Training_the_Lats_for_Maximum_Isolation_Stimulation_Innervation_and_Pump_By_Greg_Zulak.pdf

TRAINING THE LATS For Maximum Isolation, Stimulation And Pump

B Y

GREG ZULAK

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Training the Lats for Maximum Isolation, Stimulation, Innervation and Pump  

 

 

 

 

By  Greg  Zulak  

 

Without a doubt the most difficult muscle group of all to train properly for most

bodybuilders are they lats. Many beginners and recreational “wannabe” bodybuilders complain that they get a better pump in their biceps when training lats than they do when training biceps! There are many reasons for this. One of the reasons why working the lats are so difficult to train properly is because you cannot see them as you do your sets of chins, pulldowns, rowing exercises or pullovers. You have to concentrate harder, do your repetitions more smoothly and strictly, and try to “feel” the lats as you train them. It’s a difficult skill to learn and takes time and effort. But I guarantee that by the time you finish this article and you follow the suggestions recommended, you’re going to by a lat training fiend. I can really go in-depth for this article as I am no longer under the restraints of a magazine that prefers all articles be six to 10 pages long double spaced at a maximum of 2000 word. Because this is for my website I can write 10,000 words or even 20,000 words if necessary-to get my idea across. Some ideas may be repeated more than once because they are so important. I’ll probably go off on some wild tangent occasionally, again to help make my point. I will also punctuate this article with little stories and antidotes which I think you will find interesting and, in some cases, comical. One of the biggest mistakes wannabe (I-wanna-be-a champion someday) bodybuilders make when training lats is using the absolutely most weight they can for their sets of lat exercises. The problem is that using maximally heavy weights often

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leads to cheating and bringing in secondary muscle groups in order to help lift the weight. Lat isolation is lost. When trying to lift the heaviest weights possible, the natural tendency is to use the strongest muscle groups to move the weight. On lat exercises the stronger hands, biceps, traps, and deltoids, as Larry Scott likes to say, “bully and take over.” Since most beginners have almost no innate feel for their lats (which are weak and underdeveloped), and since their hands, biceps, traps and shoulders are stronger than the lats, those are the muscle groups used and they are the muscle groups that receive the most work and stimulation. Too many bodybuilders think too much in terms of “how much weight am I using” instead of “how hard are my lats working.” This is why on chins and pulldowns the hands, biceps, shoulders and traps seem to get almost all the stress and overload. Many bodybuilders are not doing lat pulldowns, they are doing biceps pulldowns (hence, the biceps pump). On certain rowing exercises all the work goes to the biceps, traps, deltoids rhomboids and even the lower back, so they’re doing biceps and shoulder rows. The lats are hardly used or stimulated at all. They feel weak, numb and mushy, if they are felt at all. They are unresponsive to exercise. Without a doubt this is the number one reason for poor lat development for the majority of novice and recreational bodybuilders. Even some competitive bodybuilders have ordinary lat development because they’ve never learned how to train their lats correctly.

Ideas to Make Your Training More Successful: A lot of bodybuilder’s are frustrated by a lack of gains. They want to know why they are not making better gains. This is not the typical article about sets and reps and exercise routines or training principles. It’s my thoughts on why bodybuilder’s fail to

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make the gains they want. I have some unique insights on the topic and I think I can help. What many fail to understand is your body is a riddle. Bodybuilding is all about problem solving; solving the mystery of muscle growth and fat loss. Messages sent by your body are to be deciphered like codes. Many people think there are mysterious secrets about building muscle and losing fat known only to champions, like they all got together in collusion to keep these “secrets” from the general public, and that these secrets are a mystery, covered by a shroud wrapped inside an enigma. That’s a myth. Actually, many of the real answers to many bodybuilding problems are quite simple and obvious, so simple many people cannot believe that they are solutions to their problems. Hopefully, I can unscramble and decipher some of these secrets, unravel the shroud and resolve the enigma. I don’t claim to have all the answers but I do believe there are things that explain poor gains and sticking points and plateaus, and things are not quite as complex and confusing as many believe. You simply have to listen to your body and interpret the messages sent to your body from your brain, and avoid common training, psychological, and nutritional mistakes. What I have found over the years is that many people tend to put their faith in sets, reps, and routines. Many feel there is a magic secret routine that will guarantee them fantastic results. If they only knew how Ronnie Coleman or Dorian Yates train back they’d get back development like them too. If they only knew how Arnold Schwarzenegger trained pecs and arms they’d get arms and pec like The Oak. If they followed Tom Platz’s exact thigh routine, one day they’d get legs like the Golden Eagle.

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Unfortunately, bodybuilding doesn’t work that way. There’s this problem called genetics. We all have different body types and somatotypes and muscle shapes, as well as different skeletal structures, different insertions and length of muscle bellies, a different number of muscle cells in each muscle, not to mention different hormone levels, metabolisms, and mental proclivity to training. As much as we want to, we can’t train like some champ and hope to look like him or her one day. Actually, the worst thing a novice or intermediate bodybuilder could do is to follow the training routine of a champion bodybuilder. The routines listed in magazines are almost always the bodybuilders pre-contest training routines, which are meant to get them into contest condition. It’s for tearing the body down and helping them to lose fat and bodyweight, not to build up with. It’s not how they trained to get big in the first place. Beginners and intermediate bodybuilders should follow sane routines that are appropriate for their level of development. Beginners should not use split routines and will make very good gains training three days a week—say Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and doing one basic exercise for each major muscle group for 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps, emphasizing training progressively and increasing weights used and the number of reps performed when they can. Only after a minimum of six months of steady training should they consider a split routine, splitting the body in half training no more than four days a week—say chest, back, delts Monday and Friday, abs, legs and arms Tuesday and Thursday, and doing at most five sets per muscle group. Remember, you grow when you rest, not when you train and overtraining is by far much worse than under training.

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Still people do put their faith in routines and sets and reps. They reason “if I do X number of exercises for each muscle group for Y number of reps and Z number of sets, eventually I’ll get the development I want. It’s just a matter of time.” Hope springs eternal. Such reasoning is spurious. There are many other factors related to whether your goals of greater muscle mass and increased muscularity will be achieved than the exercises you do, the number of sets and reps you perform, or how many days a week you train. These are archaic concepts. Discussing exercises, lat routines, and sets and reps is putting the cart before the horse. Therefore it is useless for me to write down a lat routine until you understand some basic muscle building truths.

The Secrets of the Champions: Work the Muscle. Before we get to how to work the lats properly, we need to discuss proper training of any muscle group in general. Many times I have been asked if there is a “secret” training method that explains why champion bodybuilders are so large and muscular. There is a secret and here it is: When champion bodybuilders train their mental mind-set and focus is to always first and foremost to “work the muscle” as they do a set, not lift the weight, while beginners and wannabe’s focus on “lifting the weight,” not on working the muscle. As well, champions know when and how to cheat correctly to place extra overload on a muscle during a set, while beginners and wannabe’s cheat because it’s the only way they can move the weight. If you do not know the difference between “working a muscle” versus “lifting a weight,” you have a lot to learn about bodybuilding—and especially about lat training.

Train for Maximum Innervation of the Lats: Innervation Training

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I strongly believe you have to feel a targeted working muscle in order to stimulate it properly. If you cannot feel a muscle as you train it, it’s impossible to isolate it or to send strong nerve impulses from the brain to the muscle via the neuro-muscular pathways to make it contract forcibly. Without muscular contraction there cannot be proper stimulation, overload or a growth pump. Without overload and a growth pump there is poor muscle growth or no growth. You really have to make that mind-to-muscle connection as you do a set to work a muscle properly. This is another “secret” of the champions. Innervation, a term first coined by Canadian personal trainer Scott Able, one of the brightest minds in bodybuilding, relates to the neurol control of a muscle group by the nerves or nerve impulses and to your ability to “feel” a muscle as you train it and sense the sensations of muscular exertion in the targeted muscle group: muscular contractions, muscle ache, muscle stimulation, muscle exhaustion, and muscle pump. The basic tenet of innervation training “is that in very specific planes of motions, the muscles are innervated differentially.” Innervation also refers to the increased supply of nerve fibres or nerve impulses to the muscles. Increased nerve or neurol output means stronger brain nerve messages sent to the muscles via the central and peripheral neruo-muscular pathways for increased muscle stimulation. This allows you to make that all important mind-to-muscle connection. In order to innervate the muscles, you must develop the neuro-muscular pathways from the brain to the muscles so you can generate stronger nerve force to make your muscles contract more forcibly during a set. You must make that important mind-to-muscle connection. All of these things are necessary to cause overload, adaptation and overcompensation, leading to muscle growth. As well, Scott says

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“workouts require deep concentration and as much mental energy and effort as physical energy and effort.” In other words, you need to use the power of your mind to work your muscles properly. Your number one goal as a bodybuilder should be to learn how to innervate or feel and stimulate your muscles work as you train them, and to maintain innervation throughout a set. Poor innervation—known as enervation, is defined as “a lack of energy, as muscle weakness or lethargy,” is the explanation why slow muscle growth occurs. The muscle fails to grow because it never gets the proper nerve impulses or messages from the brain. Enervation means an inability to feel or sense your muscles as you train them, especially muscle groups you cannot see like the lats, because of a lack of neruomuscular pathways. This results in muscle unresponsive to exercise. Enveration is essentially poor sensory ability. It is characterized by muscle numbness, and the lack of neuro-muscular pathways and nerve impulses from the brain. It means you will have trouble isolating a muscle, stimulating it with hard contractions, or achieving a full pump. If you cannot feel a muscle as you train it, it will not grow. There is no bio-feedback as you do a set, poor mind-to-muscle connection, poor neuro-muscular pathways and no neural impules from the brain to the lats. If you properly innervate a muscle you will isolate it. You will feel the muscle working. You will experience ache, burn, contractions and pump. You will have forced the muscle to work very hard.

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No one of born with the innate ability to innervate and feel and sense their lats during a set. It is a learned ability, like learning how to throw or kick a football or sink a free-throw in basketball or slap a hockey puck. It takes time and correct repetition to learn. The first year of any bodybuilder’s training is learning how to innervate their muscles and establishing neral networks and the neuro-muscular pathways from the brain to a working muscle so you can forcibly contract it during a set. Most of all you must understand that exercise is not merely motion and moving a weight up and down and counting reps. You must have motion with purpose and deliberation. Your mind-set before beginning a set determines how hard the muscle will be worked. You can, like all champion bodybuilders, focus on innervating and stimulating a muscle so you feel the sensations of muscular exertion—ache, burn, fatigue, intense contractions, and pump—or you can mindlessly heave a heavy weight up and down and count reps. Moving a heavy weight up and down does not guarantee muscle stimulation and ultimately, growth. If you fail to innervate a muscle, you will have failed to isolate it. You will fail to stimulate it. You will fail to pump it. You do not feel the sensations of muscular exertion in the muscle. The muscle fails to grow because it never gets the proper impulses or messages from the brain. You feel at best, numb, mushy feelings, or even nothing at all. The muscle is never stimulated properly and has no reason to grow. Your brain has not sent the right nerve signals or messages via the central nervous system to the muscle fibers telling them to contract forcibly. As Struther Martin told Paul Newman in the movie Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to

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communicate.” It`s like some kind of computer glich. It`s also some kind of “chicken versus egg” scenario, which comes first? While some might argue that a failure to feel a muscle is the reason you cannot isolate a muscle, in truth you cannot isolate it because you cannot feel it. It all comes back to innervation and feeling again. There are a number of ways to train for innervation and to teach a muscle how to grow. If a muscle refuses to respond to standard training, you must teach it to respond. To properly innervate a muscle, you must concentrate harder, use higher reps (15 to 100), take shorter rest periods between sets (one minute or less), and use high intensity training principles such as supersets, trisets, giant sets, triple drop sets, 21’s, and 1 1’/2’s or Super Slow-Mo training. Once you have developed the neural networks and neuro-muscular pathways from the brain to the lats, then the muscle can be trained heavier and for less reps. A good way go increase innervation is to hold a weight in the fully contracted position for a count of six seconds, all the while tensing, squeezing and contracting the lats as hard as you can. Another way to increase innervation is to use the Vince Gironda 1 ½ principle. Do half a rep with a six second hold, followed by a full repetition (count that as one rep and do 6 to 10 reps). A second more intense way of using the 1 ½ principle is to do half a rep with a six second hold, followed by a six second hold at the top (spending those six seconds tensing and contracting the crap out of your lats). Again count each 1 ½ rep as one rep and do 6 to 8 reps, The last method definitely worth trying is Slow-Motion training and Super SlowMotion training. Don Ross was a big advocate of such training. He said Gary Strydom,

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Phil Williams, and Tonya Knight, all had experimented with Slow-Mo and Super Slowmotion training and found it very effective. Phil was taking five minutes to do a single set of calf raises. When I was editor of MuscleMag International, Don sent me an article called “Slow Down and Grow” and I can attest that this is a brutal but effective way to train a muscle. To do Slow-Motion training take five to 10 seconds to raise the weight, and five to 10 seconds to lower it. With the slower time, you have to use lighter weights but your muscles work very hard because there is no cheating and the action is so pure. Shoot for six to eight reps a set. Super Slow-Motion is a completely different training experience. It is brutally painful and intense. The goal is to take 30 seconds to raise the weight, 30 seconds to lower it (count in your mind one-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two, etc., to ensure you’re actually taking 30 seconds to raise the weight and 30 seconds to lower it). Expect to use about one-half to one-third less weight than what you’d use on a conventional set. Because of the time factors, you’ll find that the bar moves at most one-quarter inch each second. Super Slow-Mo is actually a series of concentric and eccentric holds, and the muscle works intensely over the entire range of motion. This is one of the most grueling, intense, and painful ways to train, and causes a massive amount of blood to be forced into the muscle for the most extreme pumps and maximum innervation because the muscle is under tension for so long. In a 1996 IronMan article on bodybuilder Rob Colacino, a NABBA Mr. USA winner who had 22

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inch arms, said he did one rep of Super-Slow Motion training for his biceps once a week, so believe me Super Slow-Mo works and does build muscle. Former IFBB pro bodybuilder Negrita Jayde tried Super Slow Motion on leg presses after we talked about Don Ross’s article and my own experimentations with Super Slow-Motion training. She said she did two reps and the pump was so massive she couldn’t walk for several minutes. Try for two reps per set—so the muscle is under tension for two minutes--though you probably will not get it. My muscles always gave out after one and a half reps, but maybe you’re more of a man than me. If you have any muscle group that fails to respond to conventional training, that you have difficulty feeling, innervating, and pumping, I guarantee that Super Slow-Mo will let you feel and work the muscle like never before. Not for the faint-hearted, though. The bottom line is any muscle that refuses to grow must be trained for innervation first and foremost. You do this by training to work the lats, not focussing on lifting the weight.

Lats and Innervation The repercussions of muscle innervation as it relates to lat development are obvious. Bodybuilders who fail to understand the significance of innervation and how it relates to muscle-building, are just going through the motions as they do their lat exercises. They can neither feel nor isolate their lats nor place the mechanical overload on them for maximum muscle stimulation. All the overload goes to other muscle groups,

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hence their lats are not stimulated properly and will not grow. And they will never grow to their genetic limits because they are continually undertrained because there is poorly developed neuro-muscular pathways to their lats, and an inability to send strong nerve impulses from the brain via the central nervous system to the muscle fibres of the lats telling them to “fire” and contract forcibly each repetition. Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, learning how to train and innervate a muscle group like the lats properly is a skill, no different than learning how to hit a baseball, bend a soccer ball, or hit a golf ball. It’s not a natural or innate skill or ability. No one is born with the sensory feelings and skill and intuitive knowledge to properly train and innervate their muscles the first six months to a year they train, especially muscles such as lower lats (or any lats), rear delts, medial head of the delts, upper pecs, biceps peak, hamstrings, lower thighs, outer calves, and other hard to develop areas of the body. The first few months of training, nearly all bodybuilders have poor development of the neuro-muscular pathways to the muscles, and the neural networks in their brain, so they have weak nerve force. They also have poor blood circulation to their muscles so they don’t pump optimally. Increasing blood circulation and developing neural networks and the neuro-muscular pathways to your muscles take a long time to develop—probably a year of training when first taking up bodybuilding. It’s a learned skill and difficult to master. Some never do. Many bodybuilders still do bench presses, bentover rows, squats, and barbell curls and other common exercise wrong after 20 years in the gym, and they bodies never improve either.

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Why Non-Contiguous Innervation is Wrong and Innervation is Right: Some so-called experts in the field of exercise don’t believe in the concept of innervation. They say it’s impossible to isolate certain segments of a muscle group—say upper pecs with incline presses or lower biceps with preacher curls or biceps peak with concentration curls. This concept is called non-contiguous innervation or NCI. Former top power lifter Dr. Fred Hatfield, for example, is a proponent of NCI According to NCI, all muscle fibers of any given muscle group share common nerve forces and therefore working sections of various muscle groups with isolation exercises is futile. They argue that muscle sensory feelings like an ache or burn or pump in a segment of a muscle is a sort of illusion or self-deception, and that just because you feel ache, burn, fatigue, contractions, stimulation, and pump in particular part of a muscle group doesn’t mean those fibers are working any harder than the rest of the muscle. They argue sensory feel doesn’t matter. If you do incline presses for upper pecs, for instance, they say the lower, middle, inner, and outer pecs work just as much as the upper chest. Therefore, according to them, you don’t have to do crossovers for inner pecs, dumbbell flyes for outer pecs, incline presses or flyes for upper pecs, and dips or decline presses for lower pecs. If you do bench presses, or any chest exercise for that matter, they say, you will work the entire pectoralis major muscle. Even if it “feels” like your upper pecs are aching and burning and pumping and working harder when you do incline presses and incline flyes, it just feels that way. In

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reality, your whole chest is working just as hard. In fact, no matter what exercise you do, say the proponents of NCI, the whole muscle works at once. Leg extensions work the upper thighs as much as the lower thighs. Preacher curls work the upper biceps as much as the lower biceps, Concentration curls work lower biceps as much as peak. So you don’t have to do preacher curls for lower biceps, barbells curls for the belly of the muscle, and concentration curls for peak. If you just do barbell curls you will work all sections of the biceps equally hard (if you buy that I have some swamp land in Florida you can buy from me, or perhaps I can sell you the Empire State building for a steal). Advocates of NCI want you to ignore and dismiss your own sensory feelings, sensations and experiences. NCI is in complete contradiction to every bodybuilding champion going back to Bert Goodrich (first Mr. America champ in 1939) of the past 84 years, including Grimek, Reeves, Ross, Park, Pearl, Scott, Oliva, Schwarzenegger, Zane, Haney, Dickerson, Bannout, Yates, Wheeler, Coleman, Jackson, Cutler, Heath and all the greats. Not one Mr. America, NPC champ, Mr. Universe or Mr. or Ms. Olympia champ has ever trained according to NCI. You cannot build a Mr. Olympia physique just with one exercise per muscle group no matter how heavy or intensely you train. Where you feel an exercise is where you develop the muscle. What are my thoughts on NCI? That it’s all nonsense and BS. It’s like saying that just because I’ve hit my thumb with a hammer my thumb doesn’t hurt worse than the rest of my hand because the fingers are connected to my hand. The NCI guys would have you believe I could hit my palm or my little finger and my thumb would hurt just as badly. We all know that if you do just squats we don’t work the entire quad, and if we do just bench presses we don’t work the entire chest and t-bar rows do not work the entire

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lats. The guys in the white labs coats with the PHD’s after their names are dead wrong about this one. They obviously have never done serious bodybuilding before. It reminds me of a story related to me by Scott Abel. Back in the late 80’s Scott went to California to spend two weeks at a Weider muscle camp. At the camp were bodybuilding champions, and experts in nutrition, kinesiology, anatomy, and exercise. The whole point of the camp was to go there and totally immerse yourself in all aspects of bodybuilding and get pertinent information from all these various champions and experts, a kind of crash course on muscle-building, nutrition and exercise. One day at one of the daily lectures a man with a PHD in kinesiology, and a proponent of NCI, was explaining to the group why it was a waste of time to do incline dumbbell flyes for upper pecs, because, he said, incline dumbbell flyes work only the anterior or front deltoids, not the upper pecs. Suddenly pro bodybuilder Renel Janvier, a member of the audience and who had placed second to Shawn Ray at the Arnold Classic a few months prior, put up his hand and said, “I love incline dumbbell flyes. When I do them I get a deep burn right at the top of my chest. They really thicken my upper pecs.” Rather than acknowledging Renel’s personal experience and the effect incline dumbbell flyes had on his upper pecs—the proof was right before the man’s eyes as Renel had upper pecs as thick as a phone book—the kinesiologist began to ridicule and patronize him. He started to lecture Renel about NCI and told him that it just wasn’t possible to work the upper portions of the pectoralis major muscle with incline dumbbell flyes. Not only that, even if Renel did feel burning and ache and pump in his upper pecs,

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it just felt that way. In reality, he was only working front delts. “The incline dumbbell flye works only front delts,” said the PHD. “I’m sorry, but it’s not possible to work upper pecs with incline dumbbell flyes.” He just totally dismissed Renels development and his own experience. But I have to ask you, who would you believe, Renel Janier with his massive chest development or some pencil-neck geek with a PHD? The experts are sometimes dead wrong. Hell, you can still find doctors who say steroids do not work and it’s all placebo effect—but they still want them banned at the Olympic Games and in pro sports just in case--or that bodybuilders don’t need extra protein or calories. In the 1940’s and 50’s doctors said smoking cigarettes was good for you. I once saw a doctor on 60 Minutes who said a lunch of a hamburger, French fries and coke was a very nutritious meal because it contained protein, starch, and simple carbohydrates. The state of California recognizes that a serving of ketchup is as nutritious as a tomato. Mike Mentzer said that regardless of somatotype or metabolism no bodybuilder—even skinny ectomorph’s—ever needed to eat more than 3000 calories or 100 grams of protein a day. Mike also said in order to gain 10 pounds of muscle a year all you had to eat was an extra two grams of protein a day, which is absurd. Vince Gironda used to do so many sets of wide grip dips that he developed a thick ridge of muscle on his outer pecs. Do you think Vince would have gotten the same development with narrow grip dips? No way. Would Larry Scott’s biceps have developed and looked the same without all those preacher curls? Would his arms developed just the same with barbell curls. I think not.

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It’s all nonsense. As John Parrillo has said to me several times, “I know guys with PHD’s in exercise physiology who do not even known how to do a bench press properly” If you want to look like a PHD, train according to NCI. If you want to look like a bodybuilder, train according to innervation and pump. There is no other way. Learn to think for yourself. Use common sense. Those who fail to think and who follow the follow of others are sure to fail. Train to maximize innervation and feel, to stimulate and work your muscles, not to see how much weight you can toss around. Try to sustain feel for the muscle and innervation throughout a set. Never lose that mind-to-muscle feeling. Never lose constant-tension on the muscle. To sum up, if you’re ever in the gym someday doing concentration curls for biceps peak or incline presses for upper chest or reverse-grip rows for lower lats and some guy tells say you should be training according to NCI, tell him to get lost or drop dead.

Don’t Always Think the Pros are Bodybuilding Experts: Believe it or not, some champion bodybuilders really don’t know a lot about training, as strange as that seems. They are so genetically gifted and in most cases they take so many drugs (as in thousands of milligrams a week), they can do less than perfect training and still become champs. They are bodybuilders, not teachers. Let give you a couple of examples. Back in the early-90’s Joe Weider called me and asked me to do a biceps training article with Cory Everson, six-time Ms. Olympia champ. The article was for

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Muscle & Fitness magazine. The last thing Joe told me was to make sure Cory mentioned all her favorite Weider training principles. “No problem,” I told Joe. I phoned Cory up and we did the interview. As we were getting to the end of the interview, I remembered Joe’s request so I said to Cory, “Oh, yeah, Cory, before I forget, Joe wants you to mention your favorite Weider training principles.” There was a long pause and Cory finally said, “You know what, Greg. I don’t know what a Weider training principle is.” I was stunned and more than taken a little aback. She was a sixtime Ms. Olympia champion and her husband Jeff had been editor of Muscle & Fitness magazine for eight years and yet she didn’t know what a Weider training principle was?!! “Uh,” I mumbled, “you know, like supersets and trisets.” “Oh,” said Cory cheerily, “I do those.” “And,” I continued, “forced reps.” “Oh, I do those too,” said Cory. “And,” I said, “you know, things like drop sets.” “Oh,’ said Cory, “I do those too.” If I mentioned a Weider training principle, Cory said she did it. Otherwise, she didn’t have a clue. Another time I was doing an article with Michael Francois on deltoids for MuscleMag International. Mike had just won The Arnold Classic. After describing the presses and laterals he did for deltoids, Mike said, “Next I do. . .Uh, what do you call it when you bend over at the waist and lift the dumbbells out to the sides.” Mike didn’t know the name of bentover laterals. The most knowledgeable people in bodybuilding are not champion bodybuilders. Scott Able and Chris Aceto have good physiques but they’re not pro level. John Parrillo,

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Gunnar Sikk—two of the most knowledgeable people I have ever met-- and myself couldn’t win a local contest. Chad Nicholls is not a top bodybuilder, nor is Bob Gruskin or Dennis DuBreuil. Vince Gironda was a good bodybuilder and almost won the Mr. USA one year but he wasn’t a freaky bodybuilder like Sergio Oliva or Arnold Schwarzenegger or the top pros. Bob Green, one of the most knowledgeable experts, was not a champion bodybuilder. That’s not to say all champs are airheads. Larry Scott really knows his stuff, as does Bill Pearl. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding” contains a lot of good information, as does Bob Kennedy’s encyclopedia and some of his other books. Rick Valente really knows training, as did Don Ross, WBBG Pro Mr. America for 1977. But just because someone has won a title, don’t automatically they know a lot about training, just as don’t ever assume because a man has a PHD that he know what he’s talking about.

