking your advice.
Sorry to all the haters here but Truth Seeker here is, well, just stating the truth.
The truth is, yes if you are, or aspire to be, a competitive strength sport, like an olympic weightlifter or powerlifter, then of course strength matters the most (you are measured on it!)
For the rest of us, and for the average Joe, who just want to look better, be healthier and VERY IMPORTANT => stay injury free for the rest of your life, yes, weight training is massively overrated. Specially the deadlift, which is the absolute king of ego lifting.
Still not convinved?: have a look at this very recent video in Joe Rogan’s channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWizDhYjGsc&t=36s
Hard to measure “waste of time”. Sports, music, games. hobbies, much of what we do could be considered a waste of time. But from the point of view of building an aesthetic body? Well, I would say that the most direct method to whatever results you are going to get is stick to the hypertrophy range, no real point going below five reps, above 15.
Hey Finisher-Joker, can’t you start your own home page on which you can put all your nonsense, fantasies, useless information and other shit?
We are more than fed up with “high volume”, “18.5” pig arms “and easily growing calves”.
Hey Sam or Glove- Pathetic loser – I bet you’re huge, please tell me how to train?
I hope you’re fed up with being small, you deserve it.
Constantly chasing PRs in gym has to be the most detrimental thing one can do to demolish one’s joints and decrease one’s long term quality of life.
Persistence, patience, healthy lifestyle in general and good form will always be the key to succes in anything in life! As we age our muscles mature more and get naturally more dense as long as we eat right and stimulate them properly. Most experienced lifters will tell you this, keep curling those 30+ pound dumbbells for 10+ years and you will be blown away by the progress you will make, try to curl with 50+ pound dumbbells as a staple and we bid you farewell as you cruise to SnapCity!
Functional strength for example which gymnasts/athletes rely on produces a healthy and extremely muscular physique, yet you won’t see them attempt to do a 600+ pound deadlifts in the gym, they are too smart for that BS. Even seasoned pro bodybuilders try to avoid the Gym PR-trap as they become more older and wise.
Morons (even some “experts”) who spout that you can apply progressive overload indefinitely are just that morons and would be laughed out the of any medical boardroom, but selling BS PDF e-books and misleading the young ones on YT can also pay the bills.
I love watching 70+ year old (even amateur) gymnasts perform feats of strength with their own bodyweight all while the pro strongmen/powerlifters/bodybuilders have all bid the dust!
Truthseeker, you are absolutely right and you have triggered all the fat barbell humpers as evidenced by the comments. One thing that is so weird about the weight lifting online community is its cultish devotion to ‘the big three’, as if the mere suggestion of doing barbell curls would suddenly turn one a pink singlet spray tanning wearing mirror preening pansy. There is a strong current of repressed homosexuality especially among the Rippetoe crowd. They often claim to lift to become ‘better men’ but the result is usually quite repulsive from a basic hygienic and attractiveness standpoint. Look at Rippetoe, Wendler, Louie Simmons, and all the ‘gurus’. They are all grotesquely bloated with ugly fat faces, often balding because of the chronic stress from lifting weights without a break, hanging guts and love handles. No woman could ever be attracted to such a thing, which is why they just hang out with other sweaty guys who are constantly on edge. You can see by all the posts how easily aggravated such people are. In real life, these guys just look like fat smelly guys who can’t have a normal conversation. I think this basic frustration and insecurity with their own bodies is a self-perpetuating cycle. And how manly can you be when your very presence repels most sane women? They have no friends but have like 10,000 posts on some forum about humping weights in a metal cage. They would benefit better from just playing a social sport and going for a walk and getting down to less than 20% bodyfat.
This is the destiny of many natural slaves to strength.
What kind of gymnastic are you talking about Truthseeker? Some gymnastic 2 x times a week for one hour? Or Olympic gymnastics as competitive sport on a high level? First might be healthy but second definitlely is not. Daily training sessions for hours from very young age on can ruin health.
@Glove
Most retired pro gymnasts are very healthy individuals and are able to retain incredible strength/muscle most of their life, sure they are the elite but amateurs do not need overdo it to get fantastic results. You can easily do gymnastic work 3 times per week and not burn out!
