Buraken
2006-04-30, 09:54
1 -- You can get as big as a pro bodybuilder. without
taking steroids; it just takes longer.
Despite what many of the magazines say, all professional
bodybuilders use either steroids or steroids in combination
with other growth-enhancing drugs. Without manipulating
hormones, it just isn't possible to get that degree of
muscularity, the paper-thin skin, and the continuing ability
to pack on mass, despite sometimes having poor workout
habits and relative ignorance of the principles involved
that many pro bodybuilders have. Many supplement
distributors, in order to sell their products, would have you
believe otherwise.
Still, that's no reason to give up. By using state-of-the-art
training principles, consuming a nutrient-rich diet, and by
getting proper amounts of rest, almost every person can
make incredible changes in his or her physique. The
competitive bodybuilder circuit may not be in your future,
but building the kind of physique that gains you respect is
certainly achievable, as are self-respect and robust health.
2 -- In order to get really big, you have to eat a super-highcalorie
diet.
Well, that's true; you'll get really big if you eat a super
high-calorie diet, but you'll look like the Michelin Man's
fraternal twin. However, if you want to get big, lean-tissue
wise, then super-high-calorie diets are probably not for
you unless you are one of those very few people with
metabolicrates so fast you can burn off these calories
instead of depositing them as fat. Unfortunately, studies
show that, in most people, about 65% of the new tissue
gains brought about by high-calorie diets consists of fat!
Of the remaining 35%, approximately 15% consists of
increased intracellular fluid volume, leaving a very modest
percentage attributable to increased lean muscle mass.
According to Dr Scott Connelly (MM2K, Spring 1992, p.
21), only about 20% to 25% of increased muscle growth
stems from increased protein synthesis. The rest of the
muscle growth is directly attributable to increased
proliferation of the satellite cells in the basal lamina of
muscle tissue, and dietary energy (calories) is not a key
factor in the differentiation of these cells into new
myofibres (muscle cells).
Of all factors determining muscle growth, prevention of
protein breakdown (anti-catabolism) seems to be the most
relevant, but adding adipose [fat] tissue through constant
overfeeding can actually increase muscle pro- teolysis
(breakdown). Furthermore, additional adipose mass can
radically alter hormone balances which are responsible for
controlling protein breakdown in muscle. Insulin balance,
for one, which partially controls anti-catabolism in the
body, is impaired by consistent overfeeding. So much for
the eat-big-to-get-big philosophy!
Stay away from the super-high calorie diets unless you're a
genetic freak, or you're woefully lean and don't mind
putting on fat [or you're using appropriate pharmaceutical
supplements].
3 -- If you eat a low-fat diet, it doesn't matter how many
calories you take in, you won't gain any fat.
The bottom line is, if you exceed your energy
requirements, you'll gradually get fatter and fatter. It's true
that eating a diet rich in fat will pack on the pounds
quicker for a variety of reasons, the most significant being
that a gram of fat has nine calories as opposed to the four
calories per gram that carbohydrates and proteins carry.
Fat is also metabolized differently in the body. It takes a
lesser amount of calories to assimilate the energy in
ingested fat than it does to assimilate an equal (weight
wise) amount of carbohydrates. Consequently, more fat
calories get stored than carbohydrate calories. However,
the gross intake of carbohydrates, as facilitated by many of
the weight-gain powders, will make you fat very quickly.
4 -- The more you work out, the more you'll grow.
No, no no. This is one of the most damaging myths that
ever reared its ugly head. 95% of the pros will tell you that
the biggest bodybuilding mistake they ever made was to
over-train--and this happened even when they were taking
steroids. Imagine how easy it is for the natural athlete to
overtrain! When you train your muscles too often for them
to heal, the end-result is zero growth and perhaps even
losses. Working out every day, if you're truly using the
proper amount of intensity, will lead to gross overtraining.
A body part, worked properly, ie. worked to complete,
total muscular failure that recruited as many muscle fibers
as physiologically possible, can take 5-10 days to heal.
To take it a step further, even working a different body
part in the next few days might constitute overtraining. If
you truly work your quads to absolute fiber-tearing failure,
doing another power workout the next day that entails
heavy bench-presses or deadlifts is going to, in all
probability, inhibit gains. After a serious leg workout, your
whole system mobilizes to heal and recover from the blow
you've dealt it. How, then, can the body be expected to
heal from an equally brutal workout the next day? It can't,
at least not without using some drugs to help deal with the
catabolic processes going on in your body [and even
they're usually not enough .]
