Categoriesmuscle growth Program Design

How to Optimize Your Training For Maximal Hypertrophy

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of strength and conditioning coach Kevin Finn.

It’s a doozy with tons of information related to how to add slabs of muscle to your frame in the most time efficient and scientifically backed way possible.

So, pretty much everyone will be interested in reading it.

Enjoy!

\Copyright: shevtsovy / 123RF Stock Photo

Step One: Optimize Your Training Split and Rep Ranges for Volume Accrual

First off, if you’re still doing a “bro split” and hitting your muscles once per week, you need to “get woke” as the kids say these days. It’s time to get out of the 90s and get that frequency up. Besides optimizing muscle protein synthesis rates over the course of the week, higher training frequencies allow you to accumulate more quality volume—both throughout the week and on a per session basis.

Consider this:

We know that 10 sets per muscle, per week is likely the minimum threshold for maximizing muscle gains, but there is also evidence that suggests there may be a per session cap on volume, beyond which, progress is actually impaired. One study, for example, showed that 10 sets of 10 (a popular protocol utilized in German Volume Training) offered no additional benefits when compared to 5 sets of 10. In fact, the group that only performed 5 sets had greater strength gains and slightly higher increases in lean body mass!

via GIPHY

This is one of the reasons higher training frequencies are so beneficial. By upping your training frequency, you can still hit 10+ weekly sets per muscle while sidestepping that potential “per session cap” on volume.

With this in mind, utilize a split that allows you to hit each muscle a minimum of twice per week, and consider even higher frequencies for the upper body or for smaller muscle groups that recover well (calves, shoulders, arms).

Now that you’ve got your training frequency sorted out, you need to consider your rep ranges.

As you attempt to push volume, an issue that will invariably crop up is time. As much as I’d love to stay in the gym for 2+ hours, as a working dad, it’s simply not going to happen.

Some days I’m lucky to get an hour.

So, if time is going to be an issue, you should strongly consider ditching most of your lower rep strength work. In fact, if you’re trying to build muscle as your number one goal, you don’t have any business doing much work below the 5 rep range.

What? Blasphemy you say?

Well, there’s a couple facts to keep in mind when it comes to rep ranges:

1) Utilizing higher rep ranges is a much more time efficient way to accumulate volume: Higher reps allow you to perform more total volume as they require shorter rest periods, less warm-up, and they don’t beat your joints up like heavy loading does.

2) Even when sets are equated, moderate rep ranges (8-12) have been shown to produce more hypertrophy than high load sets in the 2-4 rep range.

If the goal is to build muscle and you’re seeking to push volume, stick to moderate and higher rep ranges. Keep the bulk of your training based around 6-15 reps, and don’t be afraid to play around with reps as high as 15-30 on some of your accessories.

As long as you come sufficiently close to failure, you’ll build just as much muscle and you’ll be able to accumulate a lot more volume in less time.

One more time-saving tip:

If you’re still having issues fitting in the amount of volume you need to progress, I suggest following a split that will allow for the pairing of antagonist muscle groups so you can perform antagonist paired sets (APS). By performing APS, you get the time saving benefits of supersetting without tanking your performance.

Here’s how they work:

Take two exercises that work opposing muscle groups—like a shoulder press and a pulldown.

Perform one set of shoulder presses, rest about a minute or so, and then do a set of pulldowns. Rest for another minute and then repeat until you’ve completed all your sets for both exercises.

If you typically rest 2-3 minutes between sets, this will save you quite a bit of time, since you will be utilizing a portion of your rest periods to perform another exercise.

And, unlike with supersets, your performance won’t suffer due to excessive fatigue; in fact, there’s even some research that suggests performance may be enhanced.

APS work best with movements that don’t inflict a lot of systemic fatigue, so don’t try these with squats or deadlifts.

Key Takeaways:

  • Use higher training frequencies (2-4 times per week) to facilitate higher training volumes and increase the average quality of your per session volume.
  • Do the majority of your work in the 6-30 rep range as this is the most efficient way to accumulate volume and is less likely to leave you beat up and burnt out.
  • If time becomes an issue limiting your total volume, consider using protocols such as APS to get in extra volume without tanking performance.

Step Two: Be Flexible with Exercise Selection

Listen, if it takes you 40 minutes of warm-up, mobility work, and movement prep in order to get to your first working set of squats, we need to talk…

And if deadlifts tire you out so much you need 5-10 minutes between sets to recover, perhaps you need to consider a different approach…

Because the truth is, unless you’re a powerlifter, there’s no need to stay married to the big three, especially if hypertrophy is your main goal.