Starting out slowly is the key or else one could easily hurt themselves in the process.
For example: On the rings one could strive to mastering exercises like the ring dips/pull ups, L-sit and then progressing to various levers and muscle ups will not harm your joints and won’t come remotely close to what damage frequent heavy barbell/dumbbell lifting can do to your training longevity.
In fact gymnastics are naturally more healthy than most compound movements due to their isometric nature which is much more in line with what human physiology has evolved to benefit from, doing perfect pull ups will net you an appealing and muscular back and most importantly a healthy spine too! Contrary to doing heavy deadlift/t-bar rows/bent over rows which will send you to snap city when you least expect it.
Longevity is the key and I believe that most bodyweight training and supplementing smart in the gym with exercises that target your muscular weak spots delivers the best kind of natural physique without having to slave endlessly in the gym chasing the elusive PR.
@Truthseeker 2
the problem is that you mix some things in your comment.
1.) Gymnastics are NOT performed to have an aesthetic or strong body. Sense is to be a better gymnast after training than before. Top gymnasts don´t care about “strength”. They care about to be a better gymnasts and win competitions.
Strength and many other skills develope but as a by-product.
2.)
– Top-gymnasts start with 5 – 7 years.
– Training volume 30-40 hours per week
– training 11 -12 month a year
Do you think this is “healthy”???
Check the studies of long term damages and acute injuriies of top gymnasts.
One exampe: 75% of them have changes on intervertebral discs.
Please don´t misunderstand: I have nothing against gymnastics and admire what these athletes are able to do. But on top level it´s not healthy. No sport on top level is healthy.
I think you want to say that exercises with body weight only are more healthy than heavy lifts. This is a different story again…
Excellent post Truthseeker – using these numbers as my targets, I think they’re doable and manageable long term. Wanted to throw in shoulder press, any BW target I should keep in mind? Perhaps 1BW?
15 pull-ups in a row
20 dips in a row
2 BW Deadlift
1.2 BW Squat
1 BW Bench Press
Cheers!
BW shoulder press is beyond average – it’s like a 2BW SQ or a 3BW DL.
Got it, so will aim around the 60-70%BW as an overall target…will take a while to get there anyway I’m properly deconditioned lol.
Thanks,
Ammar
Ammar a good goal for the overhead press is bw x 0.9 for a 1 OR 3 rm.
I have bin training for almost 12 years and this seems to be around a good point to aim for.
In my experience naturals can aim for the following strenght standards depending on their built.
BP 1.3 and 1.7 times bw
Squat 1.7 and 2.2 times bw
Dl 1.8 and 2.5 Times bw
The higher end numbers might take a little more dedication depending on your leverage.
I train 2 days a week for 45 mins now a days and Just maintain a 1.3 Times bw bp, 2 Times bw Squat, 2.2 bw dl.
Im 82/83 kg , 30 years old and and 183 cm tall.
I could lift al little heavier if i wanted to, but the extra effort and chance of injury increase isnt worth it. In my oppinion.
I’m 64 and have been an athlete all my life. I’ve used gear and I’ve been natural. I agree with you 100%. You can have a nice, athletic physique naturally. But, you if you want BIG MUSCLES you have to use gear. Anything else is in illusion. Also, 90% of all the food supplements they are trying to sell you are bunk. A couple of exceptions are BCAAs and creatine. Add a good multivitamin and mineral supplement and you’re good. A protein shake at bed if you’re really training hard. Or just a healthy snack.
What bodybuilding routines have you used?
“Build strength don’t demonstrate it”, use slow movements, don’t slave to some stupid numbers or exercises Squatting is not written in stone, people with short torso and long legs like me suck at squatting, so fuck the squat and the dealift too
Low reps with heavy weighs is called STRENGTH TRAINING. If you don’t care about getting as strong as possible, for whatever reason, then by all means, don’t lift heavy weights. All this BS about Rippetoe promising big muscles is Straw Man . He promises increased STRENGTH, ie, the ability to resist greater external forces than you could before training. If you don’t train, progressively, using heavy weights, you’ll never be strong enough to resist greater forces. Nobody said you couldn’t get bigger muscles and still not be as strong as possible, which apparently the goal of some people; usually people who don’t publish their real names.
