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Massive Changes

Turbo-charge your training, nutrition and lifestyle to produce maximum mass in minimal time

College football has become big business. Success on the gridiron brings schools national exposure, prestige and bundles of cash from sold-out stadiums, TV revenues and big-time sponsors. Such fortune and fame can often be distracting, and games are lost that should have been won. After a hard season, you hear talk of the coaches “getting back to the basics of blocking, tackling and working on the kicking game.” This advice should be heeded in the sport of bodybuilding as well.

Bodybuilders often get distracted. Many muscle magazines provide page after page of hype on the latest sports drinks, workout apparel and special cable exercises designed to bring out the crucial inner-outer-upper pec tie-in. When these solutions don’t produce the expected outcome, we turn the page looking for another secret that promises to change our genetic destiny and pack on Olympia-winning muscle in record time. Those who can see the error of their ways eventually realize they must get back to the ideas that made them enjoy fast results in the first place: They must return to the basics.

Ever since I was introduced to the bodybuilding world through my articles for various bodybuilding magazines such as Iron Man, not a week has gone by without someone asking me how to increase lean body mass – in fact, without question, my most popular article ever was the one about the German Volume Training System for increasing muscle mass.

Just as blocking and tackling are factors that directly influence success in football, bodybuilding has its own set of crucial factors, including training, diet and recovery. Some of the ideas I’m about to share with you may seem like common sense, but it’s been my experience that neglect of these very basic protocols is the basis for most plateaus and sticking points.

TRAINING

Whether it’s a teenager signing his first gym contract, a veteran bodybuilder in a slump, or a football player needing a little “bulk insurance,” the principles of gaining muscle mass are the same for all. Only the applications vary slightly.

Keep your workouts short and challenging. Once your warm-up is completed, your workout should not last longer than one hour. If you’re in the gym longer than that, you’re not training – you’re making friends. Also, Bulgarian weightlifting coaches have suggested that because testosterone levels decline after 45 minutes of training, all your quality work should be completed within that time frame. If you are in the gym, more than one hour after you are reading for your first work set, you are making friends, not training.

Change your loading parameters frequently. Varying loading parameters is more important for increasing muscle mass than it is for increasing strength. This is apparent if you carefully examine the routines of elite weightlifters versus elite bodybuilders. The loading parameters you must change the most frequently are reps and sets; and except for beginners, I make at least minor changes every week. The next-most important variable is tempo, which I usually change once every two weeks, followed by the variables of choice and order of the exercises.

Emphasize moderate and slow training tempos. A “super-slow” style of training is often advocated by coaches in Germany and the Scandinavian countries for athletes who need to increase muscle mass. The key word for combined mass/strength workouts is muscle tension, because the more tension your muscles create, the greater the stimulus for growth.

The most effective way to increase muscle tension is to slow down your lifting speed. Your ego will initially take a beating because you’ll have to lower your training poundages to compensate for the lack of momentum, but the added muscle bulk you’ll quickly gain is worth the sacrifice. Plus, if you stick with this type of training, eventually you’ll be able to handle, at a slow tempo, the weights you used at faster tempos. For example, if you work yourself to a point where you take 30 seconds on the concentric and 30 on the eccentric portions of a chin-up, you can be sure your arms will have grown in strength and size!

However, one important thing, slow work should be reserved to one workout out of four, no more, when seeking hypertrophy.

Favor exercises that recruit as many motor units as possible. Exercises such as squats, deadlifts, chins and dips will pack on more mass than leg extensions, leg curls, pullovers and flyes. Although these exercises use the same muscles, their biomechanics are such that more muscle fibers are used to perform the lifts.

Do not talk while training. Training should be conducted in a businesslike manner, concentrating on getting the most out of every rep and every set. The only talking permitted in your workouts should be training related: encouraging your partner, telling him or her how much weight you want on the bar, etc. Powerlifting guru Louie Simmons encourages this type of training environment in his gym, and if you ever get a chance to see his athletes work out, you’ll see they’re all business.

Minimize other types of training. If you’re an athlete, technical sports training and endurance training should be put on a maintenance mode – if performed at all – when trying to develop maximum muscle mass. My experience and the feedback I’ve received from top-level coaches support the fact that athletes perform their skills at a higher level when they return to them after a concentrated 12-week strength-training block. Of course, a very brief period of adaptation (two to three weeks) is needed to reeducate the central nervous system in how to use that newly built body.

Organize your training to favor lower-body recovery. The legs are the most essential body part to focus on when it comes to developing mass. If you’re using a spilt program, which is a must if you’re trying to get big fast, it should be designed so that heavy leg training is performed on Friday. An ideal four-times-per-week program would have you training your upper body on Monday and Thursday, and your lower body on Tuesday and Friday. This arrangement will give you the entire weekend to recover from your last leg workout.

Keep a detailed training diary. A training diary enables you to evaluate the efficiency of your training program and will help you set short-term goals. It helps me tremendously as a strength coach when I’m deciding how to organize the training from phase to phase. I tell potential clients that I will not write workouts for them if they are not willing to keep a log book of their progress. This approach is also used in weightlifting by the Romanians as a way to determine which workout systems produce the best results. In fact, I heard that even if a Romanian athlete wins the National Championship, he or she will not be allowed to compete internationally unless they gives their national governing body his training diaries for the past year.

