First, I want to reiterate that Mr. America and Drug-Free Mr. Universe Doug Brignole was a good friend (Robert Reiff photo)…
We were acquainted because he wrote for Iron Man magazine while I was Editor in Chief back in the early 2000s.
I reconnected with Doug in mid-2020 when the Covid pandemic was taking a heavy toll. His tome on biomechanics, The Physics of Resistance Exercise, was released around that time, and I consumed it with a passion. I even bought copies for a few friends…
His ideal exercise for each muscle made a lot of sense, and Doug convinced me to try emphasizing them in my bare-bones home gym…
I had no cables or machines—only a 50-pound PowerBlock dumbbell set, an adjustable bench, and a doorway chinning bar…
With gyms closed, I figured I had nothing to lose—except muscle. That was fine. I just wanted to stay in decent shape, not shriveling too much, as I hid out till gyms reopened.
I decided to experiment with 35-minute workouts 3 days a week emphasizing Doug’s ideal exercises as best I could…
Without cables, I had to improvise—and I wasn’t expecting gains, that’s for sure. But after a few months, I was shocked at my progress…
My wife took a photo of me hitting a comical most muscular pose in our backyard in early spring of 2021. The before photo was taken about a year prior while I was still training at a commercial gym using conventional 1 1/2-hour workouts three to four days a week (full disclosure: I was trying to look shitty to motivate myself)…
Ignoring the dumb look on my face, I was so impressed at my progress that I decided to stick with my short workouts emphasizing the ideal exercises and tighten my diet to see if I could get abs. This photo was taken about 10 weeks later, early summer 2021—age 62, 5’11”, weighing around 190…
I was so motivated with my progress that I was reinvigorated to write about experience. I began putting together Old Man Young Muscle, detailing how I did it by combining Doug’s ideas with my own.
That ebook was released in early January 2022. I sent Doug a copy, and he responded with rousing approval.…
While we didn’t agree on everything, both of our training protocols were still evolving. The searching and tweaking would continue…
We influenced each other, and our back-and-forths were always eye-opening. I’ll share excerpts in the next few newsletters…
Next I’ll discuss how Doug was training when he began writing for Iron Man, how that evolved, and his discoveries that he shared with me before tragedy struck.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
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