Learn to accept rest as a valuable part of your workout.
You should probably spend as many days out of the gym
as you do in it.
5 -- The longer you work out, the better.
It just isn't necessary to do 20-30 sets for a body part, or
even 10 sets like many 'experts' would have you believe.
In fact, research has shown that it's possible to completely
fatigue a muscle in one set, provided that that set taxes a
muscle completely, ie. incorporates as many muscle fibers
as possible and takes them to the point of ischemic rigour
where, rather than contract and relax, the muscle fibers
freeze up, sort of like a microscopic version of rigor
mortis. Any further contraction causes microscopic
tearing. Hypertrophy is just one adaption to this kind of
stress and it's naturally the kind most bodybuilders are
interested in.
This kind of intensity can usually be achieved by doing
drop or break-down sets where you rep out, lower the
weight, and continue doing reps until you either can't do
another rep or you've run out of weight. It can also be
achieved by doing your maximum number of reps on a
particular exercise: by a combination of will, tenacity, and
short rest periods, you complete ten more reps. You
achieve the short rest periods by locking out the weightbearing
joint in question without putting the weight down.
In other words, completely surpass your normal pain and
energy thresholds.
If you can truly work your muscle to the point described, it
will afford you little, if any, benefit to do another set
(Westcott, 1986). The exception would be the body parts
that are so big that they have distinct geographical areas,
like the back, which obviously has an upper, middle and
lower part. The chest might also fall into this category, as
it has a distinct upper and lower part, each with different
insertion points.
6 -- You don't have to be strong to be big
For a variety of reasons, people, even those with an equal
amount of muscle mass, vary in strength enormously. It
might have something to do with fast-twitch/slow-twitch
muscle ratios, or it might have something to do with the
efficiency of nerve pathways or even limb length and the
resultant torque. But it is still a relative term. To get
bigger muscles, you have to lift heavier weight, and you,
not the guy next door, have to become stronger -- stronger
than you were. Increasing muscle strength in the natural
athlete, except in a very few, rare instances, requires that
the tension applied to muscle fibers be high. If the tension
applied to muscle fibers are light, maximal growth will not
occur (Lieber, 1992).
7 -- The training programmes that work best for pro
bodybuilders are best for everyone.
You see it happen every day in gyms across the country.
Some bodybuilding neophyte will walk up to a guy who
looks like he's an escaped attraction from Jurassic Park
and ask him how he trains. The biggest guy in the gym
likely got that way from either taking a tremendous
amount of drugs and/or by being genetically predispositioned
to get big. Follow a horse home and you'll
find horse parents. The guy in your gym who is best
bodybuilder is the guy who has made the most progress
and done the most to his physique using natural
techniques. He may still be a pencil neck, but he may have
put on 40 pounds [19kg] of lean body mass to get where
he is, and that, in all probability, took some know-how.
That person probably doesn't overtrain, keeps his sets
down to a minimum, and uses great form and
concentration on the eccentric (negative) portion of each
exercise repetition.
Many pros spend hours and hours doing innumerable
sets--so many it would far surpass the average person's
recuperative abilities. If average people followed the
routines of average pro bodybuilders, they would, in
effect, start to whittle down what muscle mass they did
have or, at best, make only a tiny bit of progress after a
couple of years.
8 -- You can't build muscle on a sub-maintenance calorie
intake diet.
It may be a little harder, and it may require a little bit more
know-how and a little bit more conscientious effort, but it
can be done. The fact is, the obese state in humans and
animals is not universally correlated with absolute levels
of caloric intake and neither is the accrual of lean body
mass. The ability to realize changes in lean/fat ratios is
regulated by components of the automatic nervous system
working in concert with several endocrine hormones; this
is called nutrient partitioning. For example, certain betaagonist
drugs like Clenbuterol increase meat production in
cattle over 30% while simultaneously diminishing bodyfat
without increasing the amount or composition of their
feed. Other drugs, including growth hormone, certain
oestrogens, cortisol, ephedrine, and IGF-1 are all
examples of re-partitioning agents. All increase oxygen
consumption at the expense of fat storage--independent of
energy intake!
