Ironman Magazine 2006-12

DECEMBER 2006 / IRON MAN MAGAZINE—WE KNOW TRAINING™

New Vibration Training: Effortless Size and Strength Gains!

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HOW TO SQUAT Bodybuilder Style For Massive Quads

Hot Hardbody Timea Majorova

RIPPED: SHREDDING SECRETS

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PLUS: •Medical Doctor Talks High-Intensity Training •Testosterone Replacement: Is It for You? •Faster Workouts and Anabolic Acceleration Free download from imbodybuilding.com

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www.ironmanmagazine.com \ APRIL 2006 261

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150 DECEMBER 2009 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

Hardbody,

Vol. 65, No. 12

December 2006

page 226

We Know Training™ FEATURES FEATURES

60 A BODYBUILDER IS BORN 17 Ron Harris has the lowdown on power squats vs. bodybuilder squats.

68 TRAIN, EAT, GROW 86 The TEG men are riding the Power/Rep Range/Shock wave, with X Reps, 3D Positions of Flexion and lots of muscle soreness—but strength is soaring.

96 GOODIN RIPPED Steve Holman talks to pro drug-free bodybuilder Dave Goodin about his sharp-and-shredded diet methods. (His meal-by-meal eating schedule is here too; check it out.)

116 MONSTER BENCH 2 Ryan “BenchMonster” Kennelly and Sean Katterle lay out the power program to get you benching four wheels in no time (yep, that’s 405).

New Vibration Training: Effortless Size and Strength Gains!

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RIPPED! Shredding Secrets Look Bigger and Harder

HOW TO SQUAT Bodybuilder Style For Massive Quads

Hot Hardbody Timea Majorova

134 RESEARCH TEAM A new multi-vita supplement can help build mass and strength.

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PLUS: •Medical Doctor Talks High-Intensity Training •Testosterone Replacement: Is It for You? •Faster Workouts and Anabolic Acceleration

C1_Dec06_F.indd 1

142 MORE GROW POWER, X-Files, page 152

PART 2

Jerry Brainum continues his scientific exploration of beta-alanine and its incredible effects on muscle size and power. (It may be the ultimate creatine supercharger!)

152 X-FILES Goodin Ripped, page 96

Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson outline fast-mass methods for anabolic acceleration.

158 POWERFUL MUSCLE MEDICINE John Little interviews Doug McGuff, M.D., about the high-intensity-training dose/response. (Would you believe five-set workouts once every two weeks?)

176 HEAVY DUTY Monster Bench 2, page 116

The wisdom of Mike Mentzer.

196 GOOD VIBRATIONS Jerry Brainum reports on vibration technology that’s creating bigger size and strength gains with no effort. (Maybe those old movers and shakers with the vibrating belts were really onto something.)

226 HARDBODY Fitness and figure champ Timea Majorova, captured by Bill Dobbins’ camera in the desert. Whoa!

250 ONLY THE STRONG SHALL SURVIVE Bill Starr explains the Olympic press and its variations.

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9/27/06 11:23:07 AM

Jorge Betancourt and Amber Goetz appear on this month’s cover. Hair and makeup Yvonne Ouellette. Photo by Michael Neveux

DEPARTMENTS

26 TRAIN TO GAIN Pyramid permutations. Also, Joe Horrigan’s Sportsmedicine and Stuart McRobert’s Hardgainer columns.

40 SMART TRAINING Coach Charles Poliquin explores the right time to train and logical abbreviated workouts.

46 CRITICAL MASS Steve Holman looks at waist management, max-fiber activation and getting your rotator cuff buff.

Powerful Muscle Medicine, page 158 Pump & Circumstance, page 244

Train to Gain, page 26

50 EAT TO GROW Antioxidant facts and foods. Plus, Team Universe diet and priming the pump.

108 NATURALLY HUGE John Hansen analyzes single-progression training and the three-days-per-week program.

188 BODYBUILDING PHARMACOLOGY Jerry Brainum checks out the options for upping testosterone levels with TRT.

212 MUSCLE “IN” SITES Eric Broser logs in to muscle up at the Muscle Mayhem site. Dennis James’ landing page is here too, along with Danielle Hollenshade’s.

214 NEWS & VIEWS Lonnie Teper’s take on the wild world of bodybuilding.

WEB ALERT!

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News & Views, page 214

244 PUMP & CIRCUMSTANCE Ruth Silverman’s got what femme-physique fans are looking for: Lots of pics with fit chicks.

260 MIND/BODY CONNECTION Randall Strossen, Ph.D., gives you a guaranteed formula for good workouts. Then Dave Draper’s got lots of straight talk from a crooked mouth.

272 READERS WRITE Piling on mass, natural notions, amino awe and pros and contests.

In the next IRON MAN Next month we have loads of additional musclebuilding insight from Doug McGuff, M.D. The good doctor discusses extreme abbreviated workouts— once every 14 days—and how to speed up the anabolic process. Then we have Jerry Brainum’s take on the science of muscle growth—and our top-six size-surging facts you can use to get huge. Plus, speaking of science, it’s our annual muscle-science roundup, with a snapshot of all the research from the past year that can help or hurt your bodybuilding and fat-loss efforts. It’s a muscle-building, research-wielding anabolic buffet! Watch for the jammin’ January IRON MAN on newsstands the first week of December.

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John Balik’s Founders 1936-1986: Peary & Mabel Rader

Publisher’s Letter

Training and Life’s Cycle The bodybuilding lifestyle, as practiced by the true iron man, is a style of living that should enhance and extend your active, healthful life. There are absolute parallels between the stages of life and the evolution of perspective that life brings to training. All along the way bodybuilding can and should be an integral part of a healthful lifestyle.

Youthful exuberance and its inevitable over-the-top enthusiasm are wonderful to experience and to see in others but are impossible to maintain over the long haul. That white-hot fire burns itself down relatively quickly to embers that should smolder for a lifetime. I say that exuberance burns down “relatively quickly” because most of us started training around age 14, and we hope to be training another 70 years, enjoying the workouts and our lives along the way. But there are perils, especially during the early years.

