The Ten Commandments of Bodybuilding
by the MM2K
Editors
(This is a copy from the original supplement to
issue #52)
Introduction
1. Thou Shalt Lift Weights.
2. Thou Shalt Not Work Out Too Often.
3. Thou Shalt Eat Frequently
4. Thou Shalt Eat a High-Protein Diet.
5. Thou Shalt Seek Pain.
6. Thou Shalt Use Creatine Monohydrate
7. Thou Shalt Gorge Your Body With Protein and Carbohydrates
After a Workout.
8. Thou Shalt Be Consistent.
9. Thou Shalt Change Your Training Routine Often.
10. Thou Shalt Concentrate On Eccentric Movements.
Conclusion and Recap
Do you remember
what it was like when you first began lifting weights? Do you
remember looking for info in all the wrong places? Or reading
the entire body of weightlifting mags and looking for some clarity,
hoping someone or something would say, "Here is the way to
physical perfection"? No such luck, right? There was about
as much chance of finding a common thread of knowledge in the
bodybuilding mags as there was that Jerry Falwell would be caught
dirty dancing with Bob Paris.
People in the gym weren't much help,
either, were they? You might have gravitated to the biggest guy
in the gym for advice, the guy who looked like he just walked
off the set of "Quest for Fire", but most of his progress
was the result of pharmaceutical experiments so radical they'd
make Mr. Hyde run screaming into the streets of London.
As the years passed, you learned
a lot through trial and error, and you probably made progress,
despite all the conflicting messages in the mags and on the street.
We like to think that with the birth of Muscle Media 2000, some
of that confusion went away and that the heavy oak door of confusion
had been pushed open wide enough to at least let a beam of light
come shining through
Sill, with so many conflicting messages
from so many different sources - people arguing about what the
best supplements, training programs, best everything are - you,
along with all the other consumers, probably got more confused
than ever before! Although there are a lot of things about building
muscle size and strength that remain unknown, there are a number
of very important things we do know. That's the intent and purpose
of this Muscle Media 2000 special report - to avoid the speculation
and the wildhaired theories and to tell you the facts you need
to know to build muscle size and strength. If God had handed out
an owner's manual with the human body, the chapter on building
muscle would contain much of the same information as is included
in this report.
This report contains 10 bodybuilding
truths. Your initial reaction to some of the steps might be that
they're simplistic, but sometimes you've got to go back to the
basics to regain some clarity and get back on track.
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1.
Thou Shalt Lift Weights.
Okay, before you smack your forehead
with your palm and mockingly say, "Damn, why didn't I think
of that?" keep reading. We all know that weightlifting works,
but what's the best way.
Muscle hypertrophy has to do with
the breakdown of muscle proteins, creating conditions for the
enhanced synthesis of contractile proteins during rest periods.
The more breakdown of proteins— the more damage done to the
muscle during work — the bigger the muscle will be when it
heals (providing all other factors, like adequate rest and nutrition,
are optimum). In endurance training, the intensities imposed on
the muscle cells are very low, and since tensions are very low,
fiber damage is small, and fiber hypertrophy is small. With weightlifting,
more fibers are recruited, and tension levels are very high. Hence,
fiber damage is high, and as a result, through biochemical sequences
too complicated to even attempt to describe here, fibers hypertrophy
and strength increases.
Along the same lines, too small
a number of reps has a limited ability to induce hypertrophy.
Too small a number of reps represents a minor amount of mechanical
work, and the amount of degraded contractile proteins is small.
In other words, one rep, even if it's done with a weight equivalent
to the rear axle of a Hum-Vee, isn't going to do the trick.
The question then remains: what's
the optimal amount of reps to do? Of course, this is determined
by weight. Studies have shown that the maximum amount of motor-unit
recruitment occurs between four and six reps, and consequently,
the total amount of degraded protein also reaches maximal levels
in this same rep range. But there are different types of fibers
in a muscle, and they're recruited systematically — the low-endurance
fibers being I recruited immediately for high-tension (high-weight)
lifts, and the higher endurance fibers being recruited later,
long after the four- to six-rep set is done. These high-endurance
fibers come into play when rep ranges of 8 to 12 are used, so
ideally, and generally, both types of rep schemes should be used
in a workout program. So, if you train with heavy weights in rep
schemes of 4 to 12 reps, you can't go wrong!
Furthermore, the age-old controversy
regarding free weights and machines (and the merits of each) still
resurfaces periodically. Which is best? Both are. Nowadays, very
few great physiques were built by free weights alone, and I venture
to say that none were built by machines alone. The modern bodybuilder
uses both to attain his/her physique goals.