Train for a Growth Pump and According to the Blood Volume Theory: A second major “secret” of the champs is training for a growth pump. As any reader of my articles know I am a firm believer in Dennis DuBreuil’s Blood Volume Theory that states there is a direct relationship between how well a muscle pumps and how well it grows. A muscle that pumps the best and the easiest grows the fastest and easiest too, while muscles that pump poorly, or refuse to pump at all, grow slowly and poorly, if they grow at all. I’m sure if you think about it you will agree this statement is true. Aren’t your best and easiest growing muscle groups those that pump the best, and

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aren’t your worst muscle groups those that pump poorly, if they pump at all. I’ll bet anything it’s true. To me this validates the Blood Volume Theory. I make the distinction between a growth pump and just a pump. You can lift 5 pound dumbbells and do hundreds of reps and get some pump but your muscles will not grow. If you use moderate or heavy weights and do 6 to 100 reps, then you’ll get growth. I can guarantee you that all champion bodybuilders train to pump their lats as they do their lat exercises. If there is poor blood circulation to the lats, there can be no good pump. A good growth pump is a strong indicator that more blood is flowing or circulating to working muscle group, in this instance, the lats. Increased blood flow brings in freshly oxygenated blood and key nutrients to the working muscle and carries away lactic acid and other fatigue products so growth and recovery can occur. It should be noted that a muscle is not made larger not by just thickening of the muscle fibers. It is also made larger by increasing the number of capillaries and red blood cells, as well as more red muscle fibres and larger veins and arteries to accommodate the increased blood circulation and volume. John Parrillo calls this increase in capillaries, red blood cells, and red muscle fibres as “cardio-vascular density.” Your muscles are like sponges, soaking up blood and making your muscles look larger and fuller. Consider a good growth pump as a kind of cell volumization that occurs when you use creatine monohydrate, but with blood instead of water. If you do

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not increase blood circulation or flow to a muscle, pump and this type of cell volumization cannot occur. This is why many top powerlifters and weightlifters can lift very heavy weights without a lot of muscle mass, especially those competing in the lighter weight classes. They have good leverages, strong tendons and ligaments, and strong white “fast-twitch” muscle fibres, but little cardiovascular density. To me a skin tight pump is a very good indication that you have been successful in your primary goal of innervating, isolating, and stimulating the lats. Pump doesn`t occur in a vacuum. It is always accompanied by muscular ache, burn, fatigue, and contractions. When you achieve a maximum pump, can there be any doubt in your mind you`ve worked the muscle very hard?

Train Like a Bodybuilder, Not a Weightlifter or Powerlifter: This statement may confuse some people. After all, some powerlifters and weightlifters have pretty good physiques. Both bodybuilders and weightlifters or powerlifters lift weights but it`s how they lift the weights that makes them different. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen a world-class weightlifter or powerlifter with the muscular development of a Mr. Olympia competitor? No, of course not. If lifting maximally heavy weights gave the most muscle mass and muscularity, than world champion powerlifters and weightlifters would win the Mr. Olympia and Arnold Classic every year. But they don’t and can’t. I mean who would you like to look like, Paul Anderson or Steve Reeves, or Anthony Clark or Ronnie Coleman or Phil Heath? How do powerlifters and weightlifter lift a weight? With speed, momentum and inertia, the fastest and easiest way they can. They don’t care if their muscles pump or

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receive maximum muscle stimulation. They don’t give a damn about innervation and feeling and isolating their muscles. They just want to drive the weight up and make their lift. Any muscle stimulation is secondary and incidental to their primary goal of making their lift. Bodybuilders need to train differently than weightlifters or powerlifters. They need stricter form, higher reps, greater muscle concentration and lifting a weight the hardest way they can with pure muscle action. Their primary goal is to isolate, innervate, and pump their muscles to the max. You need to, as I said above, focus on working the muscle, rather than just lifting the weight. It’s a matter of proper mental mind-set as you do a set and training priorities. Just don’t expect to look like a bodybuilder if you train like a weightlifter.

Strength Versus Size Do you believe that you there is a definite relationship between how strong you are and how big you get? That is to say, do you believe every time you get stronger you will always get bigger too? If you do, you are wrong—at least some of the time. It is possible to get significantly stronger without developing larger and more muscular muscles if you train primarily for strength, not for muscular development and size. How do you think Olympic weightlifters and world-class powerlifters train to increase strength while maintaining at a certain bodyweight so they can compete in a specific weight class? Say a guy is a 148 or 165 pound powerlifter. He can’t afford to increase his muscle mass and bodyweight as that would take him out of his weight class. Still, he

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needs to increase his strength each year to remain competitive. So how does he train to increase his strength without increasing his bodyweight? Well, I’ll tell you. First, he never does high repetitions or takes short rest periods between sets because that would cause increased blood flow and create a pump in the working muscle. Our powerlifting friend does low repetition sets (1 to 6), with lots of doubles and triples. He takes long rest periods between sets, at least five minutes and on his heaviest sets as long as 10 minutes. Strongman Paul Anderson used to rest 10 minutes between sets and one hour between exercises. Why? Power needs rest. The longer you rest, the more strength you have to lift maximally heavy weights. In a sports journal strength expert Charles Poliquin said even a three minute rest between sets was not enough rest when attempting max attempts. Long rest periods between sets ensures no pump, no increase in capillaries, red blood cells, and no increase in red “slow-twitch” muscle fibers and no cardiovascular density. Instead the powerlifter/weightlifter targets white “fast-twitch” muscle fibres that are worked with low reps (1 to 6). He isn’t trying to increase his muscle size. He needs explosive power and strength, not 20 inch arms or cross-striated thighs or glutes. As well he may do heavy partial reps in the power rack and heavy supports with 150 to 200 pounds more than his max to increase tendon, ligament and connective tissue strength and his entire skeletal frame. He may do some negative-only training, as it’s possible to lower 40 per cent heavier weights than one can raise concentrically. As well, he may develop better neurological efficiency. Peary Rader, former editor of IronMan magazine, observed that some champion weightlifters and powerlifters were

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able to lift more and more weight each year even though their bodyweight did not increase. He theorized that many lifters can generate what he called stronger “nerve force.” These lifters can literally “rev up” their nervous systems before a maximum attempt to lift heavier weights, as if they took amphetamines. Finally, another way to increase strength without getting bigger is through intense stretching, which decreases the body’s protective mechanisms, such as the Golgi Tendon Organ stretch receptors which “shut a muscle down” when it is exposed to extreme stretch and stress and strain to prevent possible injury. If you can raise the threshold of the Golgi Tendon Organs, you can lift more weight without increasing bodyweight and muscle mass. You’ve probably experienced the effect of the Golgi Tendon stretch receptors without being aware of it. For example, have you ever run as fast as you could for a long distance when suddenly your legs seem to turn into mush and you’re suddenly running in slow motion? No matter how fast you try to run, you can only run at a slow pace. That’s the Golgi Tendon stretch receptors kicking in to shut the muscles of the legs down to prevent possible injury. It happens with weight-training too. On a set of bench presses for 10 reps, perhaps the first eight reps goes smoothly, but on the ninth rep your arms start shaking and trembling and the weight goes up slowly and you barely complete the rep. On the tenth rep the weight goes half way up but you can’t finish the final rep. It’s not just because of muscular exhaustion that you fail. It’s the Golgi Tendon Organ stretch receptors in the triceps kicking in to shut the muscle down to prevent possible injury.

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Back to strength verus size training. It is true that if you get stronger on strict sets done for 6 to 20 reps (or more) per set, you will gain size along with strength. The basic premise of bodybuilding is, after all, progressive training. As long as you are maintaining correct form and are training for innervation and pump, and performing at least six strict repetitions, you will get bigger as you get stronger. But bodybuilders need to train differently than powerlifters or weightlifters because their needs and goals are different. They need higher repetitions, stricter form, more isolation movements, and all their sets done with the goal of maximum innervation and pump. They need less rest between sets so their muscles do not cool off and they lose their pump. They need to do more exercises for a muscle group to hit all muscle fibres. I’ll repeat what I said above: Bodybuilders need to train to work the muscle, not to focus on how much weight they can lift. All champion bodybuilders train to innervate, stimulate, isolate, and pump their muscles when they train. So should you. Yes, aim to get stronger over time on compound movements but never sacrifice feel for the muscle for the sake of lifting heavier weights. When you train like a bodybuilder you have to “muscle up” the weight, lifting it with pure muscle action the hardest way you can. You never want to rely on speed, inertia, momentum, and excessive cheating to lift the weight the easiest way you can. There is fine line between training heavy and working the muscle properly and training too heavy. You’ll know when you are training too heavy when you lose the feel for the target muscle and you have to cheat excessively and use secondary muscle groups to help lift the weight.

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Many recreational bodybuilders get so caught up in lifting the heaviest weights they can, in any manner they can, and counting reps, they forgot to work the muscle they are training. They use so much weight they are forced to cheat excessively and use speed, inertia, and momentum to lift the weight. You often see guys doing bench presses by arching their backs a foot or more off the bench to drive the bar through the sticking point and then bouncing the bar off their chests to gain momentum for the next rep. Such benching will never develop the pecs properly. Or you see guys using so much weight on on t-bar rows or bentover barbell rows they have to yank and heave the weight up with their arms and drop their chests to meet the bar. They may have to stand up with the weight as if they are doing a deadlift. Such rowing will never develop the lats properly. Only increase the weight when you can do so without excessive cheating and you retain the feel for the working muscle. Only cheat at the end of after you’ve completed as many strict repetitions as you can. Always strive to do at least six strict repetitions before allowing any cheating, and only cheat enough to make another rep possible, not easy. Cheat to make the muscle work harder. In other words, only cheat when fatigue and muscular failure does not allow any more strict repetitions. Also, always accentuate the negative whether performing strict or cheating reps. Fight gravity all the way down. If a weight feels too light you can make it feel heavier by slowing the speed of your reps and by concentrating harder. An advanced bodybuilder can make a 35 pound dumbbell feel more like a 50 through deep concentration alone. Slow-Mo training—

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taking five to ten seconds to lower the weight and five to ten seconds to raise it—is an excellent way to learn to feel the muscle and innervate it properly. If a weight feels too heavy, try to speed up your reps or to move the weight faster over a complete range of motion. On heavy sets the bar will actually often move quite slowly even when you are trying to move it faster because of the heaviness of the weight. This type of “explosive” eccentric and concentric lifting is favored by some champion bodybuilders, including six-time Mr. Olympia champ Dorian Yates and twotime Mr. Olympia Larry Scott. But save the speed reps for near the end of a set when you are near muscular failure.

Cardiovascular Efficiency and VO2 Max and Muscle Size and Development and Maximum Strength: Arthur Jones, the developer of Nautilus machines and principles and author Nautilus Training Bulletins 1 and 2, believed that bodybuilders and strength athletes should train as fast as possible (not speed of repetitions but rest between exercises), with little rest between exercises and to use the heaviest weights possible and high intensity training, while at the same time raising the heart rate and working the cardiovascular system as hard as possible too. He had people literally running back and forth between various Nautilus machines as they did their sets for various muscle groups with as little rest between sets as possible. Actually, Russian research has shown it is not possible to build maximum muscle size and strength and maximum cardio and Vo2 Max at the same time. In other words,

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you can`t train to win the World Weightlifting or World Powerlifting championships or become Mr. Olympia and win the Boston Marathon at the same time. Bodybuilders and strength athletes should maintain some cardiovascular efficiency but should not train for the maximum VO2 Max and maximum muscle size at the same time. If you do you are just holding back gains. This is especially true of skinny ectomorphs who have difficulty adding bodyweight and muscle size. Too much cardio burns too many calories and prevents maximum muscle size.

Negative-Only Training: Back in the 1970`s Arthur Jones began to advocate negative-only training to gain maximum muscle size and strength. Arthur said it was possible to lower 40 per cent negatively more weight than you can raise concentrically. For example, if you can raise 100 pounds in the barbell curl, you can lower 140 pounds negative-only style. Intrigued, I decided to give it a try. At the time I was in my third year of university (I was completely natural and weighed about 185 pounds) and I had been stuck for several months at standing behind-the-neck presses with 145 pounds for 6 repetitions. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn`t do one rep more. Actually, the 145 pound for 6 reps was actually quite good because the gym where I trained had no squat racks or power racks, therefore in order to perform a set of behind-the-neck presses I had to clean the bar to my shoulders, push press it overhead so I could lower it to my neck, do my 6 reps, then push press it back overhead, and then lower it to the ground. That`s a lot of work for one set of behind-the-neck presses.

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Anyway, I used to keep a 200 pound barbell under the couch of our common room, and one night I somehow I talked my three pot smoking, beer drinking and nonexercising roommates to lift that 200 pound bar overhead as dinner cooked so I could slowly lower it down. When performing negative-only lifting, the idea is to try to slow the descent of the bar for as long as you can. You should actually try to stop the bar if possible. The time to end the set is when you can no longer slow or control the descent of the bar and it drops like a stone. I did two sets of 6 reps with 200 pounds. The next night I did two more sets of 6 reps. My next workout I went to the gym not knowing what to expect. What happened was quite unbelievable. When I did my behind-the-neck presses, the bar felt incredibly light. When I did 145 pounds I did 12 reps, not 6. I actually did a set with 175 pounds for 6 reps—a 30 pound gain in just a few days. I even did a single for 195 pounds (again, cleaning the bar to my shoulders, push pressing it overhead, doing my one rep, push pressing it overhead to my front shoulders, and lowering the bar to the ground). The problem with negative-only training is trying to find people willing to lift a heavy weight up so you can lower it down. The novelty wears off very quickly. In my case my roommates were willing to do it for two nights. After that they wouldn`t do it for love or money. Another thing about negative-only training is you cannot sustain these unbelievable gains in strength for very long. I have spoken to people who have added

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50 pounds to their bench presses in a few weeks by performing a few sets of negativeonly training. Then the gains stop. Also, it`s one thing to find two people to lift a heavy weight so you can lower it down on bench presses, incline barbell presses, behind-the-neck presses, barbell curls and chins, quite another thing to find two (or three) people to lift a super heavy weight— 500-600 pounds or more- when doing squats and deadlifts. Still, you cannot knock a 30 pound gain on behind-the-neck presses after just two days of negative-only lifting, or 50 pounds on your bench press in just a couple of weeks. Most lat exercises do not lend themselves to negative-only training. T-bar rows and seated cable rows do not. I suppose you could have two people raise a heavy barbell so you could do a few sets of bentover barbell rows, or one-arm dumbbell rows. Wide-grip and medium and narrow grip chins definitely could be done in negative-only training style—if you can find two people willing to lift you up with a heavy weight attached to your body so you can lower yourself slowly down. As I said, people will do it once or twice but the novelty wears off very quickly. Another way to enjoy some of the benefits of negative training is to do negativeaccentuated sets. On leg extensions, leg curls, and leg presses you can raise the weight with two legs and lower with one leg. You could even try it on hack squats and Smith machine squats. On a Hammer Strength machine you could raise a weight the weight concentrically when doing incline presses or shoulder presses, then lower it

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down with one arm. On machine curls you can raise a weight up with two arms and then lower it down with one arm. You don`t need to do a lot of sets of negative-only training. Just a couple of sets taken to failure will give all the benefits negative-only training. Also, don`t do your normal workout plus negative-only training sets. Stop your regular workout for a couple of days and do your negative-only sets and then return to your regular workouts. Of course, you should always lower a weight slowly down and accentuate the negative on any exercise. The bar or weight should never just drop down. Fight gravity the whole way down.

How the Champions Train Lats and Back: Since 1982 I have done dozens of lat and back training articles with champions of both sexes, and not a single one ever said to me their lats and backs improved when they used the heaviest possible weights. On the contrary, champions such as Steve Reeve, Freddie Ortiz, Dave Draper, Serge Nubret, Frank Zane, Robby Robinson, Albert Beckles, Danny Padilla, Chris Dickerson, Paul DeMayo, Paul Dillett, Vince Taylor, Lee Labrada, Rich Gaspari, Gary Strydom, Tony Pearson, John Terilli, Laura Creavalle, Lenda Murray, and Vince Comerfort all said their lats and backs greatly improved when they reduced the amount of weight they used on their lat exercises. Vinnie Comerfort said it best: “There’s a big difference between rowing with 225 pounds properly instead of snapping up 315.”

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Lee Labrada told me, “I only started to make real improvements in my back when I reduced my weights and used correct form and a full range of motion.” Lee added, “Personally, I have never seen a guy rowing with 405 or 495 pounds properly yet.” Jim Morris, who won the 1973 AAU Mr. America contest used to train his lats with 20 sets of 20 reps of wide-grip chins (I’d like to see some power monger or HeavyDuty fanatic do that!), followed by one-arm dumbbell rowing, and seated low pulley rowing. In an article in the July, 1978 issue of IronMan magazine Jim described how he did his rows. “I rested my forearm on the dumbbell rack and placed my forehead on it. At no time should the back move up and down. The weight should be pulled to the chest without jerking.” On low pulley seated rowing Jim said, “I perform this exercise with the upper body leaning forward as far as possible and stay in that position. As the pulley is pulled toward the chest, at no time should the body rock back and forth. Once you start pulling back your upper body you are no longer working lats, but glutes and leg biceps.” Even Dorian Yates, one of the strongest Mr. Olympia champions and with perhaps the freakiest back development of anyone, recommended in his book “Blood and Guts,” that all bodybuilder’s should reduce their rowing poundage’s by 50 per cent and do their reps slower and stricter and with more concentration and trying to get a full range of motion and a hard contraction each rep. This is a tough sell to many wannabe bodybuilders because they are more concerned about how much weight they lift in any manner—ego training and showing off, I call it—than on working the lats properly. As

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Vince Gironda used to say, “most bodybuilders work out incorrectly because it’s too hard to train correctly.” It’s easier to cheat than to do your reps correctly. A story about Tony Pearson, AAU Mr. America of 1978 and NABBA Pro Mr. Universe of 1980 and a top IFBB pro, illustrates the difference between “working the muscle” versus “lifting the weight.” Tony developed some of the largest and widest lats I’ve ever seen. They were truly amazing in size and width. But this was not always the case. Back when Tony first got into serious bodybuilding he totally bought into the idea that the heavier he trained, the bigger his lats would become. He became so strong on bentover barbell rowing he could use 405 pounds for 6 reps, and use 8 plates on the tbar row device for 6 reps. And yet Tony admitted his lats at the time where not that good and he was always straining his lower back. Then one day the great Robbie Robinson invited Tony to do a back workout with him. They used less than half the weight Tony normally used and yet his lats ached and pumped like never before. Robbie taught Tony how to do rows properly: Staying down over the weight and not standing up with it, and rowing with knees bent, head up, body just slightly above parallel, keeping the lower back arched and never allowing it to round over. Robbie told Tony to think of his hands as hooks and to row with his lats, not his hands and arms. He told Tony not to heave and yank with the arms and drop the chest to meet the bar. After that training session with Robbie Robinson Tony said he rarely ever used more than 185 pounds on bentover barbell rows for 5 sets of 12 to 15 reps. On t-bar rows he usually used four plates, again for 5 sets of 12 to 15 reps. His lats grew like crazy—among the greatest lats of all time.

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But the average gym monster can’t understand that. They see Tony Pearson rowing with 185 pounds and they laugh it off and think he’s training easy. ‘Hey, I use four plates aside for 6 reps on barbell rows,” they say. They strut around like they’re Mr. Olympia. Their whole focus is on how much weight they can pile on the bar. “Hey, during my lat workout I rowed with 405 pounds.” They don’t mention that the only place they feel sore is in their lower backs and their biceps. Never mind their joints ache and they almost had to stand upright when they did their rows as if they were doing a deadlift. Never mind the range of motion when they row is half of what it should be. Never mind that their lats are lousy. They’re baffled by Tony Pearson’s lat development. “How can this be?” they demand to know. “I use twice the weight he does. I work my ass off and yet his back his ten times better than mine. It’s not fair. Why is he so genetically gifted and I’m not” They can’t understand that when Tony rows his lats do almost all the work. When they row they use every muscle in their body to lift the weight—except for the lats. They think expending effort makes for effective training. Never confuse effort with effective training. If I ran a 100 meter run against by Olympic champion Usain Bolt of Jamaica by hopping up and down on one leg I would use a lot of effort but it wouldn’t be a very effective way to run, would it?

A Row is not a Clean, Snap, Heave or Deadlift: Let’s make this point very clear. Very few bodybuilders do their rowing exercises properly. They throw and heave and yank the bar upwards and drop their chests to meet the bar. It’s like their doing a clean in the bentover position. They use every muscle group in their body to get

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the weight up except their lats. They also use speed and momentum and inertia to move the weight up and down, instead of rowing smoothly and correctly with their lats and using pure muscle action. Such bodybuilders think they are doing rows but they are not. They can’t even feel their lats as they row, so it’s no wonder why they don’t grow. They’ve never learned how to row correctly because they’ve never experienced a proper row. We are back to the problem of not being able to watch the lats working as you do a set. You have to go by feel and many bodybuilders are not sure what they are supposed to feel. Any fool can grunt and groan and throw heavy weights around but it takes a smart cookie to put all the effort into the lats when they do rowing exercises. True rowing involves the lats over a full range of motion. The hands merely act like hooks holding the bar. The involvement of the spinal errectors, traps, shoulders, rhomboids, and biceps is kept to a minimum. Watch a good rower and you notice how little body movement there is, how the lower back is always arched and never allowed to round over (which makes lat contraction impossible). A good rower always rows with his knees flexed, his head up, and his upper body just slightly above parallel. He stays down with the weight. He doesn’t let his body move up and down. He doesn’t drop his chest to meet the bar. The lats move from full stretch to full contraction. There is never any heaving or throwing of the weight. A proper row is a thing of beauty. It’s all finesse. Any cheating is saved for the end of a set of at least six strict repetitions. I tell bodybuilders to row with their heads on a folded towel on a dumbbell rack to keep their bodies locked in. Or they can row with their butts against a wall to keep their

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body locked in. I tell them to get the mental image of a jet airplane coming in to land: nose up, the flaps up, wheels down. In the same way, keep your head up, your upper body higher than the knees, the lower back arched, and to stay down over the weight. Also, you can row off a block to get a greater range of motion. Use sponges or straps to reinforce your grip. Use deep concentration and visualize your lats stretching and contracting each rep. One last thing about rowing: Many bodybuilders think that rows are done in a straight-up-and-down motion but they are not. Actually, the plane of motion is tilted. When you do one-arm dumbbell rowing you should not row the dumbbell up and down. That works only upper lats, along with rhomboids and traps. Row as if you are sawing wood. Reach forward as you lower the dumbbell out to stretch the lat, than pull it into the lower lats to contract the lats. This type of rowing works the entire lat, even the lower lats. Rick Valente actually told me to row as if sawing wood when we did an article together back in the mid-90`s. This is also the type of rowing Sergio Oliva used when I went to Chicago for four days to watch They Myth train. Even on bentover barbell rowing or reverse-grip barbell rowing (Dorian Yates’s favorite rowing exercise), you should reach forward and outward as you lower the bar down, and then pull it into the lower lats. The range of motion is tilted like \, not straight up-and-down like |. I also like to tell bodybuilders to not start coming up until they’ve finished going all the way down. This ensures a full range of motion. You will never achieve your genetic potential for lat development if you do your exercises incorrectly and you cheat too much. I suggest you reduce your training

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poundage’s by half and doubling your repetitions. I also suggest you keep rest between sets to a minute or less. After training this way for several months, then you will have established the proper neuro-muscular pathways to the lats, and you should be able to do heavier sets and still achieve innervation and pump. But first things first. First learn how to innervate and pump your lats, then add heavier lifting.

See Your Body as a Bio-Feedback Machine: What do I mean by that? I mean your body will tell you everything you need to know to make gains. It will answer every question you have about training and diet if you listen to it. It will tell you if you are doing an exercise correctly. It will tell you if you are using too much weight, cheating too much, performing the exercise wrong, failing to concentrate, isolate, innervate, or stimulate your muscles. It will tell you if you are not feeling contractions in the muscle during a set, if you are feeling muscular ache, burn, fatigue and pump. It will tell you if you are innervating and feeling the muscle. It will tell you if you’re making good gains or not and if you are not eating enough. It will tell you if you are overtraining or are not working hard enough. Some of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked prove the point. “Greg, how do I know if I’m performing an exercise properly? Answer: When you feel the sensations of muscle exertion: ache, fatigue, burn, contractions, and pump in the working muscle. “Greg, how do I know how much weight to use? Answer: You’ll feel it. It’s the right weight when it’s enough to work the muscle but not so heavy that you lose control or have to cheat excessively to lift it.

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“Greg, how do I know if I’m training too heavy?” Answer: If you’re focusing more on lifting the weight than working the muscle, and you lose the feel for the target muscle, the weight is too heavy? Also, the weight is to heavy when you are forced to bring secondary muscles into play to help lift the weight. “Greg, how do I know which width grip is best?” Answer: You tell by feel. Experiment with different width grips or foot placements until you find the one they feels best, that allows you to isolate, innervate and pump the muscle the best. “Greg, how do I know which plane of motion to use?” Answer: You tell by feel. Experiment with arcs and angles and planes of motion to find the ones that feel the best that best allow you to isolate, feel, innervate, stimulate and pump the muscle group the best. Everything comes down to feeling the muscle. If the working muscle burns and aches and contracts and pumps during a set, man, you’ve got it. You’re doing everything right. If you fail to feel the sensations of muscular exertion in the working muscle, if there’s no ache, burn or pump, than something is obviously wrong. If you do bentover rows with a lot of cheating and all you feel is biceps and forearms and traps, than you’re not performing the rows properly and you’re certainly not stimulating or innervating your lats. If you’re doing bench presses for pecs but all that burns or works is your triceps and front delts, you’re obviously not performing the bench presses properly or for maximum pectoral growth. If you do barbell curls and your biceps don’t pump, but your shoulders do, you’re not training biceps, you’re training shoulders.