Drugs are not the only way to do this, however. It's true
that a significant component of this mechanism is
genetically linked, but specific nutrients, in specific
amounts, when combined with an effective training
programme, can markedly improve the lean/fat ratio of
adult humans. MET-Rx is one such nutrient re-partitioning
agent, and several companies are trying to duplicate its
successes [warning: one of the authors of this article has
a significant financial stake in Substrate Technologies,
the makers of MET-Rx].
9 -- You can't grow if you only work each body part once
a week.
If you work out -- work out intensely-- then it can take 5-
10 days for the muscles to heal. Although the following
should be taken with a grain of salt when determining your
own exercise frequency, a study in the May 1993 issue of
the Journal of Physiology revealed it can take weeks for
muscles to recuperate from an intense workout. The study
involved a group of men and women who had worked
their forearms to the max. All of the subjects said they
were sore two days after exercising, and the soreness was
gone by the seventh day, and the swelling was gone by the
ninth day. After six weeks, the subjects had only gained
back half the strength they had before the original
exercise! By no means are we advocating that you wait
two months between workouts, but we are trying to prove
the point that it takes muscles longer to heal than what you
might have previously thought. For some people,
especially natural bodybuilders, waiting a week between
body part workouts might be just what the doctor ordered
for size and strength gains!
10 -- You can't make gains if. you only train with weights
three days a week.
Although you probably couldn't find a single steroidassisted
athlete who trains only three days a week [well, I
was, and I made fantastic gains!], there's absolutely no
reason why a three-day-a-week routine couldn't work for
many natural athletes. As long as your routine attacked the
whole body and you worked to failure on each set, you
could easily experience great gains on this sort of routine.
However, you need to pay even more attention to your diet
if you only train three days a week, especially if your job
involves little or no physical activity, and you like to
spend your idle time eating. Ignore those who say threeday-
a-week bodybuilders are only 'recreational lifters'.
Think quality and not quantity.
11 -- You should only rest 45 seconds in between sets.
That's true if you're trying to improve cardiovascular
health or lose some bodyfat. But in order to build muscle,
you need to allow enough time for the muscle to
recuperate fully (ie. let the lactic acid buildup in your
muscles dissipate and ATP levels build back up). In order
to make muscles grow, you have to lift the heaviest weight
possible, thereby allowing the maximum number of
muscle fibers to be recruited. If the amount of weight you
lift is being limited by the amount of lactic acid left over
from the previous set, you're only testing your ability to
battle the effects of lactic acid. In other words, you're
trying to swim across a pool while wearing concrete
overshoes. When training heavy, take [at least!] two and
three minutes between your sets. Notice I said, "when
training heavy." The truth is, you can't train heavy all the
time. Periodization calls for cycling heavy workouts with
less intense training sessions in an effort to keep the body
from becoming overtrained. (See 'Periodization' by Brad
Jeffreys on p. 85 of the Feb/March 1993 issue of MM2K)
12 -- You have to use fancy weightlifting equipment in
order to make the best gains.
Futuristic-looking, complex machinery designed to give
your muscles the 'ultimate workout' is typically less
effective than good-old barbells and dumbbells. Using
simple free weights (barbells and dumbbells) on basic
multi-joint exercises, like the squat, bench press, shoulder
press, and deadlift, is still the most effective means of
resistance exercise ever invented. Scientific research has
shown that many exercise machines lack the proper
eccentric component of an exercise that's necessary to
stimulate muscle tissue to remodel (grow). (See the article
titled 'Research Confirms that Bodybuilders Should Pay
Heavy Attention to Negative Reps' by Bill Phillips on p.18
of the Feb/March issue of MM2K)
13 -- Weight training makes you big; aerobic exercise cuts
you up.
Manipulations in your nutrient intake are the main factor
in getting cut up, and how you do it doesn't matter. If your
daily caloric expenditure exceeds your daily caloric intake
on a consistent basis, you will lose fat and get more cut.
Aerobic exercise is generally meant to improve
cardiovascular efficiency, but if you do it long enough,
you will burn up calories and in the long run drop the fat.
However, weightlifting can do the same thing, only better.
Studies have shown that the body burns far more
efficiently if exercise is performed at a moderate pace for
periods longer than 20 minutes. (It generally takes that
long for the glucose in the bloodstream to be 'burned up',
causing the body to dip into glycogen reserves for its
energy) Once the glycogen reserves are used up, the body
must metabolize fatty acids for energy. That equate to lost
bodyfat.