For example, the competitive goals of youthful bodybuilders can create dangers that only become apparent later in their training lives. Some young and not-so-young athletes step over the boundary between body building and body destruction. IRON MAN has always stressed that bodybuilding is a process, and while it is primarily about becoming bigger, stronger and faster, that’s just the surface result.

Obsession by its very nature leads to a narrow view. That tunnel vision is essential to reaching an important competitive goal; however, it’s a two-edged sword, one side being success and the other being hidden or unrecognized danger. In youth, we tend to block out or diminish the danger in our minds when we’re in pursuit of the goal. Competitive bodybuilding, like every other sport today, operates at a fever pitch of competitiveness that has led to a plague of performance-enhancing substances. Yes, we have bigger physiques, more home runs and ever increasing weights being hoisted, but at what cost? I call this “the no such thing as a free lunch” rule.

I’m not going to repeat the sad litany of athletes from track to football to bodybuilding and powerlifting who have died in their 30s, 40s and 50s. I merely pose the question: What is going on here? I don’t have an answer, but on the other hand, I know many lifelong bodybuilders from Jack LaLanne (92 years old) to Zabo Koszewski (80s) to Bill Pearl (70s) to Gene Mozée (60s) for whom bodybuilding has been as close to a fountain of youth as anyone has ever seen. I could name many more, but I think I’ve made my point—that bodybuilding should improve your life and help lengthen it.

Enjoy your workouts. The process is one of the rewards. IM

Publisher/Editorial Director: John Balik Associate Publisher: Warren Wanderer Design Director: Michael Neveux Editor in Chief: Stephen Holman Art Director: T. S. Bratcher Senior Editor: Ruth Silverman Editor at Large: Lonnie Teper Articles Editors: L.A. Perry, Caryne Brown Assistant Art Director: Aldrich Bonifacio Designer: Emerson Miranda IRON MAN Staff: Vuthy Keo, Mervin Petralba, R. Anthony Toscano Contributing Authors: Jerry Brainum, Eric Broser, David Chapman, Teagan Clive, Lorenzo Cornacchia, Daniel Curtis, Dave Draper, Michael Gündill, Rosemary Hallum, Ph.D., John Hansen, Ron Harris, Ori Hofmekler, Rod Labbe, Skip La Cour, Jack LaLanne, Butch Lebowitz, Stuart McRobert, Gene Mozée, Charles Poliquin, Larry Scott, Jim Shiebler, Roger Schwab, C.S. Sloan, Bill Starr, Bradley Steiner, Eric Sternlicht, Ph.D., Randall Strossen, Ph.D., Richard Winett, Ph.D., and David Young Contributing Artists: Steve Cepello, Larry Eklund, Ron Dunn, Jake Jones Contributing Photographers: Jim Amentler, Ron Avidan, Reg Bradford, Jimmy Caruso, Bill Comstock, Bill Dobbins, Jerry Fredrick, Irvin Gelb, Isaac Hinds, Dave Liberman, J.M. Manion, Gene Mozée, Mitsuru Okabe, Rob Sims, Leo Stern

Director of Marketing: Helen Yu, 1-800-570-IRON, ext. 1 Accounting: Dolores Waterman Subscriptions Manager: Sonia Melendez, 1-800-570-IRON, ext. 2 E-mail: soniazm@aol.com Advertising Director: Warren Wanderer 1-800-570-IRON, ext. 1 (518) 743-1696; FAX: (518) 743-1697 Advertising Coordinator: Jonathan Lawson, (805) 385-3500, ext. 320 Newsstand Consultant: Angelo Gandino, (516) 796-9848 We reserve the right to reject any advertising at our discretion without explanation. All manuscripts, art or other submissions must be accompanied by a selfaddressed, stamped envelope. Send submissions to IRON MAN, 1701 Ives Avenue, Oxnard, CA 93033.

We are not responsible for unsolicited material.

Writers and photographers should send for our Guidelines outlining specifications for submissions.

IRON MAN is an open forum. We also reserve the right to edit any letter or manuscript as we see fit, and photos submitted have an implied waiver of copyright. Please consult a physician before beginning any diet or exercise program. Use the information published in IRON MAN at your own risk.

IRON MAN Internet Addresses: Web Site: www.ironmanmagazine.com John Balik, Publisher: ironleader@aol.com Steve Holman, Editor in Chief: ironchief@aol.com Ruth Silverman, Senior Editor: ironwman@aol.com T.S. Bratcher, Art Director: ironartz@aol.com Helen Yu, Director of Marketing: irongrrrl@aol.com Jonathan Lawson, Ad Coordinator: ironjdl@aol.com Sonia Melendez, Subscriptions: soniazm@aol.com

24 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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SIZE MATTERS, SO‌

Going to your heaviest weight on your first work set can create more overload and trigger more growth.

26 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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MASS MOVES

Pyramid Permutations

Neveux \ Model: Moe El Moussawi

Set 1: 135 x 15 Set 2: 185 x 12 Set 3: 225 x 8 Set 4: 255 x 6 Set 5: 280 x 3-4 While that’s a tried-and-true method, there’s an alternative that I believe is even more effective.

The problem with traditional pyramid schemes is that the first few sets are normally not maximum efforts and are meant to simply warm up the muscles for the heavier sets to follow; however, while you’re getting a nice warmup, you’re also sapping valuable energy that you could use on your heavier sets. When you use light weights and perform higher reps, you produce a lot of lactic acid in the muscles. That, among other things, will make you weaker on your later sets. The problem here is actually twofold. Not only are the earlier warmups weakening you, but they’re also making inroads into your recovery ability, which can hinder your overall growth.

An alternative is the reverse pyramid. Here the warmups are very brief and gear up your mind and body for the heavier weights to come without tiring you or producing large amounts of lactic acid. Sets of 12 to 15 reps aren’t necessary. You just need a few progressive sets of one to three reps, as long as you take the proper precautions.