Beyond that, if you focus on fundamental
exercises like the bench press shoulder press, squat, and deadlift,
you will get stronger bigger.
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2.
Thou Shalt Not Work Out Too Often.
Easy to say, but what exactly is
working out too often ? Well, you can measure blood levels of
3-methyl histidine and creatine kinase (two biochemical markers
of muscle damage), but that isn't exactly practical, is it? The
logical assumption is that we should work a particular body part
when it's regained its pre-workout capacity. Again, easier said
than done. Would we have been better off had we waited an extra
day?
There are as many theories on muscle
recovery rates as there are groupies outside Shawn Ray's hotel
room door. Why is it so darned complicated? Well, largely because
it's so individualistic. People vary in this regard as widely
as they do in hair color, height, or any other trait that is regarded
as genetic. And, to boot, there are countless other factors that
fit into the equation. What's the subject's age? How much rest
did he or she get? What's the subject's nutritional or hormonal
status?
Lab studies show that some individual
muscle groups recover more quickly than others. Calves supposedly
recover overnight, whereas forearms could theoretically be trained
twice a day. Larger muscle groups like the chest or back theoretically
need 48 hours, whereas still larger muscle groups like the legs
may need several days.
Barring any number of complicated
blood tests, there's one way to determine how long it takes you
to recover—soreness. If you're scheduled to work chest today
but your chest still hurts from the previous workout, take an
extra day off. Although working a body part when it's still sore
is occasionally permissible, it will eventually catch up with
you; i.e., you will tear down muscle tissue and regress instead
of progress. Muscles adapt and become stronger during rest periods,
not during exercise itself. Accept this fact, or you'll be caught
in the revolving door of bodybuilding—moving a whole lot
but not going anywhere.
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3.
Thou Shalt Eat Frequently
Ever talk to some of these guys
who skip breakfast — don't eat anything till noon —
and complain that they can't put on any muscle? Or maybe some
of those guys who eat great one day and then let their eating
habits go to hell the next? Hey baby, you've go to give the mason
some bricks if you want your house built! Eating your entire day's
allotment of calories in one, glorious, pig-like sitting isn't
going to cut it, either. There's a lot of evidence to suggest
that your body will only assimilate a certain amount of calories
per sitting; any more will quickly be put in the First National
Bank of Flab-onia where there is a substantial penalty for early
withdrawal. What's more, research has shown that with optimal
protein intake, nitrogen balance varies directly with the number
of feedings; i.e., there is greater nitrogen retention with more
frequent feedings. In addition, when taking in fewer feedings,
the body has the tendency to show adaptive changes like rapid
intestinal absorption of glucose and fat, increased synthesis
of glucose, increased lipogenesis, and higher serum cholesterol
(Young, et al., 1976). In short, infrequent feedings bad; frequent
feedings good.
Nutritionist Keith Klein has bellyached
about this small but important fact for years. He has seen, time
and time again, cases where bodybuilders were eating only four
times a day stopped making progress as quickly as your grandma
carrying a football and shuffling for a first down against the
defensive line of the Dallas Cowboys. Likewise, these same bodybuilders
made dramatic improvements when they started eating six times
a day.
Now, eating by the clock is hard
because it requires a great deal of discipline, perhaps more discipline
than working out! It doesn't matter if you're hungry or not, if
you're out with friends, or if you're on the road — when
it's time to eat, you should eat. If you skip meals, eat irregularly,
or try to make up for missed meals by having a Caligula-style
Roman feast, you're throwing a lug wrench in the machinery of
anabolism.
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4.
Thou Shalt Eat a High-Protein Diet.
The average old-school nutritionists
love to talk about protein. They like nothing better than corner
the neophyte bodybuilder and assail him or her with the cold protein
logic of the 1950's: "Listen, what's the most muscle you
could build in one day? A few grams here and there? And what's
the amount of protein the body typically needs in one day? About
70 grams, right? So, in order to build muscle, you only need 70
grams, plus the few that will go directly to the muscle growth
you've elicited through your workouts. Any more will be wasted!"
Ahh, too bad it isn't that easy.
If growth and metabolism were as two-dimensional as the old-school
nutritionists claim, then all you'd need every day would be a
few extra grams of protein to build muscle. Unfortunately, the
body isn't two-dimensional; it's three- or even four-dimensional.
Granted, the average sedentary shoe salesman body needs about
70 grams of protein a day to repair the damage caused by everyday
wear and tear, including the occasional bruised-from-having-a-high-heeled-shoe-step-on-it
toe. Bodybuilders, however, need more protein. A lot more.
