Muscle development is not a social ritual
I remember it like it was yesterday… the first time I saw the dungeon.
I was about 14 years old and had just joined the YMCA. My parents thought it would be a great place for me, since there was a pool, billiards, ping pong, and many other things to do. There are many classes in progress, etc. however, he had other ideas. It was the first time I saw Roger DeCarlis.
Roger was a Mr. America caliber bodybuilder with a phenomenal physique. To me, a young mother, she seemed larger than life.
The Y’s weight room could be considered a dungeon. No heat in the winter and no air in the summer. Temperatures reached close to 100 degrees on some summer days and it was wise to be in and out early.
You had to go down a flight of concrete stairs and enter a 14 x 14 room. The walls in the room were block…painted yellow. Connected to the first room was another room approximately 20 x 14 in which was additional equipment. This was a weightlifting gym by rights and all you saw was 100lb plates, olympic bars, power racks, squat racks, benches and a plethora of dumbbells with absolutely no visual value…again, it seemed a dungeon. Along with that was a plate-loaded leg extension machine that doubled as a leg curl. There was a cable pull, a leg press machine, not a sled…and a set of dip bars. They were all dressed in rust. That was the extent of it. The windows, on one wall… I think three, were shoulder-high and faced the street where passers-by peeked out. There they would watch the screams, grunts, metallic bangs, chalk everywhere, and the smell of ammonia capsules just before performing a record-breaking squat, deadlift, or bench press. This was not some namby pamby gym you would find today that has alarms if you growl! No way! This was something serious!
In those days, we were considered another kind of culture, we hardly understood why we put our bodies to that kind of physical stress. Little did they know that we were competing against ourselves in the deepest parts of our souls.
Roger got up from the leg extension machine and could hardly believe his eyes. He looked like superman to me. The first thing I saw was a huge chest, thick shoulders, and massive arms. His small waist added to the symmetry of his physique and made everything seem even bigger.
Roger was normally around 190 at 5’7 but he was always rock hard. At a 30 inch waist with arms close to 19 (yes I saw them measured) he was amazing. His legs were big but not as developed and with the muscular separation of his upper body, but certainly not for the reason of not working them hard. I’ve seen him do 20 reps with 640 pounds in the squat below parallel on every rep. Think about that for a bodybuilder who weighs 190! His entire bodybuilding career, Roger would literally go through hell trying to bring his legs into his upper body development. His back was a sight to behold, too, huge thick erectors and a thick broad lat spread and squared with traps. Roger was all business, as he would soon discover. He wouldn’t say a word while he was in the gym in any social way and his focus was that of a man possessed. You always thought that he was just angry, but the funny thing is that he didn’t really care what you thought… the only thing that mattered was his mission that day… the training! I learned focus and discipline from this man.
It didn’t take long for him to realize that this was not a social ritual. I must have been a real pain in the ass in those days because Roger finally got tired of all my questions and wandered around and agreed to let me train with him. Our trainings were just as I witnessed them when I first met Roger…all business. There was absolutely no problem during the training. Each repetition was deliberate, without impulse, and I learned to focus each repetition with my mind, to visualize and feel the repetition. Roger moved with very little rest despite using almost ridiculous weights, he was extremely strong. He built his entire physique on barbells and dumbbells, but he attributes his advantage to his mind and focus.
Fast forward a few years…it’s no longer around 1971 but around 1977. Roger and I, although we no longer train together, are still great friends…as we are today. By now I’ve been introduced to high intensity training by people like Mike Mentzer who burst onto the bodybuilding scene by storm. He called the Heavy Duty version of it and it was. Mike, after working with Arthur Jones, turned to bodybuilding. He showed bodybuilders how to use their ability to think critically while proving that the theory of more is better does not apply to bodybuilding. Further proving that we don’t need to be our own scientists as Muscle Magazine implies…searching in the dark for what works for us. His theory of high intensity training lives on today and his rational approach to bodybuilding is a guide for all. He was considered the thinking man’s bodybuilder.
Although I did not know the theory of High Intensity Training before that, my training was brief, infrequent and intense by necessity. At the time, my goal was to get as big and strong as I could. The only way to do that was to get rid of all the fluff exercises that got in the way and stole my energy and focus and only perform the movements that made me stronger. And I got strong.
