HOW TO TRAIN FOR GREAT GAINS
by Brooks D. Kubik
Gaining strength, power and muscular bodyweight is EASY if you know how to do it. Forget about the whiners and complainers who tell you it can’t be done. It can! MANY men have used weights to pack on 20, 30, 40 or more pounds of rock hard, power-packed muscle. And I'm talking about guys who trained in the old days- BEFORE steroids hit the scene—so don’t automatically dismiss my words by saying: “Yeah, but they all used roids.”
For decades, Strength & Health ran a regular column featuring success stories from readers. Letter after letter came in to the office at 51 N. Broad Street—letters from around the globe--letters from men and boys who trained with the most basic of equipment, often by themselves, usually in a garage, cellar or attic. Most of them had only a barbell. The lucky ones also had a set of squat stands. Yet, all of these guys reported TREMENDOUS gains. Reports of 20 to 30 pound gains in a three month period were common. So many guys reported such EXCELLENT progress that Bob Hoffman started to say that the AVERAGE results that any student should expect from a weight training program was a gain of one pound of solid muscle per week during a twelve week program of intensive training. That’s twelve pounds of muscle in three short months. And remember, those are AVERAGE gains. Some men did far better.
Moreover, these men built muscles that not only LOOKED strong, but really WERE strong! The same guys who added 20 or 30 pounds of bodyweight doubled or even tripled their strength on all of the basic lifts. They weren’t just adding useless, pumped up, inflated tissue. They were building MUSCLE.
If so many guys could build muscle and strength back in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s with nothing but a barbell and a set of squat stands, then there is no reason why YOU can’t do the same. All it takes is the right kind of program—and GALLONS of sweat.
The best programs for gaining strength, power and muscular bodyweight involve the basic, heavy duty exercises: squats, standing presses with barbells or dumbbells, standing presses behind neck,
power cleans, power pulls, power snatches, push presses and jerks, deadlifts, shrugs, barbell bent-over rowing, and barbell or dumbbell bench presses. The exercises the wimps never do, the “authorities״ never recommend and The Exercise Police universally condemn.
You will note that the majority of these exercises require you to stand on your feet, that all of the exercises involve conventional equipment, and that most of the exercises can be done with nothing
but a barbell. You also will note that these exercises are ones where you can pile on the plates. They are the BIG movements. And make no mistake about it: these are the exercises that force the body to
grow stronger and more muscular.
Forget about the leg extensions, leg curls, concentration curls, triceps pumpers, flies, pec dec movements, lunges, lateral raises and cable cross-overs the rest of the world likes to do. The kindergarten exercises don't build muscle. It takes hard work on heavy, basic, compound exercises to build muscular size and strength. If anyone ever tries to tell you or sell you something different, drop the heaviest dumbbell you can find directly on his head, check to make sure you still have your wallet and run like hell.
In addition to the basics, include some dinosaur style grip work, neck work with a headstrap, heavy ab work (NOT crunches!), thick bar training, power rack partials and “finishers” (the farmer’s walk, the sandbag carry, pushing a car around the block, dragging a weighted sled, sprinting up hills, etc.). Lift heavy sandbags, rocks, logs or barrels.
You can add some extra arm work if you want, but don’t overdo it. Too many guys spend too much time training the arms when what they should be doing is training the legs, hips, lower back and shoulders. Bob Hoffman always used to say, “First do what you SHOULD do, then do what you WANT TO.” Arm work is NOT necessary for a guy who is trying to gain 20 to 40 pounds of muscular bodyweight and double or triple his overall power. Squats, pulls and presses are what you need, not curls and triceps work. The biceps will do just fine on nothing but heavy pulling movements (especially the barbell bent-over row), and the triceps will grow by leaps and bounds as a result of your overhead lifting and bench presses.
Train two to four days per week. Forget about training cycles, periodization, light days or easy sessions. Bust your butt every time you train. Too many guys are wedded to cycling programs that allow them to loaf for half of their training time in any given year. You’re never going to get anywhere in the Iron Game unless you are willing to train VERY HARD on a regular and consistent basis.
I know that many self-proclaimed experts advocate “intensity cycling” to avoid over-training, burnout, staleness, or injuries. Maybe some men need to train in so conservative a fashion, but I doubt if most guys do. Remember, we’re not talking about daily workouts or long training sessions. If two or three hard workouts of about 60 minutes each are too much for you to handle in one week, then there’s a problem, and it’s not with your exercise schedule, it’s with your head. Frankly, most guys who worry about “over-training” are simply offering an excuse so they either don’t have to train at all or don’t have to train as hard as they otherwise would. Remember, most guys who lilt weights don’t really enjoy training. They only do it because they like the end result (i.e., they want to look better). Guys like this will grab onto any excuse possible to avoid having to train or to permit them to coast through their workouts.