He did promise big muscles. It’s not straw man. He promised noobs to get big. He made them FAT. Google Zach Evetts.
I am 5’7”’ approx 195lbs, natural, not really lean, 36″ waist.. I have been lifting for 35 years and am now 55. I lift weights one day, jog up to an hour the next. Weights I do
1. Squat, good morning and speed deadlift
2. Bench, dips and ohp
3 deadlift bent over row and speed squat
4 ohp dips and cg bench
Everything is for 8-10 sets of 5 reps on a 3 min timer. Apart form the speed work which is 8-12 sets of 2 on squats, singles on deads on a 1.30 timer.
Every third week will be an attempt at a PR set of 5 on the powerlifts.
So its heavy but not Maximum intensity. No fluff, all big compounds.
I suppose health and longevity are the main reasons, but is another reason being strong or having muscle mass?
I just turned 30 so I decided to do Body by Science big five once or twice a week.
I’d lift hard on and off in the gym in my 20’s, got up to a shitty 205 lbs bench, 315 squat, 385 deadlift and what is likely a permanent shoulder injury from work that was made worse in the gym. It was on and off because every time I’d do a high volume routine (which was every time) I’d get injured. Didn’t matter how many youtube videos I watched on form or how much I spent on supplements or books I read or coaches I paid and talked to, none of that shit mattered. You can do a thousand deadlifts and overhead presses properly, it only takes one bad one to reveal that the thousand reps you did took their toll.
If I’m not going to get anywhere, I might as well just phone it in for 12 minutes a week BBS style.
I’m not getting my hopes up, but if decent gains are made I’m going to be pretty fucking mad, after 12 years of being told how shitty HIT is and how HIT doesn’t work and never worked. If it works for me I’m never going to stop shit talking the festival of jackasses who told me to never go to failure and to go to the gym 3-6 times a week.
On the bright side, if it doesn’t work I’m only out 12 minutes a week and the time it took me to download and read Body by Science on archive.org.
Well imo training to failure every time Arthur jones style may work in the short term but it’s just too stressfull on the body and the nervous system to be productive over the long haul. I used to bust my ass in the gym with hit training, 2 times a week and it never got me nowhere. The average dude simply can’t rely only on the “training to failure” protcol. Just think about it, sitting on the leg extension or some other machine and killing yourself with painful slow reps,it’s a stupid way of training, nobody ever got big this way. Now I still train two times a week but I follow the basics, compound exercises, overall low volume but multiple sets x exercise not to failure (1 reps in the tank or just the last rep i can squeeze out) and building strenght,( but i don’t use low rep, usually 6-12 reps). This style of training was promoted by Stuart Mcrobert back in the 90s on the magazine Hardgainer, It works much better and I’m not killing myself in the gym, I enjoy my workouts. Speaking from experience, hit is dogma, training to failure every time is just stupid, nobody does that not even the steroid users, and in fact it doesnt work, unless you use steroid or have above average genetics.
I agree with Edo and indeed the insights of Stuart McRoberts (Brawn) are correct imo.
Indeed. The people of Hardgainer Stuart included were straight up to the point, no dogma, no BS, the only concern was results. If you are getting results does it really matter if you are training to failure or not? Of course not.
Hello,
Both high intensity and high reps with moderate intensity “work” but for different effects. Once past the “beginner” stage 70-90% of 1rm is good for strength and there is some hypertrophy but repetitions typically have to be 3 or greater. At the same time, the joints and connective tissue need to be “maintained” (especially with age) and this is where “greater time under tension” routines “shine” (in other words bodybuilding). And with the greater hypertrophy of muscle (and connective tissue) as well as “capillaries” a return to “strength training” will yield a greater gain (at least up to a point of course) because the “base” (work capacity and the ability to recover) has “expanded”.