It was and is all about focus! I only did one working set… ie one set to failure for each exercise. I just did the basics…bench press, squats, rows, deadlifts, leg press, close grip bench, dips and partials. I completely eliminated from my workouts any direct bicep exercises, shoulder exercises, calf exercises, chin ups, dumbbell movements like flies, etc. I only did what would help me become stronger. And knowing that strength and muscle size is relative… what do you think happened? You got it! I grew up to become the strongest of all time, and in doing so, the greatest of all. At the time I was training maybe three days a week…sometimes two…what I learned later was still too much. I was doing about three sets per workout…period…but with immense focus…it was all business as I had learned early in my career.
Oh yes, others entered the gym and performed the movements without the mental focus… true… but they never changed, they lacked the same focus and the same vision that would lead them to their goals… it was a social problem. ritual for them They enjoyed being there. Maybe their goals and purposes didn’t exist or maybe they didn’t know how to focus on them… I guess we’ll never know, it doesn’t matter.
My preparation for each training session was like a planned mission. I would focus and really see what I was going to do. I would keep a log book and check the weights. I was doing a self hypnosis visualization routine every day in preparation for the next training, this alone helped me in an incredible way to reprogram my mind for success. When I went to the gym, it was all business. I never spoke to anyone and everyone knew it. It was like the movie “Over the Top” with Sylvester Stallone when he’s ready to fight and turns his cap with the brim back, as if he flipped a switch, which was his indication that it was time to do business. In fact, I still have a T-shirt that was given to me 35 years ago with the Tasmanian Devil on it… you know, that Looney Tunes character that goes around! The twin brothers who gave it to me told me that this is what I looked like when I walked into the gym and started my workout…like a person possessed.
I still train this way today. It’s all business and certainly not a social ritual. Of course I have a deep understanding these days of anaerobic exercise and understand now that training is just a boost and always a negative in the equation because it takes away growth reserves. Looking back like a wise man in a movie, I think to myself… “If I knew then what I know now”, I would have trained less frequently and with more rest.
My own personal workouts today are between 7-15 minutes…performed once every 6-8 days, thanks again to the wisdom of Mike Mentzer and his work regarding high intensity training theory.
I often see trainers (not all) waste precious time with clients in the gym…burning an hour easily…probably because that’s how they get paid. The sad thing is that it is truly a social ritual. They make them do dumbbell curls while balancing on a ball (only half exaggerating)…standing on their heads while talking about how the weekend went, while tossing the weight up and down. Your understanding of anaerobic exercise is very limited and your approach conveyed to your clients is less than desirable in reaching your intended goal. My clients train no more than 7-15 minutes because it is impossible to train more than that.
As Greg (Anderson, another HIT trainer and colleague in Seattle) said in his article, High Intensity Strength Training: More Aerobics Than Aerobics… “it usually takes a few workouts before the client understands the depth and The Magnitude of Cardiovascular Commitment Possible from Strength Training As one of my students recently commented (after a set of squats to total failure followed by 20 seconds of pushing against the bar in the bottom position): “My God! (gasp, gasp…) this is more aerobic than aerobics…”
In fact, when we talked a couple of weeks ago, we were laughing about how little exercise is needed when you’re focused and working hard instead of long. One in particular was about another athlete in Seattle I think…a diehard HIT who trains for minutes every 9 days.
Building muscle is nothing more than a stimulus. Stimulate the muscles with an intense workout, then head out of the gym to allow the adaptation to take place… that is, the whole body to build additional muscles for the next round. This requires focus and vision and is as far from a social ritual as there is. And the most important thing to remember, because the body has the ability to increase strength by 300%, while your recovery capacity increases by maximum 50%, then as you get stronger, you have to reduce as much volume as well as frequency to continue progressing towards your genetic potential. . There is never a need to take a layoff due to overtraining, as there is never overtraining if managed properly.
If you’re serious about your progress, HIT IT hard, 7-15 minutes is all (H)IT needs! And don’t forget to focus and prepare for your mission!