In the long run, bodybuilding is more efficient than
aerobics for burning up calories. Let me explain--if
researchers were to undertake a study of twins whereby
one twin performed daily aerobics and the other practiced
a bodybuilding programme where the end result was
increased lean body mass, the bodybuilding twin would
ultimately be a more efficient fat burner than his aerobic
twin. Why? Well, by adding lean body mass, that person's
metabolic requirements are higher--muscle uses energy
even while it is not being used. The aerobic twin might use
more calories during the time period of exercise itself, but
the weight-lifting twin would use a higher amount during
rest time, leading to a higher net 24-hour expenditure. The
weight lifter burns fat just sitting there.
14 -- You can completely reshape a muscle by doing
isolation exercises.
You can't limit growth to only one area of a muscle. Larry
Scott, for whom the 'biceps peaking' Scott curl was named,
had tremendous biceps, but he didn't have much of a peak.
The shape of your biceps, or for that matter, any muscle, is
determined by your genetic makeup. When you work a
muscle, any muscle, it works on the all-or-nothing
principle, meaning that each muscle fiber recruited to do a
lift -- along the entire length of that muscle -- is contracted
fully. Why would a certain number of them, like the ones
in the middle of the biceps, suddenly start to grow
differently or at a faster rate than its partners? If anything,
the muscles that are closest to the insertion points are the
most prone to mechanical stress, and you don't see them
get any bigger than the rest of the muscle. If they did,
everyone would have proportions like Popeye.
This is true of any muscle, but you're probably thinking,
what about quads? I know that when I do hack squats with
my feet together, it tends to give me more sweep in my
legs. Sure it does, but the quadriceps are made up of four
different main muscles, and doing hacks with your feet
together forces the vastus lateralis muscles on the outside
of the leg to work harder; consequently, they grow
proportionately along their entire length and give the outer
quads more sweep.
As further evidence, take a look at a picture of any young
professional bodybuilder before he was developed enough
to become a pro. He will have virtually the same structural
lines as he does today. All that has changed is that his
muscles are now bigger.
FORSTÄTTNING FÖLJER
taking steroids; it just takes longer.
Despite what many of the magazines say, all professional
bodybuilders use either steroids or steroids in combination
with other growth-enhancing drugs. Without manipulating
hormones, it just isn't possible to get that degree of
muscularity, the paper-thin skin, and the continuing ability
to pack on mass, despite sometimes having poor workout
habits and relative ignorance of the principles involved
that many pro bodybuilders have. Many supplement
distributors, in order to sell their products, would have you
believe otherwise.
Still, that's no reason to give up. By using state-of-the-art
training principles, consuming a nutrient-rich diet, and by
getting proper amounts of rest, almost every person can
make incredible changes in his or her physique. The
competitive bodybuilder circuit may not be in your future,
but building the kind of physique that gains you respect is
certainly achievable, as are self-respect and robust health.
2 -- In order to get really big, you have to eat a super-highcalorie
diet.
Well, that's true; you'll get really big if you eat a super
high-calorie diet, but you'll look like the Michelin Man's
fraternal twin. However, if you want to get big, lean-tissue
wise, then super-high-calorie diets are probably not for
you unless you are one of those very few people with
metabolicrates so fast you can burn off these calories
instead of depositing them as fat. Unfortunately, studies
show that, in most people, about 65% of the new tissue
gains brought about by high-calorie diets consists of fat!
Of the remaining 35%, approximately 15% consists of
increased intracellular fluid volume, leaving a very modest
percentage attributable to increased lean muscle mass.
According to Dr Scott Connelly (MM2K, Spring 1992, p.
21), only about 20% to 25% of increased muscle growth
stems from increased protein synthesis. The rest of the
muscle growth is directly attributable to increased
proliferation of the satellite cells in the basal lamina of
muscle tissue, and dietary energy (calories) is not a key
factor in the differentiation of these cells into new
myofibres (muscle cells).
Of all factors determining muscle growth, prevention of
protein breakdown (anti-catabolism) seems to be the most
relevant, but adding adipose [fat] tissue through constant
overfeeding can actually increase muscle pro- teolysis
(breakdown). Furthermore, additional adipose mass can
radically alter hormone balances which are responsible for
controlling protein breakdown in muscle. Insulin balance,
for one, which partially controls anti-catabolism in the
body, is impaired by consistent overfeeding. So much for
the eat-big-to-get-big philosophy!