Muscles grow because of net protein
synthesis — the difference between protein degradation and
synthesis. In the average person, this net difference is zip —
he or she isn't incurring any damage, so protein needs remain
largely unchanged day to day. However, in the bodybuilder, there's
so much muscle fiber disruption occurring every day that a microscopic
tour of a muscle would look like Poland after the Germans blasted
through in World War II. Bodybuilders need extra protein to repair
all this damage. What's more, they need it at very specific intervals.
In fact, timing of protein intake is just as important as quantity.
The only trouble is, it's almost impossible to say exactly when
in the muscle-building process we should turn the hose on. Instead,
it's safer to give the body large, regular amounts of protein,
so we aren't caught with our muscle-building pants down when we
need extra protein.
There's evidence that we need extra
protein right after a workout. There's evidence that we need extra
protein about 30 hours after a workout, when muscle resynthesis
is at its highest. There's evidence we need it before bedtime,
to keep cortisol levels low, GH high, and to provide enough amino
acids throughout the eight-hour fast we commonly call sleep. See
what we're getting at? The bodybuilder needs protein throughout
the day and night. Here's a short list of the times we appear
to need extra protein:
1. Going to sleep means not eating,
and not eating means that the body runs out of protein and insulin
about halfway through the night, so you, in effect, stop synthesizing
the protein you need for growth and repair. This compounds itself
if your last meal was at 6:00 p.m.
2. Strenuous workouts compound the
problem. Damaged muscles need more protein and more insulin to
"carry" that protein to the muscle cells.
3. Strenuous workouts also cause
a decrease in GH levels and an increase in cortisol levels, making
it even harder to build muscle.
4. Muscle protein synthesis is elevated
for a relatively long time after a workout, proving that additional
protein is imperative.
The question that remains is, how
much protein? There's some evidence that extremely high levels
of protein can elicit muscle growth above and beyond what you
might normally achieve. One particular study involving Romanian
weightlifters showed that their lean body mass increased approximately
6% when they increased their protein intake from 275% to 438%
of the US government recommended levels. This, however, may constitute
overkill. Get at least one gram of protein per pound of lean bodyweight.
For instance, if you weigh 200 lbs and have a bodyfat percentage
of about 10%, you need at least 180 grams of protein per day,
taken in divided doses (ideally 6 divided doses).
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5.
Thou Shalt Seek Pain
Don't run right out and try to pick
up a Dominatrix on Sixth Avenue who wants you to lick her 1 boots...that's
not what we mean. You've all heard about intensity, but trying
to explain it is as difficult as trying to explain why some people
spend hours and hours downloading semi-naked pictures of Claudia
Schiffer off the Internet (hey, I gotta have a hobby, don't l?).
Intensity is probably the most important aspect of bodybuilding.
After all, if you don't damage muscle fibers, you won't break
down protein, and you won't cause the body to respond by rebuilding
that muscle fiber bigger and stronger. There's an old saying in
the coaching business: "Do as may reps as you can, and then
do three more." There's no way to say it more succinctly.
Try this. The next time you're doing
an exercise, say, dumbbell bench presses, do as many as you can,
but wait! Don't put the dumbbells down. Merely let them rest for
a moment in the down position while you regroup your thoughts,
channel your concentration, and do another one. You can do it.
It's amazing, but there's a certain point when the body gives
up. Call it a self-preservation thing or whatever, but remember,
the body doesn't have the final say in these matters. If it did,
you'd either be eating, sleeping, or having sex—not working
out. Tell yourself you will do another rep. It's during this extra
rep when Mr. Pain will introduce himself: "Excuse me? I'm
Mr. Pain, and if you don't stop doing the equivalent of poking
me with a stick, I will make you regret it." Tell Mr. Pain
to kiss off, because it's exactly at this point in bodybuilding
time that you're exposing the body to the most muscle-fiber recruitment,
the most metabolic and hormonal stress, and muscles will respond
over time by becoming bigger. Hey, remember, no one ever said
this sport was for sissies.
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6.
Thou Shalt Use Creatine Monohydrate
HMB, CLA, DHEA, Co-Enzyme Friggin'
Q-10, Endo make-me-stand-up-and-say-howdy Pro: all of these supplements
are at the howling center of a great supplement tornado. I say
Supplement A works. You question my parenthood. Magazine X devotes
an entire issue to Supplement Z. I lose my lunch. The truth is,
some of these supplements may indeed work. There is ample evidence
to suggest that a couple of them, namely HMB and CLA, may help
you increase muscle mass. There's also evidence that DHEA may
help people over the age of 30 lose fat and gain some muscle.