The first thing you should do upon entering the gym is to warm up on a bike or treadmill for five to 10 minutes to raise core body temperature. That’s perhaps the most important step for preventing injury. Next, some simple calisthenics like shoulder rolls and arm rotations will loosen your joints and warm up your tendons and ligaments. Now you’re ready to begin your first exercise. Again, let’s look at the bench press as an example:

Set 1: 135 x 3 Set 2: 185 x 3 Set 3: 235 x 2 Set 4: 285 x 4 Set 5: 265 x 6 Set 6: 245 x 8 As you can see, with the reverse pyramid you will go to your heaviest work set immediately after your warmup. Since you haven’t sapped your strength with high reps, you’ll be able to max out at a higher poundage and get even more reps than with the traditional pyramid. While your second and third work sets will be somewhat lighter, they’ll still be heavier and for more reps than in the first pyramid scheme. Heavier weight plus more reps equals more growth.

Once you begin your second exercise, you may need only one or two quick warmup sets before going once again to your max weight.

That’s how I prefer to train at every workout, and since I started doing so, my muscle growth and strength increases have never really hit a wall.

If you’ve been stuck in a rut with your own training, give the reverse pyramid a try. It could be just the plateau buster you’ve been looking for.

—Eric Broser www.PRRSTraining.com

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Neveux \ Model: Moe El Moussawi

The traditional method of set progression is known as pyramiding. You start with a lighter weight for higher reps and add some weight and lower the number of reps on each successive set.

Using the bench press as an example, here’s a typical pyramid scheme for a 300-pound (one-rep max) bench presser:

Try starting with your heavy poundage

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TRAIN TO GAIN

FAT FLUX

Aerobics

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BACK ATTACK

Chin up, my good man!

Toney Freeman.

Comstock

In this business we often toss around hyperbole like “lats so wide they block out the sun.” In a couple rare cases, though, it’s not hyperbole. We all know Ronnie Coleman has a wingspan like a B-52 bomber, but rising IFBB star Toney Freeman is right there with him. And since Toney is 6’2”, his back width is even more impressive. The surprising fact is that Toney started out lifting in his early 20s with a typical ectomorph’s structure—tall and narrow. That tremendous width was no gift from God but rather the result of thousands of reps of wide-grip chinups.

“I was pretty weak on the bench press and shoulder presses when I started out, so instead I did a lot of chinups,” he says. “I would make a game out of chinups, selecting a number like 100 and doing as many sets as it took to reach it.”

Toney got so good at chins that before he weighed even 200 pounds he was able to do sets of wide-grip chins with three 45-pound plates hanging from his waist.

Within a few years his dedication to the exercise had paid off handsomely. No longer narrow, he now had such a wide back and a narrow waist that his V-taper was one of the best in amateur bodybuilding. “You can’t beat wide-grip chins, and you can’t get the same results with lat pulldowns,” he states. “You have to do chins if you want a wide back. And if you aren’t strong enough to do chins, use an assisted chin/dip machine and gradually reduce the amount of assistance it gives you each week until you can use your own bodyweight. When you’re strong enough to do three good sets of 12 reps, squeezing your back at the top by crunching your shoulder blades together, it’s time to start adding weight.”

So if you’d like a back so wide it would take an ant three days to walk across it, chin up, my good man!

—Ron Harris

Neveux \ Model: Tamer Elshahat

Want to be W-I-D-E?

Aerobics, or endurance exercise, beneficially affects several cardiovascular risk factors. It lowers blood pressure, increases nitric oxide release in blood vessels and lowers elevated blood lipids, or fats, such as cholesterol. A new study, presented at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting in San Francisco earlier this year, illustrated a novel way that aerobics lowers cholesterol.

The study measured levels of sterols, substances produced in the cholesterol synthesis pathway, in 30 sedentary subjects (20 women, 10 men, average age 59) before and after six months of aerobics training. The results showed a trend for a 20 percent increase in the sterol campesterol, along with an increase in protective

high-density-lipoprotein cholesterol and a lowering of blood triglycerides, or fat.

The significance of this is that campesterol interferes with the uptake and absorption of food cholesterol, as well as cholesterol produced in the body.

That leads to increased cholesterol excretion and a lowering of blood cholesterol levels. Note that cholesterol, unlike fat, cannot be burned, and excretion is the only way the body can dispose of an excess. So aerobics may help prevent cardiovascular disease through this previously unknown mechanism.

—Jerry Brainum Feeney, L.A., et al. (2006). Effect of endurance exercise on markers of cholesterol absorption and synthesis.

Med Sci Sports Exer. 38:S483-S484.

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YOU CAN BENCH BIG Add 20 Pounds to Your Bench Press Almost Overnight!

How would you like a surge in upper-body power and a bigger bench press—say, 20 extra pounds on the bar—after only a couple of workouts? Sure, adding 20 pounds to your bench in two or three training sessions may sound crazy, especially if your bench press poundage has been stuck in neutral for a while.

But nine times out of 10 this stall is due to an easily correctible muscle weakness—not in the pecs, delts or triceps but in a group of muscles known as the rotator cuff.

The rotator cuff muscles stabilize the shoulder joint. During the bench press and almost all other upperbody movements these muscles protect the shoulder joint and prevent ball-and-socket slippage. If these muscles are underdeveloped, they become the weak link in the action and your pressing strength suffers, or worse, you injure your shoulder. One of the best ways to strengthen this area and create an upper-body power surge is with direct rotator cuff exercise.

Once you start using the ShoulderHorn for two or three sets twice a week, your pressing poundages will skyrocket. This device allows you to train your rotator cuff muscles in complete comfort and with precise strengthening action. After a few weeks you’ll be amazed at your new benching power. There have been reports of 20-to-30-pound increases in a matter of days.

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Training to Failure

Does it decrease anabolic hormones?

A group of researchers compared the effects of training to failure and not training to failure for 16 weeks.