Training cycles came into vogue about the same time that anabolic steroids hit the big-time in the United States. Steroids tie directly into a “cycling” approach. In fact, that’s what the druggers call it: “cycling.” When you use drugs, you “go on a cycle.” When you go off the drugs, you “get off the cycle” or are “in-between cycles.” A drug based approaeh-and that’s exactly what cycling is—has no relevance to a drug free lifter.
Of course, you won’t be able to match or exceed your all time best every time you train. That’s fine. Just train hard every time you train and give it everything you have on every given day. You’ll do fine.
Every once in awhile, something will happen that will cause you to miss a session or two—family or work responsibilities, travel, a vacation, or what have you. That’s OK. Take a couple of days or even a whole week off, then get back to the gym, and ease into things with one or two medium heavy sessions, then get back on track and go for broke. This approach works far better than the complicated cycling programs dreamed up by armchair crowd.
So let’s get down to brass tacks. “Give me the program,” you say.
No sweat! Here’s an example of a typical training program that will help you add many, many pounds of muscular bodyweight like simultaneously increasing your total body power enormously.
Train three days per week on alternate days: M/W/F or T/Th/F. If this is too much for you, train twice per week. If you have extra energy, train every other day. Don't get locked into someone else’s idea of “the best” training frequency. Find what works for you and stick to it. To hell with the “experts” who sit in the Ivory Towers of Weenie-dom and pronounce “Doom!” on anyone who trains more often than they permit. Remember, there’s far too many “experts” and “authorities” out there with arms the size of unusually small tooth-picks.
Back to the program: On Day One, do some light calisthenics to loosen up a little, then skip rope for two sets of 100 reps. After that, grab a light barbell and do one set of 8 or 10 reps in the power snatch
or the clean and press. This is purely a warmup, so keep the bar light.
For your first real exercise, do squats. Use the 5x5 system: two progressively heavier warmup sets followed by three sets with your top weight. Train at a moderate pace. Don’t rush from set to set. Try resting two to three minutes between sets. If you need a longer rest when you are handling your top weight, that’s fine.
Always try to add weight to the bar. When you can get five reps on each of the heavy sets, it’s time to throw a 5 or 10 pound plate onto each side of the bar. Ultimately, you should work up to around 400 pounds or more for your heavy sets~and that’s with NO knee wraps and NO squat suit.
Learn to love the squat. Make it your FAVORITE exercise. Get to be really good at it. And use all the weight you can handle. To TRANSFORM your body, you need to use something like 200 pounds or more over your bodyweight in the squat. A lighter poundage just won’t cut it. Plenty of guys get away from the glossy mags and the pumper/toner advice and start training on basic, old fashioned programs—which is GREAT -- but get ZIPPO in the way of results, and then decide that weight training doesn’t really work, that only “easy gainers” can build strength and muscles, or that you have to live on roids to be big and strong. When you talk to them, however, it all boils down to one thing: they squat with around 150 pounds.
Men, weight training WORKS! But it ONLY works if YOU work. To get big and strong you MUST work hard. Hard training is the sine qua non to muscle building success. Using 150 pounds in the
squat doesn’t amount to hard training. I don’t care if it feels heavy, I don’t care if it makes you sweat, I don’t care if it’s twice what anyone else you know can handle. It is NOT heavy enough to transform you. To get REAL results, you need to push those poundages up, up and UP! Never settle for less than 400 pounds—for reps. If you do, you are GIVING UP before you get started.
Of course, you won’t get there overnight. For many men, it takes YEARS of effort. That’s fine. Nothing worthwhile ever happens overnight. A powerful, thickly muscled physique is the result of YEARS of effort. If you think about it, who would want it any other way? What’s the point of building super strength if it happens in a matter of months or weeks?
And yes, you will have to work HARD to get those squats up to the 400 pound mark. In fact, you will have to work VERY hard to get there. But you’re a dinosaur. You wouldn’t expeet anything less, would you?
Become fanatical about the squat. Learn to love the exercise. Get psyched when you squat. Attack the bar. Make it mean something when you squat. The squat is the single best exercise there is. It will
do more for you than any other movement. The squat alone will build supermen. Make up your mind—NOW!!!—to get very, very good at squatting.
After the squats, do heavy power pulls from just above the knees to just above the belt. Position the bar in the rack on pins or outside the rack on sturdy boxes. (Make boxes from heavy lumber.) Use a
snatch width grip. Concentrate on an EXPLOSIVE pull! Shrug HARD, HIGH and FAST to elevate the weight. Don’t make it an arm exercise -- pull with the traps. This is a tremendous way to learn what Olympic lifters call “the second pull.” It’s also a GREAT way to pack size and power into the upper back. A couple of months of hard work on this and similar pulling movements will literally TRANSFORM your upper body.
