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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’.
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Posted by james at March 21, 2005 4:10 AM