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This ain’t rocket science, folks. It’s common sense. Exercise is not merely motion. You must have motion with a purpose. Your mind-set before starting a set determines how hard the muscle is worked. You can focus on innervating and stimulating and pumping a muscle or you can focus on moving a weight any way you can and counting reps. Moving weights and counting reps doesn’t guarantee muscle stimulation or growth. Poor muscle growth is nearly always caused by an inability to “feel” a muscle as you train it. This gets back to the concept of working a muscle versus lifting a weight. Lifting a weight doesn’t necessarily work a muscle, especially when bad form and cheating come into play. You really have to know what you’re doing to work a muscle, while any dummy can lift a weight. Your own body will tell you if you’re training properly or incorrectly. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t it empowering? You don’t need Greg Zulak or John Parrillo, Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, Phil Heath or any bodybuilding expert or champion to tell you how to train or what to eat or how to do an exercise properly for maximum innervation and stimulation. Your body has the innate ability to feel, sense, and give feedback on all your sensory abilities. As far as training goes everything comes back to sensory feel, sensing what your muscle is doing as you train it, feeling and isolating the muscle, and feeling and sensing all the sensations that go along with proper muscle innervation and stimulation such as muscle ache, fatigue, contractions, stimulation, overload and pump. Let your body guide you. Everything ultimately comes down to the feelings you get in the muscle as you train it. Just listen to the feedback you get from your body as you do your exercises. Your body has the ability to feel and sense and to give you feedback on all your sensory

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abilities you experience during a set: I mean the sensory feedback of muscular exertion: muscle ache, exhaustion and fatigue, muscle burn and pump. Your body will tell you what is the best plane of motion to use, which width of grip is best, and which exercises are best for your structure. The answer to all your questions comes from the feedback and the feelings you experience during a set. It your lats burn and ache and pump during a set, you know your training is spot on. If they don’t, something is wrong and must be changed. It really is as simple as that. Learning how to train a muscle properly is no different than learning how to hit a baseball or throw a football or slap a hockey puck. It take time and correct repetition. New neuro-muscular pathways and neural messages must be established and become part of your nervous system and the brains neural network. It’s a skill and it takes time to learn. Some never do learn. Even after 20 years they still make the same mistakes at the gym. This can happen through the engraining of bad habits, habits that are hard to break.

Are You Practicing Perfectly or Just Practicing? Remember the old saying, “practice makes perfect? Actually that is wrong, “practice doesn’t make perfect.” Only “perfect practice makes perfect,” otherwise you’re just engraining bad habits. It’s a phrase used by golf instructors, baseball batting coaches, and teachers of any sport and any athletic endeavor that requires precise and exact physical skills and perfect body performance, such as, weightlifters, power lifters, divers, swimmers, figure skaters, skiers, ski jumpers, speed skaters, gymnasts, sprinters, hurdles, high jumpers, pole vaulters, shot putters, javelin throwers, discus throwers, hammer throwers, Ball room dancers, and tennis players. It means if you always practice to do a movement

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incorrectly you’ll never learn how to do it correctly because you are teaching the nerves and the muscles how to do it the wrong way. Doing anything wrong over and over just engrains bad habits. If you continually do a movement wrong, you never get to experience what is actually right, so you just keep on doing it wrong. You see this a lot in golfers. They start off with a bad grip, a poor stance and bad body posture, and they never get the fundamentals right, so they develop bad swings. When they go to the driving range to practice they continue to do the wrong things—because they feel and right and natural to them—and so they never get any better. Often to do something correctly you have to go 100 per cent against your intuition and sense of what is right. Allow me to digress for a bit. After bodybuilding golf is my next great passion. Many people do not consider golf a sport. They see it as a game, like checkers. I’ll tell you why golf is one of the toughest sports in the world—and surely the most frustrating and humbling game ever conceived by the mind of man. People think golf is about hitting a little white ball to a little hole. It’s not, as Mark Twain famously said, “a good walk spoiled.” For advanced players and PGA players, it’s all about controlling distance, spin, trajectory, and shaping the ball to hit a particular shot. Most holes are not straight. Most dog-leg or turn left-to-right or right-to-left, so you have to curve or shape your shot to play the hole probably. Approach shots often must be shaped as well, as the pin may be on the right or left side of the green. Golf must be played in all kinds of weather: Hot, cold, wet and rainy, windy or no

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wind. The wind can be in your face, from behind, or a cross-wind. The wind really affects the flight of the ball so you need to know how to adjust to the wind. The ball doesn’t travel as far when it’s cold, so you have to make an adjustment. From a physical standpoint, there is a lot of walking involved in playing golf. The golf courses the PGA stars play on TV are typically 7200 to 7700 yards long. That’s over four one-third miles to five miles. When you add in the distance between the greens and the tee blocks, and all the walking to your ball, and all the walking done on greens, you can add another 1000 yards. So to play a four day tournament, plus one or two practice rounds, the pro’s are walking probably 25 to 30 miles in a tournament. And it can be up and down hills, in very hot and humid weather, so there is a lot of walking and they have to walk fast because they are timed and slow play can result in a one stroke penalty stroke. If amateur players play golf, and they carry their own golf bags (which can weigh 40 or more pounds), they can walk four to five miles in a round of golf with 40 or more pounds on their back. It’s harder than you might think. Once I played a round of golf with pro bodybuilder Henderson Thorne and a couple of guys from Gold’s Gym. Henderson was getting ready for a pro show and even though he was doing more than an hour of aerobics a day, by the end of the round he was exhausted. You have to be a good walker to play golf. Golf is the most difficult sport in the world because it is so anti-intuitive. Golf is a game of opposites. Everything a beginner thinks is right about the golf swing is completely wrong and the opposite of what they think and believe. For example,

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beginners and “hackers” think they have to hit up on the ball to help the ball into the air. That’s all wrong. If you hit up on the ball you top it and it barely gets off the ground. You need to hit down on the ball and let the loft of the club get the ball into the air. If you’re playing a hole downwind (with the wind at your back), the natural tendency is to think, “Oh, the wind is blowing behind me, so I can swing easier as the wind is going to help the ball to travel further.” But actually, when the wind is blowing from behind, you want to take less club and hit the ball harder to put maximum backspin on the ball, because the wind is going to reduce backspin, making it more difficult to keep the ball on the green. Again, the complete opposite of what you would think. On the other hand, if you’re hitting into the wind the natural tendency is to think, “I have to hit the ball much harder because the wind is going to make the bar travel less far.” But that’s when you want to swing easier. If you swing extra hard you put extra backspin on the ball and it balloons up into the air and may come up short of the hole or even the green. If it would normally be an 8-iron to the green, into a strong wind you might hit an easy 6-iron and hit a punch shot “under” the wind in order to hit the ball low to get it to the green. To hit a low punch shot you keep your weight on your left side and have an abbreviated follow through. This is just anti-intuitive. In order to make the ball go right-to-left—a hook or draw--you have to swing the club right—which is opposite of what bad golfers do. To make the ball go left-to-right, a fade or slice, you swing the club to the left. That’s swing right to make the ball go left, swing left to make the ball go right Confusing? This is the opposite of what you might

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think to be true and, again, completely anti-intuitive and it’s what makes golf so frustrating and difficult. People who slice the ball badly do so because they club face cuts across the ball and puts left-to-right spin on the ball. They don’t understand that the reason they slice the ball is because they’re swinging the club left (not by a foot, but inches or even fraction of inches). If they miss the green or fairway by 30 yards to the right, on their next hole they might try to compensate by aiming 50 yards left of the green or fairway. But that just opens their stance up even more and makes them cut across the ball even more—they’re swinging even more left—so they might miss the green or fairway by 50 yards. They only way to straighten their shots is to square up their stance, take the club slightly inside, and swing a bit out to the right to put a hook spin on the ball. But I’ve known guys who took up the game when they were 10 and they had a bad slice then, and 50 years later they still slice the ball because they’re still swinging left instead of right. They haven’t figured it out after 50 years. There are so many shots you have to master to play golf well—drives, fairway woods, long irons, medium irons, short irons, wedges, chips, pitches, putts, and sand shots. Greens are not flat so you have to try to figure out how much your putt is going to bend or break. You can also putt uphill or downhill or side hill and the speed of the greens can change due to weather and all this makes putting very difficult to do. The fairways are not flat, so you have to know how to hit the ball from a “hanging” lie. The ball could be lying slightly (or a lot) above your feet. In this case you

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have to allow for the ball to hook or curve right-to-left. If the ball is below your feet, you have to allow for the ball to curve left-to-right. If the ball is downhill, you have to align your body to the slope and play the ball back in your stance or you’ll hit the ground before the ball and hit it “fat” (take a big divot) and come up short of the green. If the ball is uphill, you have to play the ball forward, align your body, or you’ll hit the ball fat again. Sand shots are a major struggle for many players. They never learned that when playing a greenside bunker, it’s the only shot in golf where you do not try to hit the ball. You try to hit behind the ball with the clubface wide open and laying flat, and you try to move sand. How far behind the ball you hit the ball depends on how far you are from the pin. If you’re 20 feet or less you might hit five inches behind the ball. If you’re 30 feet, you might hit 4 inches behind the ball. If you’re 40 feet you might hit two inches behind the ball, or even one inch. To hit a greenside bunker shot the shaft should point outside your right leg (for right-handers) in order to open the face. But hackers have the shaft pointing left and they hood the clubface and try to hit the ball, not move sand, so often they can’t get the ball out of the bunker. Or if it comes out it comes out low with no back spin and runs off the green. But if your ball is buried and you have a half buried lie, then you have to allow for a low ball flight with no spin because you can’t float the ball up in the air as you can on a normal bunker shot. If you hit your ball in the rough you get what are called “flyer” lies. Grass gets between the clubface and the ball so you can’t put as much backspin on the ball. The ball may fly lower and hotter and run farther. You have to take less club and

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compensate for this. In order to play good golf you need the proper grip (with the V’s created by your thumbs and forefingers pointing to your right shoulder), the proper stance, and you have to relax. If you squeeze the grip hard before you hit the ball—the natural tendency for hackers but they are anxious about the shot5 they are about to hit—then you create tension in your arms and shoulders so it’s difficult to make a full backswing and to make a good pass at the ball. The toughest thing about golf for many people is the ball is not moving. Willie Mays, one of the greatest baseball players of all-time, who hit 661 home runs, who had no problem hitting 98 mph fastballs and all the sliders, curve balls, cutters, screw balls, fork balls, knuckle balls, and all the crazy pitches major league pitchers throw, had trouble hitting a golf ball because it was not moving. Sometimes Willie Mays would “whiff” or miss the ball completely on his drives. Charles Barkley, one of the greatest NBA players of all-time, had no trouble dribbling through three or four players and doing a behind-the-head dunk. He had great athletic ability. But put a golf club in his hands and he’s terrible. When you see Charles Barkley playing golf in some celebrity golf tournament, it looks like he took up the game an hour before his playing time. He’s actually been playing for over 20 years. He’s worked with some of the top golf instructors in golf, men like Butch Harmon (who worked with Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, and currently works with 2013 Masters champ Adam Scott), Rick Smith (who worked with Jack Nicklaus, the greatest golfer of all-time with 18 majors), David

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Leadbetter (who worked with Nick Faldo and Nick Price and Greg Norman some), and Hank Haney (who worked with Tiger Woods and Mark O’Meara). He’s had his swing videotaped many times. He has the best equipment money can buy. Charles can’t make a golf swing to save his life. He doesn’t turn and coil on his back swing, and then uncoil on the follow through. He lunges to the right, then lunges to his left. It’s painful to watch. He can’t break 100. Golf is a game you play but can never win. No matter how well you score there are always a few shots you could have putted better or hit better drives, irons or chips. Even the top players in the world can shoot a great score one day and a terrible score the next. It’s common for even top PGA pro’s score 10 shots worse after a great round the day before. In 1987 Greg Norman shot a 63 at the Masters in to set an all-time low score at Augusta National in Georgia. He had a seven stroke lead. On Sunday he shot 78 in the final round—a 15 stroke difference from the day before—while Nick Faldo shot a 67, and won by several strokes. The best golfers in the world hit the greens about 75 per cent of the time. They hit the fairway on their drives at best 75 per cent of the time. They save par when they miss a green at best about 75 per cent of the time. Even they can`t hit perfect shots all the time. Ben Hogan, who won nine majors and who was one of the best ball strikers of all-time said he expected to hit only four or five perfect shots a round, out of 65 to 72 shots. Sorry for going off topic but, as I said, golf for me is a passion. All golfers can send me $10 bucks for the lesson. Send the money to, “Thanks for Improving my Golf

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Game, Greg “You’re one hellava nice guy” Zulak.” What does this have to do with training? Everything. Doing exercises is also in many cases anti-intuitive. You may think you’re doing an exercise correctly—because it’s the way you’ve done it since your first day in the gym—but you may be making all kinds of mistakes. When you are doing your exercises in the gym, don’t just do them, do them perfectly. Don’t cheat excessively. Don’t heave and toss and throw heavy weights around with speed, momentum, and inertia without thought. The only way to get better in any athletic endeavor is if you practice doing something the right way. When you’re at the gym you have to “practice” your exercises correctly—correct for innervation, isolation, stimulation and pump—or you will never improve. Throwing and heaving heavy weights may be gratifying because doing so allows you to lift heavier weights but actually gives your muscles less stimulation and work. Don’t kick with your knees and drive with the legs on standing presses. Don’t yank and pull on pull downs and rows, or kick and wiggle on chins. Don’t shrug with your delts and traps and lean back on curls. Don’t arch your chest and bounce the bar off your chest doing bench presses and incline presses. Many people are in such big hurry to get big and strong they wreck every exercise in the book by using such heavy weights that all they can do is cheat like crazy. They build their ego’s, not their muscles. Like the golfers who start with the wrong fundamentals, bodybuilders who never learn to do their exercises correctly, are sure to fail. Like golf fundamentals, performance of many common bodybuilding exercises is anti-intuitive. What feels right may be totally wrong. You’ve been told that in order to get bigger you have to get

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stronger, and then you take that idea and pervert it into training with excessive cheating and no innervation. You focus on lifting weights rather than working your muscles, and just counting their reps to finish your sets. As I said previously, sets and reps and routines mean nothing if you’re doing the sets and reps and exercises wrong. If you lose the feel for a muscle as you train, the weight is too heavy. If you have to bring into play secondary muscle groups to lift a weight, it’s too heavy. Unfortunately, many people’s ego’s do not allow them to reduce their poundage’s so they train improperly. They refuse to swallow their pride and use weights that allow for maximum innervation, stimulation, overload, and pump. The point I’m making is substitute the word training for the word practice and you can understand the significance of the statement, only “perfect practice makes perfect.” Those who fail to do their exercises properly and use feedback from their muscles as they train and who do not experiment to find the method that allows them to work their muscles the hardest, with maximum innervation and pump, are sure to fail. You simply must “practice” your exercises correctly for optimum results. So now let me ask you, are you training perfectly or just training?

Concentrate and Focus on Working the Muscle, Not Lifting the Weight Your number one goals as a bodybuilder should be to learn how to innervate and “feel,” isolate, and stimulate your muscle groups as you do your exercises. You have to maintain innervation throughout the entire set. Your second goal should be to greatly

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increase blood volume to your working muscle group and to increase cardio-vascular density and to achieve the best pump you can. In Pumping Iron author Charles Gaines wrote, “Concentration. . .is one of the great sheep and goat separators of the sport (of bodybuilding). The people who cannot manage it very well tend to stay smooth. And all the best bodybuilders can block out an air war with their concentration. I remember watching Ed Corney doing dumbbell curls in Baghdad. He was seated on a stool in the middle of the big, strange gym that the city let the Mr. Universe competitors work out in. There must have been thirty or forty Iraqis standing along all four walls and another fifty or so at the windows looking in. Ed Corney sat in the middle of all those fervid, noisy little people, staring at the sheath of his biceps, fill and empty, fill and empty, his face—remote and rapt as a yogi’s, his mind somewhere down inside the fibers of his arm.” You must train your lats with the same kind of concentration Ed Corney used while training biceps. Remember, innervation training stipulates that workouts require as much mental energy and effort as physical energy and effort. You must use the power of your mind to lift weights properly for maximum innervation and pump.

Stretch and Squeeze: I don’t want to come off sounding sexist, but I’ve noticed that especially among female beginners there is this attitude that what you do is more important than how you do it. They believe motion equals results, whereas male beginners focus on trying to lift the heaviest weights they can, in any form they can. In the past when I did personal training, I found women were very eager to please but they

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really didn’t grasp the idea of working their muscles as they did their exercises, especially on lat exercises. If, for example, I told a female client to do 10 lat pulldowns to-the-chest, 99 per cent of the time they’d focus more on the idea of doing the 10 reps and getting the set over with, than working their lats or backs. Even though I would take great pains to explain about lat isolation and innervation and the importance of feeling their lats as they did their set, I’d find more often than not they focussed on counting their reps than working the muscle. I’d hear them count their reps, 1…2…3 and so on until the set was completed. At the end of the set they’d smile and ask, “How was that?” or “How’d I do?” When I asked them if they had felt their lats working or the muscles in their back working during the set they’d nearly always look confused as if to say, “Did I feel what where?” If anything, most would say they only felt their biceps and their shoulders during the set, not the lats. That was the problem I faced. Mmm, what to do? I learned that explaining to them and telling them what they should be feeling wasn’t enough. Feeling their lats and back muscles contract each rep, squeezing their lats and back muscles as the elbows came down and back when the bar was pulled to the chest, and feeling the lats stretch as the bar returned to the top position were foreign ideas to them. Many didn’t even know they had lats, or where they were, let alone how to feel (innervate) them as they exercised. Then I hit upon an approach that really seemed to help them connect their minds to their body, and to finally feeling their lats and back instead of their arms and

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shoulders. I’d tell them, “I tell you what,” I’d say to them. I’ll count the reps. I want you to focus on something completely different. As you do your set I want you to close your eyes and visualize your back. When you pull the bar down to your upper chest, I want you to arch your chest, drop your shoulders down, and to pull your elbows back as far as possible. As the bar hits your upper chest, tense and squeeze your back as hard as you can and say the word ‘squeeze’ out loud. Really think about trying to squeeze your back muscles together. Pretend there is a potato between your shoulder blades and you’re trying to mash that potato. Then when the bar returns slowly to the top position I want you to say out loud the word ‘stretch.’ Think about your lats stretching all the way to the top position.” The difference was amazing. All of a sudden these woman started focussing on working their lats and their backs instead of just counting reps. By saying the words “squeeze” and “stretch” each repetition, they were finally working their lats and backs instead of just counting reps and going through the motions. For the first time they actually felt their back muscles working. I applied the “squeeze” and “stretch” concept to every exercise: curls, extensions, pushdowns, flyes, bench presses, pullovers, cable crossovers, leg extensions, leg curls, leg presses, calf raises, and crunches and leg raises. It worked great for any muscle but was particularly effective on lat exercises. Because they couldn’t actually see their lat muscles squeezing and stretching, they had to picture it in their minds. They had to “feel” the movement.

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Now ladies don’t think I’m picking only on you. The truth is most guys are just as bad at lat exercises but for different reasons. Whereas most women concentrate on counting reps and finishing the set, most men get hung up on using too much weight and end up doing their reps in any sloppy fashion. It’s a macho thing. They use too many other muscles to assist in getting the weight up. They tend to let their arms and shoulders, even legs and lower backs take over. They feel six or eight sloppy cheating reps are as good as six or eight strict, full range of motion reps. I found the “squeeze” and “stretch” concept worked just as well for the guys because it made them focus on feeling and working their lats, instead of just heaving heavy weights up and down. It made them visualize their lats working. They could suddenly feel their lats working like never before. Many felt silly saying the words “squeeze” and “stretch” out loud, so I would do it for them, or ask them to whisper the words instead. This approach assured they did all their chinning, pulldown and rowing exercises over a full range of motion. I’d constantly remind them, “don’t start up until you finish going all the way down.” The more you stretch any muscle group at the bottom of a rep, the harder it can contract at the top. That is a basic rule of bodybuilding. Getting people to use good form is not easy. As I mentioned before, Vince Gironda says most people train incorrectly because it’s too hard to train correctly. It’s easier to train incorrectly. People forget that the reason you lift weights and do sets and reps is to work the muscle. Read that line again. You go to the gym to work your muscles, not to see how much weight you can lift in any cheating manner. Barbells, dumbbells and exercise machines are just tools that allow you to work your muscles.

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Here a few simple rules to follow which will make your lat training more effective.

*Rule Number One: If you cannot feel your lats as you train them, always assume you method is wrong. Assume you are not isolating nor innervating the lats. You are cheating and bringing other muscle groups into play to help you lift the weight. Remember, you are trying to work the muscle, not lift the weight. If you use too much weight all your focus will be on lifting the weight and not on working the muscle. Check your body position. If you round your back on rows instead of keeping it arched, it is not possible to contract the lats correctly. On exercises such as wide-grip chins and pulldowns, you should not hold the bar with the fingers wrapped around it. This brings the biceps into play too much. To de-activate the biceps, drape your thumbs and fingers over the bar. If you do so your lats will pull out or hook out and you will find it impossible to completely straighten the arms at the top of the range of motion, increasing constant-tension on the lats.

*Rule Number Two: If a muscle such as the lats fails to respond to training, always assume you are training them incorrectly. Even if you think you are using textbook perfect form, if your lats refuse to ache and pump, assume your method is wrong. By method I’m not just referring to exercise form, I also am referring to sets, reps, and training principles.

Use the Pre-exhaust Principle to Work the Lats Hard: The preexhaust principle was invented by Bob Kennedy back in the 1968, but it was Arthur Jones who really made lifters aware of this principle when he wrote about it in his articles in IronMan magazine and his Nautilus Training Bulletins 1 and 2 in the 1970’s.

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Most readers know what pre-exhaust training is, but for the benefit of younger readers I will explain what the pre-exhaust principle is and how to do it. Pre-exhaust training involves performing an isolation movement before a compound movement. Examples would be leg extensions before squats, dumbbell flyes before bench presses, laterals before behind-the-neck presses, and pullovers before chins, rows or pulldowns. This is an especially effective for hard to develop muscle groups, or muscles that are difficult to isolate, pump, and innervate (feel). In the case of working the lats, the biceps tend to give out before the lats have been worked as hard as they should have. Pre-tiring or pre-exhausting the lats by performing pullovers—which involve little or no biceps—allows you to work the lats harder than normal once you begin the compound exercise because the arms are fresh but the lats are already tired. Using the pre-exhaust principle is especially effective for people who have a hard time innervating and pumping their lats—hence they can be very effective for stimulating lat growth.

Find out What Works: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Just because a muscle fails to respond to one type of training does not mean it will not respond to another. For example, if your lats fail to respond to sets of 6 to 10 reps does not mean they will not respond to supersets, trisets, drop sets (triple, double or single), and high rep sets of 20 to 100 reps. You won’t know until you try. All champion bodybuilders ultimately find the methods that give them the best results. So should you. That’s why many champions train so differently.

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Also, just because one muscle group responds well to certain sets and reps, don’t believe it applies to all muscle groups. Small muscle groups generally need less reps than larger muscle groups—which is the opposite of what many bodybuilders believe. Whereas your pecs and biceps may grow well with sets of bench presses and barbell curls for 6 to 8 reps, your quads or lats may need double or triple the reps or even more for best results. Okay, now I’m going to let you in on another “secret” of the champions. Hush, move closer. This comes right from the horse’s mouth, from various champion bodybuilders I have interviewed over the years. Here it is. If a muscle fails to respond the champs will try anything—and I mean literally anything--to force it to respond. I’ll give you a few examples of how some champion bodybuilder’s train certain body parts or muscle groups that may surprise you and that illustrate the concept of “working the muscle” versus “lifting the weight” and that there is a huge difference between using working weights when working a muscle instead of lifting maximally heavy weights. Allow me to digress from lat training to make my point. See, I think where many wannabe bodybuilders go wrong is they think the champions train one way when they really train in a completely different way. There is a big difference between training with maximum weights versus the working weights many champs train with—often only 50 or 60 per cent of what they are capable of lifting. They train with lighter weights because it allows them to control the weight better and to isolate, stimulate, innervate and pump the working muscle better for maximum growth. It’s also a safer way to train with less chance of injury.

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As well, 99.9 per cent of the champions do not train according to Heavy-Duty or Nautilus training principles. Unlike Mike and Ray Mentzer and Casey Viator who believed you could train a muscle properly with just a couple of high intense sets, the many champs I have interviewed over the years believe you need high intensity training and lots of it to make a muscle grow. For example, many years ago I did a biceps training article with Vince Taylor for Flex magazine. At the time Vince had won The Night of the Champions, The Arnold Classic, numerous IFBB grand prix events, and finished third at the Mr. Olympia contest, and had 21 inch arms, so I assumed he would tell me about using curling poundage’s that would tax an elephant. Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Vince told me the heaviest he ever went on barbell curls was 65 pounds, and sometimes he admitted he only used 55 pounds. Beginners use 55 pounds on barbell curls, so how was Vince able to develop 21 inch arms training so light? He did it with a super high volume of sets and reps. Vince did what he called “double sets.” He told me he imagined he was training with a training partner. He would do 15 repetitions with 55 pounds, and as soon as he finished his set he paused only as long as it took to take in four or five deep breaths and then did another 15 reps. Vince did 30 sets of 15 reps training this way, with maybe 10 or 15 seconds rest between sets. Can you imagine how pumped, innervated, stimulated and exhausted his biceps must have been after doing 30 sets of 15 reps? No wonder he only used 65 or 55 pounds. After the barbell curls, Vince would do 10 sets of alternate dumbbell curls with 35 pound dumbbells using the double set concept, again 15 reps a set, followed by 10 sets

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of hammer curls with 30 pound dumbbells, 15 reps a set, again using the double set concept. This amounted to 750 reps for the biceps. In short, Vince just pumped the hell out of his biceps. If you talked to Vince he would tell you he did 15 sets of barbell curls and five sets of alternate dumbbell curls and five sets of hammer curls, but because of his double sets training method, he was doing twice the number of sets. Another time I did a thigh training article with Vince for Flex magazine. Vince had really freaky thighs so I assumed he did a lot of heavy squatting and hack squats to develop his thighs. Everyone says you have to squat to get great thighs, right. Not Vince. He told he me had had never done a single set of squats in his life, and he never did Smith machine squats or hack squats either. What he did do is 40 sets of 45 degree leg presses: eight sets with two legs working up to 700 pounds, a minimum of 20 reps per set (usually 25 to 30 or more reps). He then did 32 sets of leg presses with one leg using two or three plates aside, again a minimum of 20 reps per set. He rested only as long as it took to do a set for one leg and then he immediately began a set for his other leg, and went back and forth until all 32 sets were completed. In reality, he was doing 64 sets of one-leg leg presses. Every eight sets Vince changed his foot position on the foot platform to train a different part of his quads: upper, lower, outer, inner. As with his biceps Vince just pumped the hell out of his quads, and the rep total was more than 800 reps. When Vince first started bodybuilding he tried heavy training for low sets of 6 to 8 reps and conventional training but it didn’t work for him and his muscles just did not

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grow. He wasn’t sure he had what it took to become a professional bodybuilder. Then he experimented and found he needed lots of sets and reps to grow. If he hadn’t experimented and tried high reps and high sets, he never would have become the great bodybuilder he did. Another reason why Vince made the switch to high reps was because he tore his right biceps—with of all things a 7.5 pound dumbbell pumping up before a contest in Germany. Fortunately, unlike Tom Platz and Dorian Yates, Vince had his injured arm operated on the very next day and the biceps he tore actually has better peak than his other arm. I’ll tell you a funny story about Vince Taylor. When he first began bodybuilding he was living in Germany. John Brown, NABBA Amateur Mr. Universe for both 1981 and 1982, came to Germany to do some guest posing. Vince and John met at a contest and became friends and John invited Vince to come to LA and train with him for a week. John Brown was insanely strong. He could actually superset bench presses with 500 pounds with incline barbell presses with 405 pounds for 6 reps a set in loose, cheating form and bouncing the bar off his chest. John never put collars on the bar when he benched so the plates clanged and made a lot of noise. Vince told me he was absolutely terrified when John did his sets because he was supposed to spot for him. Vince told me if the bar got stuck on John’s chest there was no way he had the strength to pull the weight off him. With wide eyes as he told me this story, Vince said, “I can still remember all those plates clanging and how scared I was.”