On the pulls, do doubles or singles. If you do doubles, do the second rep from the hang. In other words, lower the bar almost back to the blocks or pins and then RIP it up as hard and fast as possible.
Charles Smith publicized this movement extensively in MUSCLE POWER in the 1950’s. Smith believed that the various forms of heavy pulls were among the best strength and power developers a man could practice. And he was right. Boy, was he right!
Remember, though, you have to train HEAVY. Light poundages won’t do the trick. Plan on working up to weights in the 300 to 400 pound range. (A simple rule of thumb is to use TEN TIMES the weight that Johnny Buffbody handles on any of his exercises.)
After the heavy pulls, do standing dumbbell presses. Five sets of five reps. Two progressively heavier warmup sets followed by three sets with your top weight. Do the presses in either simultaneous or
alternate fashion, whichever you prefer.
The standing dumbbell press is a TERRIFIC exercise. The old-timers used to specialize on this movement, and some of them could handle huge poundages. In one of the all-time GREAT training books, Development of Strength, Harry Paschall noted:
In the same book, Paschall later noted: “The lifting of two heavy dumbbells builds a ruggedness...you can achieve in no other way.” That’s a pretty strong endorsement of heavy dumbbell pressing! (It’s also an endorsement with which I whole-heartedly agree.)
Again, though, you need to go heavy or you’ll miss the entire value of the exercise. Paschall stated: "If you desire strength you must be prepared to sweat and struggle with really HEAVY weights.
You cannot get strong with a pair of ten pound dumbbells."
According to Paschall, “[w]hen you can do this movement with a pair of 75 lb. bells, you are getting strong. A pair of 100 lb. bells means super-strength-and 125 puts you up with the world champions. ”
Bob Hoffman offered a similar standard in his 1939 book, WEIGHT LIFTING. Hoffman thought that a top notch 181 pound lifter should be able to handle a pair of 115 pound bells in the alternate press for ten reps—that is, five reps per arm. For a man over the 181 pound limit, a top performance dictated the use of 125 pound bells.
After the dumbbell presses, do some neck work with a headstrap. Try the headstrap sold by IronMind Enterprises; it’s a dandy-the best of its kind ever manufactured, bar none, and believe me, this ex-wrestler has done plenty of serious neck training in his life. Do three sets of five to 25 reps in the backward extension (weights hanging in front of the body).
A strong neck is critical to total body strength. Far too many men completely ignore neck training. Don’t let this happen to you. Train your neck hard and heavy. Remember, one of the goals of serious strength training is balanced development, and you can’t be balanced if you fail to train your neck.
Follow the neck work with the farmer’s walk. Use HEAVY dumbbells for this one. Shoot for two to four “sets” of 100 to 300 feet. Don’t use light bells and go for distance. Use really heavy weights and travel over a shorter course.
When you finish the farmer’s walk, you’ll be dead. Before hitting the shower, however, do one set of 15 to 25 reps in the lying leg raise, with extra weight strapped onto your feet. This exercise will
build the abdominals like nothing the bunny blasters ever imagined.
I like to do leg raises with a 35 pound plate. My plate for this exercise has a long length of rope looped repeatedly through the center hole, then tied off to form a circle of rope that both feet can fit into, with the plate pulled tightly against my shoes. This is perhaps the world’s most productive and inexpensive ab blaster. Just be sure you use a STRONG rope and that you loop it through the hole a number of times. And tie it off securely. Remember, the dam thing is going to be over your chest and face at the end of each rep, so make sure your set-up is totally secure.
For the second training session of the week, start the day with the same sort of light warmup you used on day one. Then do some power pulls from the floor to chest height. Use a clean width grip for these. Do singles or doubles, and if you do doubles, do the second rep from the hang. Try something like three to five progressively heavier sets, followed by three to five sets with your top weight. If you are really tough, do 3x5,3x3,3x2 and 3 x 1-a pulling schedule recommended by no less than the immortal Norb Schemansky. (Yeah, I know, Schemansky never got a Ph.D. and never claimed to be an “expert,” but he was one STRONG lifter. Maybe we need to spend more time listening to men like Schemansky than arm-chair theorizers who can’t squat bodyweight and couldn’t snatch an empty tissue paper tube.)
Use lots of speed and lots of “snap" when you do these. As the bar comes up above the knees, make the “second pull” an EXPLOSION of coordinated power. Power pulls are a vitally important of a strength and power program. Work them HARD!