I love squats and deadlifts as much as the next guy, but these movements tend to be uniquely time-intensive and fatiguing. If you’re not careful, they can “crowd out” other movements that may give you more bang for your buck in terms of volume. Furthermore, some of us are simply not well-suited to these specific exercises and would do better with other movements.

Maybe hitting some heavy leg presses first and following that with some front squats and Romanian deadlifts would allow you to accumulate a lot more volume in a lot less time while still maintaining those same basic movement patterns?

Key Takeaways:

  • Unless you’re a powerlifter, there’s no reason to stay married to the big 3.
  • Do a “cost benefit analysis” on movements that cause a lot of fatigue or eat up a lot of your training time.

Step Three: Work Smarter, not Harder

There’s a fair amount of evidence showing you do not need to train to complete failure to grow your muscles. In fact, by avoiding failure altogether on most sets, you not only reduce the risk of injury, you also open up the possibility of performing more total volume. And more volume is generally associated with more hypertrophy.

Not a bad trade-off, right?

When attempting to maximize volume and recovery, the key is to come close enough to failure to maximize muscle fiber recruitment and adaptations without actually hitting failure—all while maintaining good form.

In general, the higher the intensity (in terms of percentage 1RM), the farther you can be from failure while still maximizing muscle fiber recruitment. Conversely, the lower the intensity, the closer you must come to failure.

Here’s a general rule of thumb I like to follow regarding average RPE ratings:

  • <10 reps = RPE 6-8
  • 10-15 reps = RPE 7-9
  • 15-30+ reps = RPE 8-10

There will always be exceptions to the above of course, but this will get you in the right ballpark.

Key Takeaways:

  • You don’t have to train to complete failure to achieve full muscle fiber recruitment.
  • For lower rep sets you can leave quite a few reps left “in the tank” and still maximally recruit muscle fibers.
  • For higher rep sets, you should come a little closer to failure.
  • In managing your “per set fatigue” by avoiding failure, you will be able to perform more total volume in that session and throughout the week.

Step Four: Mitigate Muscle Damage

I came up as a young lifter thinking the goal of training was to tear down your muscles so they are rebuilt bigger and stronger than before (no pain, no gainz). This lead me to pursue protocols that focused disproportionately on muscle damage. I’d take pride in my levels of soreness and relish the pain–never mind the fact that my recovery and performance were compromised for the rest of the week and I was hobbling around like an old man…

Now I know better.

via GIPHY


As more research comes out, it seems of the three proposed mechanisms for muscle growth (mechanical tension, metabolic stress, and muscle damage), muscle damage is likely the least important factor.

In fact, recent studies show excessive muscle damage can have a detrimental effect on your gains because your body must spend time and resources repairing the damage before it can begin to build new muscle

So the key is to allow for some muscle damage as a natural consequence of training hard and progressing, but not so much that your total weekly volume is compromised by impaired recovery and/or performance.

How do we do that?

One way is by taking advantage of the repeated bout effect.

The repeated bout effect is the phenomenon by which a single session, or bout, of a given exercise protects against muscle damage from future bouts. Put more simply, the more you perform an exercise, the more resistant to damage (and adaptation) the muscle becomes.

This is often viewed as a bad thing; after all, if the muscle becomes resistant to adaptation, doesn’t that make it harder to progress?

That may be true, but there’s another way to look at it…

Becoming more resistant to damage means your muscle are able to perform more volume with less damage per session. This is key because it can allow us to incrementally increase training volume to levels high enough to maximize hypertrophy while protecting against excessive muscle damage that will impair recovery and progress. One way I like to take advantage of this is by incorporating “intro weeks” into my training cycles.

When you first start a new training cycle, you’ve most likely changed quite a few variables—reps, progression schemes, exercises, etc.—and these changes will temporarily result in higher levels of muscle damage due to the novel stimuli.

By starting off with an intro week with slightly lower volume and intensity, you’ll still get a strong training effect and the easy dose of volume will inoculate you against the higher volumes and intensities coming down the line.

How low one should keep the training volume and intensity during an intro week will vary based on the individual, but I like to put the intro week somewhere in between a deload and an average “meat and potatoes” week of training. Think of it like a bridge between the two.

Another thing to consider in regard to mitigating muscle damage is exercise selection.

If deficit, stiff-legged deadlifts consistently leave you so sore you’re crippled for a week, you’re not doing yourself any favors by maxing out on them on the regular. Sure it feels like you’ve accomplished something (gotta sacrifice to win, brother), but it’s a short-sighted approach.

Don’t get me wrong, being sore is not a bad thing per se. And I think it’s good to include a few movements that load a muscle in a stretched position—especially if hypertrophy is the goal, but you need to do a cost-benefit analysis with these types of movements.