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Vince went back to Germany absolutely convinced he could never become a professional bodybuilder—not if he had to train as heavy as John Brown. Fortunately he was intelligent and creative enough to experiment with high reps and high sets and became one of the most successful bodybuilders of all-time—even more so than John Brown, who never did anything in the IFBB. Don’t think this type of training is unusual. Roger Stewart, a former top NPC competitor with freaky leg development, began his hamstring workout with sets of leg curls starting with 1 x 100 reps, 1 x 75 reps, 1 x 50 reps, and 1 x 35 reps. That got his hamstrings to grow, not 4 sets of 6 to 8 reps. Tony Pearson used to do what he called “suicides” for his thighs. He would do eight triple drop sets of leg extensions—probably 40 to 50 intense reps a set. He told me the pain and burn in his thighs was so severe he’d (jokingly) rather commit suicide then do the eight triple drop sets, but he said they brought out the separation and crossstriations in his thighs better than any method he had ever used. Everybody knows about Tom Platz and his totally massive and freaky thigh development. Everybody knows Tom loved to squat, but what many bodybuilders may not be aware of is Tom developed his thighs with very high rep sets of squats, not low rep 6 to 8 reps sets as everyone assumes. In a thigh training article I did with Tom for MuscleMag International he told me on his heavy leg day he would squat with 405 pounds for 50 reps! After a few minutes rest he would do a second set with 405 pounds and would get about 35 reps. He would squat for just two sets but what sets, eh?

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What Tom did on his light leg day should be in Ripley’s Believe it Or Not. After warming up, Tom would put 225 pound on the bar and squat non-stop and continuously for ten minutes straight!! He went by time, not by how many reps he did, although in ten minutes he surely must have done more than a 100 reps. What makes this feat even more unbelievable was Tom would squat very deep, until his butt hit his calves, but stop short of full lockout to keep constant-tension on his quads. Can you imagine how pumped and stimulated and innervated and exhausted his thighs must have felt after squatting for ten minutes non-stop? This was intensity on a super human level. Why would Tom do such super high reps? Obviously, because that’s what made his thighs grow the best. What other explanation can there be? Twice a month Tom would squat heavy with two sets with 600 pounds for 15 reps. Not orthodox training—when’s the last time you did 50 reps on squats or squatted for 10 minutes--but look at the results! Also, please note, even on his heaviest squatting days of the month, Tom did sets of 15 reps, not 6 or 8. Tim Belknap, a former AAU Mr. America and NABBA Mr. Universe champ with freaky thighs, also used to squat for sets of 40 to 50 reps. Jeff King, another AAU Mr America and NABBA Mr. Universe champ, did a minimum of 20 reps on all his leg exercises. Bob Paris, former NPC heavyweight champion, did 20 reps or more on all his leg exercises, as did Samir Bannout, Mr. Olympia for 1982. Canadian champ Nimrod King and winner of two IFBB pro contests, told me he did all his leg exercises for sets of 25 to 30 reps, including squats, and that the absolute minimum amount of reps all bodybuilders should use on leg exercises was 20. Henderson Thorne once told me

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anything less than 20 reps on 45 degree leg presses was useless for growth. Sometimes Henderson would do triple or quad drop sets of leg presses starting with 1300 pounds for 30 reps, and by the time the weight was down to 600 pounds he would have done 100 reps or more. Afterwards Henderson couldn’t even walk. Even mighty Greg Kovacs would do 45 degree leg presses with 2000 pounds for sets of 20 reps. Eric Heiden, the famous American speed skater who won five gold medals at the winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid in 1980, had thighs like tree-trunks—absolutely massive. His secret was doing leg presses with 600 pounds for 100 reps per set. If you’ve never done sets for 100 reps, you don’t know what pain is all about. John Parrillo has the bodybuilders he trains do sets of 100 reps on his belt squat machine. John puts a weight on the machine the bodybuilder can do for 20 reps on their own, and then makes them do 80 forced reps. Doing two or three forced reps at the end of a set is intense and difficult but 80 forced reps? I can’t even fathom the pain. By the way, John told me that every single bodybuilder or athlete who did the belt machine squats for 100 reps for the first time, blacked out and vomited when they came to long before they got to 100 reps. Casey Viator, who won the AAU Mr. America contest in 1971 while still a teenager (as well as the “best legs” ward), used to do a very painful and exhausting preexhaust triset of leg presses with 600 pounds for 50 reps, leg extensions with 225 pounds for 20 reps, followed immediately by full barbell squat with 405 pound for 20 reps. Casey literally ran between the leg press machine, leg extension machine, and

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squat racks to get the maximum pre-exhaust effect. This triset is absolutely killer for thighs. Former top IFBB pro Eddie Robinson was a high rep guy, and, boy, did he have massive and freaky thighs. He was so strong he could squat with 525 pounds for 25 reps. But what was really unbelievable about his leg training routine is the insanely super high amount of reps he did while performing lunges. I’ll tell you a funny story about Eddie and his training partner. It was a little ritual they did before each leg workout. On leg day in the change room as they got into their sweats Eddie’s training partner would say to Eddie, “Tell me we’re not doing the lunges today.” And Eddie would say, “Yeah, we’re doing them.” Eddie’s partner would grimace and shake his head and say “oh, no!” After each leg exercise in the gym, Eddie’s partner would say, “Tell me we’re not doing the lunges today.” And Eddie would say, “We’re doing them.” Eddie’s partner would grimace and shake his head and say, “Oh, no!” Finally, after doing all their sets of squats, 45 degree leg presses, hack squats, and leg curls, Eddie and his training partner went outside to a football field behind the gym where they trained. They would put 175 pounds on their shoulders and lunge up and down the entire football field—end zones included. This was lunging for about 240 yards, and amounted to hundreds (almost a 1000) of reps for each leg. Afterwards, they would dump the barbells to the ground, fall to the ground in utter exhaustion, and then vomit their guts out.

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Now you know why Eddie’s partner would say, “Tell me we’re not doing the lunges today,” because it was something that required super human effort and was so utterly painful and sickening to do. Have you ever done lunges for hundreds of reps? No, who would think to do such a thing? Sure works the quads and hamstrings harder than doing 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps, eh. Serge Nubret of France was one of the best bodybuilders of all time. He won the NABBA Pro Mr. Universe title in 1976 and finished second to Arnold Schwarzenegger at the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest in Pretoria, South Africa. He also won a WABBA Mr. Pro World contest. He was very strong and set a bench press record in France in his weight class of 500 pounds raw. Yet Serge built his fabulous physique with very light weights, very high reps, and a massive number of sets. For chest, for example, Serge would do 20 sets of 20 reps of bench presses with 225 pounds (That’s 400 reps. I’d like to see some Heavy-Duty fanatic do that!). He would then do dumbbell flyes with 25 pound dumbbells for 15 sets of 15 reps, followed by straight-arm barbell pullovers with 60 pounds for 15 sets of 15 reps. Serge developed one of the greatest chests ever using this type of training, right up there with Sergio’s, Franco’s, Arnold’s and Lee Haney’s. For deltoids the heaviest Serge went on seated behind-the-neck presses was only 95 pounds but he did 15 set of 15 reps, with just a minutes rest between sets and lifting in constant-tension style. If you think that is easy, try it. He followed the presses with lying one-arm dumbbell laterals with just a 15 pound dumbbell but for 15 sets of 15 reps. He rested only as long as it took to do 15 reps for one deltoid and then he rolled over and did 15 reps for the other deltoid and so on until all 15 sets were completed. He then did 15 sets of 15 reps with 65 pounds on barbell upright rows. Not exactly what you

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would call power training, eh, but Serge had pecs and deltoids most power trainers and Heavy-Duty fanatics like Mike Mentzer could only dream about. Dave Draper, IFBB Mr. America of 1965 and IFBB Mr. Universe of 1966, could bench press 450 pounds. But he said for pectoral development he said the most he used on bench presses was 225 pounds for high rep sets in constant-tension style. Danny Padilla, one of the greatest short bodybuilders of all-time and IFBB Mr. America of and IFBB Mr. Universe of 1977, once bench pressed 405 pounds for 6 reps. Yet, like Nubret and Dave Draper, he said for pectoral development he did all his sets for between 225 to 250 pounds in constant-tension style. Jim Morris, who won the 1973 AAU Mr. America contest would start his lat workouts with 20 sets of 20 reps in the wide-grip chin or 400 reps! Amazingly, each rep was done until Jim`s chin was over the bar. When Roy Callendar trained his amazingly muscular back he would do various chins for an entire hour (40 sets), and then do an hour of bentover rowing, T-bar rowing, seated cable rowing and one-arm dumbbell rows. Three-time Mr. Olympia champ Frank Zane often trained some of his muscle groups more than two or three times a week. For example, if Frank wasn’t satisfied with the muscularity of his back and lats, he might train them four days straight. This is not unusual among champions. Albert Beckles said in an article in Flex magazine that his thighs really improved when he trained them six days a week. In an early 1960 article in IronMan magazine a bodybuilder named Bill Cook said he trained all his muscle groups six days a week. He did different exercises each day but trained

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all his muscle groups six times a week. Bill was also a black belt in Karate and had gained 150 pounds of muscular bodyweight in less than five years training this way. I once had a long conversation with Armand Tanny (brother of Vic of the famous fitness chain), and a top writer for Muscle & Fitness magazine and who had won the Pro Mr. USA title in 1950. Armand trained on Muscle Beach in Venice, California along with Steve Reeves, Joe Gold, Zabo Koszewski, and other well-known bodybuilders of the time. Armand told me it was nothing for them to do a 100 sets of squats training all day long. He said the next day they might do 50 sets of bench presses and 50 sets of dumbbell flyes and dips, again training all day. The next day they would do 50 sets of rows and cleans for back all morning and then spend all afternoon doing endless sets of curls and extensions for their arms. They trained this way six days a week. There were no steroids or testosterone in those days, in fact, few supplements, equipment was basic, yet these guys developed amazing physiques. By the way, is it just me or have bodybuilder’s gotten lazier in the last 20 years. John Little and Peter Sisko have bodybuilder’s thinking they are overtraining if they train a muscle for two or three minutes every 14 days. Mike Mentzer was telling people before his untimely death to do one working set per muscle group. But don’t you think 100 sets of squats is just a little bit harder to do than one set? Bodybuilder Bill Petis was famous for his 23 inch arms back in the 1970s. Bill was very strong and could do overhead triceps extensions with as much as 370 pounds for reps. But to finish off his triceps workout Bill would do triceps dips between-benches

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for 60 sets of 50 reps, or 3000 reps. Ya, think that might have given his triceps a little pumping? In 1984 Bob Kennedy took me to Chicago for four days to watch the great Sergio Oliva train so I could write a two-part article for MuscleMag. I was totally blown away by Sergio’s massive physique but even more stunned by his very unusual way of training. It was unlike anything I had ever seen or read about before. On all upper body muscle groups Sergio did little partial reps. On bench presses, for example, the bar never got higher than six inches off his chest and on his heaviest sets it looked more like four inches. He used the same form on incline and decline presses. I had never seen or heard of anyone benching this way before. Between sets I asked Sergio why he benched this way. He asked me to place my hand on his chest. He then moved his arm back and forth in the typical benching full range of motion style and he asked if I felt his pec working? “Yeah,” I said, “sort of, I guess.” Then he dropped his delts down and back, arched his chest and moved his arms back and forth with that six inch range of motion he used and he asked me if I felt his chest working now? Wow! Could I ever!! His pec bulged and contracted and it felt like it was alive and that something was going to come bursting through his chest like in the movie Alien. Doing partial reps with continuous motion was the method that allowed Sergio to work his pecs best. Another thing Sergio did was what I call “continuous motion” training to maintain constant-tension. When he did a set for any upper body muscle group (oddly, for legs everything was full range of motion) the bar or dumbbells or cable never stop moving

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until the set is finished. There were no resting at the bottom of the range of motion and no pauses at the top to squeeze and contract the muscle. The bar moved constantly and the set ended when muscular exhaustion forced the set to end. On seated Smith machine presses Sergio used a collar-to-collar grip and pressed the bar only to the top of his head and the bar never stopped moving. On widegrip chins he lowered his body down only half way down but his body never stopped moving until the set was over. On preacher curls Sergio did only the bottom one-third of the range of motion, the bar constantly moving On one-arm concentration curls he did only the top one-half of the range of motion and the dumbbell moved constantly. On lat pulldowns he pulled the bar to the top of his head, not his neck or chest. When I asked him why he trained this way he said it was so he could maintain constant-tension on the muscle-or the part of the muscle he was training-at all times. He said, “Why come all the way up on preacher curls? That just takes the tension off the lower biceps. Just do the bottom one-third and keep hammering away at the lower biceps.” On concentration curls he said, “Why lower the dumbbell all the way down. That just takes tension off the upper and outer biceps. Just do the top one-half of the range of motion and keep hammering away at the upper-outer biceps.” Another thing Sergio did that surprised me was his preference for high reps. He did a minimum of 20 reps a set for all muscle groups including biceps and triceps. On one set of bench presses he did 50 reps with 225 pounds. When’s the last time you did 50 rep sets of bench presses? How’s your chest looked compared to Sergio’s in his

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prime? Come to think of it, in Planet Muscle magazine Jeff Everson said Ronnie Coleman bench pressed 225 pounds for 80 reps. Norman Zale, who lives in Chicago with Sergio, once wrote an article in IronMan on Sergio’s chest training. Sergio did 10 sets of his partial rep bench presses supersetted with wide-grip chins, and then did 15 supersets of dips and dumbbell flyes, 20 reps a set. You think that might have pumped Sergio’s pecs just a little? One training principle Sergio used on almost every set was rest-pause. For instance, on his last set of seated behind-the-neck Smith machine presses he used 315 pounds. He got 10 reps, then paused and took in a few deep breaths. Then he pumped out another five partial reps, paused to take in another few deep breaths, and pumped out another five partial reps. This allowed him to achieve his goal of 20 reps. Sergio did a massive number of sets, about 25 to 30 sets per muscle group. He never did any forced reps or negatives and on most sets it looked like he didn’t even go to complete muscular failure and yet somehow it appeared like he was training harder than anyone in the gym. He had tremendous endurance. He told me after an hours training he felt like he was just warming up and after two hours he looked fresh like he could do even more training. To me Sergio was, like Serge Nubret, the ultimate innervater and muscle pumper. It was just pump, pump and pump some more. British bodybuilder Johnnie Rutherford told Bob Kennedy that he did all his exercises for all muscle groups for 10 sets of 32 reps. It’s an odd number, I must admit. Why not 10 sets of 30? But the point is, like Freddie Ortiz, Vince Taylor, Serge Nubret,

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Sergio Oliva and other top bodybuilders, Johnnie just pumped the crap out of his muscles. All these champions trained in an unorthodox manner. That’s not how most recreational bodybuilder’s train. They’re stuck in the old 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps kind of training. See, again, part of the problem, as I see it, is readers of bodybuilding magazines are confused as to how they think bodybuilders train and how they actually train. If someone wrote that Sergio Oliva did ten sets of bench presses, you’d only get half the story. You’d think Sergio benched in the typical fashion, utilizing a full range of motion with a pause at the top of the range of motion. You wouldn’t know about the constantmotion of the bar and the partial reps unless someone like me told you. If I had written in my MMI articles that Sergio did preacher curls, without mentioning he only did the one-third bottom of the range of motion, you’d think he did preacher curls full range. Many champs have their little idiosyncrasies as to how they train, the way they have found best for muscle growth. Larry Scott used to do a heavy-light superset for his forearms of 250 pound wrist curls for half reps, followed by full wrist curls with 135 pounds for 20 to 25 reps. On EZbar reverse curls he cheated and did only the middle three-fifths of the range of motion. On his dumbbell presses he did only the middle three-fifths of the range of motion. Why? Because doing so allowed him to work his muscles harder. That’s why all the top pros don’t train alike. They experiment until they find out what works for them. So should you.

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I’ll give you a few more examples of bodybuilder’s who found that training lighter gave them better results than training with maximum heavy weights. In the early 90’s I did a biceps article for MuscleMag with Australian bodybuilder John Terilli, who placed high at the Olympia and would go on to win a NABBA Pro Mr. Universe title. Early in his career John told me he had worked up to cheat curls with 275 pounds for 5 reps. Yet his arms measured only 18 ½ inches and his joints ached constantly. Forced to train lighter due to his injuries, John was surprised but delighted to find that when he did barbell curls for 5 sets of 12 to 15 reps with 135 pounds—less than half what he used before— his arms grew two inches in one year to 20 ½ inches. Like Sergio Oliva John employed continuous motion to maintain constant-tension on his biceps. There were no pauses at either the bottom or the top of the range of motion. He essentially did the middle three-quarters only. The set ended when muscular exhaustion forced the bar to stop moving. Pat Neve was a top amateur bodybuilder back in the 1970’s and had placed top three at the AAU Mr. America contest several times. Pat used to be a powerlifter and had a personal best raw bench press of 500 pounds. He could also do a seated behindthe-neck press with 315 pounds. Yet when lifting that heavy he admitted his pecs and deltoid were not very good. When he reduced his training weight for seated behind-theneck presses down to 135 pounds and did 5 sets of 12 to 15 repetitions per set, employing constant-tension and resting just a minute between sets, his deltoids became one of his best body parts. Similarly, when Pat reduced his bench press weight by half and began doing sets of bench presses for 12 to 15 reps in constant-tension style, his

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chest became so developed he almost always won “Best chest” award at the Mr. America contest. Two-time Mr. Olympia champ Larry Scott developed some of the best arms and deltoids ever. He built his arms with trisets and supersets and his deltoids with drop sets. For biceps did a very painful and highly intense triset of dumbbell preacher curls with 85 pound dumbbells for 6 reps and 4 burns (or partial reps), then barbell preacher curls with 135 pounds for 6 reps and 4 burns, followed by cheating EZ-bar reverse curls (doing the middle 3/5 th of the range of motion) with 155 pounds for 6 reps and 4 burns. Larry did this triset five times. This gave his biceps a massive pump. Larry’s triset is brutally intense and painful to do. It was too intense for me. I couldn’t do barbell preacher curls after just having done dumbbell preacher curls, so I modified Larry’s triset and came up with an effective triset of my own. I trisetted barbell preacher curls for 6 to 8 reps with barbell curls for 6 to 8 reps plus a couple of cheat reps, followed immediately by EZ-bar reverse curls for 6 to 8 reps and a couple of cheat reps. I did three or four trisets depending on my energy level each arm day, resting just a minute between trisets. This routine was utterly grueling and painful to do—trisets are t-o-u-g-h-but they got my arms to their all-time largest size. They just blew up like balloons. The great thing about trisets is the whole biceps workout is over in only 12 to 15 minutes. For triceps Larry did six supersets of lying triceps extensions with his elbows splayed wide and lowering the bar to his neck, with kneeling long pulley triceps

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extensions. He then did six sets of triceps pushdowns in descending weight style and resting only a few seconds rest between sets. I came up with a very effective way to train my triceps. I first did 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps of lying decline extensions with a EZ-curl bar (the decline bench allows for a greater range of motion than a flat bench). Next I did five drop sets of close-grip bench presses, 6 to 10 reps a set, with my first set with the heaviest weight. I rested only as long as it took to reduce the weight on the bar. I finished with three trisets of the following exercises: Seated triceps extensions, triceps pushdowns, and tricep dips between-benches. On the triceps dips I started with a 50 pound plate on my lap and did as many reps as possible. When I hit failure I removed the plate and then repped out till failure. I rested as little as possible between exercises and only a minute between trisets. This routine just blew my triceps up. Along with the biceps training it sounds like a lot of work but I could do the whole thing in only 45 to 50 minutes because I kept rest between sets to a minimum. Larry Scott felt the deltoids recovered faster than any muscle group and therefore should be trained faster. Larry would begin with his special “Scott dumbbell presses” (held with an off-center grip so the little fingers and fleshy part of the hand pushed against the outer plates of the dumbbells so they would tilt with the little fingers pointing up and the thumbs down and then doing only the middle 3/5th of the range of motion, with the arms pulled back in line with the shoulders. The dumbbells never touch the shoulders nor do you lockout at the top). He would do six sets of six drop sets or 36 sets of presses! He then would do dumbbell laterals, six sets of six drops, or 36 sets of

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laterals! He would finish with bentover laterals for six sets of six drops or 36 sets of bentover laterals! That’s over a 100 sets for delts, yet Larry could do this work out in only 90 minutes because he rested just a few seconds between drops and only a minute between cycles (six drops being a cycle). He called it “racing the pump.” Vince Gironda said Larry Scott could do more sets in one hour than most bodybuilders could do in two hours. Vince Gironda felt one of the most effective ways to train a muscle was to do 10 sets of 10 reps with only 30 seconds rest between sets. This was known as “quality training.” Vince also called it the “honest workout.” He said it was the best method he knew of for taxing a muscle to its limit and developing the muscle to its maximum size in the shortest time possible. It sounds simple but this is one brutally tough way to train. The last three or four sets are killer difficult to do. You’ll have to reduce the weight to keep your reps up but it won’t matter because of the amount of work the muscle gets. Using 10 sets of 10 reps you can train three muscle groups in 45 minutes. Vince said to acquire larger muscles you had to increase the intensity of work within a given time. This meant a minimum of rest between sets. Said Vince, “Back in 1925, German scientists discovered that to acquire large muscles you must increase the intensity of work within a given time. That means that it doesn’t matter how much work you do. What counts is how fast you do it.” Vince added, “I feel workouts should be timed, and you should constantly strive to shorten the time it takes to get through your routines (push yourself). This is a form of progressive training. It does not matter how much work you do, what counts is how fast you do it. This is known as the overload principle.”

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Vince could point to the fact that sprinters who run the 100 meters in 11 seconds or less had large, muscular thighs, while marathoners, who ran marathons in over 2 hours and 20 minutes, or two and a half hours or more, had skinny thighs. It’s more work to run a marathon but the sprinter is doing more work per second. One last example. Steve Davis won a Mr. World title back in the 1970’s. He found his muscles grew best when he did partial reps and employed constant-tension. There was a member at his gym who was always bragging about how strong his arms were because he could do 3 sets of barbell curls with 135 pounds for 12 reps—as long as he rested 3 minutes between sets. To shut the guy up Steve bet him $100 dollars he couldn’t do 6 sets of 12 reps of barbell curls with 65 pounds resting only 30 second between sets. The braggart took the bet confident he would win. The first three sets were no problem, but by the fourth set sweat was pouring down his forehead and he had a pained facial expression. He barely got the fifth set. Half way through the final set he had to stop. His biceps were just too exhausted to continue. Steve won the bet and made his point: It’s not how much weight you lift that makes your muscles grow, it’s how hard you make your muscles work. For some reason it bothers some people when some bodybuilders do not train as heavy as they think they should. One time I had a conversation with strength expert Charles Poliquin who believes bodybuilders should be as strong as the look. He had just returned from a trip to LA and was appalled that Paul Dillet used only 30 pound dumbbells on flyes and laterals and that he could not bench press 315 pounds. Yet how

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many bodybuilders are bigger than Paul Dillet? Obviously Paul knew how to work his muscles with light weights—like Vince Taylor—and didn’t need heavy weights in order to grow. By the way, Paul had freaky thighs but like Vince Taylor he never squatted either. The great Steve Reeves (AAU Mr. America of 1947 and NABBA Mr. Universe of 1950) used to develop his great thighs with front squats with 135 pounds for sets of 15 reps. He developed his 18 ½ inch biceps with seated dumbbell curls with 35 pounds for 3 sets of 8 reps. Lee Labrada squatted with only 225 pounds for 10 reps on his heaviest sets, and did leg presses with 400 pounds for 10 reps, yet he had freaky thighs. Again, just another example of two champion bodybuilder’s who developed a fantastic physique’s with light weights. People have their ego’s so matched up with how much weight they, they deny their muscles what they need to grow. When Vince Taylor does barbell curls with 65 or 55 pounds, do you think he cares what other people think? He was Arnold Classic and Night of Champions champ. Do you think Serge Nubret cared that he was using only 95 pounds on seated behind-the-neck presses, 15 pounds dumbbells on lying laterals, or using 65 pounds for upright rows? He was Mr. Universe. Do you think Steve Reeves cared he was squatting with only 135 pounds. He was Mr. America and Mr. Universe. All the champs care about are results and winning contests. The point is some people have to train in an unconventional way in order to develop their muscles. If you’ve long since stopped making good gain, I urge you to experiment and try some of the higher rep, higher sets methods used by champs like

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Serge Nubret, Vince Taylor, Sergio Oliva, and Larry Scott. What have you got to lose? You do not have to necessarily do 35 or 50 sets for a muscle like Vince Taylor, but you could experiment with the Vince Gironda concept of 10 sets of 10 reps for a single exercise per body part, with 60 seconds rest between sets rather than doing three exercises for 3 or 4 sets of 6 to 8 reps each with 2 minutes rest between sets. Over time reduce the rest between sets from 60 seconds to 45 seconds and then 30 seconds and even 15 seconds. Do different exercises for every workout: For example, wide-grip chins or pulldowns, then close-grip lat pulldowns, then seated cable rowing or t-bar rowing After six weeks, increase your weights and go back to 10 x 10 with a 60 second rest between sets and start the cyle all over again. Every workout use a different exercise (say barbell curls for biceps, then preacher curls, then dumbbell curls, etc, or for lats, lat pulldowns to-the-chest, bentover barbell rows and seated cable rows) for 10 sets of 10. Very grueling to perform, but it sure produces results. Reg Park used to train his arms with 20 sets of 6 reps of seated dumbbell curls for biceps and 20 sets of 6 reps of triceps pushdowns. Reg just kept hammering away at his biceps and triceps until they were fully worked and pumped to the max.

