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March 27, 2005
'Fatigue Cycling': Another Secret of the Russian Bodybuilding Underground
Scientists who study complex systems - the human body is one of them - know that in order to thrive, these systems must teeter 'on the edge of chaos'. To use a political analogy, a country with no structure, anarchy, is doomed. And a totalitarian state with too much structure such as the Soviet Union is bound to stagnate eventually.
If the training schedule is totally erratic, there is no structure or direction. You get very sore but you are not building much muscle and even less strength. If, on the other hand, your training hardly changes at all, you will hit the wall and stay there for years. What is required is enough change to stimulate gains but not too much, so your training does not lose its focus.
Until now the only surefire way of doing this was powerlifting style cycling. You stick pretty much to the same exercises but after reaching a PR you back off to very light weights to make your muscles get somewhat out of shape and become responsive to training again. The author of Brawn Stuart McRobert aptly named this process 'softening up'. Although hard to handle psychologically, cycling is the only training structure that is reliable over a long haul.
Not any more. The Russian 'fatigue cycling' technique is another dependable plateau buster in your strength and muscle building toolbox. The routine maintains the structure (the same exercises, sets, and reps) but jolts the system with the fresh stimulus of a new exercise order.
For more information on this topic order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at 5:55 AM | Comments (1)
March 21, 2005
Hardgainer? Use the DeLorme Method Inspired Six Week Hypertrophy Cycle
Russian sports science is crystal clear on the roles of volume and intensity in training. Intensity delivers short-term strength gains for peaking, largely due to neural adaptations. Volume makes lasting changes in the muscles and other tissues. With that in mind, here is a high tonnage program that will easily pack ten to fifteen pounds of beef on your frame in two months, provided that other gaining variables such as nutrition and rest are taken care of.
Surprisingly, the routine will not take much of your time. On a couple of Mondays you will suffer for over 90 min, but on the rest of the training days you will be in and out in no time flat, sometimes in as little as twenty minutes and fresh as a daisy. This is purposeful; workouts greatly varying in length and difficulty are a lot more effective than conventional flatliners.
One of the most efficient ways to crank up the volume, while simultaneously refining your lifting technique and sparing your nervous system, is a modified DeLorme Method.
Right after World War II Dr. Thomas DeLorme of the Harvard Medical School devised an effective set-rep scheme for building muscle and might.
The DeLorme Method causes significant strength increases when employed for a short term (DeLorme & Watkins, 1948; Leighton et al., 1967). Although more effective strength training protocols do exist, DeLorme’s ascending sets build an excellent foundation for heavy power training. A friend of mine, Mike, progressed from hardly being able to pick up his toddler without back pain to pulling 475 after I put him on a routine that rotated the original DeLorme with working up to a heavy single every other workout. What might interest you more than Mike’s powerlifting exploits is the fact that ladies refer to him as ‘a hunk of a man’.
For more information on this topic order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at 4:10 AM | Comments (277)
March 14, 2005
How to Make a Quantum Strength Leap with 'Progressive Movement Training'
The science behind Progressive Movement Training and the results this method delivered were decades ahead of their time. It took generations of Ph.D. bearing geeks to clue in how PMT produced Paul Anderson's 1,200-pound squat sans powerlifting gear, a mark that will remain untouched way into this millennium. That might give you a hint why the hard to impress Russians called Paul 'the Wonder of Nature'.
Paul Anderson recommended to start squatting from a pin about four inches below the lockout, with a weight about one hundred pounds over your one rep max full squat. "I realize that this is a very light weight in comparison to what you can quarter squat with," admits Big Paul, "but this is part of the plan." Burning out on max singles is not.
Two sets of twenty to twenty five reps are performed. "I would say the secret lies in taking a lighter weight that you can do many repetitions with and just working it down that way." It is amusing that in his recommendation to do high reps in the Progressive Movement Training routine Paul again beat the science geeks to the punch. Much later Meyers (1967) discovered that the greater is the number of contractions, the higher is the transfer of strength to the untrained part of the exercise ROM.
For more information on this topic order Pavel's Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at 5:01 AM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2005
Here's a better formula for strength intensity
'I used to be enthralled at 'the Barbarians' and Dorian Yates and their balls to the wall training style,' writes US Military Powerlifting National Champion Jack Reape in his article on dragondoor.com. 'Getting those hard fought last couple reps were the key to getting bigger and stronger I believed. WRONG! Intensity is not a grimace and a backwards baseball cap, it is a mathematical formula! That Mathematical formula is based on all the reps you do above about 40-50% of 1RM…'
All you need is to train heavy and stay tight; failure is unnecessary and counterproductive. And if you disdainfully blow this bit of advice off as ‘sissy’, do it in 500-pound bencher Jack Reape’s face. It will be amusing to watch you fly.
Add weight when you can, without training on the nerve. Practice each exercise every three to five days. How you split them up is up to you. If you are short on time follow the split by Igor Sukhotsky, M.S. Comrade Sukhotsky, a Russian nationally ranked weightlifter turned full contact karate fighter, squats, bench presses, deadlifts, and practices good mornings and full contact twists three times in two weeks. Monday-Friday-next week’s Wednesday.
Or you could train three times a week and alternate two workouts. To use Sukhotsky’s workout as an example, do squats, good mornings, and full contact twists on Monday. Bench and pull on Wednesday. On Friday do your SQ & Co. again.
For more information on this topic order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at 5:00 AM | Comments (0)