You may not need to give them up entirely, but tweaking the volume, rep range, and proximity to failure can help attenuate some of the excessive damage while still allowing for the positive aspects of the movement.

Key Takeaways:

  • Excessive muscle damage should not be the goal of training and may even negatively impact gains.
  • Take advantage of the repeated bout effect’s ability to protect against muscle damage by using intro weeks and gradually increasing volume and intensity as the mesocycle progresses.
  • Consider modifying the loading and progression schemes for particularly damaging exercises if excessive soreness is impairing recovery.

Step Five: Include Overreaching Weeks and Deloads

Just as you are most sensitive to volume at the beginning of a mesocycle, you are most resistant to volume toward the end. Thus, the natural counterpart to an intro-week at the beginning of your mesocycle, is an overreaching week to close it out.

An overreaching week is a week where you intentionally push volume a little higher than normal in an effort to maximize potential progress. When done in an intelligent manner, this can be an extremely productive and fun week of training. During this week you can go for slightly more damaging protocols, push a bit closer to failure, and/or up the volume to a level higher than you could normally sustain.

Immediately following an overreaching week, you should perform a deload week. The two go hand-in-hand.

A deload is more than just a preventative measure to protect against injury, it’s the second half of a “one-two punch” that allows you to expose your muscles to higher levels of volume by providing a window for recovery.

During a deload, you should reduce volume and both intensity of load and intensity of effort to allow for active recovery to occur. Without the recovery period, you would not be able to peak volume as high and your muscles would not have been exposed to those superlative levels of stress.

The higher the peaks, the lower the valleys.

Overreaching strategies:

While I consider deloads a mandatory part of a good training program, overreaching weeks are more of an optional piece. For some lifters (particularly those who tend to run themselves into the ground), any small benefits that may arise from the overreach could easily be outweighed by the increased risk of injury or burnout.

Thus, it’s important to remember an overreach is not an excuse to get sloppy with form or drastically change things up.

If hypertrophy is the main goal, you are primarily just looking to get some extra volume in and perhaps vary the training stimulus a bit. One method of doing this is to add a drop set or two to your last movement for a muscle group in a given session.

Research has shown that drop sets can be just as effective as straight sets. And because they are so time efficient, it’s easy to tack them onto your workouts without a huge time investment.

Thus, drop sets can add a nice little punch of volume without making your workout significantly longer, and we’re not so concerned with the fatigue because the deload in the following week will ensure recovery is adequate.

Key Takeaways:

  • Pushing a bit harder towards the end of a mesocycle can be a valuable strategy to potentially eke out some additional progress.
  • You must pair an overreach with a deload to allow the higher levels of fatigue to dissipate and any potential supercompensation to occur.
  • Regardless of whether you utilize overreaching strategies, regular deloads should be incorporated in your training.
  • Drop sets can be a very time efficient way to add some quality volume during an overreach.

Parting Thoughts and a Word to the Wise

You’ll note I didn’t include a sample training program with this article. This was intentional. I’ve instead chosen to outline some “broad strokes” concepts so that you can use these principles to improve on your programming now and for years to come.

By following the steps outlined above, you may find you now have the potential to double your training volume.

But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Let’s say you’ve been doing around 10-12 sets per muscle group, per week on average. You’re training hard, eating well, and feel well-recovered between sessions, but you’ve hit a plateau. It’s very likely that you’ll benefit from bumping up your training volume. It’s the most logical next step. By using the strategies outlined above, you may find you are now able to fit in 20 quality sets per week.

Don’t jump straight to 20.

Just as you should progress incrementally when adding weight to the bar, you should view volume in the same way. So rather than doubling your volume right off the bat, simply add about 10% or so and see how you fare.

Did you progress? Was recovery okay?

If so, run it again. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Milk as much progress as you can out of your current level of volume, but keep an eye towards progressively and incrementally adding volume—both to test your limits and to keep those adaptations rolling. Your ideal volume is a moving target, but if you are paying attention to your training, tracking variables, and keeping your eyes on the prize, it’s a target you should be able to hit fairly consistently.

It doesn’t have to be a bullseye.

About the Author

Kevin Finn is a strength and conditioning specialist, online trainer, and the owner and creator of FitnessWalkthrough.com.

As a coach with a master’s degree in education, he specializes in breaking down complex information and arming people with the knowledge and tools necessary to transform their physiques and take their performance to the next level.

He has created some of the most comprehensive guides available online for skinny guys and girls who struggle to build muscle. Visit http://fitnesswalkthrough.com/get-jacked.html to get a free copy and learn more.