HOWEVER, the feelings are hardly unanimous.
There is one supplement, though,
that is virtually universally accepted as being effective in promoting
lean body mass and strength — creatine monohydrate. Creatine
monohydrate is a naturally occurring chemical that's one of muscles'
main energy sources. Luckily for us, it's possible to supersaturate
muscles with this compound by ingesting it. And, if our muscles
are chock-full of creatine, our muscle cells are stronger, and
they recover faster. Creatine also has a "cell-volumizing"
effect. In other words, it causes the muscles to hold more intracellular
fluid, and it's theorized that this promotes protein synthesis
and inhibits protein breakdown.
What creatine will do is help you
gain mass, quickly. It also makes you stronger. And, if recent
studies are correct, creatine, more specifically, Phosphagen HP,
may even improve speed (over a 100-meter run) and reduce fat!
Best results are obtained when creatine
is "loaded" for a period of five days. The usual loading
dosage is between 20 and 30 grams per day, followed by a maintenance
dosage of 10 grams or so.
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7.
Thou Shalt Gorge Your Body With Protein and Carbohydrates After
a Workout
After you're done working out, don't
hang out by the Stairmasters and watch the "Thong-Butt Goddesses,"
à la Dan Duchaine. Granted, it may be intensely pleasurable, but
it's not conducive to muscle growth. Go straight home and mix
yourself a high-glycemic-index (Gl) carb and protein drink. There's
strong scientific evidence that right after you get done training,
your body needs nutrients. It stands to reason that the most important
time to elicit positive adaptations in muscle tissue is right
after an intense workout. And, from what we know about insulin,
carbohydrate, protein, and muscle synthesis rates, it would be
downright amazing if the post-workout drink didn't, over the long
run, help you build muscle. A post-workout drink, made with the
right ingredients, may lower cortisol levels, increase glycogen
levels, and supply muscles with the protein they need to recover
from the damage you've no doubt incurred.
Here's what a good post-workout
drink should contain:
• Around 50-100 grams of carbohydrate
(a mixture of high Gl and low Gl)
• About 40 grams of protein
• Five grams of creating monohydrate
This can be accomplished rather
easily by mixing a meal-replacement powder in 12 to 14 oz of juice
and adding a heaping teaspoon of Phosphagen (or Phosphagen HP
to increase the carb dose).
Although some people might argue
that this isn't a surefire way to put on muscle, we'd argue right
back. We know this kind of drink is effective as we've seen its
positive effects over and over again.
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8.
Thou Shalt Be Consistent
Hey, if you want to play the game,
you have to take the field. In bodybuilding, the gym in your playing
field, and if you continually ride the bench, you're not going
to make progress. In other words, if you go to the gym religiously
for two weeks and then take two weeks off, you're not going to
make much progress; it's more likely that inactivity will cancel
out the activity, and the people who don't know your name in the
gym will always refer to you as "you know, that guy who always
looks the same, year in and year out."
Okay, that's pretty obvious, but
along with consistency comes a methodical approach. Over time
your workouts need to progress. As the weeks and months go by,
you must gradually increase the workload so that your muscles
are forced to adapt. It's called the overload principle, and it
means that the stress placed on the muscle today must be greater
than the stress placed on the muscle the workout before.
There are other ways to increase
the overload principle, too. As Charles Poliquin pointed out in
the July '96 issue of MM2K, there are 3 ways to incorporate progressive
load increase:
Increased volume: more sets, more
repetitions, more workouts.
Increased intensity: more resistance,
more eccentric work.
Increased density: shorter rest
intervals between sets, exercises, or workouts.
You must expose the muscles to a greater and greater work load,
so they're forced to adapt by becoming stronger. In order to keep
track of greater and greater work loads, you must keep a training
journal. Carry it with you, and record every set and rep you do.
Prior to your next workout, look over the numbers from your previous
workout. Your goal is to beat those numbers. Instinctive training
doesn't work unless you're so chemically enhanced that the mere
act of sitting on the toilet will cause growth in your quads,
hams, and glutes.
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9. Thou Shalt Change Your
Training Routine Often.
Remember when you first started working out? You picked up some
lame routine out of Men's Fitness and practiced it—without
making a single change—for about a year, and you still made
progress. Anything you did in the gym caused muscle growth. Too
bad it's not that simple anymore. Experienced weight trainers
need to change their routines often. You may be a creature of
habit, but in the wild, creatures of habit get eaten by the big,
slobbery-mouthed wolf that sits by the creek, knowing you'll be
walking your very habitual sorry ass to the stream at 5:00 p.m.
to get a drink. Change is good, particularly in bodybuilding.