Stay away from the super-high calorie diets unless you're a
genetic freak, or you're woefully lean and don't mind
putting on fat [or you're using appropriate pharmaceutical
supplements].
3 -- If you eat a low-fat diet, it doesn't matter how many
calories you take in, you won't gain any fat.
The bottom line is, if you exceed your energy
requirements, you'll gradually get fatter and fatter. It's true
that eating a diet rich in fat will pack on the pounds
quicker for a variety of reasons, the most significant being
that a gram of fat has nine calories as opposed to the four
calories per gram that carbohydrates and proteins carry.
Fat is also metabolized differently in the body. It takes a
lesser amount of calories to assimilate the energy in
ingested fat than it does to assimilate an equal (weight
wise) amount of carbohydrates. Consequently, more fat
calories get stored than carbohydrate calories. However,
the gross intake of carbohydrates, as facilitated by many of
the weight-gain powders, will make you fat very quickly.
4 -- The more you work out, the more you'll grow.
No, no no. This is one of the most damaging myths that
ever reared its ugly head. 95% of the pros will tell you that
the biggest bodybuilding mistake they ever made was to
over-train--and this happened even when they were taking
steroids. Imagine how easy it is for the natural athlete to
overtrain! When you train your muscles too often for them
to heal, the end-result is zero growth and perhaps even
losses. Working out every day, if you're truly using the
proper amount of intensity, will lead to gross overtraining.
A body part, worked properly, ie. worked to complete,
total muscular failure that recruited as many muscle fibers
as physiologically possible, can take 5-10 days to heal.
To take it a step further, even working a different body
part in the next few days might constitute overtraining. If
you truly work your quads to absolute fiber-tearing failure,
doing another power workout the next day that entails
heavy bench-presses or deadlifts is going to, in all
probability, inhibit gains. After a serious leg workout, your
whole system mobilizes to heal and recover from the blow
you've dealt it. How, then, can the body be expected to
heal from an equally brutal workout the next day? It can't,
at least not without using some drugs to help deal with the
catabolic processes going on in your body [and even
they're usually not enough .]
Learn to accept rest as a valuable part of your workout.
You should probably spend as many days out of the gym
as you do in it.
5 -- The longer you work out, the better.
It just isn't necessary to do 20-30 sets for a body part, or
even 10 sets like many 'experts' would have you believe.
In fact, research has shown that it's possible to completely
fatigue a muscle in one set, provided that that set taxes a
muscle completely, ie. incorporates as many muscle fibers
as possible and takes them to the point of ischemic rigour
where, rather than contract and relax, the muscle fibers
freeze up, sort of like a microscopic version of rigor
mortis. Any further contraction causes microscopic
tearing. Hypertrophy is just one adaption to this kind of
stress and it's naturally the kind most bodybuilders are
interested in.
This kind of intensity can usually be achieved by doing
drop or break-down sets where you rep out, lower the
weight, and continue doing reps until you either can't do
another rep or you've run out of weight. It can also be
achieved by doing your maximum number of reps on a
particular exercise: by a combination of will, tenacity, and
short rest periods, you complete ten more reps. You
achieve the short rest periods by locking out the weightbearing
joint in question without putting the weight down.
In other words, completely surpass your normal pain and
energy thresholds.
If you can truly work your muscle to the point described, it
will afford you little, if any, benefit to do another set
(Westcott, 1986). The exception would be the body parts
that are so big that they have distinct geographical areas,
like the back, which obviously has an upper, middle and
lower part. The chest might also fall into this category, as
it has a distinct upper and lower part, each with different
insertion points.
6 -- You don't have to be strong to be big
For a variety of reasons, people, even those with an equal
amount of muscle mass, vary in strength enormously. It
might have something to do with fast-twitch/slow-twitch
muscle ratios, or it might have something to do with the
efficiency of nerve pathways or even limb length and the
resultant torque. But it is still a relative term. To get
bigger muscles, you have to lift heavier weight, and you,
not the guy next door, have to become stronger -- stronger
than you were. Increasing muscle strength in the natural
athlete, except in a very few, rare instances, requires that
the tension applied to muscle fibers be high. If the tension
applied to muscle fibers are light, maximal growth will not
occur (Lieber, 1992).
