Q & A

Questions and Answers:


As a new trainee, you’re bound to have questions. What follows are common questions followed by my responses.


1. IMMEDIATE GAINS


QUESTION: I have been training for just under one year, and I must say that I am very disappointed with my lack of results. The reason I undertook weight training was to get bigger, and yet in the past months I haven’t added a single pound. My question to you is which exercises do you think I should be performing in order to best build muscle mass, and to build it quickly?
Answer:
  As a rule, it is best to concentrate on the exercises that involve the largest muscle masses of the body, such as thighs, back,and chest. For specific growth stimulation of these bodyparts, I recommend isolation movements such as leg extensions, pull-overs, and dumbbell flies. If, however, your goal is to build overall muscle mass, then I recommend compound movements, which tax many more muscle groups, stimulate many more muscle fibers overall, and produce greater accumulative muscle growth, although they will not stimulate certain muscle groups nearly as thoroughly as will the isolation movements. Examples of such compound movements are squats, bent-over rows or chin-ups, standing presses, bench presses, and parallel bar dips.

  Even more important than the exercises you select is the manner in which you perform them. If you give each exercise everything you’ve got while maintaining proper form and using what for you is a heavy weight, then you will grow. That said, don’t let blind ambition override metaphysical reality: don’t expect to gain a pound of muscle a day or even a pound of pure muscle tissue a week. That degree of progress is beyond the physiological scope and metabolic pathways of nine-tenths of the people on this planet. Proper diet is integral as well, in that it provides the nutrients necessary for growth, once you’ve stimulated the muscle with hard training. A well-balanced diet with a slight emphasis on increasing your carbohydrate and calorie intake should aid you in reaching the muscle size that you desire—providing that you have assessed your genetic potential correctly.


2. EATING BREAD


QUESTION: You mentioned that it’s all right for a person to eat anything he wants, and as long as his total calorie intake is reduced, he will lose bodyfat. I was wondering if this holds true for bread as well?
Answer:
Yes. Inasmuch as bread is a “thing,” you can still eat any thing, inclusive of bread, that you want, and as long as your total calorie intake is reduced, you will lose bodyfat. There is nothing fattening about bread, perse; a slice of enriched white bread contains only seventy calories. Likewise, don’t be deterred by the maxim that warns, “It’s not the bread that is fattening; it’s what you put on it.”  It is, rather, the total number of calories consumed above your personal maintenance need in the course of a  day—or accumulatively throughout a week, month, or year—that results in the acquisition and/or expansion of adipose tissue. Bread, jams, peanut butter, margarine, and the like are not of themselves going to cause you to become fat. Now, if you were to consume your maintenance need of calories and then have bread and/or spread, the calories in that added snack could prove to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and cause you togain some bodyfat. Even then, though, you would have to eat approximately twenty-five slices of bread and peanut butter over and above your daily maintenance need of calories to gain one pound of fat.
 
  So, bread itself is safe to consume while dieting. In his book The Nautilus Nutrition Book (Contemporary Books, 1981), Ellington Darden, Ph.D., recounted how Michigan State University conducted a nutritional study in which college students who were allowed to eat whatever they wanted—provided they ate twelve slices of high-fi ber bread each day—lost weight. The bread was fi lling, so it curbed their desire for additional food, and it was comparatively low in calories, which would account for the weight loss, providing their total calorie intake was below their maintenance need of calories. Bon appétit.


3. THE NEED FOR A WEIGHT BELT


QUESTION: Do I need a weight belt or not? I just recently started training and noticed that while some bodybuilders wear them, others never do. Are they a necessity, or simply a custom?
Answer:
The answer depends solely upon your choice of exercises. If you routinely engage in exercises that, from a kinesiology standpoint, are potentially or actually stressful to your vertebrae, then yes, you should wear a lifting belt. Exercises such as standing presses, dead lifts, squats, and barbell (and particularly T-bar) rowing put major pressure not only on your erector spinae muscles but also on your spine. While a belt does not prevent pressure from being directed toward your lower back, it does aid in the dissipation and distribution of the pressure. That benefit will definitely prolong your training life and help stave off the possibility of injury.

in a remote attempt to perform a set of barbell curls, all the while screaming like a banshee. This is palpable nonsense to those who know anything about the requisites of productive exercise, and it is needlessly off-putting to newcomers to the science.
 
  In summary, if you are going to seriously perform a heavy set of standing presses, barbell or T-bar rows, dead lifts, or squats, or if you are experiencing back problems, then a belt would be a useful item to have among your training paraphernalia. If, however, you’re thinking of purchasing a belt because other people are wearing them, then stop now before you digress to the point where you’ve become one of the attention-seeking masters of interruption just described.

  Look for valid reasons why you should or should not obtain or pursue something; don’t look to convention. In the quest for training truth, there can be no sacred cows. Tradition, convention, imitation, and custom have no place in the training concepts of the modern bodybuilder. Only facts should anchor your premises, your conclusions, and, in the end, your actions—not only in your training but also in all other aspects of your life.