Adaptation: Some of you might be reading of the examples mentioned above and think, “Hey, wait a minute. What about recuperation and recovery and what about overtraining?” Well, the truth of the matter is the body can adapt to very high levels of stress for short periods of time if your nutrition is right and you get enough sleep and

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rest. The Bulgarians came up with the concept of adaptation for their world-class weightlifters. It was what you could call planned over training. They had some of their top men doing 40 or more sets per workout, and doing presses and squats, high pulls, power snatches and cleans six day a week—without overtraining. Why, because the body adapts to the workload placed upon it. The Bulgarian weightlifters could recuperate overnight. The rationale was to condition the body to accept daily workouts of the same exercises, rather than doing the standard method of working a muscle two or three times a week. They might train this way for six weeks, than reduce intensity for a week (active rest—low sets, light weights, low reps to allow the muscles and nervous system to recover but which maintains muscle tone so when they began heavy training again they avoid the soreness that always occurs after a layoff), to regenerate the nervous and recovery systems, and then return to high sets once again. If your diet and nutrition is adequate, and you get enough sleep, the body can recuperate in less than 24 hours. The secret is to put the correct training load on the body for each exercise. Obviously, the stress and overload you place on your muscles, and your nervous system and recovery systems, depends on the exercises you do. Squats and deadlifts drain the body of energy more than concentration curls and triceps kickbacks. You do not have to do a great amount of squats and deadlifts to work your thighs and back. Tom Platz would do only one or two working sets of squats in his leg workouts. Most top bodybuilders practice maximum deadlifts once or twice a month. If, however, you do the correct amount of load, you can do these exercises five times a week at less than max levels and still recover.

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Jim Williams, the great American powerlifter who almost bench pressed 700 pounds (raw) in 1972—13 years before Ted Arcidi became the first man to bench press 700 pounds—used to do max bench presses (working up to 700 pounds) five days a week. Jim would do only 19 or 20 reps for a single workout, whereas many other top powerlifters would do double that many reps. Jim said “Many guys do more sets and reps but how many guys can hit a max bench press every workout?” The point is you can train a muscle group five days a week without overtraining because of the body’s ability to adapt to stress and your bodies increased work capacity: More sets, more reps, and heavier weights. The greater demand you put on your muscles, the better they grow. Tom Platz and Leo Costa’s Serious Growth-Optimum Training System was based on the Bulgarian Burst training model. The greater the load you place on muscles, the more adaptation by the body. To them adaptation meant growth. If you pay attention to diet and take the right supplements it is possible to make gains by doing very high levels of sets and reps.

Don’t Over train: This sounds like a contradiction to what I just said about adaptation but it’s not. If you can do 40 sets in an hour, you’re not overtraining. If you’re doing 40 sets for a muscle over two or three hours or more, you are—especially if you are a natural bodybuilder. Vince Gironda said anything longer than 45 minutes was overtraining—for the natural bodybuilder (Obviously bodybuilders using testosterone and anabolic steroids can train longer because they enhance recovery ability). It’s a myth that natural

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bodybuilders train harder than steroid users. The drug user can lift heavier weights and do longer workouts because the drugs allow them to recover from their workouts. Keep workouts intense but brief. This not only gives your muscles a better workout but keeps your enthusiasm for training at a higher level. If your workouts are something you dread and are a chore to do, you’re overtraining and need a break to regenerate your batteries. For very advanced bodybuilder who were getting ready for contests, Vince would put them through three workouts a day for the same muscle group, but using different exercises and training just 45 minutes per workout. Vince said “overtonis” was a bodybuilder’s greatest pitfall. In The Vince Gironda File he wrote, “Overtonis is a conditioned caused by too many sets, too many different exercise combinations—in short—overwork, which causes muscle tissue loss, hormone depletion, weakness, and a smoothed out appearance, an inability to produce a pumping effect and general lassitude or weakness. Overtonis produces a stringy appearance with no healthy round look apparent in a properly worked muscle. Overtonis is caused by male hormone loss.” Overwork, causes cortisol levels to rise—or anticatabolism--and testosterone levels (anabolism) to fall. It also causes the central nervous system to cease pumping blood into the capillaries and red blood cells Both Vince Gironda and John Parrillo believe the time to end a workout is when you lose the pump in the targeted working muscle group. This is an indication you have used up all the glycogen in the muscle So, for example, if you’ve done nine sets for a

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muscle group and it’s fully pumped but then you do a tenth set and you lose the pump, that’s the time to end the workout for that muscle group and move on to another muscle. Vince felt in order to establish your personal exercise requirement you should train a muscle until it is fully pumped. When you lose the pump, it’s time to end the workout. At his point, check back to the number of sets it took to achieve your max pump, the time to took to do those sets, and the number of repetitions you performed to achieve the most pump. Vince said muscle-building was a two-part process: (1) Developing more capillaries and (2) Developing more nerve pathways or better and stronger nerve impulses to the muscles, or as I said above, training for innervation and training according to the Blood Volume Theory. Just keep in mind muscles cannot pump unless there is enough glycogen (blood sugar) in them. Therefore consume enough carbs to keep glycogen levels high. Vince Gironda also believed that the most a bodybuilder could train at the highest levels of intensity was three weeks. He believed all bodybuilders should train on a 21 day on-one week off schedule (or active rest week). Vince also believed the most sets any bodybuilder should do per muscle group is 12 sets and anything more was overwork. Clancy Ross (AAU Mr. America of 1945) and Bill Pearl said if you can’t train a muscle with 15 sets, you’re not concentrating properly. Larry Scott said try to get the biggest pump you can with the least amount of sets (racing the pump). Bob Kennedy said that “sometimes gains must be coaxed, not forced.” Lee Haney once wrote, “You should train to stimulate your muscles, not too annihilate them.”

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Unfortunately many amateur bodybuilders think that every set is a battle and every workout a war. They think you have to train past failure and do forced reps on every set to gain. They ignore their bodies warning signals when they are overtraining, hence they fail to gain as they should. Not all champion bodybuilders believe in the idea of forced reps and training past failure. Sergio Oliva never trained past failure. Both Bill Pearl and Lou Ferrigno actually believed bodybuilder’s should stop one rep from failure. They didn’t think training past failure was too hard for their muscles, they believed it was too hard on the nervous and recovery systems. Don’t think they trained easy. Bill Pearl could bench 480 pounds and squat with 600. He could do seated dumbbell curls with 100 pound dumbbells for 5 sets of 6 reps. He trained 20 sets a muscle group, three times a week and felt the volume of sets he did for each muscle caused the necessary overload to make his muscles grow, not training past failure. Big Louie also did some fairly heft training and lots of sets and reps to work his muscles. Even Dorian Yates felt the most he could do forced reps and negatives without overtraining was three weeks. After that he would spend the next six weeks training just till failure—which is plenty intense enough. Vince Gironda did not believe in taken sets past failure all the time and every workout. He said, “Only very infrequently push to absolute all-out effort, which when practiced regularly actually stunts muscle growth or worse—you lose size. . .Of using 100 per cent failure. It is counter-productive. It throws the system into a state of shock. You can’t work out that way and build muscle tissue.”

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There is a fine line between heavy and too heavy, between enough work to train a muscle and too much work or overtraining. You want to tip-toe up to that line, not pole vault over it. To be honest, more sets are better than less but only if you can recover from your workouts (5 sets is better than 4 sets, 10 sets is better than 9 sets, and 20 sets is better than 19 sets, but only if you can recover properly). Unfortunately, to make matters more confusing, what’s not too heavy and not too much work changes on a daily basis based on how much sleep, rest, and recovery you’ve had since your last workout and the state of your nutrition (John Parrillo believes overtraining is really just inadequate diet and nutrition), as well as other factors, such as your stress levels and even how happy you are. Just remember you grow when you rest, not when you train. For the natural bodybuilder, in general, a muscle needs 72 hours rest between workouts in order to grow. Workouts tear down tissue and rest builds it up.

Lat Exercises and Lat Routines: Finally! Okay, you know you need to train for innervation. You know you should train according to the Blood Volume Theory and for a maximum pump. You know you should train like a bodybuilder and not a powerlifter or weightlifter. You know you should experiment with higher reps. You know you should “practice” your lat exercises perfectly and to see your body as a biofeedback machine. You should stretch and spread your lats and scapulae after each lat exercise (more on stretching shortly). Now let’s get to proper performance of lat exercises and some highly effective lat routines.

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Wide-grip Chins: Both Arthur Jones (of Nautilus fame) and Mike Mentzer (of Heavy-Duty (or Hev-Fee-Du-Tee!! fame) went on record saying wide-grip chins do not work the lats fully and narrow-grip chins give the lats a better workout. What they both ignored is the fact that many champion bodybuilders have built enormously wide lats primarily with wide grip chins, including Steve Reeves, Robbie Robinson, Brian Buchanan, Frank Zane, and Tony Pearson. As well, they ignore the fact that wide-grip chins don’t just work the lats, they stretch and spread the scapulae and clavicles to increase shoulder and upper back width. If you’ve ever seen a champion bodybuilder photographed while doing wide-grip chins their lats always flare out like a Cobra’s neck or a Condor’s wings, so it’s absurd to say wide-grip chins do not work the lats. Wide-grip chins widen the lats and spread the scapulae and create a full sweep to the lats if you do them properly. While some experts such as Vinnce Gironda say it is essential to chin until your chin is above the bar, in fact many champions chin just until their nose touches the bar. The key thing is to arch the chest and drop the shoulders down and back. Bend your knees and tuck them behind your body, rather than having your legs hanging down straight. As well, as previously mentioned, do not wrap the fingers and thumbs around the chinning bar. Drape the thumbs and fingers over the bar to deactivate the biceps and to increase lat isolation and stimulation. This is a Larry Scott trick to increase lat intensity. I recommend you begin every lat workout with four sets of wide grip chins for maximum reps (as many as you can do) when your biceps are fresh and strong. When

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you can perform several sets with at least 12 reps per set, add weight by either holding a dumbbell between your knees or using a belt to strap on extra weight. Start with just 10 pounds and only add weight when you can do so and still maintain good form. One advantage to using the dumbbell between the knees method is you can drop the dumbbell to the floor when you hit failure and then continue for more reps, so you’re doing a single drop set. Always use sponges or straps to reinforce your grip and to prevent your hand from slipping from the bar. A tip you can use to work your lower lats when performing wide or medium-grip chins is once you hit muscular failure to lockout your arms and then try to raise your chest to the chin bar. Larry Scott calls these “scapulae rotations”. You may not actually get that high but it’s the effort in trying that counts. Consider these as burns for the lower lats. Do as many straight-arm burns as you can. You will really feel your lower lats aching if you do these properly.

Medium-grip Chins: John Parrillo says the reason so many bodybuilders have poor lower lats is because they have relied too much on machines and because they do their chins with too much of an arch. He says too much of an arch works the upper lat and rhomboids and denies the lower lats stimulation. John suggests you do your chins with a shoulder width overhand grip (again, fingers and thumbs over the bar, not wrapped around the bar), and to prevent your back from arching too much to hold your knees in front of your body. It’s also important to pull

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your shoulders down before bending your arms. At the top press your shoulders down and bring your elbows into your sides. Pause to tense and contract the lats. At the end of each set lock your arms and try to raise your upper body to the bar to do lat burns. Do as many lat burns as you can to give those lower lats extra work.

Alternate Wide-Grip Chins: This was a common exercise many years ago—Vince Gironda was a fan of this style of chinning--but it’s seldom done anymore which is unfortunate. As the name implies, pull your body up to one side and touch your chin to the right side of the chinning bar where your right hand holds the bar. Lower down with control and then raise up and touch your chin to the left side of the bar where your left hand holds the bar. Pause at the top for a second or two to consciously contract the working lat. Go back and forth for as many reps as you can do.

Narrow Grip Chins: Use a curl or reverse-grip about 6 to 8 inches apart. You can also experiment with a shoulder width grip. Narrow grip chins give the lats a great stretch and work the lower lats as well. Try to chin until your chin goes over the chin bar. Slowly lower the body all the way down to the starting position, feeling the lats stretch all the way. Narrow-grip chins with a curl-grip will also give your biceps a good workout too. After you can do at least 12 reps per set, hold a dumbbell between your knees. When you hit failure, allow the dumbbell to slide to the floor and rep out till failure.

Hands Together Chins: These really work the lower lats hard. Put a triangle bar over one end of the chinning bar. Raise your body to the bar, leaning back and trying to touch your abdomen or your belly button to the bar. Keep your lower back

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arched throughout the movement and try to raise your body as high as possible. Use strict form and don’t kick with the legs.

Lat Pulldowns to-the-Chest: If you are too weak to chin, start out with lat pulldown to-the-chest. As with chins, drape your thumbs and fingers over the bar. Arch your chest and drop the shoulders down and back. Smoothly pull the bar until it hits the upper chest. Pause briefly to tense and contract the lats and allow the bar to return slowly to the top position feeling the lats stretch all the way. If you use a wide grip (about where the lat bar bends is about right) and you use the draped over the bar fingers and thumb grip, you will discover your arms cannot lockout totally at the top of the range of motion. You also should find your lats pull out with such a grip. Do 3 or 4 sets of 12 to 15 reps, resting one minutes between set. Remember, your goal is lat innervation and isolation and pump, not to see how much weight you can lift. The great thing about lat pulldowns is it is easy to do triple, double or single drop sets to increase training intensity. Even a single drop in weight will really allow you to work your lats harder. Do a set of 8 to 12 reps, then reduce the weight by half and rep out till failure. You don’t have to do this on every set, but it’s worth doing on your last set to give those lats a nice pump.

Richard Kee Lat Pulldowns: Richard Kee was a bodybuilder who trained at Vince’s Gym back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. He was known for his small waistline and tremendously wide shoulders and lats. Don Howorth, IFBB Mr. America for 1967, and one of the widest bodybuilders ever, also did this exercise. These pulldowns are

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especially effective for those who have narrow clavicles and lats. Place an incline bench facing away a few feet from a lat pulldown or overhead pulley. Anchor the bench with a heavy dumbbell so it will not slide. Set the incline at about 75 degrees (although you should experiment with different angles to find the optimum angle for you) and lie against the bench as you would if doing incline presses or incline flyes. Take a wide grip on the lat bar and pull it down to your upper chest. Use a full range of motion and do sets of 8 to 15 reps. Have your training partner push on your knees to anchor your body and to give you better leverage on the weight.

Lat Pulldowns to-the-Neck: I’m not a big fan of either chinning to-the-neck or pulldowns to-the-neck. Why? I find on pulldowns to-the-neck the tendency is to hunch forward which places all the work to the traps. I recommend you sit backwards on the lat pulldown seat and face away from the weight stack. This way you can pull the bar straight down and work the lats more effectively. Have your training partner sit on your thighs or push down on your knees to anchor your body and to give you leverage so you can use heavier weights. Some people, however, get good results with this exercise. Bob Kennedy was a big fan of wide-grip chins to-the-neck. He would dislocate his scapulae every rep to give his lats maximum stretch. John Parrillo also likes lat pulldowns to-the-neck. He recommends you use a bar that allows a parallel grip. Again, sit at the bench backwards. Start by dropping the shoulders down and back. During the set do not arch your back; try to remain upright.

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Stay tight throughout the set and pull your elbows down and back as far as you can. Tense and squeeze your lats in the bottom position and then return the bar slowly to the top position, feeling the stretch all the way. Again, 3 or 4 sets of 8 to 15 reps, pyramiding up in weight. Let feel and innervation be your guide. If you sense and feel your lats working and pumping, your form is spot on. If they don’t work and pump, check your form and experiment until you can innervate, stimulate and pump your lats. If all you feel is biceps, you’re using much too much weight for lat innervation and pump. Again, try some drop sets on your final set to increase lat intensity.

Seated Cable Rows: This is a popular lat exercise that many recreational bodybuilders do incorrectly. Begin by arching your chest and dropping your shoulder down and back. Really keep the shoulders down. Allow the pull of the weight to pull your upper body until it is over your thighs but keep your lower back arched. This is vital! The lower back should never round over. As you pull the bar into your waist, come erect and then arch your chest and drop the shoulders, which will cause the lats to contract. You can use a narrow, medium, or wide grip. All will work the lats a little differently. I recommend sets of 10 to 15 reps, with the goal of innervating and pumping your lats. If you train with a partner he can drop the pin to a lighter weight so you can do drop sets: either single, double or triple drop sets, but only on the last set. When you hit muscular failure, do not end the set. Allow your body to lean all the way over until your chest almost touches your thighs. Then lock your arms and just rock

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back and forth 6 to 8 inches. You should feel a strong pull in your lats. These are burns for lats. Do as many as you can and you should really feel the lats burn and ache.

Reverse-grip 70 degree Lat Pulldowns: Use a reverse or curl-grip and hold the bar with a grip 12 to18 inches wide. Lean back so you pull the bar at a 70 degree angle. These really work the lower lats hard. As always, arch your chest, pull the shoulders down and back, and really concentrate on feeling and isolating the lats. Focus on bring the elbows as far back as possible. Do higher reps-12 to 15 per set— and 3 or 4 sets. This is another exercise in which drop sets can be performed because its so convenient to put the pin to a lighter weight in the weight stack. You can do triple, double or single drop sets on your last set. When you hit failure, lock the arms and rock back and forth 6 to 8 inches to do burns for the lats.

Reverse-Grip 90 Degree Pulldowns: Use a triangle bar and keep the body erect. Do not lean back at all. As you pull the triangle bar into your upper chest, pull the elbows as far back as you can. Do sets of 10 to 15 reps, really trying to feel the lats working.

Leaning Lat Pulldowns: These were a favorite exercise of Vince Gironda. Sit away from the lat machine or overhead pulley so the pulley is at a 60 degree angle. Begin with the head down between the arms. Use a narrow grip on the lat bar—12 to 18 inches at most. Pull rearwards, keeping the elbows high and wide. As you bring the

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pulley bar downwards lay back and drop the chin to your chest. Keep the chest concave. Touch the bar to the lower pec line and contract the lats. Allow the pulley to return completely to the top position, feeling the lats stretch as it does.

Racing Dive Lat Pulls: Another Vince Gironda exerciser that works the middle or belly of the lats. Begin bent over as you would be as if doing bentover barbell rows with your abdomen touching your thighs. Use a wide stance. Stand back from the weight stack so the plates cannot touch and the cable cannot go slack. Ideally the pulley should be about 16 inches off the floor. Grasp the pulley handle, keeping the head down. Pull inward with the elbows wide. As the pulley handle comes into the lower pec line, pull your head back and arch your back. Use a weight that allows sets of 8 to 15 reps.

Bentover Barbell Rows: I’ve already discussed this excellent lat building exercise and how Tony Pearson found using 185 pounds for sets of 12 to 15 reps gave him much better results than using 405 pounds for 6 reps. The key thing is to keep the lower back arched, the head up, the knees flexed and the upper body slightly above parallel. Think of your hands as hooks and try to row with your lats, not your arms. If you have to stand up with the weight, or you have to heave the weight up and drop your chest to meet the bar, you using too much weight for proper lat innervation, stimulation and pump. Also, remember the plane of motion is not straight up-and-down. It’s on a slightly tilted plane of motion. Lower the bar down and away from the body and then pull the bar

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into the lower lats to contract them. The plane of motion is \, not |. Pulling the bar into the waist rather than the chest involves more lower lats. Try sets of 1 x 12, 1 x 10, 1 x 8 and 1 x 6 pyramiding up in weight each set. This is a power movement so rest two minutes between sets.

Reverse-grip barbell rows: Dorian Yates’s favourite rowing exercise. Use a curl grip about shoulder width. Lower the bar down and away from the body and then pull the bar into the lower lats to contract the lats. Again, the plane of motion is \, not | and straight up-and-down. Try 4 sets of 6 to 12 reps: 1 x 12, 1 x 10, 1 x 8, 1 x 6-8pyramiding up in weight each set. As always, row with your lats not your arms. Keep body movement to a minimum.

T-Bar Rows: This fantastic exercise works the lats and the rhomboid and really thickens up the back and the lats. It is very important to keep your lower back arched. Do not allow the lower back to round over. Also, stay down over the weight and row with your lats, not your arms. If you have to heave the bar excessively, you’re probably using too much weight. As always keep the shoulders down and back. Keep the knees flexed, your head up, your lower back arched. Let innervation be your guide. The bio-feedback you get as you do your reps will tell you if your doing t-bar rows correctly. You’ll know you are doing them right if you feel your lats ache and pump. If all you feel is arms, then you’re using too much weight. I suggest 4 sets: 1 x of 12-15- 1 x 10-12, 1 x 8, 1 x 6, pyramiding up in weight each set.

One-Arm Dumbbell Rows: Kneel with one leg on a flat bench. Do not row the dumbbell straight up-and-down. Row it as if you are sawing wood. Reach out to give

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the working lat a nice stretch than pull the dumbbell into the lower abs to contract the lats. Row with your lats, not your arms. Keep body movement to a minimum.

One-Arm Pulley Rows: Pulley rows are different than one-arm dumbbell rows because the cable imparts constant-tension. Larry Scott has a unique way of doing this exercise (Larry has a unique way of doing every exercise). Grab the handle attached to a lower pulley and stand back from the weight stack four or five feet. Straddle the feet in scissors fashion with the front leg several feet ahead of the back one. As you pull the cable into the lower lat, rotate your body to the left (when working the right lat). Your thumb should be higher than your little finger on the pulley handle. When you return the pulley to the starting position you must reverse your hand position so the little finger is higher than the thumb. This helps isolate the lower lats. This is a high rep exercise so do sets of 12 to 15 reps.

Two Dumbbell Rows: Use two dumbbells instead of a barbell. The same rules apply: head up, knees flexed, lower back arched and upper body slightly above parallel. You can row with the palms facing back or facing towards each other. As always, keep body motion to a minimum and row with the lats, not the arms. You can also place a folded towel on the dumbbell rack and row with your forehead on the towel to keep locked in.

Alternate Dumbbell Rows: These were a favourite exercise of Chuck Sipes, IFBB Mr. America of 1959, IFBB Mr. Universe of 1961, and IFBB Mr. World of 1968. Bent over at the waist holding two fairly hefty dumbbells at arm’s length. Pull the dumbbell in your right hand into your waist, then lower and pull the left hand into your

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waist. You can do these with a bit of body rhythm. What I like about this exercise is that the see-saw motion increases stretch on the lat by the dumbbell hanging down, and increases contraction of the lat on the dumbbell pulled into the waist. Pyramid up in weight each set and try sets of 12, 10, 8 and 6 reps. Experiment with different grips. Sometimes do rows with the palms facing each other, and sometimes with the palms facing backwards.

High Bench Dumbbell Rows: Mohamed Makkawy, IFBB Mr. Universe of 1976 and runner-up to the Mr. Olympia contest twice, told me about this exercise when I wrote his Variable Angle Training courses for him back in 1984. These really thicken up the lats and the middle of the back. Lie on a high bench—about 30 inches is about right—with two heavy dumbbells resting on the floor beneath the bench. Grab the dumbbells and pull them as high as you can while lifting the legs and head. Hold for a count of two in the top position, and then lower to the floor. Keep the elbows wide and at right angles to the body. Rest for several seconds and then do a second rep. Do 6 reps in similar fashion, allowing the dumbbells to rest on the floor for several seconds each rep. All the good stuff happens at the top of the range of motion, so be sure to contract the lats and back muscles each rep. If you do not have a flat bench 30 inches high, sit at low incline bench set at 20 degrees and do your single reps in the same manner.

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Cross Bench Dumbbell Pullovers: This fantastic exercise not only gives the lats and ribcage a great stretch and workout, it also works the serratus, triceps, and pecs to some degree. Both Frank Zane and Arnold Schwarzenegger did a lot of crossbench dumbbell pullovers. An old Arnold Schwarzenegger trick to give his lats extra stretch and stimulation at the bottom of the range of motion when the dumbbell was overhead at its lowest position was to drop his hips down. Lower the dumbbell as far back as you can, taking the deepest breath you can, then drop your hips to increase the range of motion. This is a high rep exercise so do sets of 15 to 20 reps. After several months of high rep sets, you can start to use heavier weights and do a few sets for 12 reps.

Machine Pullovers: You’ll need a Nautilus machine or one made by Hammer Strength or Flex or one of the other exercise manufacturers. Dorian Yates credits Nautilus machine pullovers with for the great width he obtained on his lats. I believe Dorian kept one at his house so he could do extra sets of pullovers when the mood struck him. Arnold Schwarzenegger said these machines were one of the best for working the lats over a full range of motion. These are definitely worth trying when you feel you’re going stale or bored with cross bench dumbbell pullovers. Keep your reps in the 12 to 20 range If you train with a partner definitely try some drop set to increase workout intensity. Do a set of about 12 reps, then have your partner reduce the weight and rep out till failure. Machine pullovers are an excellent pre-exhaust movement before any chinning, rowing or pulldown movement if you do high reps.

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Bent-Arm Pullovers: This is a power movement so keep reps in the 6 to 8 range. I believe the unofficial world record in this movement is 455 pounds. These work the pecs, lower lats, serratus and even the triceps. They were a favourite of world-class weightlifter Phil Gripaldi back in the 60’s, who had 20 inch arms. Lie on a flat bench, your head hanging off the back. You can use a straight bar or an EZ-curl bar. Keeping your arms bent, take a huge breath of air and lower the bar as far behind your head as possible. Lower the bar back slowly and with control, then pull it back to the over the chest position. Try to have someone sit on your thighs or knees to give you better leverage, which will allow you to use heavier weights.