Their results were reported at the ’06 meeting of the ACSM.1 Forty-two active men were randomly assigned to either a failure or a nonfailure group. They underwent muscular and power testing, as well as baseline hormonal testing, before the start of training and at the six-, 11- and 16-week marks during the study. In the final peaking phase, both groups did a conventional style of training, using weights equal to 75 to 80 percent of onerep maximum.

Both groups made similar strength gains in the bench press, squat and arm-muscle-power output, as well as the leg extensor, or front-thigh, muscles. The primary differences in the groups related to hormones. Those in the failure group showed a reduction in insulinlike growth factor 1, with an increase in the main blood protein-binding hormone of IGF-1, IGFBP-3. Those in the nonfailure group showed decreases in resting cortisol levels, with an increase in resting serum testosterone levels.

Based on those results, it would appear that training to failure lowers IGF-1, an important muscle anabolic hormone. The nonfailure group also had higher testosterone levels. On the other hand, the gains made by both groups were similar. Since the failure group did three sets of each exercise to failure, some may fault the study because that much exercise is considered overtraining, and it’s not surprising that it would depress anabolic hormones.

Another study presented at the conference got different results.2 It evaluated the effects of a single

Neveux \ Model: Derik Farnsworth

TRAIN TO GAIN

INTENSITY

weight workout in eight healthy young men, average age 22, all of whom had at least one year of training experience. They used common exercises for both upper- and lower-body muscles and trained in a circuit style, alternating upper- and lower-body movements. They did all exercises to failure, resting 10 and 20 seconds between sets. The entire workout lasted only 15 minutes, which is consistent with recommendations for some current high-intensity-training designs.

Participants experienced a significant increase in serum testosterone, averaging 29.42 percent, immediately following the workout. Testosterone levels dropped 26.47 percent within one hour after the workout; however, the sharp rise in testosterone that occurred right after the workout led the authors to suggest that “a short training stimulus may contribute to muscle anabolic responses.”

—Jerry Brainum

Neveux \ Model: Derik Farnsworth

References 1 Izquierdo, M., et al. (2006). Strength training leading to failure induces insulinlike growth factor 1 reduction and IGFBP-3 elevation. Med Sci Sports Exerc.

38:S287.

2 Marin, D., et al. (2006). One session of resistance training may increase serum testosterone and triiodothyronine in young men. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 38: S285.

32 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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UCLA Football

Strength and conditioning

The UCLA football program has made a significant improvement in the past three years. There are several key reasons.

One is the new head coach, Karl Dorrell, and his capable assistant coaches. Another is Dorrell’s hiring strength and conditioning coach E.J. “Doc” Kreis, D.A., who began his tenure at UCLA in June 2003.

Kreis has had an illustrious career, having coached at Colorado, Middle Tennessee State, Vanderbilt and Clemson. He built a series of successes in football, track and field, basketball, baseball and dozens of collegiate sports. Doc earned his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in physical education. I recall watching a game on ESPN when the announcer mentioned that Doc Kreis was the only NCAA Division I strength and conditioning coach with a doctorate. As we all know, education provides a great deal of knowledge, but it isn’t always enough. Practical experience carries just as much weight. Doc Kreis traveled to the former East Germany, Bulgaria and Russia to study their methods of weightlifting and strength training. He has received numerous awards, including induction into the Strength and Conditioning Hall of Fame in 2003, in York, Pennsylvania; master strength & conditioning coach, Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association, 2001; 1994 Stan Jones recipient, Strength Coach of the Year; 1992 and 1994 National Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year.

Doc brought all of that knowledge and experience to UCLA and began implementing a new speed-strength and conditioning program immediately. He moved out machines that he thought were overrated and replaced them with combined lifting platforms and power racks. As of this date the UCLA weight room has nearly 60 platforms. There are a few machines for pulldowns, neck training, Hammer Jammers, etc., but his program is centered on functional, weight-bearing exercises that have carryover to sports performance. Many of the lifts derive from Olympic weightlifting, including power cleans,

Doc Kreis has restructured the players’ weighttraining program to include mostly free-weight exercises.

Photo courtesy of E.J. “Doc” Kreis

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clean pulls, squats, front squats, push presses and split jerks off the rack.

Kreis said, “I choose the biggest lifts and heavy loads as the basis of the program. The power clean, squat and bench press are three of the biggest lifts we work with.

One must be smart with the selection of reps, intensity and frequency. Awareness of these factors is critical. When working with athletes, you must look where you want to be and work backward with the plan.”

Other exercises complement one another. “I may have athletes perform the power clean and bench press one day and perform heavy dumbbell rows and dumbbell presses the next day. There are other lifts as well, such as glute/ham raises, pulldowns or pullups and abdominal work. Much is said today about ‘core training.’ All heavy lifts require core strength to perform them. We try to enhance the program by adding exercises in specific positions for the athletes. This helps them perform better and helps identify strengths and weaknesses.”

Doc has extensive experience with periodization, and he designs several peaks each off-season. Kreis adds, “UCLA is on a quarter system, and that actually helps the timing of our training cycles. They buy into the program because it works.

The athletes know that if they perform every set and every rep of the program, they will be stronger and faster. We are looking for success.”

Kreis’ attention to detail is obvious. “We look at the next workout. We look at the next few hours after training. I see changes right away in the program,” he explains.

“Success from the strength and conditioning facility must be displayed on the field. We are faster and stronger and play well as the game progresses. It has been said that you should be able to play your best at the end of the game, not the beginning.

“We need to have safe and tough workouts. These workouts are followed with attention to recovery. Nutrition is a critical part of recovery. We must train more efficiently today. The middle school and high school athletes must learn this too.

IRON MAN magazine has a history of featuring original thinkers. This dates back to Peary Rader and continues with John Balik, Mike Neveux and Steve Holman. Progressive thinking and awareness of the history of success in training is very important.”

UCLA has won 99 national championships in all sports combined. It will be the first to win 100. The strength and conditioning program has the full support of nationally prominent coaches such as Coach Dorrell, men’s basketball coach Ben Howland, men’s baseball coach John Savage, women’s softball coach Sue Enquist, water polo coach Adam Krikorian and men’s volleyball coach Al Scates, among others.