You may be wondering what we’re going to do for the lats. Well, you just did your lat work for the day. Yep, that’s right. We’re going to hit those power pulls so hard that they constitute our entire back program. And if you do them right, they will!
Most guys think “lats” when they think about back training. Where strength is the goal, this is totally wrong. The most important muscles in the back for a STRENGTH athlete—as opposed to a buff-body, beach boy—are the spinal erectors: those twin cables of steel hard muscle that bulge like twin boa constrictors on the lower back of any POWER ATHLETE.
The next most important part of the back is the traps. In any test of total body strength, the traps are tremendously important. The lats don't even begin to compare to the traps when it comes to
demonstrations of strength and power.
This is not to say that you should neglect your lats. What it does means is that you should devote the lion’s share of your effort to training the lower back and the traps. And if the exercises you do for THOSE muscles also hit the lats, extra lat work is almost unnecessary. Dr. Ken has often written about doing heavy, high rep stiff legged deadlifts on a block, and how the exercise murdered his lats, In one article, he said the stiff legged deadlift on a block was the best lat exercise he ever used. Similarly, Olympic lifters around the world have for decades built the entire back, including the lats, with nothing beyond their various pulling exercises.
After the power pulls, do standing presses or push presses from the rack. Try 2x5, 2x3,2x2 and 2 x 1. If you have loads of energy, try 3 x 5, 3 x 3, 3 x 2 and 3x1. Don’t worry about "over-training". The strongest men in the world did LOTS of heavy overhead presses three, four or even five times a week back in the 40’s and 50’s, and THEY didn’t over-train.
In strength training, you need to use HEAVY weights. That means you do LOW reps. When you do LOW reps, you can do MORE SETS without over-training. Five sets of three reps in the press will
build plenty of strength and power for almost anyone who tries it. And it will NOT cause the lifter to over-train.
After the presses, go outside and walk around the block with a heavy sandbag. Bear hug the thing and carry it as far as possible. When it hits the ground (which may well be when YOU hit the ground!), catch your breath, then pick the monster up and carry it some more. I expect you to go through ten to twenty minutes of sheer agony, with PLENTY of puffing and panting—and lots of cursing the editor, if you have the breath to do it.
The sandbag carry is a tremendous strength builder, but above all else, it is a superb conditioner. Remember, we are trying to develop functional strength. Few things in life are more functional than lifting and carrying a heavy object. It’s a basic movement pattern for the human body—but one that conventional training totally neglects.
After the sandbag carry, lie on the ground for awhile. When you can move, take a shower. You're done for the day.
For the third training day of the week, use the same sort of warmup as on days one and two.
For your first heavy exercise on day three, do squats. Five to seven sets of two to three reps. Start light and add weight on each set, finishing with your top set for the day. Go back and read everything
I said about the squat on day one of the program - it all applies to this session as well.
After the squats, do snatch grip power pulls to chest height. Five to seven sets of two reps. Do the first rep from the floor and the second rep from the hang. Again, go back and read what I said about
the pulling movements on days one and two - it all applies to this training day as well.
Alternatively, do five sets of five reps in the barbell row.
Follow the snatch grip pulls with the dumbbell clean and press. Do five sets of five reps. Two progressively heavier warmup sets and three sets with all the weight you can handle. Do the first clean in each set from the floor; after that, clean from the hang. The dumbbell clcan and press is a killer. It’s a combination exercise with heavy, hard to control dumbbells, and it will call on every ounce of strength and every bit of will-power that you possess to complete all five reps in all five sets. But it’s a tremendous strength builder. Sig Klein and Clyde Emrich are two examples of Iron Game Legends who did lots of work on this exercise.
After the dumbbell clean and press do two or three sets with the headstrap—same as on day one—and one or two sets of bent-legged situps or leg raises. Forget about “crunches” if you are training for strength. The crunch is a boobybuildcr movement. Strength athletes do simps and leg raises.
Finish the day with one set per side in the HEAVY side-bend. Go for something like ten to twenty reps per side. Work hard, and use a HEAVY weight. John Grimek used to do side bends with something like 250 pounds. Don’t be content with anything less than 100 pounds, and even that is LOW for a serious strength trainer. Push the poundage UP, UP and UP in this one.
There you have it. The nuts and bolts of a serious, low tech, high effort, sweat based training program that will build many, many pounds of steel hard, super powerful muscle. Yeah, I KNOW it's old-
fashioned, but so what? It WORKS!!!
by Brooks D. Kubik
Gaining strength, power and muscular bodyweight is EASY if you know how to do it. Forget about the whiners and complainers who tell you it can’t be done. It can! MANY men have used weights to pack on 20, 30, 40 or more pounds of rock hard, power-packed muscle. And I'm talking about guys who trained in the old days- BEFORE steroids hit the scene—so don’t automatically dismiss my words by saying: “Yeah, but they all used roids.”