CategoriesFemale Training mindset muscle growth Program Design Strength Training

Maybe Less Isn’t More

Peruse pretty much any fitness magazine targeted to women and you’ll inevitably see words like, “lose, fat-loss, tight, drop a size, tiny, hot, and lean” plastered all over its pages. This is unfortunate.

Women are programmed, often at an early age, to be less, that in order to be attractive and have self-worth, the smaller you are the better.

I say: Bull to the shit.

It’s no secret I’m a firm advocate for women to strength train. Time and time and time again I witness women transform their bodies (and mindsets) when they choose to nix the endless elliptical sessions in lieu of picking up some barbells.1

There is nothing wrong with choosing to be more.

I am pumped to help promote The Bigness Project from Kourtney Thomas and Jen Sinkler. It’s everything I’m a fan of when it comes to directing women to the right kind of information.

Please enjoy the guest post Kourtney was kind enough to write below.

Maybe Less Isn’t More

I used to be one of those women who made a point to talk about how little space I took up. I’d brag about taking the first middle seat I came to on a Southwest flight because, “I’m just a little girl!” On top of that, I made a point of keeping everything about my already small body as tiny as possible. Because, after all, being less is more when it comes to women’s bodies, right?

More like “Yeah right!”

Over the years, I eventually began to see that there was another way to go. And while, yes, I do walk around in a petite frame, I’ve come to see that what I do with it and how I carry myself can convey a whole different message.

When I first got into fitness, though, it was pretty much cardio only for me. I loved group cycling and endurance running. I enjoyed sweating all over the floor teaching a high-energy cycling class, and I loved running out to the middle of nowhere and melting into nature and myself.

At the time, I didn’t yet grasp that my participation in each of these sports tended to reinforce that same, constant message for me: that less is more. Endurance runners have to be rail-thin so they can be fast. Group cycling classes will claim to burn a gazillion or so calories. The rest, if not explicitly stated, is often implied in skewed marketing messages: stay little.

In time, I experimented and found my way to some weight training. But I started with methods I thought wouldn’t make me too big or bulky. And obviously, to burn more calories, because I still believed that less was more. Along the way, I began to see glimpses of a different way though. Who is this Jen Sinkler person, and what is this Lift Weights Faster stuff I see? Oh my goodness, Girls Gone Strong?

Strong? What a novel concept!

And women were using…what was that called again? A barbell? I was clueless and petrified to touch the thing for the first time, but I eventually gave myself a dose of my own tough love, sucked it up, and walked into the weight room one day. As it turned out, it wasn’t so bad, and I felt capable of being there! (I also realized not everyone knew what they were doing in there.)

And, so, I started with strong, and I believe in that wholeheartedly. I completely agree with Tony when he says that training for performance in lifting is a great place to start. I not only saw my strength come up substantially, but as Tony has also mentioned many times before, I began to see significant physical changes in my body shape and composition.

I was getting bigger. Bigger! Everywhere. And I liked it.

I liked it so much, in fact, that it became my primary goal. I’ll never forget writing my initial email to my first coach and my No. 1 goal as “Gain some size. As much hypertrophy as possible.” Oh, how different that was from the last 30 or so years of my life — that a woman should actively say to herself, I don’t want to shrink. I want to grow! I don’t want to lose weight. I want to gain! And then deliberately work toward getting bigger?

It took a little time to get behind fully, I’ll admit. Just like so many other women, I’ve been conditioned by the mainstream messaging to know nothing other than slender, slim, and thin-is-in. Not to mention, quiet, polite, and ladylike. Flipping the script on all of that doesn’t happen overnight. But changing my training focus to hypertrophy not only helped me to discover the most fun kind of training ever (seriously!), but it helped me to embrace my own body, more than I ever thought possible.

I used to hate my “linebacker shoulders” and big arms. Now? Are you kidding me? Let’s beef ’em up so I can bust out of my sleeves! I used to cringe at my outer thighs and cover them up with my hands so they’d look like the ones I saw in the magazines. Now? I cannot stop leg pressing because I want to see my muscles through my pants.

Letting go of less is more was freeing. It was empowering. It was a gift, an open door to start exploring what other mainstream misconceptions might be out there. I’ve always been one to go a bit against the grain and question the norm, and while it took me a little while longer to do it when it came to what I wanted for my body, when I got there? Everything changed.

Loving my big arms (and doing 10,000 biceps curls) enriched my life exponentially and boosted my confidence about everything through the stratosphere. Who would have thought that working deliberately to bulk up would have that effect? Oh, and it also happened to have the effect of creating a physique that I, personally, consider totally rockin’.