7 -- The training programmes that work best for pro
bodybuilders are best for everyone.
You see it happen every day in gyms across the country.
Some bodybuilding neophyte will walk up to a guy who
looks like he's an escaped attraction from Jurassic Park
and ask him how he trains. The biggest guy in the gym
likely got that way from either taking a tremendous
amount of drugs and/or by being genetically predispositioned
to get big. Follow a horse home and you'll
find horse parents. The guy in your gym who is best
bodybuilder is the guy who has made the most progress
and done the most to his physique using natural
techniques. He may still be a pencil neck, but he may have
put on 40 pounds [19kg] of lean body mass to get where
he is, and that, in all probability, took some know-how.
That person probably doesn't overtrain, keeps his sets
down to a minimum, and uses great form and
concentration on the eccentric (negative) portion of each
exercise repetition.
Many pros spend hours and hours doing innumerable
sets--so many it would far surpass the average person's
recuperative abilities. If average people followed the
routines of average pro bodybuilders, they would, in
effect, start to whittle down what muscle mass they did
have or, at best, make only a tiny bit of progress after a
couple of years.
8 -- You can't build muscle on a sub-maintenance calorie
intake diet.
It may be a little harder, and it may require a little bit more
know-how and a little bit more conscientious effort, but it
can be done. The fact is, the obese state in humans and
animals is not universally correlated with absolute levels
of caloric intake and neither is the accrual of lean body
mass. The ability to realize changes in lean/fat ratios is
regulated by components of the automatic nervous system
working in concert with several endocrine hormones; this
is called nutrient partitioning. For example, certain betaagonist
drugs like Clenbuterol increase meat production in
cattle over 30% while simultaneously diminishing bodyfat
without increasing the amount or composition of their
feed. Other drugs, including growth hormone, certain
oestrogens, cortisol, ephedrine, and IGF-1 are all
examples of re-partitioning agents. All increase oxygen
consumption at the expense of fat storage--independent of
energy intake!
Drugs are not the only way to do this, however. It's true
that a significant component of this mechanism is
genetically linked, but specific nutrients, in specific
amounts, when combined with an effective training
programme, can markedly improve the lean/fat ratio of
adult humans. MET-Rx is one such nutrient re-partitioning
agent, and several companies are trying to duplicate its
successes [warning: one of the authors of this article has
a significant financial stake in Substrate Technologies,
the makers of MET-Rx].
9 -- You can't grow if you only work each body part once
a week.
If you work out -- work out intensely-- then it can take 5-
10 days for the muscles to heal. Although the following
should be taken with a grain of salt when determining your
own exercise frequency, a study in the May 1993 issue of
the Journal of Physiology revealed it can take weeks for
muscles to recuperate from an intense workout. The study
involved a group of men and women who had worked
their forearms to the max. All of the subjects said they
were sore two days after exercising, and the soreness was
gone by the seventh day, and the swelling was gone by the
ninth day. After six weeks, the subjects had only gained
back half the strength they had before the original
exercise! By no means are we advocating that you wait
two months between workouts, but we are trying to prove
the point that it takes muscles longer to heal than what you
might have previously thought. For some people,
especially natural bodybuilders, waiting a week between
body part workouts might be just what the doctor ordered
for size and strength gains!
10 -- You can't make gains if. you only train with weights
three days a week.
Although you probably couldn't find a single steroidassisted
athlete who trains only three days a week [well, I
was, and I made fantastic gains!], there's absolutely no
reason why a three-day-a-week routine couldn't work for
many natural athletes. As long as your routine attacked the
whole body and you worked to failure on each set, you
could easily experience great gains on this sort of routine.
However, you need to pay even more attention to your diet
if you only train three days a week, especially if your job
involves little or no physical activity, and you like to
spend your idle time eating. Ignore those who say threeday-
a-week bodybuilders are only 'recreational lifters'.
Think quality and not quantity.
11 -- You should only rest 45 seconds in between sets.