Straight Arm Barbell Pullover With a Cupped Grip: This is a fantastic exercise to pre-exhaust the lats. As mentioned previously, Serge Nubret did a lot of straight arm barbell pullovers, which worked both his lats, pecs, and ribcage. After some experimentation I came up with a special way of performing straight arm barbell pullovers which I call ``cupped grip straight arm barbell pullovers`` that is almost all lats. This is a high rep exercise to teach lat feel and innervation, so the amount of weight you use is not important. I recommend 25 pounds for most people, to 35 pounds for those really strong and advanced. Too light is better than too heavy because if you try to use too much weight it forces the arms to bend and brings other muscles into play and the lat isolation effect is lost. This is a high rep exercise so do sets for 20 to 50 reps. The secret which makes this such a great lat exercise—or a pre-exhaust lat exercise--is how you hold the bar. Normally when you do straight-arm barbell pullovers the bar is held mostly in the fingers and as the bar passes overhead the palms of the

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hands face upwards. I want you to hold the bar in the palms of your hands, and as the bar passes overhead, the palms should face toward your feet, not overhead. This cupped grip causes a tremendous stretch and pull on the lats right down to the lower insertions. You may have to experiment a bit to get the action down but you’ll known when you’ve got it right when you feel an intense stretch and pull on the lats, right down to lower insertions. If you do it right your lats will burn and ache like crazy. Start with a shoulder width grip. Lie on a flat bench with your head hanging off the back of the bench. Keep your arms locked, take as big a breath of air as you can, and keep your chest expanded throughout the set. You’ll notice with the cupped grip the lats take almost all the brunt of the work. As the bar passes overhead you will feel the lats bracing to hold the weight. The difference in the amount of stretch felt in the lats is dramatic. When you fail with the cupped grip barbell pullovers it will be because your lats are exhausted, fully stretched, stimulated, innervated and pumped. This is an highly effective exercise to pre-exhaust your lats before any chinning, pulldown or rowing exercise. Several pre-exhaust supersets of straight-arm barbell pullovers with the cupped grip for 20 to 50 reps, combined with your favorite chinning, pulldown or rowing exercise will give your lats an a great pump, an intense stretch, and a deep ache and burn like you’ve never experienced before. Not only are you working the lats very hard, you’re also improving nerve force and creating the important neuromuscular pathways to the lats, as well as increasing blood flow or circulation to the lats. This all adds up to more lat growth.

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Straight-Arm Lat Pull-ins With a Cupped Grip: Most people call this exercise straight-arm lat pulldowns, but like straight-arm barbell pullovers with the cupped grip, I have discovered a more effective way of doing this exercise. Again, you hold the bar in the palms, not with your fingers and thumbs wrapped around the pulldown bar. The finger and thumbs are draped well over the bar and you hold the bar in the meaty part of the palms near the bottom of the hands. You don’t pull the bar down, you push the bar down and inward toward the body. Don’t pull the bar down with your hands and biceps, push it down with the lats. The more you hold the bar in the palms, the more the lats work. There are several important key point doing this exercise properly. The first is to step back from the weight stack several feet so the plates cannot touch in the starting position. If you stand too close to the weight stack the plates can touch and the cable will go slack and you will lose the constant-tension effect on the lats. Use a wide stance, with one foot in front of the other in scissors-like fashion. Next hold the bar in the palms. You push the bar towards the body with pressure from the meaty part of the palms. Experiment with various grip widths. Start with a grip 12 to 15 inches wide but also try some grip about shoulder width too. The key to this exercise is light weights and high reps—20 to 50 per set. This is a high rep, finesse and feel movement, not a power movement, so throw your ego out the door. If you use too much weight your arms will bend and you’ll have to pull the bar down with the biceps and the lat isolation is lost. You’ll know you’ve got the action correct when you feel the lats burning and aching and pumping.

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The fourth vital key is the position of the head. It must be below the level of the shoulders and your upper arms and elbows. Lean into the weight stack and let the lats brace to support your body. You should lean so far forward that you would fall on your face if it were not for the support of the lat bar. This position is vital. Most bodybuilders do this exercise standing straight up but you will definitely get more lat stretch and stimulation if you lean forward and pull the bar down and into the thighs. About 50 to 60 degrees lean is about right. Arch your chest outwards and downwards. Experiment until you find the right angle at which to lean your body forward. Once you’ve gripped the bar in your palms and you’ve stepped back from the weight stack and assumed your scissor stance, lower your head below your arms. You should feel an intense pull or stretch in your lats. This is another great exercise to use as a pre-exhaust movement before any chinning, pulldown or rowing exercise. Do 20 to 50 reps and then as quickly as possible, and with as little rest as possible, immediately do a chinning or pulldown or rowing exercise.

Chest Expander Pulldowns: This another excellent exercise to preexhaust the lats. In fact, next to the cupped grip pullovers, it may be the best preexhaust lat movement I know of. Even though these cables are called chest expanders, in truth they don’t do diddly for the pecs. But they can be very effective for rear deltoids, biceps and triceps, and the lats. They are especially useful for the home trainer who doesn’t have access to a pulldown machine or a chinning bar because they are very inexpensive to buy. However, chest cables are so effective for working the lats that

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even if you train at a well-equipped gym you might want to take them to the gym on lat day. You can do chest cable pulldowns to either the chest or down and away from the back of the neck. For the most lat stimulation you should lower the cables about a foot from the shoulder/trap and upper back area. Both pulldowns are highly effective. As always, experiment which gives you the best results, cable pulldowns to-the-chest or chest cables to-the-back. As with the cupped grip barbell pullovers and the cupped grip straight-arm lat pullins, this is a high repetition exercise. Don’t put four or five cables on the device and cheat out 5 or 6 sloppy reps. You want to give your lats a good stretch and to preexhaust them without using your arms. Aim at getting at least 15 to 25 reps per set, although if you can get 50 reps, my hat’s off to you. Personally, when I do cable pulldowns I put only two cables on the device to keep my reps high. As with any lat exercise, let innervation and sensory feel be your guide. If you feel your lats stretching and aching and pumping, you’re doing the exercise properly. If you feel only arms and shoulders, you’ve got too many cables on the device. We’re looking for that flaring, pulling out action of the lats, as well as the bracing of the lats against the resistance of the cables. To do chest cable pulldowns to-the-chest, start with the arms straight and overhead in front of the face while holding the handles of the chest expanders. Do not completely lockout your elbows. The handles of the cables should rest between the thumbs and the index finger on the meaty part of the palms. Your palms should now

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face upwards towards the ceiling. Keeping the arms nearly straight tilt your head back and pull the cables down until they touch your upper pecs. Really focus on the stretching felt in the lats. Do as many reps as you can. Do not let the cables go slack at the top of each rep. When doing cable pulldowns to the back, start with the same grip as before but pull the cables down until they are as far behind your shoulders as possible. The farther away from your body, the better. It helps to lean back a little and arch your chest forward and twist the wrists so they are slightly turned out at the bottom of the range of motion. Your wrists and the palms of the hands should now point to the sides. Again, focus on stretching and working the lats. Allow the cables to return to the starting overhead position very slowly, feeling the stretch in the lats all the way. If possible try to watch yourself in a mirrow. Wear a tank top or no shirt at all. That way you can see the lat’s being pulled out and flaring, which will help you “feel” them better too. If you’ve ever been able to watch yourself do wide-grip chins in front of a mirror, then you’ve seen your lats flare out like a Cobra’s neck. That’s the flaring action you want when doing the chest expander pulldowns. One other point. Never let the cables go slack at the top. You want to always keep constant-tension on the lats. To do that keep arching your chest and spreading your lats as the cables return overhead and keeping the cables a foot or more behind your body. If you’re doing these correctly, you should feel the pull on the lats throughout the entire range of motion. If you get the action down pat, you won’t believe the burn

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you’ll feel in the lats after 15 or 20 reps. Your lats will really burn if you go right to wide or narrow grip chins, any pulldown exercise or any rowing exercise. A third way of doing cable pulldowns to the back is to totally invert your grip and use the power of your triceps to pull the cables down. Just remember the more you arch your chest and the farther you pull the cables behind your body, the more your lats must flare and brace against the resistance of the cables.

The Reeve Deadlift: Although this an article on lat building, I’m going to discuss a couple of exercise for stretching and spreading the scapulae and the clavicles or shoulder bones for greater shoulder and upper back width. There is a rigid notion in bodybuilding that shoulder width is fixed and cannot be improved upon once a person is out of their teens and their bones fuse. While there is no doubt shoulder and upper back width is greatly influenced by genetics and no matter of exercise will turn a narrowshouldered, wide-hipped blocky bodybuilder into a super V-shaped bodybuilder such as Sergio Oliva, Brian Buchanan, Frank Zane, Lee Haney, Paul Dillet, Flex Wheeler, Ronnie Coleman, or Dexter Jackson it is a fallacy that width is fixed and cannot be improved. Like anything, it takes time and effort but anyone can improve their width and V-taper by utilizing the exercises recommended here. One of these exercises is the Reeve deadlift, which are fantastic for stretching and spreading the clavicles and shoulders. I first learned of the Reeve deadlift in an article written in IronMan by Bob Green back in the 1970’s. Bob was a fine amateur bodybuilder who trained at Vince’s Gym in North Hollywood along-side champs like Larry Scott, Don Howorth, Lou Degni, Bill McArdle, Dan Mackey and Dan Howard. He

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also frequently talked to Vince Gironda himself. As well, he worked at Joe Weider’s warehouse in LA with Dave Draper and so learned from the “Blonde Bomber” as well. Bob really knew all aspects of bodybuilding, especially exercise performance. I credit much of my knowledge about training from Bob’s many great articles in IronMan. The Reeve Deadlift is an unusual exercise as you do not hold the barbell as you do your set, you grip the plates on the barbell. You need the large Olympic plates that have a large lip. You have to put the plates on the barbell backwards so you can grip the lip of the plates with your hands and fingers. At first start with just a pair of 45 pound plates (Woman can start with a pair of 25’s). Reach down and grasp the lip of the plates. Do a deadlift, then at the top do three shrugs or scapular rotations to put extra stress on the clavicles and scapulae. Repeat for 15 reps. When you are finished a set you will feel as though your shoulders have undergone stretch therapy! Repeat for three or four sets.

Wide-Grip Chins and Ultra-Wide Grip Chins From a Dead Hang: I have already spoken about the effectiveness of wide-grip chins for working the lats and spreading the clavicles and scapulae. When performing wide-grip chins for lats, hold the bar about where the bar begins to bend, and drape the thumbs and fingers over the bar. Ultra-wide grip chins are a whole different kettle of fish. Take the absolutely widest grip on the bar as you can—right to the end of the chin bar. Use sponges or straps to reinforce your grips and to prevent your hands from slipping from the bars. Although this exercise is to stretch and spread your clavicles and scapulae, your lats will get some work too. Do as many reps as you can. When you can no longer do anymore

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reps hang from the bar and do scapular rotations to put additional stress and stretch on the scapule and shoulder bones. Hang for as long as you can with the ultra-wide grip. When you can hang for a minute or more you will definitely be wider. The stress on the clavicles will even make the clavicle bones thicker. For the ultimate in clavicle and scapulae stretching and upper back spreading, do three or four supersets of the Reeve deadlifts with scapular rotations and ultra-wide grip chins with scapular rotations. This combination does work. Years ago when I was doing personal training I had a female client who wanted to be a competitive bodybuilder but she didn’t have the right structure to become one because her hips were wider than her shoulders. After a year of Reeve deadlifts and ultra-wide chinning, as well as adding muscle to her medial deltoids and to her lats, her shoulders became several inches wider than her hips, so believe me, this combination works. I’ve seen it work. By the way, the younger a bodybuilder starts performing the Reeves deadlift and the ultra-wide grip chins, the more they can increase their width. Teenagers can dramatically change their body structure doing these exercises because their bones and connective tissue is still soft and not yet fused. I recommend bodybuilders do the supersets of Reeve deadlift and ultra-wide grip chins several times a week. If they train on a one-muscle-group a day routine they can do it after both lats and deltoids (assuming they are training on different days). You can also do it at the end of a chest workout on chest day.

Posing and Stretching the Lats: Another way to increase your ability to feel and sense your lats better is to practice flexing and posing them. This can be done

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while you’re sitting at a desk working, watching TV or even driving your car. Do double lat spreads and single lat spreads too. Since everyone is either right or left handed, you may find it easier to flex one lat than the other. Do 15 or 20 lat spread before bed every night. Not only will this increase your ability to spread your lats, it will improve your posing too. Former IFBB pro, Negrita Jayde, a real extremist, used to practice spreading her lats the entire one hour of the David Letterman show. Believe it or not, along with regular stretching, Negrita increased her chest measurement by two inches in two months. This two inch increase was the result of one inch gained on each of her lats. A tip to make lat spreading more effective is to begin bent over with your thumbs dug into your sides. As you begin to come erect, start spreading your lats. You will get a greater spread starting from the bent over position than from the standing position. Try doing some flexing with your eyes closed so feel is enhanced. Don’t be discouraged if at first you have trouble flexing and spreading your lats. Over time your ability to spread your lats will improve dramatically. Eventually through regular practice you will be able to “pull out” and spread your lats as easily as you can flex your biceps. Bob Kennedy practiced posing and spreading his lats for decades and he could pull them out—together or one at a time—with amazing and impressive results. He had better control over his lats than most people do their arms or legs. How did Bob do it? For more years than most of us have been alive, Bob had done a lot of wide-grip chinning to-the-neck. This exercise built up his lats and taught him how to dislocate his scapulae to get an even bigger lat spread. When Bob dislocated his scapulae, his whole

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upper back seemed to double in size right in front of your eyes. When he spread just one lat, it was like a bird spreading one of its wings. It was amazing to see. Bob was proof positive that it is possible with hard work and a lot of practice to dramatically control your ability to pose, spread and pull the lats out. Just remember to work on pulling out one lat at a time, as well as two lat spreads. Reach around your body and feel the lat stretching and spreading. This will give you feedback as to how successful your lat spreading is. Stretching your lats during your workouts will help you to develop wider lats. Until I met bodybuilding expert John Parillo in Cincinnati in 1988, I never gave much thought to stretching. Parrillo proved to people that intense fascial stretching resulted in better muscle growth. “The more you stretch, the more you grow,” said John. “Failure to stretch reduces muscle growth.” The facial is a sheath of tissue that surrounds each muscle. If this facial tissue becomes hardened—say a football or hockey player who has taken a lot of blows to the arms or legs, or a former powerlifter who has done a lot of heavy squatting and benching, this hardened facial tissue makes muscular growth and muscular separation difficult to achieve. It acts like tough bands of tough leather covering and encasing the muscle, making muscle growth hard to achieve. If that’s the case, the muscles are smaller and flat. If the toughened facial tissue is in the arms, the biceps may lack peak and fullness. If it is in the thighs, the quads will lack separation. If the problem is with the back, the lats will be narrow and unimpressive.

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For maximum lat width intense facial stretching should become an integral part of your lat routine. You should incorporate lat stretching into part of your daily routine, the same way Bob Kennedy and Negrita Jayde incorporated lat posing and spreading into their daily lives. You should also stretch the lats after every set of lat exercise you do. If you do 12 sets of lat exercises, you should do 12 sets of stretches for the lats as well, and 12 lat spreads too. Every set of chins, pulldowns, rows, and pullovers should be followed by a lat stretch for 10 seconds and then 10 seconds of lat posing and lat spreading. It’s almost like a kind of triset for the lats: exercise, stretching and posing and spreading. There are several ways to stretch the lats that not only pull out and spread the lats but also the scapulae too. The most intense and effective way is with a partner assisted stretch but that requires a partner who knows how to do the stretch. If you own a John Parrillo training manual—something every serious bodybuilder should possess— John describes how to do the partner-assisted lat stretch. For the benefit of those who do not own a Parrillo manual, I will describe how it is performed. Start by sitting on the floor. Bend your right elbow and extend it so it points toward the ceiling. Straddling your body, your partner places his left heel at your right hip. He then takes his right knee and presses it against your right shoulder. He then reaches around and places his right armpit next to your right armpit. Next your partner pushes his right knee against your left shoulder, lifting your torso and making a comma with your upper body. At the same time you should contract your lats. What the partner doing the stretching is doing is pulling your upper body up

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and to the right and to the side. There will be a strong pull in the right lat. He holds the stretch for 10 seconds and then repeats a stretch for the left lat. A less intense but still highly effective way to stretch the lats is done by pulling on a stationary object—a beam in the gym floor, a heavy piece of equipment, or a bar about waist height in a power rack or a Smith machine, or even pulling against a bar on a bench press will do. Bend over at the waist while pulling hard on the beam or bar. You can do this with one arm at a time or with both arms at the same time. Really try to feel the lats stretch. Hold for 10 seconds then do 10 seconds of lat posing and spreading. To add extra tension and torque, pull hard with your hands but twist your torso in a clock-wise fashion to put extra stretch in the lats. Bend over at the waist, with the hands spread about 15 to 18 inches apart. At the same time set your feet at right angles to one another. Your heels should be touching, with the left foot pointing straight ahead while the right foot should be at a 90 degree angle to the left. Now, as you push hard with your left hand and pull hard with your right, twist your torso to the right as far around as you can. This will put extra torque and pull on the right lat. If you do it correctly you will feel a tremendous pull in the right lat. As always, hold for 10 seconds, and repeat for your left lat. Then pose and spread your lats as hard as you can for another 10 seconds. You may have to adjust your body position or the height of the bar and the proper placing of the feet to feel the most pull in the lat. Experiment with different angles, different heights of the bar, different body positions, and different twisting angles until you find the optimum spot. You’ll know you’ve hit the right spot when you feel the

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strongest pull on the lat. The twisting or cranking of your torso is the real key to getting the most stretch. You’ll know when you’ve found the right spot when it feels as though your lats are undergoing stretch therapy. A third and effective way to stretch your lats is with free-hand towel stretching. This is actually a stretching exercise Joe Weider had in his “Building a Mighty Back” course many years ago. Here’s how to do it. Stand erect with your hands stretched overhead about shoulder width, while holding a towel in both hands. Weider recommends an 18 inch stretch of towel between the hands. The idea is to keep your arms locked and your torso erect, while at the same time the right hand pulls against the left. As with the Parrillo partner-assisted stretch, try to lean to one side and make your torso form a comma. If you lean to the right, the left lat pushes outwards, making the body form the comma. By pulling hard with the hands you should feel a nice stretch in the left lat. Hold for a count of 10 and then repeat for the right lat. Again, then pose and spread your lats for 10 seconds. Don’t forget to start your lat spread bent over at the waist. Then come erect and spread those lats as much as you can. As before, it may take a bit of experimentation to get the towel stretching down pat, but once you learn to do it properly, you’ll want to include it in your lat workouts for sure. You can do lat stretches while sitting at a computer or at a desk working. Raise your arms overhead, locking the elbows. Interlock your fingers and simply lean to one

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side, making your body form a comma. Feel your lat stretching. This exercise is a good way to learn how to do the towel stretches. By the way, if your lats are especially narrow, there is no reason why you can’t stretch your lats twice. Do the pole or bar stretching with the tensile torque placing of the feet for 10 seconds, and then follow that by 10 seconds of towel stretching for each lat. As always follow the lat stretches with 10 seconds of lat posing and spreading for another 10 seconds. In time you will really increase your ability to pull out and spread your lats, just as Bob Kennedy was able to do so.

Some Lat Routines to Try: I once read a lat training article in Flex magazine by top IFBB pro Boyer Coe (and former AAU Mr. America, NABBA Mr. Universe and a five-time WBBG Mr. Pro World). Boyer recommended a triset of lat pulldowns to-the-chest with seated cable rows and cross-bench dumbbell pullovers. What’s so great about this triset is you’re doing a pulldown exercise, a rowing exercise, and a pullover movement. Do the pulldowns and rows for sets of 8 to 12 reps and the pullovers for sets of 12 to 20 reps. Take as little rest between exercises as possible and rest only one minute between trisets. Do three to five trisets, depending how advanced you are. Train your lats this way twice a week. This triset gives the lats a tremendous burn and pump. It will also get you huffing and puffing and sweating like a pig. After a few weeks on the Boyer Coe triset you should notice a dramatic improvement in your lat development, as well as an increase of your upper back’s muscularity and cuts.

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Actually, I finished my lat workout with the Boyer Coe triset. I first did 4 sets of wide-grip chins to-the-front for a maximum number of reps each set. Next I did either 4 sets of bentover barbell rows, t-bar rows or reverse-grip barbell rows, for sets of 12, 10, 8, and 6 reps, pyramiding up in weight each weight. This was my power movement so I rested about two minutes between sets. Then I did the Boyer Coe triset for four trisets. This routine dramatically improved my lats and my back thickness and muscularity. To review, here is the routine again: Routine Number 1: Wide-grip chins

4 set of maximum reps each set

Bentover barbell row or t-bar rows or reverse-grip rows

1 x 12, 10, 8, 6

Triset: Wide-grip pulldowns to-the-chest

1 x 15, 12, 10, 8

Seated cable rows

1 x 15, 12, 10, 8

Cross-bench dumbbell pullovers

1 x 20, 16, 14, 12

You can do the same triset as the one described above but substitute the crossbench dumbbell pullovers for the straight-arm barbell pullovers with a cupped grip, 20 to 50 reps a set. Routine Number 2: A second routine you can try that is a little more advanced is to do 4 sets of widegrip chins, maximum reps each set. If you’re a little more advanced do your first couple of chins with extra weight. Hold a 10 or 15 pound dumbbell between your knees and do

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as many reps as you can in good form (no kicking with the legs, please). Add weight as your strength increases (Marvin Eder used to do wide-grip chins for 8 reps with 100 pounds attached to his body. Marvin could also do 100 continuous reps of wide-grip chins with no weight). When you hit failure allow the dumbbell to slip between your legs to the floor and do as many reps as you can. Don’t forget to do your straight-arm burns at the end of each set. Next do either bentover barbell rows, t-bar rows, or reverse-grip rows for 4 sets: 1 x 12, 1 x 10, 1 x 8, 1 x 6. Pyramid up in weight each set. Rest about two minutes between sets to allow for the use of heavier weights. Next perform a pre-exhaust triset of the following exercises: Straight-arm pullovers with the cupped grip

1 x 50, 1 x 40, 1 x 30, 1 x 20

Straight-arm lat pullins with a cupped grip

1 x 30, 1 x 25, 1 x 20, 1 x 15

Reverse-grip pulldowns

1 x 12, 1 x10, 1 x 8, 1 x 8* (Do double drop set last set)

One-Arm Dumbbell Row:

1 x 12, 1 x10, 1 x 6-8

You may find you might not be able to 50 or 40 reps on the straight-arm pullovers with the cupped grip at first. That’s okay. Just do as many as you can. As long as you’re getting 20 reps or more, you’ll still get quite a pre-exhaust effect. For beginner or intermediates, I would recommend the following routine: Either wide-grip chins or lat pulldowns Pre-exhaust superset:

2-3 x 10-12 reps

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Straight-arm barbell pullovers with the cupped grip: 2 x 20 Bentover barbell rows

2 x 10

After three months assess your lat and back development. If you’re getting wider but not thicker, then increase your sets of rowing and add a few sets of t-bar rows. If you’re getting thicker but not as wide as you want then do wide-grip pulldowns both to the front and the neck instead of the barbell rows. Or you could do some Richard Kee lat pulldowns supersetted with the cupped grip straight-arm pullovers. Finish off your back with three sets of bentover barbell rows. Another excellent superset for the intermediate to advanced bodybuilder is to do wide-grip chins supersetted with seated low pulley rowing for three to five sets. Finish with some kind of rowing for four sets: bentover barbell rows, t-bar rows, reverse-grip rows, and then three sets of one-arm dumbbell rows or Larry Scott Stradle low lat pullins, supersetted with either straight-arm pullovers with the cupped grip, or Machine pullovers, or lat machine pullins with a cupped grip, for 20 to 50 reps a set Wide-grip chins* supersetted with low pulley rows* 3- 5 x 8 to 12 (*Remember to do burns on both chins and rows) Bentover rows or t-bar rows or reverse-grip rows

1 x 12, 10, 8, 6

Supersetted with pullovers*

4 x 20 to 50

(*either cupped grip barbell pullovers, cupped grip pullins, machine pullovers, or cross bench dumbbell pullovers) Routine Number 3: This routine is for people who have been training at least a year and are more advanced. Do straight-arm barbell pullovers with the cupped grip for sets of 20 to 50 reps, trisetted with wide-grip chins to-the-front and reverse-grip bent barbell rowing

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Do this for 4 to 6 trisets, then finish with four sets of one-arm dumbbell rows: 1 x 12, 1 x 10, 1 x 8, 1 x 6 To review: Triset: Straight-arm barbell pullovers with the cupped grip:

4-6 x 20-50 reps

Weighted wide-pulldowns or chins

4-6 x 6-10

Reverse-grip barbell rows

4-6 x 6-8

One-arm Dumbbell rows

1 x 10, 8, 6, 6

Keep rest between exercises of the triset to a minimum and rest only a minute between trisets.

The Standard Routine: After months of pre-exhaust supersets and compound supersets and trisets, it`s time to spend six weeks or so training the lats for lower reps and heavier weights—while still maintaining good form Weighted Wide-grip chins to-the-front

4 x 10 reps

Reverse-grip barbell rows

4 x 6-8 reps

T-bar rows

3 x 6-8

Seated cable rows

3 x 8-10

Cross-bench dumbbell pullovers

1 x 15, 12, 12

After six to eight weeks on this routine, return to high reps and/or supersets or trisets and drop sets, or routine one.

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Part Two: Important Thoughts About Training and Bodybuilding: Don’t Stagnate: Change is a bodybuilder’s best friend. Strength and bodybuilding expert Charles Poliquin says scientific research has found your body adapts to any kind of training in as little as six workouts. That’s only three weeks. You should, therefore, change exercises frequently to shock your muscles into new growth. Larry Scott’s highly successful Bio-Test training system has his clients changing their routines weekly—different sets and reps, different exercises, and different training principles. Larry says that whenever you make changes to your routine and the body is put under a new stress—even just changing the order of the exercises or the width of your grip or going from barbells to dumbbells or free weight to machines, or increasing or decreasing your reps, etc., the body reacts by increasing growth hormone output. Over the years I have been asked by numerous bodybuilders which is the very “best” way to train? Is it straight sets for low repetitions, with the emphasis on power? Is it high repetitions with the emphasis on pump? Is it compound, supersets, antagonistic supersets, trisets, giant sets, triple drop sets, descending reps, and down-the-rack training? Is it forced reps and negatives, rest-pause, 21’s, 11/2’s or pre-exhaust? Is it heavy-light, Heavy-Duty, or just plain heavy? My answer has always been the same. They all work well for working a muscle and inducing muscle growth. The problem is they just don’t work forever. That’s a fact. When something stops working, it’s time to change to something different. Change is a bodybuilder’s best friend.

