I mention genetics a lot. It’s not an excuse, but a bodybuilding reality—and an arbiter in other athletic endeavors as well.
I’ve been training for over four decades and tried just about everything. At 5’10 1/2” I never weighed over 200 in fairly ripped condition—190 was my best.
Not too bad for an ectomorph. You may even conclude that after more than 45 years of training, I have it all figured out. Nope. I’m still learning and trying different approaches into my 60s.
I have learned this: Something will work for a while and then stop working. It’s why a mantra around these parts is “change to gain.”
And sometimes that change can be a simple reduction in volume and/or intensity.
Arthur Jones, the inventor of Nautilus machines, was wrong on some things, but he did have a handle on limited muscle-building recovery. Check out this quote from his 1971 Nautilus Bulletin #2:
If every individual weight trainee in the country suddenly cut his training in half—merely reduced his weekly workouts by 50 percent, while making no other changes in his training—it is my belief that overall results would be at least doubled…. Most trainees quickly fall into a rut of training wherein their workouts almost totally deplete their recovery ability—and then it takes them years to produce the same degree of results that could have been produced in an equal number of months.
That was from a time when the standard for most bodybuilders was training six days a week with up to 20 sets per body part.
Jones was basically saying that overtraining is more harmful and prevalent than we think—and it is the very reason muscle growth is so slow for the majority. But it’s not just volume…
Science is discovering that too much intensity, even on a few sets, can drain your recovery resources—so much so that most people train again before growth is allowed to happen.
And if the recovery process isn’t complete when you attack the muscle again, the result can be stagnation or even regression—as in losing muscle.…
I mentioned how I learned that recently when I put a new cable unit in my home gym. It gave me new motivation and so many more options that my workout time and intensity increased. I began losing muscle..
It’s why I’m back to the workout structure in Old Man Young Muscle, but I’m now experimenting with brief training-to-failure days alternated with sub-failure workouts.
I have the option of new cable exercises, which is great, but I’m keeping my workouts to around 40 minutes, still training each muscle twice a week.
Another lesson: Intensity phasing is a workout tweak that can pack new muscle on your physique.
More on this in the next newsletter.
New: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best add-on moves for ultimate mass, complete 35-minute workouts, exercise start/finish photos, and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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