For decades, Strength & Health ran a regular column featuring success stories from readers. Letter after letter came in to the office at 51 N. Broad Street—letters from around the globe--letters from men and boys who trained with the most basic of equipment, often by themselves, usually in a garage, cellar or attic. Most of them had only a barbell. The lucky ones also had a set of squat stands. Yet, all of these guys reported TREMENDOUS gains. Reports of 20 to 30 pound gains in a three month period were common. So many guys reported such EXCELLENT progress that Bob Hoffman started to say that the AVERAGE results that any student should expect from a weight training program was a gain of one pound of solid muscle per week during a twelve week program of intensive training. That’s twelve pounds of muscle in three short months. And remember, those are AVERAGE gains. Some men did far better.
Moreover, these men built muscles that not only LOOKED strong, but really WERE strong! The same guys who added 20 or 30 pounds of bodyweight doubled or even tripled their strength on all of the basic lifts. They weren’t just adding useless, pumped up, inflated tissue. They were building MUSCLE.
If so many guys could build muscle and strength back in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s with nothing but a barbell and a set of squat stands, then there is no reason why YOU can’t do the same. All it takes is the right kind of program—and GALLONS of sweat.
Program Basics
The best programs for gaining strength, power and muscular bodyweight involve the basic, heavy duty exercises: squats, standing presses with barbells or dumbbells, standing presses behind neck,
power cleans, power pulls, power snatches, push presses and jerks, deadlifts, shrugs, barbell bent-over rowing, and barbell or dumbbell bench presses. The exercises the wimps never do, the “authorities״ never recommend and The Exercise Police universally condemn.
You will note that the majority of these exercises require you to stand on your feet, that all of the exercises involve conventional equipment, and that most of the exercises can be done with nothing
but a barbell. You also will note that these exercises are ones where you can pile on the plates. They are the BIG movements. And make no mistake about it: these are the exercises that force the body to
grow stronger and more muscular.
Forget about the leg extensions, leg curls, concentration curls, triceps pumpers, flies, pec dec movements, lunges, lateral raises and cable cross-overs the rest of the world likes to do. The kindergarten exercises don't build muscle. It takes hard work on heavy, basic, compound exercises to build muscular size and strength. If anyone ever tries to tell you or sell you something different, drop the heaviest dumbbell you can find directly on his head, check to make sure you still have your wallet and run like hell.
In addition to the basics, include some dinosaur style grip work, neck work with a headstrap, heavy ab work (NOT crunches!), thick bar training, power rack partials and “finishers” (the farmer’s walk, the sandbag carry, pushing a car around the block, dragging a weighted sled, sprinting up hills, etc.). Lift heavy sandbags, rocks, logs or barrels.
You can add some extra arm work if you want, but don’t overdo it. Too many guys spend too much time training the arms when what they should be doing is training the legs, hips, lower back and shoulders. Bob Hoffman always used to say, “First do what you SHOULD do, then do what you WANT TO.” Arm work is NOT necessary for a guy who is trying to gain 20 to 40 pounds of muscular bodyweight and double or triple his overall power. Squats, pulls and presses are what you need, not curls and triceps work. The biceps will do just fine on nothing but heavy pulling movements (especially the barbell bent-over row), and the triceps will grow by leaps and bounds as a result of your overhead lifting and bench presses.
Train two to four days per week. Forget about training cycles, periodization, light days or easy sessions. Bust your butt every time you train. Too many guys are wedded to cycling programs that allow them to loaf for half of their training time in any given year. You’re never going to get anywhere in the Iron Game unless you are willing to train VERY HARD on a regular and consistent basis.
I know that many self-proclaimed experts advocate “intensity cycling” to avoid over-training, burnout, staleness, or injuries. Maybe some men need to train in so conservative a fashion, but I doubt if most guys do. Remember, we’re not talking about daily workouts or long training sessions. If two or three hard workouts of about 60 minutes each are too much for you to handle in one week, then there’s a problem, and it’s not with your exercise schedule, it’s with your head. Frankly, most guys who worry about “over-training” are simply offering an excuse so they either don’t have to train at all or don’t have to train as hard as they otherwise would. Remember, most guys who lilt weights don’t really enjoy training. They only do it because they like the end result (i.e., they want to look better). Guys like this will grab onto any excuse possible to avoid having to train or to permit them to coast through their workouts.