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In Bill Pearl’s Keys to the Inner Universe he shows with illustrations more than 2000 exercises, so there is no excuse about using different exercises you can do to shock your muscles into new growth. Just remember, no matter which training system you choose to follow your body will eventually adapt to it and gains will slow down, even stop. Whenever you go stale on any training method, at that point, it’s time to change to another type of training to shock the muscles and to get them growing again. It’s not that one training principle or routine is better than the other, it’s the change from one to the other that creates new growth.

Do the Opposite of Whatever You Have Been Doing: If you have been doing mostly high reps, spend several weeks doing low reps. You can even spend a week or two doing really low reps. You might do 15 sets of 4 reps to work the white muscle fibers. If you’ve been doing low reps, double or even triple your reps. If you’ve been doing Slow-Motion or Super Slow-Motion, do your reps as fast as you can. If you’ve been doing fast reps, spend a few weeks doing Slow-Mo. If you’ve been doing only straight sets, do some supersets and trisets. If you’ve been doing supersets and trisets, do straight sets.

High Reps and Low Reps—What’s Best For You? There has always been a lot of confusion about this question. The controversy has raged for years. Is it moderate weights for high reps or heavy weights for low reps that is best for muscle growth? Mr. Olympia/Mr. Universe calibre physiques have been built utilizing both types of training, and much information about how champions train is

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conflicting. Yes, high reps worked very well for Freddie Ortiz, Sergio Oliva, Serge Nubret, Vince Taylor, Chris Dickerson, John Terilli, Tom Platz, and Johnnie Rutherford, while low reps worked well for Bertil Fox, Reg Park, Bill Pearl, Chuck Sipes, John Brown, Kal Szkalak, Dave Johns, Mike and Ray Mentzer, Lee Haney, Mike Francois, and Dorian Yates. But which method is best for you? How should you train for the best results? The most obvious way is to use the heavy-light principle and do both high reps and low reps in your workouts. This works both the white “fast-twitch” muscle fibers or myofibrils, as well as red “slow-twitch” muscle fibers, as well as developing the capillaries and other muscle tissues, the sarcoplasm and the mitochondria. John Parrillo believes all bodybuilders should start training a muscle like a powerlifter, with heavy weights and low reps and long rest periods between sets, but finish with light weights and high reps (up to a 100 per set), and resting less between sets. For example, you could do 4 sets of bentover rows for 5 to 8 reps, and then do 2 or 3 sets of 15 to 25 reps. Or do heavy barbell rows followed by the Boyer Coe triset. On a large muscle group like the thighs you could start off doing squats for sets of 1 x 10, 1 x 8, 1 x 6, 1 x 4, 1 x 2-3, then do squats or 45 degree leg presses for sets of 4x 50 to 100 reps or doing triple drop sets. Or you could squat heavy and do low reps and then superset leg presses with hack squats for at least 20 reps per set. Another way of utilizing the heavy-light principle is to do half reps with heavy weights for 4 to 6 reps, followed by lighter weights and higher reps—say 15 to 20—for full range of motion. For example, you could do one-arm concentration curls for 4 to 6

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half reps, and then immediately do full reps for 15 to 20 reps. This ensures you thicken the white muscle fibers while increasing capillaries and cardiovascular density. The heavier training also strengthens the tendons, ligaments, and bones and builds thickness and power. The lighter higher rep training increases blood vessels and capillaries, blood circulation to the muscle and improves the muscles ability to pump (Blood Volume Theory), and builds red muscle fiber. If you do them both you can be confident you’re building all muscle fibers and to maximize growth potential. But, I admit, even this approach can be a little hit or miss. It doesn’t account for anyone’s genetic ability. Do you need more heavy training or more lighter training? Everyone is predisposed to a certain type of lifting, whether heavy or light, and while I still believe that everyone can benefit from heavy-light training, they shouldn’t necessarily do equal amounts of both types of training. It shouldn’t be in all cases a 5050 format. Depending on your genetic predisposition, most people should spend either 75 to 80 per cent of their time training either heavy for low reps or lighter for high reps. The question is, how do you know if you’re the type of person who should be training mostly heavy or mostly light? My good friend Gunnar Sikk, who I regard as one of the most knowledgeable persons I have ever met in bodybuilding, has come up with a simple test to tell you which genetic type you are. Here’s how you do it. Determine your one rep max on the bench press. For a person who can bench press about 300 pounds, start with a very easy set of bench presses with 135 pounds for about 10 reps to warm up. Also do a light set of chins or pulldowns for 15 or 20 reps to warm up the antagonistic muscles. Wait several minutes

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(3 at least) and do 225 for 1 rep. Wait for several minutes and do 250 pounds but for only 1 rep. Rest at least five minutes and increase the weight to 275 pounds and do 1 rep. Finally, rest five minutes again and increase the weight to 290 pounds and do 1 rep. Wait at least five minutes and try 300 pounds. If you get it, add five or 10 pounds to the bar and wait for seven or eight minutes. Then try for a max single. If you fail, end the bench presses. If you get it, add five pounds, wait up to 10 minutes, and try for a max single again. Obviously, only do max singles with a spotter in case the bar gets stuck on your chest. After five minutes rest, put 80 per cent of your max on the bar and rep out till failure (again, always have a spotter). Your ability to do higher or lower reps with 80 per cent of your max will tell you which genetic type you are. For example, let’s say for argument’s sake two bodybuilders, bodybuilder A and bodybuilder B, can both bench press 400 pounds for a single. Eighty per cent of 400 is 320 pounds. Both men can rep out till failure, but bodybuilder A can do 10 reps, while bodybuilder B can only do 4 reps. So bodybuilder A is a high rep bodybuilder, while bodybuilder B is a low rep bodybuilder. Bodybuilder A should devote 75 to 80 per cent of his training time training light and for high reps (10 to 20 or more per set, plus supersets, drop sets, triple drop sets, 21’s, 1 ½’s), while bodybuilder B should devote 75 to 80 per cent of his time training heavy and for low reps (5 to 8 reps), and only 20 per cent doing high reps, supersets, trisets or drop sets. If bodybuilder A performs four exercises for a muscle group, one should be heavy and for low reps (4 to 6 reps), while the other three exercises should be

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performed for high reps or supersets, trisets, or drop sets. Bodybuilder B, on the other hand, should devote three exercises to heavy, low rep training, and only one exercise for high reps, supersets, trisets, or drop sets. At the time when Gunnar told me about this test, he was working with two pro bodybuilders, Henderson Thorne and Michael Payette, who were the epitome of these two genetic extremes. Both Henderson and Michael could bench press 500 pounds raw for a single, but when they did 80 per cent of their max—400 pounds—Henderson could do 10 reps while Michael could only do 4. Accordingly, Michael preferred to do a lot of heavy-low rep training, while Henderson did a lot of high rep training. On leg presses Henderson often did 1300 for 30 reps or 1100 for 50 reps. Sometimes he did triple drop sets and over 100 reps. This testing method should help optimize your training.

When All Else Fails Try Higher Reps Larger muscles like the thighs and lats often respond better to higher reps because they have more nerve fibers and we have less control over them than say we do the biceps or triceps or your fingers or face muscles, so it takes more reps to work them properly. When’s the last time you did 50 reps on bench presses like Sergio Oliva or 20 reps per set like Serge Nubret or squatted 10 minutes non-stop like Tom Platz? Back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s Muscular Development magazine always ran a series of articles by each year’s AAU Mr. America winner. When Casey Viator won in 1971, it was his turn. Casey said in his first article that bodybuilder’s should do 20 reps a set on all

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exercises and all muscle groups. Yes, even arms, delts, pecs and lats. Of course, Casey was infamous for his super high intensity workouts. To teach a recalcitrant muscle to respond you must train it with higher reps (15 to 100 reps) and take shorter rests between sets. You can also employ supersets, trisets, giant sets, pre-exhaust, rest-pause, 21’s, 1 ½’s, burns, Slow Mo and Super Slow Motion training. Once you have developed the neural networks and the neuro-muscular pathways to the working muscle, and a greater blood flow to the muscle and greater cardiovascular density, then you can reduce the reps and train the muscle heavier and in a more traditional manner. Sometimes you have to train a muscle with light weights and higher reps for three to six months before it will respond to heavier weights and lower reps. A good example of this was a story told to me by Tom Platz. Tom had been doing dumbbell curls for his biceps with 60 pounds but he didn’t feel his biceps working or pumping as much as they should have. To learn how to feel/innervate and isolate and stimulate his biceps more effectively, and how to pump them, he started going into Gold’s Gym in Venice at 5 o’clock in the morning and doing sets of dumbbell curls with 20 pound dumbbells (he was too embarrassed to try this at peak training hours later in the day when the gym was full of people). After a few weeks of light weight dumbbell curls he learned how to innervate and stimulate his biceps properly. After that he was able to use 60 pound dumbbells and feel and work and pump his biceps just as effectively as he did while using the 20 pound dumbbells.

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I’ll mention an example of my own experience of how to properly innervate and pump a muscle to make it grow when it refuses to grow. For years I had done all my leg exercises with heavy weights (well, heavy for me) and low reps—usually 6 and no more than 8 reps. When I squatted for 6 reps all that hurt were my knees and my lower back, and all I felt was my glutes. I could not get any pump in my thighs. My thighs hadn’t improved in years. After a discussion with bodybuilding authority Gunnar Sikk, who had been living in Venice Beach, California in the late 70’s and training at Gold’s Gym, I made a decision to try high rep training. Gunnar told me about how Tom Platz often squatted for 50 and 100 reps and that pros like Bob Paris and Samir Bannout and some other champs were always doing 20 (or more) reps on all their leg exercises. What did I have to lose? I doubled my reps on squats. Instead of sets of 6 to 8 reps, I did sets of 12 to 15 reps. I also began doing 45 degree leg presses after squats, for 4 sets of 50 reps a set. At first it was very grueling. Even with relatively light weights my thighs burned like fire and the pump was extreme. After a set I could barely walk afterwards. But in only two months I put two inches on my thighs, more than I had gained in seven years with my old six reps a set method. For the first time in my life I was getting super pumps in my legs and really experiencing innervation of my quads. After five or six months of this high rep torture, I discovered that on some sets I could sometimes go heavy—using the heavy-light principle--and still get great pumps in my thighs with sets of 10 to 12 reps. I could finally feel my thighs properly on squats. This indicated to me that I had finally developed the neural network and the neuro-

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muscular pathways and increased blood flow and cardio-vascular density in my legs (as evidenced by the larger veins and arteries I now had in my legs). If your legs—or any muscle group for that matter-aren’t growing with reps in the 6 to 10 range, give higher reps a try.

Forest Gumpisms and the Power of the Mind To paraphrase Forrest Gump’s mother, “Bodybuilding is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” There are no guarantees about any training routine or system but your mental attitude toward your training and diet go a long way to determine if you make good gains or not. If you do not have confidence in your ability to succeed, if you do not have a positive outlook towards training, then you probably will not grow optimally. If not, you won’t succeed. Vince Gironda often wrote about the champions who trained at his famous north Hollywood gym who had total, complete, and infallible confidence in their ability to succeed. Their mental mind-set did not allow for failure. Vince noticed that many champs had training partners who were less advanced, and even though both men did the same exercises, sets, reps, routines, followed the same diets, and took the same supplements, and both trained with intensity, the champs made fantastic gains while the wannabe’s made poor gains. Yeah, you could argue the champ had better genetic talent, but Vince was convinced that the reason the champs gained so well while the wannabe’s didn’t was that the wannabe’s had a negative mind-set and didn’t really believe they could succeed, while the champs never thought they could fail. They had absolute confidence

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in their ability to make gains, to achieve their goals, and to succeed. They had to gain! They had the power of positive thinking. What the mind conceives, the body can achieve. The chumps failure to gain was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. They thought they wouldn’t succeed so they didn’t. Vince witnessed this phenomenon dozens of times over the 60 years he owned his gym. Arnold Schwarzenegger thoughts on the same topic echo Vince’s. He wrote about the importance of confidence and having a positive mental mind-set and the necessity of using the power of positive thinking in regards to a bodybuilder’s ability to gain. He wrote that “Confidence in your ability to develop your body comes from the mind. Concentration and intensity also come from the mind, as do training desire and motivation to achieve. Passion, desire, and unlimited enthusiasm for any endeavor start with the mind. Whether it’s building a Mr. Olympia physique, climbing a mountain, succeeding in business, getting an educational degree, or learning to play a musical instrument, everything starts with the mind. You have to want to do it first in your mind and believe you can do it in your heart. “You must have a very positive attitude about training, about having goals and excited and enthusiastic about reaching those goals. Without goals to shoot for, you are training for no reason at all, so you’re just wasting your time. Without a goal your mind cannot get excited and won’t be totally involved in the effort you put forth. Your training becomes a half-assed affair, so you will not exert yourself to the extent necessary for success in bodybuilding.”

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Not only do champions have complete confidence in their ability to gain, they totally believe in themselves. They can shut out negative thoughts and influences and focus completely on achieving their goals. They believe in their ability to become champions—no matter how many times they fail or how many years the quest takes. Larry Scott, Frank Zane, Franco Columbu, and Rich Gaspari all were told they didn’t have the genetic ability to become champions. They did so in spite of all the negative talk. Another good example of this is Bob Cicherillo, who took 20 years to earn his IFBB pro card. Most men would have given up long before, but Bob persisted, and became a NPC champ and an IFBB pro. Every champion was at one time a beginner and yet they trained persistently and continuously, through ups and downs, through injuries and illness, until became champions. If you do not have enthusiasm for your workouts, you will not train with enough intensity and enthusiasm. I recall reading an article by Frank Zane in which he described how he mentally prepared for a workout. He would read over his training diary in the change room at Gold’s Gym in Venice to see what he did the previous workout and thought about what he was going to achieve during that day’s work out. He would also re-read his goals which were written in the front of the diary to reinforce them in his mind. He would then meditate for a time, blocking out any negative thoughts while psyching himself up before he went into the gym to begin his workout. He visualized himself lifting heavy weights and succeeding. He would also visualize how he wanted to look at a major show like the Mr. Universe or Mr. Olympia contest months away. Only when he saw that image clearly in his mind, how he was going to look onstage, and

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himself holding up the champion’s trophy, would he leave the dressing room to begin his workout. That’s how he stoked the fire to train with great intensity and enthusiasm. Champions never limit themselves mentally. They don’t see limits or remain at lower comfort levels. They’re always pushing the envelope. Remember when Arnold said he saw his biceps as mountain peaks as he did curls? Arnold never placed limits on his development. He always thought he could become bigger and bigger and more muscular, that he could continually improve his physique year-to-year—and so he did. The average bodybuilder, on the other hand, is always placing limits on their development and erecting mental barriers to block success (“I’ll never get 18 inch arms.” “I’ll never gain weight” ”I’ll never get cut” “I’ll never bench press 315”). The champs are always tearing down mental barriers. Bodybuilder’s who fail to gain are subconsciously satisfied to remain at a certain level of development because, whether they are aware of it or not, they want to remain at a certain comfort level. In my opinion, if many intermediate bodybuilders were honest with themselves, they don’t really want to make better gains because it would take them out of their comfort zone. Improving their physiques would require harder, more intense and painful workouts, more consistent workouts, as well as better diets and more money spent on proper food and supplements. It would mean making a greater commitment to spending more hours at the gym, making sacrifices in their social lives, watching less TV or other activities, and living a different lifestyle, and deep down inside they know they don’t want to do it. They don’t have the necessary drive or passion to do it. It’s much easier to make excuses—“I can’t gain because I won’t take steroids,” or “I can’t gain because I

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have poor genetics”--than to acknowledge their fear about stepping out of their comfort zones. Failing to raise your comfort level for training is related to goal setting and training intensity. Arnold said, “You must be mentally prepared for intense training. You must be mentally primed to go through pain. You must be mentally ready to get under heavy weights in the squat and bench press and have no fear of getting buried by the weight. You must have total confidence in your strength to lift the weight no matter how heavy it is. There is no place for fear in a gym. If you are afraid of a heavy weight, you will not lift it. If you are afraid of pain and exhaustion you must go through to do heavy and intense sets of squats, deadlifts, T-bar rows and bentover rows—exercises that can really push your body to the limit and make you feel nauseated, you will not train as hard as you could. As I said in the movie Pumping Iron, if you can go through this pain each set you may get to become a champion. If you cannot go through this pain, you’ll never become a champ.” Once on TV long ago I saw a Yogi Master who weighed just 135 pounds attempt to lift 2000 pounds in a partial squat. He claimed the lifting of such a weight was more mental than physical. The event was filmed at Gold’s Gym in Venice, California. As the extra-long bar was loaded with 100 pound plates, bodybuilder Kent Kuehn was asked if he thought the Yogi Master could lift the ton of weight. “No way!” replied Kent. Yet the Yogi Master got under the bar and lifted it several inches off the racks, proving mind over matter does work. Like Kent Kuehn, looking at this skinny Yogi Master, I doubted he could lift 2000 pounds either, but lift it he did.

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It’s interesting to think what the power of the mind can do for a man attempting to lift a very heavy weight. It’s more than just confidence. It is something in the mind that can increase the power of a man’s muscles. Stanley Pleskun, a man who specializes in bending coins, spikes, and thick iron bars, says when he’s doing a feat he says over and over in his mind, “Send more power, send more power,” into his hands, wrists and fingers as be performs one of his feats of strength. It sounds simple but Pleskun says this really works for him. In Australia there was a man by the name of Wayne who claimed he was able to increase his squat record from 380 pounds to 415 pounds after one session with the help of a hypnotist who hypnotized him into believing he was stronger. Hypnotism has been used by many times by some weightlifters and powerlifters, but usually without success. In the October, 1986 issue of Powerlifting USA, Dr. Judd Biasiotto and Arny Ferrando wrote an interesting article on the use of hypnosis to increase strength. They said not all people can be hypnotized and the degree to which they are hypnotized varies greatly too. But about 10 per cent of people can be taken to a very deep level of hypnotism or a somnambulistic state. They described in the article a former boxer turned powerlifter named Ronnie who had an extreme response to being hypnotized. Although Ronnie could squat and deadlift well over 500 pounds at 181 pounds bodyweight, his bench press was a very low 230 pounds. Actually, Ronnie had welldeveloped triceps and a deep chest so physically there did not seem to be any reason for his low bench press. Biasiotto and Ferrando thought Ronnie had some sort of mental

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block and the problem was more mental than physical. They decided to hypnotize Ronnie to help him overcome any mental block that might be hindering his bench press performance. Ronnie was taken to the weight-room in the Albany YMCA. He was hypnotized in the presence of seven other lifters. Once hypnotized, they induced some extreme and unusual hypnotic phenomena such as hallucinations, age regression, and fantasy induction. They then suggested to Ronnie that he was much stronger. To everyone’s amazement, Ronnie’s facial features seemed to change right before everyone’s eyes. His jaw jutted out. His lips curled up around his teeth. His eyes sprung open wide, giving him a sardonic or devilish appearance. Even his arms and chest seemed to expand beyond what they had been. Biasiotto and Ferrando said Ronnie “seemed to be on the verge of hysteria.” He kept taking deep breathes and was trembling uncontrollably. While in this state they took him to a bench press and made him lie down. He then proceeded to bench press 230 pounds, then 275 pounds, and finally 300 pounds. Ronnie had increased his bench press 70 pounds while in the hypnotic state. He actually wanted to try more but they brought him out of hypnosis. But he still seemed “high as a kite.” It took several hours before he settled down. Although Ronnie was hypnotized just once, his bench press continued to improve. Six months later he bench pressed 335 pounds to win the Georgia State Bench Press Championships held at Georgia Southern College. Ronnie was an extreme example and most people would not respond so well to

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the hypnotic suggestion that they were much stronger than they were. Actually, all lifters practice a kind of self-hypnosis before a lift, rehearsing in their minds the lift they are about to do and seeing in their mind’s eye themselves successfully lifting the weight, just as Stanley Pleskun tells his mind to send more power to his hands and wrists. Golfers use the same technique, visualizing successfully the shot they are about to hit before they hit the ball. The power of the mind to achieve goals cannot be underestimated. Mystics and yoga’s can control their internal organs, their heart rate, their blood flow, stomach action, metabolic function, and even the temperature of their body through meditation and the power of their minds. The mind does play a much greater part in how we respond to exercise than we think. Remember when Franco Columbu said on national TV that he and Arnold “talked to their muscles” and “willed them to grow.” Whether you believe it or not, your mind and attitude may be the most important factor in whether you gain or not. Bodybuilder, powerlifter and martial artist Mike Dayton once wrote in an article in IronMan that “Since studying martial arts, in particular the art of Chi mind control, I have realized more than ever that a fine physique is the product of the mind and not drugs. There are no substitutions for the will and mental strength of the individual. “The physique and strength, which come from the mind are permanent. You cannot lose them because they are generated from within yourself, not from outside. . . Strength is the product of the mind. A person must be mentally command his body to exert strength.”

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Stupid is As Stupid Does If you make stupid training and nutritional mistakes, you will fail to make the gains you want. If you make stupid bodybuilding mistakes, don’t expect good results. You simply must eliminate the dumb training and nutritional mistakes that slow or stop progress. What are stupid mistakes that bodybuilders make over and over? Training the same way for years and not making any improvements to your physique. It should be obvious that if your current training is not producing good gains that something is wrong and needs to be changed. What are other dumb mistakes? Not training progressively and putting ever greater workloads on their muscles is one. Not changing exercises and routines and training principles frequently enough to avoid going stale and stagnating and causing sticking points and plateaus, or always doing the same exercises, the same number of sets and reps and weights all the time, using the same training principles and the same amount of rest between sets is another. Strength and bodybuilding expert Charles Poliquin says the body can adapt to any kind of training in as little as six workouts— which is only three weeks-so constant change is vital for steady growth. As mentioned previously, Larry Scott’s highly successful Bio-Phase training system is based on changing workouts weekly—different exercises, different training principles, and different training tempo’s and amount of rest taken between sets. This should be common sense, and yet you see guys at the gym all the time who have been training for 20 years who don’t look any better because they still lift the same amount of weight, do the same exercises, and the same sets and reps. They use the same training

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principle, and the same amount of rest between sets. Their muscles have long since adapted to their workouts. They’re just going through the motions and that’s why they fail to gain. They train without goals so their training has no purpose.

Raise Your Comfort Level Many barriers are more mental than physical. Remember when it was thought impossible to run a sub-four minute mile? Then Roger Banister broke the four minute mile in 1954. Shortly afterwards, so did many others. Why, because the mental barrier to do it had been removed. Now the record time for the mile is down to 3.43 seconds and the next mental hurdle is a sub 3.40 second mile. The same thing happened in weightlifting. Even though a few lifters had done 499 ¼ pounds in the clean and jerk, 500 pounds was thought to be impossible. Than Vasily Alexeev of Russia did a 501 ¼ pound lift at 1970 World Weightlifting Championships in Columbus, Ohio. The very next week Ken Patera of the USA, Rudolph Mang of West Germany, and Serge Redding of Belgium also lifted more than 500 pounds. Why, because the mental barrier had been eliminated. Once Aleexev succeeded with 501 ¼ they knew it was humanly possible so they did it too. Now the clean and jerk record is 585 pounds and the next mental barrier is a lift of greater than 600 pounds. How do you raise your comfort zone? By not being complacent, by staying hungry and by constantly challenging yourself to improve. Don’t get comfortable or satisfied to look a certain way. Set out definite and specific goals and then map out a plan to achieve those goals.

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Bodybuilding is hard work and it is not always a smooth ride. Ups and downs, plateaus and disappointment are as much a part of training as success. What separates the champs from the chumps is the power of their minds and their ability to re-dedicate themselves to their goals and to work through slumps and never give up. They are patient and persistent. Frank Zane won the IFBB Mr. America and IFBB Mr. Universe contests in 1968. In 1970 he won the NABBA Amateur Mr. Universe and the Pro Mr. Universe in 1972. But he didn’t win his first Mr. Olympia contest until 1977. Chris Dickerson won the AAU Mr. America contest in 1970—the first Afro-American to win that prestigious title-and it took him three more years to win the NABBA Mr. Universe title, but didn’t win the IFBB Mr. Olympia contest for 9 more years, till 1982. The best example of persistence and training through ups and downs is Bill Pearl, AAU Mr. America champ of 1953, and a four time NABBA Mr. Universe champion. Bill’s passion and enthusiasm for training was unparalleled. He got up at 3 am every day to have the time to do his daily two hour workouts (and he trained six days a week). In order to train so early, he went to bed at 9 pm, even on Friday and Saturday nights. When I last spoke to Bill Pearl in 1998 he said that in the previous 35 years he had missed at most three or four workouts (and Bill had retired from competitive bodybuilding in 1971 after defeating Sergio Oliva and Reg Park at the NABBA Pro Mr. Universe contest in London but he still loved to train). Many bodybuilders miss that many in two months. That’s not to say Bill had a bull-busting workout every time he trained but even if he had a cold or some kind of injury he trained around the injury or did workouts with

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less weight, intensity and volume. But no matter what, he was going to train, come hell or high water. Bill’s philosophy for this kind of dedication was there were 24 hours in a day. The first two hours of each day were his to do as he wanted, which was to train. That left 22 hours for family, social and business obligations and sleep. Only after he completed his two hour workout would he shower, eat breakfast, and then open up his Pasadena gym for business and fulfill his social and other obligations. It didn’t matter if he was traveling out of town, or if he had a funeral or wedding or party to attend, or a business meeting, or whatever, the first two hours of each day were for training. It was the number one priority in life after his family. I’m not saying you should get up at 3 am every morning to train, but you should be dedicated enough to set aside at least one hour a day, or one hour four or five times a week (depending on how you set up your training routine) for training. Training must be a priority, first and foremost. Don’t get frustrated and give up. Never miss a workout unless it is a planned layoff or you are truly injured or feeling exhausted and you are in need of an extra day off for more recovery. Missing workouts and stopping and starting training is one of the main reason so many fail to make the gains they want. Like the hare versus the turtle, slow and steady and consistent training wins in the long run. The guy who trains hard but sanely and intelligently and progressively, and who trains year round will always gain better than the guy who trains with super human intensity for a month or two but who then stops

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training for a few weeks or months. Live in the here and now. Train for today and worry about the future later. Take each day on its own. And don’t think it’s too late to start. Vic Downs didn’t start bodybuilding until he was 33 and went on to win a Mr. Universe contest when he was 41. Ed Corney didn’t start bodybuilding until he was 28 and won the IFBB Mr. America and Mr. Universe contest in 1972 when he was 40. Vince Taylor, one of the most successful bodybuilders to ever compete in the IFBB, also didn’t start training until he was 28. By his mid-thirties he won major shows like the Arnold Classic, The Night of the Champions, and numerous Grand Prix events, placed high at the Olympia, and when past the age of 40 won the Masters Mr. Olympia more than once. Al Beckles was a good bodybuilder in his 20’s and 30’s but didn’t start winning major shows and become a superstar until his late 40’s and well into his mid and late 50’s. Chris Dickerson also started bodybuilding in his 20’s and although he became the first Afro-American to win the AAU Mr. America contest in 1970, it took him 12 more years to win the Mr. Olympia contest. The champs don’t give up. Through injuries, illness and all the problems and difficulties of daily life, through all the ups and downs, they continue to train. Like them, you have to learn the value of time, patience and persistence.

