You already know the Mr. America/Mr. Universe to which I’m referring: Doug Brignole. Here he is winning the 2019 Drug-Free Mr. Universe at age 59 (Lance Kincaid photo)…
So who is this Mr. Pan American person I speak of? Surprise: It’s me.
That was the title of the only bodybuilding contest I ever entered. I won it way back in the early ‘80s. It was held at the then Pan American University in South Texas. It’s now part of the University of Texas…
Fun Fact: The first Ms. Olympia Rachel McLish was in the audience. That contest I won inspired her to go into bodybuilding. She drove to her gym to work out immediately after the show and promptly built more muscle than I had onstage. She was spectacular…
That contest was a small local affair. I competed against 10 guys and won due to my conditioning—I certainly wasn’t the biggest. I think I weighed in the 160s at a height of 5’10”—but I was ripped.
I did get bigger and better later, but it took a while and lots of experimentation, but I didn’t use drugs to get there, which made it more challenging…
I’ve recently received some questions about my current workouts vs. Doug’s. We’re both 63, so why does he train six days a week for 1 1/2 hours per workout, and I train only three days a week for around 40 minutes each?…
That’s over eight hours a week for Doug vs. under two hours per week for me. What gives?
Well, you could call my Old Man, Young Muscle workouts the “Cliffs Notes” version of Doug’s. I emphasize the ideal exercises, two or three sets, which Doug uses exclusively for three sets, but I don’t train every muscle…
In other words, Doug does full workouts for many muscles that I don’t include in my training. Yes, I do some “add-on” exercises that Doug doesn’t do, but usually only for one set (example coming up).…
It’s simply a matter of goals. Doug is planning to compete again, so he needs to train those ancillary muscles. I feel that those get enough indirect stimulation for my needs. For example…
My front delts get hit during the ideal chest exercise, dumbbell decline presses. Then the front heads get even more specific work with the add-on exercise, close-grip bench pushups, for one or two sets. That move trains the clavicular fibers of the upper chest, but it’s actually a direct front-delt-head exercise…
Doug, on the other hand, trains front delts independently of chest—with parallel-grip dumbbell decline presses—arms in close to his body. He does a full workout for front delts, supersetting with rear delts, which I also rarely train directly…
Other ancillary muscles that he trains fully—which I don’t—include hip flexors, obliques, infraspinatus, and neck. Also, while I train upper traps and forearms with a set or two, he does full routines for each of those.
As I said, Doug has a competitive-bodybuilding mindset; I just want to look decent with enough old-man muscle to be fairly impressive without devoting too much of my time to the gym. It’s working fairly well….
Needless to say, I won’t be posing down with any young muscle bros on the beach—unless I’ve been drinking and some wrinkle-free whippersnapper challenges me. In that case, I’d probably slur something like, “You know I’m undefeated in bodybuilding competition, right, Mary?”
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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