Training cycles came into vogue about the same time that anabolic steroids hit the big-time in the United States. Steroids tie directly into a “cycling” approach. In fact, that’s what the druggers call it: “cycling.” When you use drugs, you “go on a cycle.” When you go off the drugs, you “get off the cycle” or are “in-between cycles.” A drug based approaeh-and that’s exactly what cycling is—has no relevance to a drug free lifter.
Of course, you won’t be able to match or exceed your all time best every time you train. That’s fine. Just train hard every time you train and give it everything you have on every given day. You’ll do fine.
Every once in awhile, something will happen that will cause you to miss a session or two—family or work responsibilities, travel, a vacation, or what have you. That’s OK. Take a couple of days or even a whole week off, then get back to the gym, and ease into things with one or two medium heavy sessions, then get back on track and go for broke. This approach works far better than the complicated cycling programs dreamed up by armchair crowd.
So let’s get down to brass tacks. “Give me the program,” you say.
No sweat! Here’s an example of a typical training program that will help you add many, many pounds of muscular bodyweight like simultaneously increasing your total body power enormously.
Train three days per week on alternate days: M/W/F or T/Th/F. If this is too much for you, train twice per week. If you have extra energy, train every other day. Don't get locked into someone else’s idea of “the best” training frequency. Find what works for you and stick to it. To hell with the “experts” who sit in the Ivory Towers of Weenie-dom and pronounce “Doom!” on anyone who trains more often than they permit. Remember, there’s far too many “experts” and “authorities” out there with arms the size of unusually small tooth-picks.
Session No. 1
Back to the program: On Day One, do some light calisthenics to loosen up a little, then skip rope for two sets of 100 reps. After that, grab a light barbell and do one set of 8 or 10 reps in the power snatch
or the clean and press. This is purely a warmup, so keep the bar light.
For your first real exercise, do squats. Use the 5x5 system: two progressively heavier warmup sets followed by three sets with your top weight. Train at a moderate pace. Don’t rush from set to set. Try resting two to three minutes between sets. If you need a longer rest when you are handling your top weight, that’s fine.
Always try to add weight to the bar. When you can get five reps on each of the heavy sets, it’s time to throw a 5 or 10 pound plate onto each side of the bar. Ultimately, you should work up to around 400 pounds or more for your heavy sets~and that’s with NO knee wraps and NO squat suit.
Learn to love the squat. Make it your FAVORITE exercise. Get to be really good at it. And use all the weight you can handle. To TRANSFORM your body, you need to use something like 200 pounds or more over your bodyweight in the squat. A lighter poundage just won’t cut it. Plenty of guys get away from the glossy mags and the pumper/toner advice and start training on basic, old fashioned programs—which is GREAT -- but get ZIPPO in the way of results, and then decide that weight training doesn’t really work, that only “easy gainers” can build strength and muscles, or that you have to live on roids to be big and strong. When you talk to them, however, it all boils down to one thing: they squat with around 150 pounds.
Men, weight training WORKS! But it ONLY works if YOU work. To get big and strong you MUST work hard. Hard training is the sine qua non to muscle building success. Using 150 pounds in the
squat doesn’t amount to hard training. I don’t care if it feels heavy, I don’t care if it makes you sweat, I don’t care if it’s twice what anyone else you know can handle. It is NOT heavy enough to transform you. To get REAL results, you need to push those poundages up, up and UP! Never settle for less than 400 pounds—for reps. If you do, you are GIVING UP before you get started.
Of course, you won’t get there overnight. For many men, it takes YEARS of effort. That’s fine. Nothing worthwhile ever happens overnight. A powerful, thickly muscled physique is the result of YEARS of effort. If you think about it, who would want it any other way? What’s the point of building super strength if it happens in a matter of months or weeks?
And yes, you will have to work HARD to get those squats up to the 400 pound mark. In fact, you will have to work VERY hard to get there. But you’re a dinosaur. You wouldn’t expeet anything less, would you?
Become fanatical about the squat. Learn to love the exercise. Get psyched when you squat. Attack the bar. Make it mean something when you squat. The squat is the single best exercise there is. It will
do more for you than any other movement. The squat alone will build supermen. Make up your mind—NOW!!!—to get very, very good at squatting.
After the squats, do heavy power pulls from just above the knees to just above the belt. Position the bar in the rack on pins or outside the rack on sturdy boxes. (Make boxes from heavy lumber.) Use a
snatch width grip. Concentrate on an EXPLOSIVE pull! Shrug HARD, HIGH and FAST to elevate the weight. Don’t make it an arm exercise -- pull with the traps. This is a tremendous way to learn what Olympic lifters call “the second pull.” It’s also a GREAT way to pack size and power into the upper back. A couple of months of hard work on this and similar pulling movements will literally TRANSFORM your upper body.