Set Realistic Goals Training without specific, challenging but realistic goals—both short-term and long-term--and not striving to achieve those goals is a huge mistake. Without specific goals you’re training for no reason and your workouts lack purpose and intensity. Goals must be specific but reasonable and realistic such as, “I want to gain half an inch on my

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arms and one inch on my chest and lose an inch off my waist” in four months or “I want to add 20 pounds to my bench press in six weeks” or “I want to gain 20 pounds in six months” (not vague goals like “I want to get in shape someday” or “I want to get big and muscular someday”). Your goals must be challenging but realistic. If you have 15 inch arms and your goal is to have 20 inch arms in six months you’ll fail and get frustrated and give up. Remember, the longest journey starts with the first few small steps. Every 20 inch arm was once 14 inches and was built on a series of small gains like one-eighth of an inch, one after another, over a period of years. Set a goal of one-eighth or onequarter of an inch on your arms and then give yourself the necessary time to achieve your reachable goal of one-eighth or one-quarter of an inch. Then go for another and another one-eight or one-quarter of an inch. The elation and satisfaction of that oneeighth or one-quarter of an inch will inspire you to make similar gains. If you can gain one-eighth of an inch on your arms in a month, in eight months your arms are one inch bigger. That’s a significant gain. In less than three years your arms will be over three inches larger. Be patient and get excited about even small gains as they bring you closer and closer to your goals. Don’t under estimate the importance of making small gains to achieve your goals. For example, it doesn’t sound like a lot but if you can manage to gain half a pound of muscle a week, that’s 26 pounds in a year. Not too shabby! The problem with many novice and intermediate bodybuilders is they are so impatient to get big they dismiss a gain like half a pound of muscle per week or one-eighth of an inch on their arms.

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Larry Scott, who built some of the greatest arms of all time, had a goal of increasing his pumped upper arm measurement by one-sixteenth of an inch every arm workout. He actually brought a measuring tape to the gym and measured his arms after each arm workout. That meant he would gain one inch every 16 arm workouts. Even Scott couldn’t achieve this goal every time, otherwise his arms would have been 30 inches, not 20, but the important thing was putting forth the maximum effort in the gym. It was the striving for this goal that mattered, not that he achieved it every time. Achieving small goals should excite you to immediately make new goals to work towards. That’s how you make continuous gains. If you have a goal of gaining a quarter of an inch on your arms in six weeks, and when you achieve that goal, it should motivate and excite you to make a goal of another quarter inch gain. If you could gain ¼ of an inch on your arms every six weeks you would gain one inch every 24 weeks or nearly two inches in a year. In several years you could add four or five inches. That’s how you get big arms. You should have daily, weekly, monthly, three month and six month goals (I want to be in the best shape of my life by summer, not “I want to be Mr. Olympia in one year”), as well as one year goals and long term goals (“I want to earn a pro card in five years or “I want to win a local bodybuilding contest in two years.” They key to gains is to immediately set new goals each time you attain previous goals, and then do everything possible to achieve the new goals. Look at it this way. If you achieve your daily goals, you will automatically achieve your weekly goals. If you achieve your weekly goals, your month goals will take care of

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themselves. If you achieve your monthly goals, the mid-term goals—say three month goals or six month goals or one year goals—will take care of themselves. Not being excited and passionate about achieving goals is one of the biggest mistakes a bodybuilder can make. Remember, Arnold Schwarzenegger says without specific goals to work toward and achieve, a bodybuilder will never train with the intensity and put forth the necessary effort to assure bodybuilding success. Without specific goals to work toward, you’re just going through the motions. The more passionate, enthusiastic, and excited you are about achieving your goals, the more consistent your training will be and the more intense and effective will be your workouts. Frank Zane once wrote about the savage intensity that Arnold trained with and how he went through training partners like Kleenex. Frank said that “Arnold ‘attacks’ his workouts with great enthusiasm.” So should you. Bodybuilding is not a-hit-or-miss and hope-for-the-best endeavor. You must be constantly aware of what is happening to you and why. Concentration is not just focusing with your mind as you do a set, it’s paying attention to the smallest details not just for training but for diet, nutrition, rest and recovery, and mental attitude. Arnold said, “It doesn’t do any good to go through training like a blind man, to just go through the motions. Motions mean nothing. You have to realize what is happening to you. You have to want results.” Become impatient and give up and you’ll never develop a decent physique. Another mistake many bodybuilders make is failing to concentrate deeply enough—not realizing that workouts take as much mental energy and effort as physical energy and

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effort—and to maintaining constant-tension on the working muscle throughout a set. Failing to innervate and stimulate the muscles properly because they haven’t developed the proper neural networks and neruo-muscular pathways from the brain to the muscles is definitely one of the main reasons many fail to gain, as is failing to train according to the Blood Volume Theory and failing to get a maximum growth pump in the working muscle.

Keep a Training Diary One of the biggest mistakes many bodybuilders make is not keeping a training diary, and not knowing the exercises, sets, reps, and weights used on exercises from previous workouts, so they can keep track of their workouts. If you don’t keep a training diary, how else are you to know how much weight to use and how many reps to do each exercise? Keeping a diary gives you a goal to strive for your next workout, which is either to use more weight than you used during your previous workout, more reps with the same weight, or both. With more advanced bodybuilders it might be a greater volume and intensity. Keeping a diary gives you short term goals to shoot for. If you did 16 reps in the wide-grip chin your first set last lat workout, then you know you have to shoot for 17 reps the next workout. A diary lets you know if you’re making progress. If you bench pressed 200 pounds for nine reps and your goal was to do 10 reps, then you must try for 200 for ten reps the following workout. If you get 10 reps, next workout add five pounds to the bar—which will knock your reps down, maybe to seven or eight—and continue to add reps over several workouts until you can do 205 for 10 reps. Then add another five pound\s to the bar and start the process all over again.

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There is no other way. Progressive training on basic exercises is the basis for bodybuilding: for overload and overcompensation and muscle growth, and is essential for building a physical base to grow from. First gain size and mass and then use isolation exercises to shape and refine your physique. For novices and intermediates, this is absolutely essential. Other daily goals should be to eat the right foods, not miss meals, to take in the right amount of calories, protein, carbs, and fats, to take your supplements, as well to get enough sleep, rest, and recovery. You should keep a dietary diary as well as a training diary so you know which foods you are eating, and how much protein, carbs, fats, and calories you are consuming. You shouldn’t smoke, drink alcohol excessively or recreational drugs, eat a lot of junk food and be up all night partying every night. You should be getting at least 8 hours sleep a night. Commit to your goals and review them on a daily basis. Stick copies of some of your goals on your refrigerator and on your bathroom mirror and inside your locker at the gym. If, for example, your goal is to be in the best shape of your life by summerwhich is four months away—put a little sign inside your locker that says, 120 days till summer. Each day bring a new sign to stick up: 100 days till summer, 80 days till summer, 60 days till summer, 40 days till summer, etch. On the days you don’t feel like training, look at your sign and remember your goals. Remember, the days go by slow, but the weeks go by fast. Every missed workout cannot be re-captured, and every missed workout puts you that must farther from achieving your goal.

Constantly Analyze and Get Feedback From Your Training

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Reviewing your training diary weekly to make appropriate changes in your diet or training to maximize gains is paramount in importance. You should be constantly analyzing your training and diet and getting feedback from your workouts. You never change a winning game plan (making good gains) but you never follow a losing plan either (training and making no gains). This should be obvious but as mentioned above, many recreational bodybuilders follow losing game plans for years, even decades. If you are failing to make the gains in size, strength and muscularity you think you should, something is wrong and needs to be changed and changed quickly. Find out what it is and make appropriate changes to either your training or diet. By monitoring your progress weekly you can promptly make the appropriate changes in your diet, training, supplementation, recovery, or mental attitude, to get you back in the fast lane. It all comes back to the Joe Weider concept of instinctive training, listening to your body like a bio-feedback machine, and knowing what it can do and can’t do. You should train harder and heavier on the days you feel like it, and train lighter and less intensely when you don’t feel up to it. You can’t ignore your bodies warning signals that something is wrong. If you try to train too hard when your body isn’t up to the task, you’ll burn yourself out, upset the chemical balance of your nervous system, overtax your muscles and nervous system, and deplete your ability to recover from your workouts. You may also drain the adrenal glands, suppress your immune system (making yourself susceptible to colds and flus and digestive disturbances like diarrhea), and set yourself up for injury. Before you know it your workouts become a chore you dread. Some top champions, like Dorian Yates, didn’t believe in instinctive training, while Dave Draper, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, and Frank Zane, to

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mention a few champs, did. Dorian said if he followed his instincts he’d be in the pub drinking beer with his mates every night, not busting his ass in the gym. He felt he needed a more rigid format, otherwise he wouldn’t train consistently. Having said that, even Dorian said he knew when to cut back on training intensity because he felt over trained. He found, for example, the most he could do forced reps and negatives before burning out was three weeks. Then for the next six weeks he would train just till failure, which is plenty intense enough. Personally, both ideas have merit. How do you monitor progress? Look over your training diary. Are your weights going up and are you getting stronger or are they stagnating? Do you feel you are recovering from your workouts properly or are you tired all the time? Maybe you need to reduce the number of sets you’re performing, a reduction in training volume, less intensity (or more), more rest between sets, a change to different exercises, different training principles, a different rep scheme or a completely different routine. Maybe you need to take an extra day or two of rest. Maybe you need a week off, or a week of active rest (a method devised by the Bulgarians for their elite weightlifters which entails low intensity, low volume, light weight training to allow the body’s recovery and nervous systems and the nerves to regenerate, which retains muscle tone and lifting skill, but avoids the muscle soreness and break-in time you must go through when resume heavy training). Maybe you need a complete week off to regenerate your mind and your muscles.

Don’t Under Estimate the Importance of Diet

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Both Vince Gironda and Larry Scott say bodybuilding success is 80 per cent diet. They obviously didn’t mean you could follow an awesome diet and gain huge amounts of muscle and lose fat without training. What they meant was unless you ate the right amount of calories and protein and other nutrients, it doesn’t matter how well or hard you’re training, you won’t grow, John Parrillo says that everyone is always trying to find ways to train more intensely but few bodybuilders give thought about how they are going to recover from these workouts. Parrillo says, the harder you train, the better your diet must be. John says “match your nutrition to your training.” Also, and to his credit (because John has his own supplement line), John says “don’t spend a penny on supplements until you get your diet right.” Experiment with different foods and the number of calories and protein you consume to find the foods that are best for your metabolism. Many fail to gain simply because they do not eat enough. John Parrillo says many fail to gain because they fall short of the number of calories their bodies need to grow by a mere 300 calories a day—a large baked potato and some MCT oil. If you need 4500 calories a day to grow on, and you consume 4200, you will not grow. When it comes to diet, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Never assume you are like other people when it comes to diet. For example, top amateur bodybuilder Roger Stewart loses size and smooth’s out eating egg whites, chicken breasts, rice and baked potato. He gains best in size and muscularity by eating two pounds of red meat a day along with a gallon of cream or ice cream. Roger once told me during an interview, “If I ate like the typical bodybuilder I’d be so skinny I’d blow away in the wind.”

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When I eat clean--egg whites, chicken breasts, canned tuna in water, rice, potato, raw vegetables—I smooth out and lose my hardness and vascularity. I get cut, lean, and hard and vascular eating liver and red meat, whole eggs, tuna and sardines in oil, mixing my protein supplements with 2 % milk, putting butter on toast and baked potatoes, and salad dressing on salads, and having a bowl of ice cream for dessert at dinner. Eating protein and fats makes me more cut, carbs smooth me out. But that might not work for you. The harder I train, the more I crave protein, whereas if I’m injured or ill and have to take a layoff I crave carbs. Experiment with diet until you hit above the right kind of foods and the right amounts of protein, carbs, fats, and calories that promote gains. Don’t be afraid to experiment. The reason you might be failing to pack on pounds of muscle may be all those egg whites, chicken breasts, cans of tuna in water, and rice, potato and raw vegetables you’re eating. Maybe like Roger Steward you’d be better off eating a gallon of ice cream and two pounds of red meat a day. Whenever I go away to a show like the Mr. Olympia or The Arnold Classic I always like to get into good condition so I look like a bodybuilder and not a pencilnecked geek. One year I was going to the Ms. Olympia contest in LA. I went on a small stack of 20 mg of Winstrol a day and 200 mg of Deca per week. In about a month I had packed on over 25 pounds of bodyweight, yet my bodyfat percentage had dropped from 10 percent to 6 percent. As always I was eating my red meat, whole eggs, tuna in oil, and mixing my Meso-Tech drinks with 2 per cent milk. Three weeks out from the show I was looking very hard, cut, and extremely muscular. But I thought I might get even

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more cut if I ate more like a traditional bodybuilder, so I stopped eating red meat, cut out the whole eggs and butter and desert and started mixing my Meso-Tech with water. Within a week my cuts were gone and I smoothed out. Alarmed, I went back to my regular way of eating and my cuts and hardness returned. A few days before the Olympia contest I flew to LA and stayed with my good buddy Jason Mathis, who is one of bodybuilding’s best writers. That night Jason wanted to go over to Gold’s Gym for a workout. It was about 9 o’clock so the gym was mostly empty. The only two pros training that night were Samir Bannout and Milos Sarcev. I was wearing a tank-top and I had just done my first set for deltoids when Milos literally came running across the gym towards me. He said to me, “My God, Greg, you`re ripped! Are you getting ready for a contest?” I found his question ridiculous. I know the difference between hard, cut, vascular and muscular—which I was-and ripped—which I wasn’t. I told Milos “No, in fact I’m on a bulk up diet right now and I’ve gained 25 pounds the last month.” I then told him that for breakfast that morning at the Firehouse—where all the bodybuilder from Gold`s eat after their morning workouts-I had eaten whole eggs and bacon and toast with butter, with a side order of buckwheat pancakes with syrup, with a large glass of orange juice. I think all those carbs I had consumed at breakfast really brought out my veins. I could see from the look in his eyes that Milos didn’t believe me but it was true. I have this weird metabolism that the more weight I gain, the more muscular I get. But I only get cut and muscular if I eat a lot of protein and fat and limited carbs. That’s not true for all people.

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John Parrillo, by the way, doesn’t believe it’s possible to over train and that overtraining for the most part is really just under eating and inadequate nutrition. John has mentioned to me a number of times the difference between gaining and not gaining can be as little as 300 calories a day. That’s like one large baked potato with a bit of MCT oil or butter on it. How would you like to train for months or years and not gain because you failed to eat an extra lousy baked potato a day? If your body needs 4500 calories a day to gain, and you give it only 4200, you won’t gain. When it comes to nutrition I think the biggest mistake that many aspiring bodybuilders make is failing to do whatever it takes to gain muscular bodyweight. I’ve had many bodybuilders tell me, “Greg, I’m eating 5000 calories and 250 grams of protein a day and I’m not gaining weight. What’s wrong?” The answer is simple and obvious. Five thousand calories and 250 grams of protein a day is not enough for these individuals. They need more. I don’t care if someone is taking 10,000 calories a day and 1000 grams of protein. If they are not gaining muscular bodyweight—assuming they are training properly—it’s not enough. Keep increasing your calories and protein until you’re gaining at the rate of one-half to one pound a week. It’s that simple. Be patient and think long term. One-half a pound a week doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s 26 pounds a year. That’s not too shabby. Even one-third a pound a week is 12 pounds a year. The problem is people stop increasing their calories and protein levels before they find the magic number that makes them gain. Let me tell you a quick story to illustrate this point. Roy Duvall of England was a very good bodybuilder back in the

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1970’s. He wanted to bulk up and gain 20 pounds in the off-season to train for the NABBA Mr. Universe contest in the fall. Roy had established that his basal metabolism was approximately 3000 calories a day. Now one pound of bodyweight is equal to 3500 calories. On paper, if Roy increased his calories to 3500 a day, or 500 a day more, he should have gained one pound of bodyweight in one week. But that didn’t happen. When he increased his calories to 3500 per day nothing happened, he didn’t gain an ounce. When he increased his calories to 4000 per day he still failed to gain. He still didn’t gain an ounce. He increased to 5000 calories a day. Still no gains. It was only when he increased to 5500 calories a day that he gained at a rate of one pound per week. Roy got the 20 pounds he was seeking and later that year went on to win the NABBA Mr. Universe contest. The moral of the story is to do whatever it takes to gain. If Roy had stopped at 4500 or 5000 calories a day, he would not have gained the 20 pounds he wanted. Don’t assume that a certain amount of protein and calories is going to make you gain muscular bodyweight. It may but it may not. Everyone has a different metabolism. Ectomorphs, those tall, skinny somatotypes, especially find it difficult to gain weight. Don’t assume that just because you are eating 5000 calories and 250 grams of protein a day and that you will never gain bodyweight. You just have to find the appropriate amount of calories that promotes gain. Even the genetic freaks like Nasser el Sonbaty and Greg Kovacs sometimes fail to gain because they don’t eat enough. Both Sonbaty and Kovacs said they

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experienced better muscular growth when they increased their daily protein intake from 600 to 1000 grams a day. Can you believe that? You would think that anyone eating 600 grams of protein a day would have all they needed for maximum growth, but Kovacs and Sonbaty proved this was wrong. Kovacs regularly ate 12,000 calories a day and allowed hi off-season bodyweight to get as high as 398 pounds. By the way, experiments the Polish did with their top weightlifters proved that even when eating 200 grams of protein a day, some lifters were still in negative protein balance if they ate those 200 grams in only one or two meals a day. It’s best to spread your meals out and eat six times a day. Vince Gironda recommended 50 mg every three hours six times a day. Not all those meals have to be food. Two or three can be mealreplacement drinks or protein or weight-gain drinks. It’s much easier to drink a 1000 calories and a 100 grams of protein than to eat it. Greg Kovacs would drink 10 MesoTech drinks a day, along with his meals, while Milos Sarcev drank 10 MET-Rx drinks a day. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad information out there. Mike Mentzer said in his Heavy-Duty manuals that no bodybuilder ever needs to eat more than 3000 calories and 100 grams of protein a day, which is absurd. Maybe 3000 calories and a 100 grams of protein a day worked for a classic endo-mesmorph like Mike, but how can a skinny ectomorph possibly gain when consuming only 3000 calories and a 100 grams of protein per day? They can’t. John Parrillo advocates 8000 to 10,000 calories a day for men and 4000 to 6000 calories for women, to gain at the rate of one to two pounds of bodyweight a week. John has some bodybuilders gaining more than 50 pounds of muscular bodyweight in a single year.

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Another really stupid thing Mike Mentzer said was that in order to gain 10 pounds of muscle in a year it’s necessary to eat only two extra grams of protein a day (or 102 grams per day instead of 100), which is sheer and utter nonsense. I’m surprised a man as intelligent as Mike Mentzer would have made such a comment. Mike may have been good at math—Gee, if I divide ten pounds by 365 days I get two grams—but he was spouting hogwash when it came to the topic of a proper diet for bodybuilding. Actually, to be honest, I don’t know how any bodybuilder could eat only 100 grams of protein a day. If you eat a pound of steak a day, you’ve consumed 100 grams. Throw in some eggs (7 gram each), a can or two of tuna (40 grams each) or a few chicken breasts and a couple of high potency protein shakes and you’re easily up to 250 to 300 grams a day. Believe me folks, if you eating 102 grams of protein a day for the next year, I can guarantee you won’t gain 10 pounds of muscle. If you’re a skinny ectomorph you’ll be lucky to gain an ounce. It all comes back to knowing your body and knowing what it needs in order to gain. Larry Scott wrote back in the 60’s that he advocated bodybuilders consume one half to one pound of Rheo H. Blair’s milk and egg protein powder a day—not one or two tablespoons--along with a gallon of milk (By the way, Larry now has his own protein powder based on the Rheo H. Blair formula). Larry said to prove the validity of this concept, simply double your protein and calories for the next month and compare your gains to the previous month. You can train has hard and as intensely as you want, as consistently as you want, on the best workout routine but if your nutrition is bad you

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won’t make any gains. The harder you train, the better your nutrition must be or you will not grow. Anyone who trains at the highest levels of intensity during their workouts but who do not pain attention to nutrition and their diets are fools. You really are wasting your time in the gym and guarantying failure if you do not also have proper nutrition and a good diet. Maybe you need to eat more protein and consume more calories. Some kind of change must be made. It’s up to you to figure out where the problem lies and how to correct it. Ultimately, you are responsible for your gains or lack of progress. You should also weigh and measure yourself every week, and chart your bodyfat-to-lean-muscle mass ratio. John Parillo sells an inexpensive Performance kit that allows you to chart body fat and lean muscle mass easily and quickly (Call John at 513521-0040 in Cincinnati to order one). This way you know if you are putting on lean muscle mass or fat during the week. If you’ve gained muscle and lost fat, your program is really working. Even if you’ve gained muscle with no loss of fat, you’re still on the right track. Even if you’ve gained 2/3 of a pound of muscle and 1/3 a pound of fat, you’re still on target. But if you’ve gained more fat than muscle, something needs to be changed. Either lower calories or do more aerobics. Another way of charting progress is through a visual inspection and honest assessment. Check yourself in the mirror after your morning shower. Hit a few poses. Do you look harder or are you getting smoother? How are your clothes fitting? Do they feel extra loose or are you having a hard time zipping up your jeans. These are all

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indications of your physical condition, so monitor them closely to achieve the body you want. Don’t be like the chubby fellow who telephoned one morning to tell me he was very upset and depressed because he had awoken that morning to realize he was 100 pounds overweight (what did he do, shower in the dark and not look in a mirror for a year?).

Train Progressively and Learn When and How to Cheat Despite my warnings to bodybuilders about trying to use too much weight that might cause cheating, the bottom line is that bodybuilders should always strive to get stronger, especially on their basic movements, in the first year or two of training. If your Grandmother can bench and squat more than you, you need to work on your strength. Although not true at all times, in general, the stronger a muscle gets, the bigger it gets— at least as long as you perform sets of at least six reps in strict form (save any cheating for the end of a set of strict set of a minimum of six reps to help overload the muscle better). Only cheat when fatigue and muscular failure do not allow further strict repetitions. To be honest, most champs do not train 100 per cent strict on most compound exercises. They use a little cheat. Vince Gironda called it “creative cheating” while Dave Draper calls it training with “rhythm.” The big thing is champs know how to cheat to put extra overload and stimulation to the working muscle, while novices and intermediates cheat because it’s the only way they can lift the weight. It takes time to learn “creative” cheating, so for beginners and intermediates I recommend only doing cheat reps at the end of a set of a minimum six strict reps.

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Use Leverage Whenever Possible You can use this technique when doing dumbbell curls and dumbbell presses by having your training partner push on your knees. I recall an article written by Reg Park in which he described doing seated dumbbell curls with a pair of 120’s as strongman Marvin Eder held his knees down. If you haven’t got a training partner to push on your feet as you do flyes, or your knees when you do dumbbell curls, move a flat bench close to a dumbbell rack and push off with your feet. Pushing against the rack with your feet will anchor your body, give you much better leverage, and allow you to use heavier dumbbells, while maintaining stricter style. With your feet elevated and pushing on against the rack, it’s also impossible to arch your back or cheat. Again, heavier weights in good form translates into better muscle growth (ask Arnold, Franco, and Larry Scott). You can also use the bar of Smith machine or power rack to push off of with your feet. Set the bar at a preferred height and then place a bench close to the bar (obviously how close you place the bench depends on the length of your legs), You can do this with either flat or incline flyes, and it also works well on flat and incline dumbbell presses. Some people prefer the Smith machine over the dumbbell rack because you can set the bar at any height, high or low. Some people might find the dumbbell rack too high. Remember the old Weider Arm Blaster? It was sort of like strapping a miniature preacher bench to each arm, so when you did curls the biceps worked harder. Weider used to run ads of Arnold and Franco doing barbell and dumbbell curls with the Arm Blaster, but the thing was, Arnold and Franco actually loved the thing. It wasn’t just

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marketing B. S., they actually used it quite often because it worked. They used it so often they got Joe Gold to add foam padding to make it more comfortable to use. Arnold even used it on triceps pushdowns. If you haven’t access to an Arm Blaster, have your training partner stand behind you and push on your elbows as you do barbell or dumbbell curls. This forces a stricter style and really makes the biceps work harder. Even when doing cheat curls, pressure on the elbows from behind makes biceps isolation better. Having your partner push on your elbows is also very effective on lying, decline, or seated triceps extensions. It’s also great when doing lying lat pull down curls (a Boyer Coe and, in his later years, Larry Scott favorite for peaking the biceps). With your partner pushing on the elbows to keep them pointing upwards at the ceiling, there is no way to cheat. Another way to curl more effectively is by doing curls while leaning against a wall. This way the elbows cannot go back, so you cannot cheat as much. Try it. You can do bentover barbell rows or reverse-grip barbell rows with your butt jammed against a wall to stay locked in. When doing seated dumbbell presses sit at a seated preacher bench backwards so the leading edge of the bench hits you in the middle back, to give you support. You can also sit close to dumbbell rack and push off with the feet to get better leverage on the dumbbells.

Summary: I hope you have learned a thing or two about proper training for your lats and your other muscle groups. I have written articles on every muscle group of the body and on some very effective training principles, so if you have enjoyed this

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article, tune into my other articles. I’ll have exercises you’ve never heard of, like Wpresses, power upright rows, and reveres Sissy squats. If you have any questions about training e-mail me and I will answer your questions or write articles to address your questions. Until then, train hard, train correctly and eat well.