Football fans, and sports fans in general, keep an eye on the success of UCLA and know how hard these young athletes are working in the weight room and on the field.

—Joseph M. Horrigan Editor’s note: Visit www.softtissuecenter.com for reprints of Horrigan’s past Sportsmedicine columns that have appeared in IRON MAN. You can order the books Strength, Conditioning and Injury Prevention for Hockey by Joseph Horrigan, D.C., and E.J. “Doc” Kreis, D.A., and the 7-Minute Rotator Cuff Solution by Horrigan and Jerry Robinson from Home Gym Warehouse, (800) 447-0008 or at www.home-gym.com.

34 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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The Parallel-Grip Deadlift For a number of years the parallel-grip deadlift was called the trap bar deadlift because bodybuilders often performed it with a trap bar. The rhombusshaped trap bar was developed by Al Gerard to enable him to deadlift without the back problems he experienced with straight-bar deadlifts. In recent years the shrug bar has provided a variation that because of its hexagonal shape permits more foot room. Furthermore, there are other ways of performing the parallel-grip deadlift—rectangular and square bars, some specially bent bars that don’t enclose the bodybuilder, and even a Hammer Strength machine. A pair of dumbbells can mimic a trap or shrug bar if you hold them at the sides of your thighs using a parallel grip.

The dumbbell deadlift has been around longer than the trap bar or other parallelgrip devices, which are really simulations of dumbbells for the purposes of deadlifting and shrugging. Many male bodybuilders eventually required large dumbbells for the parallel-grip dumbbell deadlift, and most gyms don’t have dumbbells that are heavy enough.

Large dumbbells are also unwieldy, and even small ’bells can get in the way of the legs and thighs. Dumbbells may limit stance width and flare more than the one-piece bars do and thus hamper optimum technique. Furthermore, dumbbells, because their plates are smaller than the full-size barbell plates used on a parallel-grip bar, enable an increased range of motion that can result in a dangerous rounding of the lower back.

If you use dumbbells, restrict your range of motion by deadlifting from a sturdy crate or platform. Find the right height of crate or platform that permits the fullest safe range of motion without any rounding of your lower back.

Although it’s a form of the deadlift, the parallel-grip deadlift can involve the thighs to a greater extent than the regular straight-bar deadlift because of the increased knee flexion.

That’s led to the parallel-grip deadlift being used as an alternative to the squat.

Squat aficionados need to understand that the squat isn’t equally effective for everyone, and parallel-grip deadlift aficionados need to understand that the parallel-grip deadlift isn’t as effective for everyone either.

You can’t change your body structure—limb length, the proportions of femur length to tibia length, torso length to limb lengths and upper limbs to lower limbs. Those factors all influence deadlifting, parallel-grip deadlifting and squatting efficiency. By adjusting your technique and exercise selection, you can modify the effects of your body structure on your training and physique.

Some bodybuilders who are structurally well built for the

Is it a satisfactory squat substitute? squats get tremendous thigh development from them. Others, with different structures, are ungainly squatters who can’t avoid leaning over. This turns the movement into more of a lower-back exercise than one for the thighs and greatly increases the risk of injury. The parallel-grip deadlift can be a godsend for them and for others who can’t squat due to lower-back injury or flexibility problems.

The parallel-grip deadlift has a lot of advantages:

A pair of dumbbells can mimic a trap bar.

1) It’s less technically challenging than the squat.

Neveux \ Model: Derik Farnsworth

TRAIN TO GAIN

HARDGAINER

2) You hold the bar beneath your body rather than precariously near the top of your spine, as in the squat, so there’s no bar bearing down on you.

3) You don’t need squat stands, a power rack or safety bars.

4) It’s easier to dump a failed parallel-grip deadlift than a failed squat.

5) You don’t need spotters.

6) You can do it from a dead stop at the bottom position.

The parallel-grip deadlift is tailor-made for bodybuilders who don’t squat well. Encourage the management at the gym where you train to get a parallel-grip deadlift bar. It’s not expensive. It should be required equipment for all gyms.

Be aware that it’s easy to injure yourself on the parallelgrip deadlift if you don’t use correct technique, as it is on any incorrectly performed exercise. Correct technique includes keeping a naturally concave lower spine at all times, minimizing forward travel of the knees and avoiding extremes of torso position—leaning forward greatly or holding yourself exaggeratedly upright. Stay upright to maximize quad action and minimize lower-back stress.

The parallel-grip deadlift has the potential to be the numberone most effective exercise for many bodybuilders.

Note: Parallel-grip deadlift bars are available at Home-Gym. com —Stuart McRobert www.Hardgainer.com Editor’s note: Stuart McRobert’s first byline in IRON MAN appeared in 1981. He’s the author of the new 638page bodybuilding opus Build Muscle, Lose Fat, Look Great, available from Home Gym Warehouse (800) 447-0008 or www

36 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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Cardio Fitness

Can weights replace standard aerobics?

Bodybuilders continue to debate whether they need to do aerobic exercise. One school deems aerobics not only superfluous but also a hindrance to muscle gains because it contributes to overtraining and blunts the release of anabolic hormones, coupled with an increase in catabolic hormones.

The benefits of aerobics, those critics say, including fat burning and developing cardiovascular fitness, can all be achieved simply through weight training.

Those opinions are often based on the improvement in oxygen intake and heart rate that occurs with intense weight training. The same two factors are responsible for the majority of health and body composition benefits attributed to aerobics. So why do aerobics? Anyone who’s done a hard set of high-rep squats can attest to the increased breathing and elevated heart rate that ensues.

A study reported at the San Francisco meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine this spring investigated what happens when you do squats for 12 weeks using aerobic-training principles. The squat program was designed to comply with guidelines for increasing cardiovascular fitness.