More muscles has meant more everything for me. More quality relationships, more fun, more business, more love. All of it — seriously — because I made a choice to defy that less is more rhetoric and train specifically to be bigger.

Because, sometimes? More is more.

Are You Ready for the Bigtime?

The Bigness Project is a brand-new hypertrophy-training program built to get you built. Written by Kourtney Thomas, a strength and conditioning coach who has spent the last few years focused on the small details that will get you big, this program—or “brogram,” as she refers to it in the most gender-neutral of ways—delivers on the promise of bigger arms and a bigger life.

Consisting of tried-and-true muscle-building techniques, The Bigness Project will guide you through 14 weeks of training that will support your overall strength, develop a stronger mind-muscle connection, and give you a look that leaves no doubt that you lift weights.

Designed for lifters of any experience level, The Bigness Project includes:

  •       A comprehensive User Manual that explains the philosophy behind the program and walks you step-by-step through every aspect of Bigness training and lifestyle.
  •       14-week hypertrophy training program.
  •       A complete exercise glossary including 95 written and photo demonstrations of every movement in the program.
  •       A video library containing 20 in-depth explanations of the most detailed movements and components of the program.

Now available—all aboard the gainz train! To celebrate the kickoff of the Bigness Project, the program is on sale now. Get your copy HERE and join us in the gym this week!

About Kourtney Thomas

Kourtney Thomas is a personal trainer and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with a passion for empowerment and hypertrophy training for women, which she coaches virtually with Kourtney Thomas Fitness. When she’s not at the gym doing some variation of biceps curls, Kourtney loves to ride her Harley-Davidson Softail Deluxe anytime the weather is above 50 degrees, travel to national parks, stay up too late reading copious amounts of science fiction and fantasy, and bake elaborate cakes and cookies—because something has to fuel those gains. Drawing on the above, her personal motto is “Big Arms, Big Life,” and she lives by that daily.

CategoriesInterview muscle growth Program Design Strength Training

Becoming a Brick Shit House 101

Pat Davidson is a savage. He’s one of the most passionate and knowledgable coaches I know. What’s more, he’s someone who’s not afraid to express his opinion and tell it like it is. Case in point he was kind enough to take part in an interview as part of the re-launch of his flagship training program – MASS.

Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_rangizzz'>rangizzz / 123RF Stock Photo</a>
Copyright: rangizzz / 123RF Stock Photo

 

He….does…..not……hold…..back.

It’s amazing.

In the year or so since it’s original (soft) release it has accumulated a cult-following. It’s brutal, it makes people hate life, but no one – male or female – who has completed it has ever not gotten amazing results. I know, I’ve seen it in action.

It makes people into brick shit houses – hence the title of this post.

MASS is on sale starting today though the end of this week. Enjoy the interview.

Tony Gentilcore (TG):Pat, thanks for doing this interview: 1) can you give my audience a bit of your background and 2) can you do so with at least two f-bombs included.

Pat Davidson (PD):  Hi Tony, I’d like to start off by saying thank you for letting me do this interview. You’re somebody I really respect in our industry, and getting the opportunity to do something in conjunction with you is big time.

It’s funny, I’ve done a number of podcasts and other kinds of interviews at this point in my life now, and this question always comes up, and I always think, “God, I fucking hate this question.” I feel animosity towards this question, because it’s so hard to know how to approach telling other people about yourself.

You have to come up with some kind of elevator pitch version of your professional life, and it always sucks. There’s virtually no way to accurately answer the question. So here’s my shitty answer to this question that provides evidence that I am a fucking authority in our field.

Note from TG:I could have just as well introduced Pat myself, told everyone he’s a savage, that he makes people into savages (as evident by his book MASS), and is one of the most passionate and intense people I have ever met in this industry. I’m pretty sure he found out arm wrestling a grizzly would increase protein synthesis by 22% he’d put it as A2 in a program.

My name is Pat Davidson. I have an B.A. in History, an M.S. in Strength and Conditioning, and a Ph.D in Exercise Physiology. I have worked as a professor for two different schools, Brooklyn College and Springfield College. I have also been the Director of Continuing Education and Training at Peak Performance in NYC.

My background in athletics has been that I played baseball and football in high school, tried to play baseball in college, but ultimately was too immature to be able to manage classes, sports, and partying as an 18 year old. After that I got into jiu jitsu, submission grappling, and MMA. I competed in those sports for 7 years.

I got more and more into the science and practice of training by the end of my MMA days and eventually just became a lifter. I did a few weightlifting meets, broke down physically from trying to do that sport, and then eventually made my way into strongman. I competed in strongman for about 3 years. During that time I finished top 10 at two National Championships, competed in two World Championships, and finished top 10 at Worlds once.