That's true if you're trying to improve cardiovascular
health or lose some bodyfat. But in order to build muscle,
you need to allow enough time for the muscle to
recuperate fully (ie. let the lactic acid buildup in your
muscles dissipate and ATP levels build back up). In order
to make muscles grow, you have to lift the heaviest weight
possible, thereby allowing the maximum number of
muscle fibers to be recruited. If the amount of weight you
lift is being limited by the amount of lactic acid left over
from the previous set, you're only testing your ability to
battle the effects of lactic acid. In other words, you're
trying to swim across a pool while wearing concrete
overshoes. When training heavy, take [at least!] two and
three minutes between your sets. Notice I said, "when
training heavy." The truth is, you can't train heavy all the
time. Periodization calls for cycling heavy workouts with
less intense training sessions in an effort to keep the body
from becoming overtrained. (See 'Periodization' by Brad
Jeffreys on p. 85 of the Feb/March 1993 issue of MM2K)
12 -- You have to use fancy weightlifting equipment in
order to make the best gains.
Futuristic-looking, complex machinery designed to give
your muscles the 'ultimate workout' is typically less
effective than good-old barbells and dumbbells. Using
simple free weights (barbells and dumbbells) on basic
multi-joint exercises, like the squat, bench press, shoulder
press, and deadlift, is still the most effective means of
resistance exercise ever invented. Scientific research has
shown that many exercise machines lack the proper
eccentric component of an exercise that's necessary to
stimulate muscle tissue to remodel (grow). (See the article
titled 'Research Confirms that Bodybuilders Should Pay
Heavy Attention to Negative Reps' by Bill Phillips on p.18
of the Feb/March issue of MM2K)
13 -- Weight training makes you big; aerobic exercise cuts
you up.
Manipulations in your nutrient intake are the main factor
in getting cut up, and how you do it doesn't matter. If your
daily caloric expenditure exceeds your daily caloric intake
on a consistent basis, you will lose fat and get more cut.
Aerobic exercise is generally meant to improve
cardiovascular efficiency, but if you do it long enough,
you will burn up calories and in the long run drop the fat.
However, weightlifting can do the same thing, only better.
Studies have shown that the body burns far more
efficiently if exercise is performed at a moderate pace for
periods longer than 20 minutes. (It generally takes that
long for the glucose in the bloodstream to be 'burned up',
causing the body to dip into glycogen reserves for its
energy) Once the glycogen reserves are used up, the body
must metabolize fatty acids for energy. That equate to lost
bodyfat.
In the long run, bodybuilding is more efficient than
aerobics for burning up calories. Let me explain--if
researchers were to undertake a study of twins whereby
one twin performed daily aerobics and the other practiced
a bodybuilding programme where the end result was
increased lean body mass, the bodybuilding twin would
ultimately be a more efficient fat burner than his aerobic
twin. Why? Well, by adding lean body mass, that person's
metabolic requirements are higher--muscle uses energy
even while it is not being used. The aerobic twin might use
more calories during the time period of exercise itself, but
the weight-lifting twin would use a higher amount during
rest time, leading to a higher net 24-hour expenditure. The
weight lifter burns fat just sitting there.
14 -- You can completely reshape a muscle by doing
isolation exercises.
You can't limit growth to only one area of a muscle. Larry
Scott, for whom the 'biceps peaking' Scott curl was named,
had tremendous biceps, but he didn't have much of a peak.
The shape of your biceps, or for that matter, any muscle, is
determined by your genetic makeup. When you work a
muscle, any muscle, it works on the all-or-nothing
principle, meaning that each muscle fiber recruited to do a
lift -- along the entire length of that muscle -- is contracted
fully. Why would a certain number of them, like the ones
in the middle of the biceps, suddenly start to grow
differently or at a faster rate than its partners? If anything,
the muscles that are closest to the insertion points are the
most prone to mechanical stress, and you don't see them
get any bigger than the rest of the muscle. If they did,
everyone would have proportions like Popeye.
This is true of any muscle, but you're probably thinking,
what about quads? I know that when I do hack squats with
my feet together, it tends to give me more sweep in my
legs. Sure it does, but the quadriceps are made up of four
different main muscles, and doing hacks with your feet
together forces the vastus lateralis muscles on the outside
of the leg to work harder; consequently, they grow
proportionately along their entire length and give the outer
quads more sweep.
As further evidence, take a look at a picture of any young
professional bodybuilder before he was developed enough
to become a pro. He will have virtually the same structural
lines as he does today. All that has changed is that his
muscles are now bigger.
FORSTÄTTNING FÖLJER