Nine young men did parallel squats three days a week on nonconsecutive days. Each workout consisted of 10 sets of squats, with rest periods determined by heart rate. The sets were done as follows:

Neveux \ Model: Federica Belli

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Set 1: 20 reps at 20 percent of one-rep maximum weight

Set 2: 20 reps at 25 percent of one-rep max Set 3: 20 reps at 25 percent of one-rep max Set 4: 20 reps at 30 percent of one-rep max Set 5: 20 reps at 35 percent of one-rep max Set 6: 18 reps at 50 percent of one-rep max Set 7: 15 reps at 65 percent of one-rep max Set 8: 12 reps at 70 percent of one-rep max Set 9: 10 reps at 70 percent of one-rep max

Neveux \ Model: Amy Lynn

Set 10: 8 reps at 80 percent of one-rep max The heart rate was maintained at 55 to 75 percent of maximum during all training sessions, which lasted for 20 to 30 minutes. At the end of the study the subjects showed an average 36 percent gain in one-rep-maximum weight used on the squat, along with a 7.5 percent increase in cross-sectional area of the thigh muscle (an indication of muscle size increase). On the other hand, despite following precise training guidelines to increase aerobic fitness, none of the subjects increased their peak oxygen consumption, as usually occurs with conventional aerobics.

Despite raising their heart rates to aerobic levels, the subjects couldn’t duplicate the effects of aerobics, even when doing the exercise best known for increasing breathing and heart rate—barbell squats.

—Jerry Brainum Burrell, W., et al. (2006). Cardiorespiratory adaptations to a heart rate-based high-intensity parallel-squat resistance-training program. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 38:S289.

38 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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Charles Poliquin’s

Smart Training

Time to Train

Neveux \ Model: Jorge Betancourt

Q: What’s the best time of day to train? I work flexible hours, so I can train whenever I want. I want to get the best results for my training efforts.

A: Studies have shown that maximal strength levels reach their peak values at three and 11 hours after awakening. In other words, if you wake up at 7 a.m., you should train at 10 a.m. Circardian hormonal fluctuations and neural facilitation explain where the strength-enhanced hours fall.

Another reason you want to wait a few hours before weight training is synovial fluid temperature. Synovial fluid is basically joint lubricant. Apparently, it takes three hours for the joints to reach an optimal level of warmth and viscosity.

If you can’t train at those hours, don’t be overly concerned with the statistics. Many professional bodybuilders have trained at very odd hours and yet displayed very impressive physiques. Bill Pearl trains at 3 a.m. So did Boyer Coe in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

In a normal person, cortisol levels are high in the morning and diminish progressively during the day. They reach their lowest point around midnight.

The problem with training too late is that working out raises cortisol, and elevated levels of cortisol interfere with sleep. At that point during the evening your cortisol should be low so you can sleep better. If you’re going to train late, I suggest you do what I call a yin stack, which will help your nervous system calm down in the evening. Strength training is a very yang activity; the following stack will build your yin reserve. If yang is fire, yin is oil. The more oil you’ve got, the more yang you can put out. So here it is: Magnesium glycinate, 450 milligrams. Given that strength athletes who are experiencing elevated catecholamines are often insulin resistant and that insulin resistance retards cellular uptake of magnesium, it’s crucial to use highly absorbable chelated forms of magnesium, such as glycinate.

Magnesium has been demonstrated to suppress the heart’s release of catecholamines, which is an indirect index of sympathetic efferent neuronal activity.

Magnesium calms the nervous system and makes us less irritable under stress.

Taurine, 3,000 milligrams. Along with GABA, taurine is a major inhibitory neurotransmitter, specifically acting as a modulator of GABAnergic function.

Increasing your taurine intake increases glutamic acid decarboxylase, the enzyme responsible for GABA synthesis. Taurine also has the ability to improve insulin sensitivity, thus promoting faster rebuilding of your glycogen stores and improved insulin sensitivity.

Phosphatidylcholine, 1.5 grams.

This completes the stack. It helps the nervous system calm down by diminishing sympathetic nervous activity. I learned about how useful phosphatidylcholine is for promoting weight gain from Robert Crayhon. Eliminating neurotoxins requires that the cell membrane be nourished with balanced essential fatty acids (4-to-1, plus HUFAs) and supportive phospholipids. Phosphatidylcholine is

Studies show that max-strength levels peak at three and 11 hours after awakening.

40 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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Neveux \ Model: Steve McLeod

the most abundant phospholipid of the cell membrane and is a hepato-protectant. Since the liver has 33,000 square meters of membrane area, it’s crucial to protect it from toxicity and infection. Furthermore, phosphatidylcholine detoxifies xeno-estrogens—which would help your legs get leaner, as receptors for estrogens are mainly in the lower body.

Take the stack twice in the evening, at dinner and with your bedtime snack. Your sleep will improve as sympathetic nervous system activity calms down. [Note: To get the yin stack, contact Judith@CharlesPoliquin.com.]

When you don’t have a lot of time to train, you need to select exercises that recruit a lot of muscle mass, like presses and squats.

Q: I’m presently in chiropractic school. I have been enjoying your articles because you combine science and experience in designing your programs.

Using your principles I have put on 22 pounds in the past five months. In the summer I trained three days out of five. Now, during school, I can do only two one-hour workouts per week. I want to at least maintain my mass (I am 5’11’’, 210 pounds with 12 percent fat). From reading your column, I think I have a pretty good idea of how to vary the tempos, sets and reps, but I have a bit of hesitation regarding exercise choices. Can you help me?

A: When you’re concerned about time, you have to select exercises that recruit a lot of muscle mass. Your most effective exercises should be taken from the following lists.