On the pulls, do doubles or singles. If you do doubles, do the second rep from the hang. In other words, lower the bar almost back to the blocks or pins and then RIP it up as hard and fast as possible.
Charles Smith publicized this movement extensively in MUSCLE POWER in the 1950’s. Smith believed that the various forms of heavy pulls were among the best strength and power developers a man could practice. And he was right. Boy, was he right!
Remember, though, you have to train HEAVY. Light poundages won’t do the trick. Plan on working up to weights in the 300 to 400 pound range. (A simple rule of thumb is to use TEN TIMES the weight that Johnny Buffbody handles on any of his exercises.)
After the heavy pulls, do standing dumbbell presses. Five sets of five reps. Two progressively heavier warmup sets followed by three sets with your top weight. Do the presses in either simultaneous or
alternate fashion, whichever you prefer.
The standing dumbbell press is a TERRIFIC exercise. The old-timers used to specialize on this movement, and some of them could handle huge poundages. In one of the all-time GREAT training books, Development of Strength, Harry Paschall noted:
Stan Stanczyk and Norbert Schemansky are great devotees of dumbbell presses and as a coasequence both have gained about 50 lb on their press during the past three years....Both of these men have been able to handle 125 lb bells, and they are now pressing 285 to 290 pounds. The leaf they have torn from the training book of the old- time Viennese strongmen might be perused with interest by other ambitious lifters and bodybuilders alike.
In the same book, Paschall later noted: “The lifting of two heavy dumbbells builds a ruggedness...you can achieve in no other way.” That’s a pretty strong endorsement of heavy dumbbell pressing! (It’s also an endorsement with which I whole-heartedly agree.)
Again, though, you need to go heavy or you’ll miss the entire value of the exercise. Paschall stated: "If you desire strength you must be prepared to sweat and struggle with really HEAVY weights.
You cannot get strong with a pair of ten pound dumbbells."
According to Paschall, “[w]hen you can do this movement with a pair of 75 lb. bells, you are getting strong. A pair of 100 lb. bells means super-strength-and 125 puts you up with the world champions. ”
Bob Hoffman offered a similar standard in his 1939 book, WEIGHT LIFTING. Hoffman thought that a top notch 181 pound lifter should be able to handle a pair of 115 pound bells in the alternate press for ten reps—that is, five reps per arm. For a man over the 181 pound limit, a top performance dictated the use of 125 pound bells.
After the dumbbell presses, do some neck work with a headstrap. Try the headstrap sold by IronMind Enterprises; it’s a dandy-the best of its kind ever manufactured, bar none, and believe me, this ex-wrestler has done plenty of serious neck training in his life. Do three sets of five to 25 reps in the backward extension (weights hanging in front of the body).
A strong neck is critical to total body strength. Far too many men completely ignore neck training. Don’t let this happen to you. Train your neck hard and heavy. Remember, one of the goals of serious strength training is balanced development, and you can’t be balanced if you fail to train your neck.
Follow the neck work with the farmer’s walk. Use HEAVY dumbbells for this one. Shoot for two to four “sets” of 100 to 300 feet. Don’t use light bells and go for distance. Use really heavy weights and travel over a shorter course.
When you finish the farmer’s walk, you’ll be dead. Before hitting the shower, however, do one set of 15 to 25 reps in the lying leg raise, with extra weight strapped onto your feet. This exercise will
build the abdominals like nothing the bunny blasters ever imagined.
I like to do leg raises with a 35 pound plate. My plate for this exercise has a long length of rope looped repeatedly through the center hole, then tied off to form a circle of rope that both feet can fit into, with the plate pulled tightly against my shoes. This is perhaps the world’s most productive and inexpensive ab blaster. Just be sure you use a STRONG rope and that you loop it through the hole a number of times. And tie it off securely. Remember, the dam thing is going to be over your chest and face at the end of each rep, so make sure your set-up is totally secure.
Session No. 2
For the second training session of the week, start the day with the same sort of light warmup you used on day one. Then do some power pulls from the floor to chest height. Use a clean width grip for these. Do singles or doubles, and if you do doubles, do the second rep from the hang. Try something like three to five progressively heavier sets, followed by three to five sets with your top weight. If you are really tough, do 3x5,3x3,3x2 and 3 x 1-a pulling schedule recommended by no less than the immortal Norb Schemansky. (Yeah, I know, Schemansky never got a Ph.D. and never claimed to be an “expert,” but he was one STRONG lifter. Maybe we need to spend more time listening to men like Schemansky than arm-chair theorizers who can’t squat bodyweight and couldn’t snatch an empty tissue paper tube.)