Alternate training cycles. Every three weeks, alternate cycles of high volume (accumulation phase) with cycles of high intensity (intensification phase). Training with short rest intervals leads to greater growth hormone output, strengthens connective tissue and improves lactate tolerance. In contrast, long rest intervals with proportionately heavier weights develop the higher-threshold motor units (Type IIB fibers). These fibers are usually well developed in weightlifters but not in bodybuilders – therefore, for maximum muscle mass, both Type IIA (fast twitch with endurance characteristics) and Type IIB (pure fast twitch) fibers need to be trained.

NUTRITION

The nutritional program is as important as training is for a bodybuilder. Some pro bodybuilders have said in their supplement ads that that success at bodybuilding is 80 percent nutrition and 20 percent training. (Some have also said it’s 50 percent nutrition, 50 percent training and 90 percent mental; but as a group bodybuilders never have been known to be great at math.) I believe training is the most important element; nonetheless, the food you eat and the supplements you take have a direct effect on your bodybuilding success.

Consume five to six small meals a day. This is a useful piece of advice I first learned from strength coach Bill Starr. Consistency in eating patterns is probably the most important factor after appropriate loading parameters for gaining lean body mass. Never go hungry.

Take a post-workout shake. Depending on your percentage of bodyfat, your post workout shake will contain carbs or not. Here are some sample shakes. I define lean minus 10% bodyfat.

Post Workout for lean 90 kg athlete

Protein pulse: 10-15g of Amino Acid Supreme with a green drink alkalinizes the body. ½ hour later you drink the following

180g of CHO (carbs), (2 grams/kg of bodyweight)
50 grams Whey Stronger 2.0

Example 180g CHO’s:
80 g of carbs from grape juice
100g of Quadricarb

Post Workout supplements:

4 Glucose Disposal Px
4 Ubermag
3 Yin R-ALA
1-5 g of Uber C

Fat Guy (>10% bodyfat)

60 grams of Whey Stronger 2.0
1-20 g of Glycine
20g Glutamine

Supplements for fat guy (97 kg) below with the shake

3 Fenuplex
2 Insulinomics
4 Ubermag
6 Yin-R-ALA
1-5 tabs of Uber C

Take BCAAs. Amino acids are the building blocks of muscle. In addition to taking BCAAs during a workout to prevent muscle catabolism immediately after a workout, always carry a bottle of BCAA Excellence 2.0 with you. If you have to delay a meal after your watch goes off indicating it’s time to eat, get some water and take 10-20 capsules to maintain your hard-earned muscle.

Beware of nutritional frauds. Many ergogenic aids on the market simply don’t work. For example, the plant sterol supplement Smilax would only increase your bodyweight if you were a geranium or a dandelion. The human digestive system cannot make use of it – plant sterols work for plants!

RECOVERY

Recovery is the forgotten element in most sports training. Paying attention to your recovery processes will maximize the training response by allowing you to train harder more frequently. Here are some tips to maximize growth:

Invest in regular massages. Probably the single best way to boost recovery is with massage. Especially effective is deep massage of the connective tissue – massage that goes by such names as Rolfing and neuromuscular massage. I have routinely seen 2-10 percent gains in strength 24 hours after such treatments. Compared to the pleasurable Swedish massage, deep massage is about as enjoyable as having the inside of your nostrils scraped with a menthol-coated potato peeler.

Stretch four to five times a week. Besides its well-known benefits of injury prevention and increased flexibility, regular stretching improves recovery by maximizing the growth process. It does this by stretching the fascia, the protective sheath around and within muscle, allowing more room for the muscle to grow. For an excellent book on stretching, see Stretch to Win by Ann Frederick and Chris Frederick, which is published by Human Kinetics.

Monitor your sleeping patterns. Record the quantity and quality of your sleep in your training diary. If you have problems falling asleep, your training intensity may be too high. If you feel as though you can never sleep enough, your training volume may be too high. There are any number of self-hypnosis and relaxation programs – try them before attempting to fall asleep. Many of my athletes have told me that these programs have enhanced the quality of their sleep and have reduced their sleeping-time needs. Further, I have many excellent supplements that can help those with sleep problems, such as the magnesium supplements Übermag and Topical Mag. The human nervous system is sent into sympathetic overdrive when it is magnesium deficient; and when the nervous system is too fired up, it is difficult to achieve restful sleep.

Do not sleep more than eight hours at a time. If you sleep for more than eight hours, you aren’t eating often enough. If you must sleep more than eight hours, take a nap in the middle of the day. If your schedule permits, your nap should end no later than 1.5 hours before your workout begins. This will give you half an hour to eat your pre-workout meal and an hour to digest it before your workout.

Abstain from alcohol. Booze and bulging biceps don’t mix. Here are three reasons a bodybuilder had better think twice about drinking alcohol:

1. It decreases your ability to sustain high-intensity workouts by inhibiting enzymes involved in energy production.

2. It disrupts your sleep patterns. The reduced quantity and quality of sleep will minimize your recovery for the following workout. In fact, an evening of partying at the pub on Friday will foul up your sleep pattern until the following Tuesday.

3. It decreases your natural testosterone production, one of your main anabolic hormones. A study in Finland showed that the occasional alcohol binge will decrease your natural testosterone production for up to three days.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Using the basic advice covered in this article, in just 12 weeks many of my male athletes have gained 15-20 pounds of lean bodyweight, and female athletes have gained four to seven pounds of muscle. And because some of these athletes also had to train for endurance during this 12-week period, it’s possible that many of them could have gained much more muscle mass!

There is more to learn about gaining mass, but the general concepts presented here will give you a good start. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas, but don’t venture too far with radical theories that have not stood the test of time. As with a successful football program, start with the basics – and stick with the basics.