Select one exercise from each group: Best Pressing Exercises (pick one) Decline dumbbell presses Parallel-bar dips Cambered-bar bench presses Dumbbell incline presses Flat-bench dumbbell presses Upper-Body Pulling Exercises (pick one) Semisupinated chinups Wide-grip chinups Supinated shoulder-width chins One-arm dumbbell rows Twin-handle seated cable rows Hip and Knee Extensions (pick one) Back squats Front squats Bent-knee deadlifts Power cleans Split squats

Neveux \ Model: Mike Morris

Remedial Exercises (pick one from each exercise family) Elbow flexor family Elbow extension Calves family Abdominals family So a sample routine that would take just under one hour would look like this (listed as exercise, sets x reps, tempo, rest interval): A. Bent-knee deadlifts 4 x 8-10 x 4/0/2/0 x 3 minutes B-1. Supinated-grip chinups 3 x 10-12 x 3/0/1/0 x 90 seconds

42 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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Look for things that make exercises harder, not easier, like pausing between reps on deadlifts.

B-2. Parallel-bar dips 3 x 10-12 x 3/0/1/0 x 90 seconds C-1. Incline dumbbell curls 3 x 10-12 x 3/0/1/0 x 90 seconds C-2. Lying dumbbell extensions 3 x 10-12 x 3/0/1/0 x 90 seconds D-1. Low-cable pull-ins 3 x 10-12 x 3/0/1/0 x 60 seconds D-2. Seated calf raises 3 x 15-20 x 1/1/1/0 x 60 seconds All muscle groups are trained. Once every six workouts or so you will want to change all loading parameters: sets, reps, tempo, rest interval and choice of exercise. The changed routine may look like this. In this new routine you should drop direct arm work (i.e., curls and triceps): A-1. Back squats 4 x 6-8 x 5/0/1/0 x 2 minutes A-2. Lying leg curls 4 x 6-8 x 5/0/1/0 x 2 minutes B-1. Flat-bench dumbbell presses 4 x 6-8 x 3/1/1/0 x 2 minutes B-2. One-arm dumbbell rows 4 x 6-8 x 5/0/1/0 x 2 minutes C-1. Twisting crunches 3 x 8-10 x 2/0/2/0 x 60 seconds C-2. Standing calf raises 3 x 8-10 x 1/1/1/0 x 60 seconds

Q: You have a reputation for being a stickler for proper form. What are some of your recommendations on proper training form?

A: People with low self-esteem refuse to live consciously.

Trainees who use proper form usually have high levels of self-esteem. They show it by: 1) Their interest in progression, not theatrics.

2) Lifting for themselves, not for others. They are not concerned about what the other guy thinks if they lift somewhat lighter loads. Remember it is not where you start that matters, it’s where you end.

Here are some of my suggestions on form: 1) You should look for things that will make an exercise harder, not easier, such as pausing the bar on the floor between reps on the deadlifts. That creates more overload on the neuro-muscular system than bouncing the plates off the floor. Successful bodybuilders feel the muscle, not the weight! There is a very large difference between training for strength and size, and training to lift high loads explosively. They are two different goals, so two different training methods should be used.

2) Never sacrifice style for increased poundage. I know people who increase their bench presses by 60 pounds in one month. They do it by adjusting their form—lifting hips off the bench, plus 25 pounds; bouncing in the bottom position, plus 10 pounds; increasing grip width, plus 10 pounds; not coming up to lockout, plus 15 pounds. That is one of the reasons I recommend changing the exercise every six workouts or so. When you’re just about to hit a plateau, it’s time to move on to another exercise. I remember being in New Zealand 15 years ago, and everybody used 225 on the bar for bench presses. If you did not use that much weight, you were not a man. You should’ve seen the different interpretations of what a bench press looked like.

3) Lower weights more slowly than you lift them. You control the weight; the weight does not control you. Even though you are stronger in eccentric contractions than in concentric contractions, you recruit only half the fibers when lowering a load, so the actual tension on the recruited fibers is double. So take your time and benefit more from your set by maximizing the overload on the eccentric portion of every rep.

Editor’s note: Charles Poliquin is recognized as one of the world’s most successful strength coaches, having coached Olympic medalists in 12 different sports, including the U.S. women’s track-andfield team for the 2000 Olympics. He’s spent years researching European journals (he’s fluent in English, French and German) and speaking with other coaches and scientists in his quest to optimize training methods. For more on his books, seminars and methods, visit www .CharlesPoliquin .net. Also, see his ad Charles Poliquin on page 189. IM Bradford

Neveux \ Model: Jennifer Micheli

3) Knowing that lifting big loads with improper form will not get you lifting big loads with proper form as quickly as lifting with proper form at all times.

w w w. C h a r l e s P o l i q u i n . n e t

44 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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\ JULY 2006 181

Steve Holman’s

Critical Mass

Waist Management Q: I read in one of your books that you and Jonathan don’t use lifting belts. Why not?

Q: In The Ultimate Mass Workout and Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building e-books you talk a lot about max-force generation and that you’re supposed to do X Reps at the maxforce point. Is that point where the most fibers are brought into play, or is it just where the muscle has the most leverage to move the most weight?

Neveux \ Model: Nathan Detracy

A: We’ve only recently gone back to using a lifting belt.

The reason we didn’t for so many years is that we believed that the belt is a crutch that can cause your lower-back muscles to become weak. A couple of recent studies changed our minds.

Jerry Brainum reported on the studies in the August ’06 issue. One found that intra-abdominal pressure was 25 to 40 percent greater when subjects wore a lifting belt during heavy squats. That means the spine is more stable and there’s less chance of spinal compression. Due to years of heavy squats—with belts, mind you—we both tend to incur lower-back injuries too frequently. After reading about the new study, we decided that wearing a belt on any type of squat may reduce our chance of injury.

That was reason enough, but the second study really sealed the deal. It looked at muscle activation during squats and found that a lifting belt increased muscular involvement of the quads and hamstrings. That may be due to more confidence coming from feeling tighter or the abil-

ity to keep the torso more upright with the extra midsection support. Either way, getting more muscle bang for your effort buck has got us strapping on the lifting belt again.