As you become more and more advanced, your body becomes more and
more efficient in adapting to routines. In fact, many athletes
adapt to the point of staleness in as little as three weeks.
Variety can be introduced in several ways. Short-term variations
that can be added or deleted over successive three-week periods
include rep ranges, type of contraction used, speed of contraction,
range of motion, and the actual exercises themselves. These short-term
variations are useful in that, done correctly and methodically,
they exercise a muscle in all possible ways and that's what's
necessary for full development of a muscle.
Long-term variations, adopted perhaps a couple times a year,
include descending sets, super sets, eccentric training (i.e.,
taking six seconds to lower the weight), and pre-exhaustion. All
of these can be incorporated rather easily if you keep a log and
take one hour every three weeks to map out your next mini training
cycle.
Here's an example of how you might alter a chest workout: weeks
one through three, begin with five sets of bench press (four to
six reps), raising the bar to a count of two and lowering it to
a count of four. Afterwards, you may do 3 supersets of incline
dumbbell presses and incline dumbbell flyes (each for 8 to 12
reps), lifted to a count of 1 and lowered to a count of 3. Three
weeks later, you might begin your chest workout with three sets
of weighted dips as a pre-exhaustion movement, and then immediately
move on to three descending sets of incline barbell bench presses.
Let's look at another example using the leg press. From mini-cycle
to mini-cycle, you could change the starting foot position—
high or low on the platform, feet narrow or wide—the angle
of the back rest, and the actual tempo of the movement (lowering
the platform to a count of four one cycle, and then lowering it
to a count of eight another). In each issue of Muscle Media 2000
we give you fresh new training ideas to spice up your workouts!
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10. Thou Shalt Concentrate
On Eccentric Movements.
Eccentric training is the opposite of concentric training. It
means lengthening a muscle as opposed to shortening it. In other
words, eccentric training on the bench press means deliberately
slowing the descent of the bar. It's been shown to cause more
muscle cell damage. Why? No one really knows for sure. It even
puzzles muscle physiologists. After all, why should lengthening
a muscle—the very act for which it was designed—cause
damage? Nevertheless, it does, and that's why every workout should
incorporate an eccentric component. Most novices in the gym train
like the old ball and paddle game—they slap the weight up
using a quick movement, ensuring lots of momentum, and watch as
the weight flies up and then falls back, courtesy of gravity.
Most novices just try to make sure it doesn't fly back and hit
them in the face. The faster they go, the more intense they think
they're working out. Pathetic.
The upward and downward portion of every movement must be slow
and deliberate, and there are a couple of reasons for this. First
of all, research has shown that the lifting portion of a movement
recruits the most muscle fibers when it's performed slowly. This
translates to about two seconds for most movements. The eccentric
portion of the movement should be even slower, occurring optimally
over four seconds. This takes into consideration the fact that
eccentric movements are easier anyhow, since they have the added
advantage of having both friction and gravity to help them. Secondly,
slow strength training provides more time to activate both muscle
fiber types—fast and slow—resulting in greater force
production. And thirdly, eccentric motor activities produce two
to three times the force of concentric activities. Therefore,
they cause more muscle damage and in turn provide the cellular
signal to degenerate and regenerate a new fiber. Given that all
other conditions are favorable, the muscle cell will grow back
bigger and stronger.
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Conclusion
To recap, here are the ten surefire ways to build muscle:
1. Lift weights! Do heavy sets of between 4 and 12 reps.
2. If a particular body part is sore, don't work it until it's
not sore.
3. Eat six, evenly spaced meals a day
4. Eat at least one gram of protein per pound of body weight
each day.
5. Do as many reps as you can, and then do three more.
6. If you're going to use one supplement, use creatine monohydrate.
7. Drink a high-carb, high-protein drink immediately after an
intense workout.
8. Keep a training log, and try to constantly "one-up"
yourself.
9. Use variety in your workouts.
10. Concentrate on using eccentric movements in your workouts.
Granted, there are other ways to make muscles grow, but the things
described in this special report constitute a "unified bodybuilding
theory." Eight out of ten coaches, gurus, and self-proclaimed
experts will agree with them. If you follow the items laid out
in this special report, you will grow, no doubt about it!
References:
Mark Albert, Eccentric Muscle Training in Sports and Orthopedics,
Churchill Livingstone: New York, New York, 1991 .
Richard Lieber, Skeletal Muscle Structure and Function, Williams
and Wilkins: Baltimore, 1992.
Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky, Science and Practice of Strength Training,
Human Kinetics Books: Pennsylvania State University, 1995.
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