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May 23, 2005
To gain strength, quit bodybuilding!
Question: Lifting weights makes me sore and tired and my demanding sport practices are suffering. I am committed to excelling at my sport and I am contemplating quitting bodybuilding. Give me a reason not to.
Quit bodybuilding; start strength training. Traditional blitzing and blasting does not meet your needs. As I have explained in Power to the People!, a comrade who has to balance the iron with a sport should drastically cut back on his or her sets, reps, and exercises, increase the weight, and never train ‘on the nerve’ or close to failure. This type of training will make you very strong. And you will not be exhausted; just the other way around, it has been documented to have a tonic effect on your nervous system.
This is not a new idea. Charles MacMahon wrote in his 1925 The Royal Road to Health and Strength, ”Instead of spending more time as I went along I spent less, because the more concentrated the exercise, the fewer times you have to repeat it.
“Once I was in the performer’s tent of a big circus, chatting with a very famous trapeze performer. Just before it was time for him to do his act, he walked over to a nearby ring, hooked his first and second fingers to his right hand around it, and chinned himself twice with his right arm. Then he did the same with his left arm. He did this to “warm up” for his performance, and he told me that it was all the exercise he took outside his performance; except when he had to practice for a new stunt. Everybody knows that it takes more strength to chin once with one arm that it does to chin twenty-five times with two arms. The funny thing is that it causes far less fatigue. The performer knew that, and that is why he was so economical of his time and energy.”
For more information on this topic order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at May 23, 2005 5:45 AM