I’ve done my fair share of writing and speaking gigs in the field. These days I’m not competing in anything. I’m just trying to consume knowledge at the highest rate I possibly can, write more books, give more presentations, and be the best professional I can be.

TG: I had the chance to listen to you speak at a Cressey Sports Performance staff in-service something like two years ago, and I was so impressed not only by your knowledge base, but your passion as well. Watching and hearing you speak it was hard not to stand up and run straight through a brick wall.

I feel MASS is the end-result of both your knowledge and passion. Can you explain WHY you wrote this program (you know, other than making people hate life)?

PD: The reason I wrote MASS is actually a very straight forward concept. The project began when I was contacted by an editor from Men’s Health who commonly did stories with myself and a couple other guys at Peak.

He said that a new intern just showed up to start working with him. The kid was a former college cross-country runner, and he was essentially way too skinny to be working for Men’s Health. The editor and a couple other people thought it would be fun to see how much mass they could put on him for his 16 week internship, and they were hoping that I could put a program together for him.

Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_varijanta'>varijanta / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Copyright: varijanta / 123RF Stock Photo

I got to meet the intern for a day, do some measures on him, and, “teach” him how to do everything. He was about 5’8″, and slightly less than 130 pounds. He had no previous strength training experience. I could tell that he was a very driven young man though, and the cross-country background is one that from my experience comes with a psychological paradigm of not being afraid to work.

Wrestlers and racers are people who often times will do whatever it takes no matter how difficult. My challenge was that I had to come up with a plan that would give this person maximum results without hurting him, and this was especially difficult because of his lack of experience.

From my experience everyone does everything wrong, regardless of how well versed in training they think they are. I don’t feel comfortable having people do anything unless I’m there to watch and coach them…so I had to get outside my comfort zone in actually writing MASS. So I designed this thing to intrinsically reward him with the programming, push him to his physical limits, and make absolutely sure he wouldn’t get hurt.

He did phenomenally well on the program. He gained 19 pounds of lean body mass in the 16 weeks according to our InBody equipment at Peak, which is absolutely preposterous when you consider he started off in the 120s.

At this point in time, Men’s Health was going to do a big story on Peak, because Peak was getting ready to move into a 25,000 sqft futuristic palace gym in Manhattan. Included in the story on Peak was going to be the intern story as well, and they were going to do something like name the program, “Best Program of the Year” or something like that.

I saw this as a golden opportunity to possibly earn some money from this, and I put a book together that would go along with this program. So I sat down on a weekend where I had nothing else to do and I wrote the book. It was a grueling weekend, and I probably looked a little bit like a bleary eyed Unibomber by the end of it, but the book was done.

mass-image

Unfortunately the Peak project fell through due to business side logistical complications, so the Men’s Health stories also never materialized, but by that point, MASS was born, and it has managed to create its own following, and it has steadily sold and continued to make people both hate and love me in expanding spheres.

TG: I have witnessed it in action – several coaches I know have done the program2 – and can vouch for its effectiveness.

Straight up: would you agree most people DO NOT train nearly hard enough?

PD: I honestly don’t know if people don’t work hard enough. I think people are just disorganized with training. When I design training sessions, I think about things like somebody would if they had to design a factory assembly line to produce at the highest level of efficiency.

I have zero time to waste, I have a valuable commodity that I have to pump out, and I don’t care about your feelings.

I time everything. I’ve never been a huge fan of technology in the weight-room other than the clock.

I’m familiar with different energy systems, loaded movement types, types of muscular contractions, speed and agility, movement quality…you know, the endless list of qualities that actually need to be developed in a performance oriented gym.

There are so many qualities that are necessary for athletes that you need 15 day weeks and 34 hour days to actually do everything you need to do. You always have to scrap certain concepts and qualities, short time (I can’t have you sitting around for 6 minutes during rest periods to maximize your phosphagen system’s substrate stores), and generally compromise the perfect textbook physiology development of things…but you blend, mix and match, and do the smartest things you possibly can to make it look right, and let people feel like they’re having a worthwhile training experience.

With MASS, there was only one goal, and it was purely body composition optimization. I wasn’t trying to help people with peaking for a race or a strength contest, or get ready for the football season, so in reality organizing it was a breeze…no movement prep, no power production development, no reactive components.

It just comes down to what is the goal, and how do I get to the goal?

With body composition goals involving muscle mass, it’s not that hard…mechanical load, mechanical work, heat, and acidity…works every time.

People are willing to work hard to get there if they want that goal, and you can explain why those variables are the ticket to that goal. Now you just have to organize things for people to to do, and give them something they feel like is a meaningful challenge. That’s where the MASS book actually comes into play.

