The Best Body Building Techniques...exercises and supplements. Learn from my 27 years body building as a “hard gainer”. I'll show you the goods and save you years, or decades of frustration. Over the years, as a hard gainer (someone who finds it hard to put on muscle mass) I found and was given all sorts of advice.After years of trial and error I found what worked best for me, and will probably work even better for you:-) With all the body building supplements,advice from the big guys at the gym, different advice from the “old timers” at the same place and the latest books, magazines or infomercials telling you something else, it hard to know solid advice from fads. I spent years reading a ton from whatever sources I could find, most promised to be the next big thing, and most worked equally well to the last big thing:-? I even bought Arnold Schwarzenegger's body building Encyclopedia, which is probably the single most complete reference on the subject in one place. I learned a lot, and a lot was repeated in most sources. None turned out to be “the answer”. Then I decided to try yet another system, it was some software I ordered on the net...It WAS the big thing!!! It taught me that most body builders work out WAY too much, and rest WAY TO LITTLE. Using low repetitions, and HIGH intensity I saw strength gains of 20 lbs PER workout for my first few workouts, then it slowed. BUT, I was getting and still get regular increases in strength about 7 years later!! Here's the secret, INTENSITY IS KING, nothing else, NO other training variable has more influence on strength and muscle gains than lifting as close to your limit as you can within your own safe limits. PERIOD. It's interesting that the SAME holds true for top quality cardiovascular exercise AND body building. I'll return to that later on another page under Bodybuilding and / or the Training section. If intensity is King then recovery is Queen, second only in power to the King. Maximizing intensity REQUIRES proper recovery. Years ago I was told that “as a hard gainer, you have to do MORE training to make gains, than easy gainers”. I got to the point where I was training six days a week two and a half hours a day! The effect was... I spent a bunch more time in the gym, not getting any bigger or stronger. Train as hard as you can (think like someone put a gun to your head and said “do another rep, or I pull the trigger”) you're done the set when you CAN'T do another. If you can do another, then next workout add weight. To pull off your genuine maximum effort, you must recover for longer than most systems recommend. I realize there will be experienced body builders who will think this is nonsense, or old news, just as I did for about 20 years of body building BEFORE trying it. TRY IT, then if you don't get the best results you've probably ever had, please contact me and I'll help you trouble shoot why you didn't. Here's a simple model to make this idea even easier to remember. Think of a seesaw in a playground. If one side goes up the other side goes down, same thing. In this case as your training intensity goes up your training frequency must go down. Take the same seesaw further, if your repetitions go up, your intensity or load must go down. I know it's obvious, yet so many body builders do hundreds of reps in a single workout:-? If you want to be big, and strong (within your genetic limits) you have to lift BIG and strong. Lets look at a popular and excellent example. The legs of a sprinter BIG and strong. A sprinter puts their maximum effort into running for about 8 or so SECONDS in a 100 meter sprint. A marathoner exerts very minimal effort (compared to their maximum strength) for 2, 3 or more hours so they can finish the race. Now look at the marathoner's legs, now the sprinter's. Which look more like a body builder's legs? Which do you want? Silly question right, if you're doing 12, 16, or 20 sets of 10 to 15 reps ask yourself “is this more like a marathon or a sprint?”. I used to do 16 to 20 sets for each muscle group six days a week, lots of gym time, few results. Now back to our see saw: higher intensity / lower setshigher intensity / lower repetitionshigher intensity / lower training frequencyhigher intensity / lower gym time If you did nothing else but: a) raised your intensityb) lowered your sets and repsc) put absolute maximum effort into your workoutd) and rested more... You'll make more progress than you ever have in the next few months, probably by the next workout once you find your ideal recovery time. How long is my recovery time... 7 DAYS, I lift every 8th day, yours will be your own. How many sets do I do? ONE. How many reps? I suggest YOU start with 12. There it is, the single best piece of bodybuilding knowledge I can give you, but many details on how to make it happen, and a whole lot more, will follow in this section and others. Oh, I almost forgot;-) supplements, most don't work or have a minimal effect while costing a fortune. The main benefit of supplements is convenience, NOT superior results. I regularly use whey protein, a multivitamin, and EFA (essential fatty acid) caps, because I don't like fish much. If your diet is solid it's unlikely you need ANY supplements. Check my diet section for details on what I mean by a solid diet. I'll be going into depth about supplements and doing some reviews in the supplements section of this site...soon as I get that far;-)
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