Use lots of speed and lots of “snap" when you do these. As the bar comes up above the knees, make the “second pull” an EXPLOSION of coordinated power. Power pulls are a vitally important of a strength and power program. Work them HARD!
You may be wondering what we’re going to do for the lats. Well, you just did your lat work for the day. Yep, that’s right. We’re going to hit those power pulls so hard that they constitute our entire back program. And if you do them right, they will!
Most guys think “lats” when they think about back training. Where strength is the goal, this is totally wrong. The most important muscles in the back for a STRENGTH athlete—as opposed to a buff-body, beach boy—are the spinal erectors: those twin cables of steel hard muscle that bulge like twin boa constrictors on the lower back of any POWER ATHLETE.
The next most important part of the back is the traps. In any test of total body strength, the traps are tremendously important. The lats don't even begin to compare to the traps when it comes to
demonstrations of strength and power.
This is not to say that you should neglect your lats. What it does means is that you should devote the lion’s share of your effort to training the lower back and the traps. And if the exercises you do for THOSE muscles also hit the lats, extra lat work is almost unnecessary. Dr. Ken has often written about doing heavy, high rep stiff legged deadlifts on a block, and how the exercise murdered his lats, In one article, he said the stiff legged deadlift on a block was the best lat exercise he ever used. Similarly, Olympic lifters around the world have for decades built the entire back, including the lats, with nothing beyond their various pulling exercises.
After the power pulls, do standing presses or push presses from the rack. Try 2x5, 2x3,2x2 and 2 x 1. If you have loads of energy, try 3 x 5, 3 x 3, 3 x 2 and 3x1. Don’t worry about "over-training". The strongest men in the world did LOTS of heavy overhead presses three, four or even five times a week back in the 40’s and 50’s, and THEY didn’t over-train.
In strength training, you need to use HEAVY weights. That means you do LOW reps. When you do LOW reps, you can do MORE SETS without over-training. Five sets of three reps in the press will
build plenty of strength and power for almost anyone who tries it. And it will NOT cause the lifter to over-train.
After the presses, go outside and walk around the block with a heavy sandbag. Bear hug the thing and carry it as far as possible. When it hits the ground (which may well be when YOU hit the ground!), catch your breath, then pick the monster up and carry it some more. I expect you to go through ten to twenty minutes of sheer agony, with PLENTY of puffing and panting—and lots of cursing the editor, if you have the breath to do it.
The sandbag carry is a tremendous strength builder, but above all else, it is a superb conditioner. Remember, we are trying to develop functional strength. Few things in life are more functional than lifting and carrying a heavy object. It’s a basic movement pattern for the human body—but one that conventional training totally neglects.
After the sandbag carry, lie on the ground for awhile. When you can move, take a shower. You're done for the day.
Session No. 3
For the third training day of the week, use the same sort of warmup as on days one and two.
For your first heavy exercise on day three, do squats. Five to seven sets of two to three reps. Start light and add weight on each set, finishing with your top set for the day. Go back and read everything
I said about the squat on day one of the program - it all applies to this session as well.
After the squats, do snatch grip power pulls to chest height. Five to seven sets of two reps. Do the first rep from the floor and the second rep from the hang. Again, go back and read what I said about
the pulling movements on days one and two - it all applies to this training day as well.
Alternatively, do five sets of five reps in the barbell row.
Follow the snatch grip pulls with the dumbbell clean and press. Do five sets of five reps. Two progressively heavier warmup sets and three sets with all the weight you can handle. Do the first clean in each set from the floor; after that, clean from the hang. The dumbbell clcan and press is a killer. It’s a combination exercise with heavy, hard to control dumbbells, and it will call on every ounce of strength and every bit of will-power that you possess to complete all five reps in all five sets. But it’s a tremendous strength builder. Sig Klein and Clyde Emrich are two examples of Iron Game Legends who did lots of work on this exercise.
After the dumbbell clean and press do two or three sets with the headstrap—same as on day one—and one or two sets of bent-legged situps or leg raises. Forget about “crunches” if you are training for strength. The crunch is a boobybuildcr movement. Strength athletes do simps and leg raises.
Finish the day with one set per side in the HEAVY side-bend. Go for something like ten to twenty reps per side. Work hard, and use a HEAVY weight. John Grimek used to do side bends with something like 250 pounds. Don’t be content with anything less than 100 pounds, and even that is LOW for a serious strength trainer. Push the poundage UP, UP and UP in this one.
There you have it. The nuts and bolts of a serious, low tech, high effort, sweat based training program that will build many, many pounds of steel hard, super powerful muscle. Yeah, I KNOW it's old-
fashioned, but so what? It WORKS!!!
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