  • It’s written in a way that explains why taking a certain approach is the correct approach.
  • It explains why a certain mindset is the right way to carry yourself. It gives you the organization of the programming, which is very efficient, and basically guaranteed to change your body composition.
  • It gives you guidance, direction, and order. It will also motivate you, and the program itself will motivate you, because you have to keep trying to beat yourself, and if you actually manage to do so, you will feel rewarded.

I don’t think people are unwilling to work hard. Everybody who has done this program has worked hard and loved it. People just haven’t put themselves into the right situations or environments to be able to appropriately work hard in a very directed manner.

TG: Well stated my man, thank you. I respect your approach to training and program design because it’s simple. Nothing about MASS says “fancy” or “elaborate,” which is why I LOVE the constant references to Rocky IV. Why is it so hard for many people to understand this concept? That training doesn’t have to advanced or nuanced?

PD: This is a great question. I think I could answer this in a million different ways, but I’m going to stick with one thread here.

Our industry is generally full of people who were failed athletes…but specifically failed athletes who were incredibly driven, tried hard, and were willing to do whatever they had to do to make it.

Coaches are probably people who, when they were athletes, were the people that their coaches loved…because they were the scrappy athlete, the kid who studied the game…and they were rewarded for this behavior with the praise, attention, and approval of the coach…all of this creates a cycle.

The people who fit into this failed athlete/future coach pedigree are routinely the people who believe that if they just did this, “one thing” differently, then it would have been all different.

We are a population of people who are always looking for the secret ingredient…it’s this new thing where you press on weird spots and the person moves like a baby, and now they can magically move better forever…wrong…it’s this new thing where you find and feel your left pterygoid, and now you can throw a baseball 5 mph faster…wrong…it’s this new thing where you touch these lights on a board that light up randomly, and you can save any shot from any direction as a goalie…wrong.

The dirty secret is that consistency, habit, intelligence, and managing the big picture is the only thing that has ever and will ever matter.

Photo Credit: www.jtsstrength.com

When I think of improving performance, I’m always trying to improve biomechanics and fitness, because the two compliment each other. Biomechanics is this positional, mechanical, psycho-social, sensory, contextual, and environmental monster of inputs and outputs that the smartest people in our field spend their entire waking hours and lives trying to wrap their mind around to figure out.

And then you hear some ass-clown trainer spit the dumbest shit imaginable about how fucking ankle band lateral walks and spreading the knees are going to be the magic bullet fix for some jumbo shrimp looking 140 pound 20 year old bag of dicks that can’t do a fucking pull-up and runs a mile in 12 minutes.

TG: HAHAHAHAHAHA. How do you really feel Pat?

That’s the kind of shit that makes me want to tombstone piledrive somebody into that pit of needles from the Saw movie franchise.

All day in NYC I see trainers taking fat women and having them do endless stupid movement prep drills with them and overhead squatting them with dowels. Maybe this fat woman can’t move because her gut is in the way.

Maybe she just needs to do something she can’t fuck up, like the most basic hip hinge possible…and oh by the way a bench press is a good fucking exercise.

Copyright: halfpoint / 123RF Stock Photo

From what I can tell, almost everybody in our industry sucks at movement…and we try to do seriously fancy shit that we fuck up left and right.

Maybe your cocky trainer ass should stick to basics. If you suck at it, do you really think your dumbass motor moron client is going to have a fucking chance? Hell no dummy.

That person needs to sweat and do basics, and feel like they actually accomplished something. Give that person some damn pride, and let them work hard in a way where they won’t hurt themselves.

Christ, I could go on all day on this one, and you finally got me swearing…this one did it.3

No, trainer/strength coach, you never were going to make it in the sport you loved. The cream always rises to the top. No, you’re never going to be an elite weightlifter unless you started somewhere around 10…but feel free to destroy your joints in your pursuit of this goal.

No handstands are not going to improve anything other than your ability to do a shitty handstand because you didn’t start gymnastics when you were 8 years old.

Shut your mouth, do basic lifts, sprint, do agility drills, and probably some basic cardio, and guess what you’ll probably stop being as fat, weak, and hurt as you are right now. Fuck.

TG: WHEW – that was an EPIC rant Pat. I hope all the walls are safe wherever you were when you wrote that….;o)

I know it’s a cliche question – sorry – but can you give your “top 3” reasons why many people fail to see much progress in the gym? How is MASS going to address them?

PD: Top 3 reasons why people go nowhere in the gym.

