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Access Builder
The vast majority of people who take up exercising with weights want to increase their present degree of muscle size. Unfortunately, enthusiasm can be the bodybuilder’s worst enemy. Caught up in the throes of weight training, the aspiring trainee trains every day, performs as many sets as can be tolerated, and then wonders why progress, if it comes at all, does so at an unbelievably slow pace. While muscle growth is a slow process at the best of times, it doesn’t have to be excessively slow, providing that you train properly. In fact, if you train exactly as I’ve outlined in this book, you’ll be amazed at the transformation in your physique in just a matter of weeks. The reason is that weight training is powerful medicine that forces your body into a virtually instant response.
The harder you train, the faster your body overcompensates in the form of additional muscle mass, but also, the harder you train, the more rest and recuperation your body requires to bring about the physiological renovations in your physique. Therefore, your initial program will be based upon a three-day-per-week training schedule, which also happens to be among the top result-producing methods of bodybuilding. The legendary Steve Reeves utilized this method exclusively in building his incredible physique. Mike Mentzer, perhaps the greatest and most massively developed bodybuilder of all time, utilized a three day a week routine right up until the day he won the 1976 Mr. America title. In short, the three-day-per-week system works extremely well for beginners and is responsible for putting more muscle on more beginners than any other system of training in the world. Again, once you hit the intermediate stage, you will have to back off on the frequency a bit in order to allow your body ample time to produce the gains that your workouts have stimulated.
1. Do not train more than three days a week.
2. Concentrate on each exercise you do; try to develop a mind-to-muscle link, whereby you are keenly aware of your muscles contracting against the resistance. Don’t just start a set with the idea of simply getting the weight to the top using any means possible.
3. Don’t “cheat” on an exercise. Don’t utilize body swing or momentum to complete a contraction, no matter how diffi cult the exercise may become. Cheating increases momentum, which, in turn, diminishes muscular involvement in the exercise and, hence, reduces the exercise’s productivity. Your goal is to involve as many muscle fi bers as possible.
4. Your training days will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Try not toengage in anything too strenuous on
your “off” days, as this would cut into your recovery ability, which should be utilized only to overcome the exhaustive effects of the weight-training workout. Performing other activities retards progress. If you miss a training day, don’t panic and don’t perform two workouts back-to-back thinking you can “make up” for it. Let it go—the extra recovery won’t hurt your progress in the least— and might actually help it along.
5. Perform each movement slowly and under control to ensure that the muscle group you are training is doing all of the required work and that momentum is not involved. Remember this rule of thumb regarding velocity: Lift the weight in two seconds, hold it at the top for another two seconds, and then lower it in four seconds back to the starting position.
Because this will be the first time that you have trained on this program, weight training will represent a major shock to your physiological system. It is important that you understand this concept. It’s the most intense form of exercise in existence, which is precisely why it produces such dramatic physiological results. Given these facts, doing more than the amount specifi ed at this stage of your development is not at all desirable. For this reason I recommend that, during your first month, you perform no more than one set of each exercise listed, and no more than two sets should be performed during month two. And now, on with the routine.