1. People Pick the Wrong Exercises for Their Goals.

If your goal is to change body composition, you need to do as much mechanical work with load as possible. Mechanical work is the result of force times distance. Do not pick low force exercises with small excursions built into the movement. The right exercises are hinges, squats, split squats, presses, and pulls. I’m not against direct arm and calf work, but that’s the spices you sprinkle on at the end of cooking a dish.

2. People Pick the Wrong Sets and Reps Schemes.

Most People are weak and unimpressive. If I do a 5 rep set of bench press with such people, they might be using 145…but then I take 5 or 10 pounds away and they do it for 20. There’s no rhyme or reason to most people…their muscles aren’t working synchronously, they’re more psychology cases than physiology cases.

They’re going to build more strength doing 15 reps with slightly less weight compared to 5 reps with slightly more. People need practice and volume.

Everybody thinks they’re a damn international weightlifter who needs Prilepin’s table applied to all their programming. Do more mechanical work…push that variable and you’ll be amazed at what happens.

3. People Don’t Time Their Rest.

Easily the most powerful adjustment I’ve ever made. It’s so simple and so powerful. Nobody is accountable, and perception of time is something that nobody experiences accurately while exercising.

If you’re not timing things, you are wasting a ton of time, guaranteed. MASS addresses all of these factors. You’re going to deadlift, squat, press, and pull your face off.

Everything is timed.

Everybody sees crazy results.

TG: BOOM. Want to find out for yourself why MASS has garnered such a loyal following? Go HERE and see for yourself. It’s on sale this week only (until 10/23).

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Categoriesmuscle growth

A Quick and Dirty Way To Add Muscle

I’ve spent the first part of this week writing about action heroes and poking a little fun at CrossFit, so I felt it was only fair to write something actually useful to those of you heading to the gym today.

Most everyone reading this blog is interested in getting stronger and/or adding muscle (usually both). Well there’s also my uncanny wittiness, good looks, and pop cultural references. But mostly it’s the getting strong and muscles part.

Both endeavors are relatively simple to do (but not easy to accomplish).

Getting stronger entails picking (heavy) things up and putting them down…repeatedly. Progressive overload is the term most commonly used. Do a little more work today than you did the last time out, stay consistent, and good things will happen.

There’s more “stuff” that comes into the conversation of course – maximal effort, dynamic effort, repeated effort, speed strength, strength speed, absolute strength, rate coding, intra/intermuscular coordination, Batman – but I don’t want to deal with all the mental and intellectual gymnastics involved.

To keep things simple: do more work today than you did last.

Muscle building very much mirrors everything above. Progressive overload is kind of a big deal, in addition to all those fancy terms from above. I mean come on: someone with a 500 lb deadlift is usually not a small human being.

Then again there’s this video which has been making its rounds on social media the past few days of a 16 year-old girl deadlifting 418 lbs (at a bodyweight of just under 150 lbs):

 

Training for strength doesn’t always equate to big muscles – especially when someone competes in a sport where weight class comes into play and relative strength (strength as it relates to their bodyweight) is more of the goal.

That said, getting bigger almost always comes down to total volume. Most people who’s goal it is to add muscle don’t do enough of it.

They perform their 3 sets of 10 for a particular muscle group and move on. Unless it’s biceps than it’s more like 17 sets of 10.

And while counting total sets/reps (and hence total tonnage) is a fool proof way to attack things, we also can’t neglect the innumerable ways to illicit mechanical stress and muscle damage (all of which break down muscle and stimulate it to grow.4

To quote the great Zatsiorsky:

“A muscle fiber that is recruited but not fatigued is not trained.”

Constant Tension Sets

A key component to muscle growth is time under tension, and one “trick” I’ve been using lately in my training (thanks to Greg Robins) is the notion of constant tension sets.

As an example lets take your standard flat bench DB press.

You’d set up like you normally would, but the idea is to maintain constant tension on the pecs by not locking out your elbows.

You’d lower the weights to get a nice stretch in the pecs, and then press making sure to stop just short of locking out. Moreover, instead of focusing on a specific number of repetitions you’d shoot for a time.

It may look something like this:

Week 1: 3 sets of 40s
Week 2: 3 sets of 45s
Week 3: 3 sets of 50s
Week 4: 3 sets of 60s

It can be brutal. 40s never felt so long.

These have been a great addition to my upper body days as an accessory movement after I perform a (heavy) bench press variation.

And you don’t have to limit yourself to DB presses, either. You can be inventive. I’ve used the same method with Goblet squats, front squats, RDLs, shoulder presses, and you can bet your ass I’ve used it as a killer finisher for bi’s and tri’s. Yeah buddy!

It’s nothing fancy, but the method is effective.

Hopefully it’s something you can implement and try for yourself soon. If so, let me know what you think.