Just recently we found a wide wraparound that provides tighter, fuller support than most belts. It’s the Tommy Kono Waist Band, and we were sold on its effectiveThe Tommy Kono Waist Band is ness the first time we a more functional alternative to wrapped it around our the standard lifting belt. waists and sealed the Velcro. It’s comfortable because it’s made of a pliable elastic material. And it’s wide, covering your entire abdominal and lower-back area. The elastic material also helps keep heat in, which improves midsection muscle function (and your waist looks much smaller too). At $29.95 it’s pretty inexpensive for such a key piece of equipment—and it folds up to the size of a spiral notebook. My apologies if this sounds like a commercial, but the “belt” has really made our leg workouts more productive. If you’re interested in getting one, go to www .Home-Gym.com.

A: To paraphrase Steven J. Fleck, Ph.D., and William J. Kraemer, Ph.D., there’s an optimal length at which muscle fibers generate max force. It’s when the target muscle is elongated, but not so much that it’s inordinately stretched.

As the muscle contracts, or shortens, less tension occurs because with excessive shortening there’s an overlap of actin filaments, so they interfere with each other’s ability to contact the myosin crossbridges.

I don’t think you can equate max force and leverage unless you’re talking about fiber leverage. The max-force point is the ideal spot on the stroke where the most target-muscle fibers can generate optimal power; however, it may not be the most advantageous point for moving the most weight on a particular lift. That depends on the individual’s muscle lengths and attachment points, strength in assisting muscles and so on. For example, on the bench press some people may not be as strong near the bottom of the stroke as they are near the top. Is that

Many bodybuilders squat without a belt, but a new study says that midsection support can improve quad and hamstring activation during the lift.

46 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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Steve Holman’s

because the pecs can activate more fibers near the top of the stroke? No. It’s because there’s better leverage with assisting muscle groups. More pectoral activation occurs near the bottom of the stroke.

The top of the stroke is more triceps and front Muscles fibers align for better activation delts. when the target muscle is somewhat That’s the elongated, or stretched. That’s the key X reason we spot, where end-of-set partials should suggest you occur. do X-Rep partials at a point on the stroke where the target muscle is somewhat elongated, such as near the bottom of a bench press or chinup. The fibers are more advantageously positioned for firing. As you move toward the contracted position, the fibers become so bunched up that firing becomes more inefficient.

Neveux \ Model: Luke Wood

Critical Mass

Incline one-arm lateral raises do good things for the rotator-cuff muscles— and they also round out the delts nicely.

Q: I recently spoke with a sportsmedicine doctor about lifting and exercise in general. He made the observation that bodybuilding routines almost uniformly neglect rotator cuff training. Don’t you think the programs you prescribe would be more effective with exercises that address those issues?

A: I agree that many bodybuilding routines neglect rotator cuff strengthening. In fact, Jonathan and I used to use the ShoulderHorn regularly, but we train on our lunch hour, so time is a factor. We use it now only if we feel shoulder pain, which is rare because we’ve discovered that if you do the right exercises and avoid or at least deemphsize the wrong ones, you need little, if any, direct rotator cuff work.

For example, a lot of rotator cuff damage is the result of too much attention to the flat-bench press. It’s a good exercise, but moving heavy weight with haphazard form is a sure route to shoulder damage (I still get twinges in my right shoulder joint from an injury I incurred during my powerlifting days doing triples). We either substitute decline-bench presses or wide-grip dips or do bench presses near the end of our chest workout, after the pecs are fatigued. That way we don’t need as much weight to get the job done—and our shoulders stay tight and injury free.

One exercise you should always include for shoulder stability and rotator cuff strength is overhead presses. In the November IRON MAN Bill Starr mentioned that back in the good old days when military presses were the key lift in almost every weight-training regimen, rotator cuff injuries were nonexistent. In fact, he said the lifters back in the ’50s and ’60s didn’t even know what the rotator cuff was because they rarely had problems with it. He said the epidemic of shoulder injuries didn’t start until the bench press supplanted the overhead press as everyone’s key strength lift.

We believe that if you use POF and train all the positions for delts, you’re getting plenty of rotator cuff work.

In addition to overhead presses, which I include in all POF delt routines, incline one-arm laterals, where the arm comes across the torso, trains the rotators through that important plane of movement—and also provides stretch overload for the medial-delt head, which builds more roundness, fullness and width. [Note: For the latest updated information on full-range POF training for each bodypart, see the new e-book 3D Muscle Building, available at www.3DMuscleBuilding.com.]

Editor’s note: Steve Holman is the author of many bodybuilding best-sellers, including Train, Eat, Grow: The Positions-of-Flexion Muscle-Training Manual (see page 84). For information on the POF videos and Size Surge programs, see the ad section beginning on page 270 and 222, respectively. Also visit www.X-Rep.com. IM

48 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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Neveux

Neveux \ Model: Becky Holman

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EAT TO NUTRITION SCIENCE

Recent studies of several antioxidant nutrients prove many to be disappointing. In some cases, however, the poor results have to do with study design.

Take, for example, studies of vitamin E. Vitamin E is fat-soluble, meaning that some fat must be present for it to be assimilated into the body. Studies in which vitamin E is taken with a glass of water are doomed to failure. The vitamin E in such cases simply takes an express route out of the body without being absorbed. Yet that type of study has been published and used as “evidence” against the potential health benefits of the vitamin.

In nature, vitamin E is composed

Vitamin E is fat-soluble, so some fat must be present for it to be assimilated. Many studies that have disproved vitamin E’s health benefits ignore that fact.

of a complex of eight nutrients, with designations such as alpha tocopherol, gamma tocopherol and so on—there are four tocopherols. The rest of the vitamin E complex consists of tocotrienols, which have antioxidant capabilities and other beneficial attributes not found in the tocopherols. Even so, the standard for vitamin E potency is based on the level of just one form: alpha tocopherol. Alpha tocopherol, which is the most abundant in the blood, is carried by a special transporter.

To get the maximum health benefits of vitamin E, you need all eight nutrients of the vitamin E complex. Taking only one form, alpha tocopherol, is bound to produce inferior results. Most of the studies that have “disproved” the benefits of antioxidants focus on just one nutrient, but that’s not the way it works in nature. All antioxidants function as part of a large group. They are synergistic, even restoring each other’s antioxidant activity after exposure to an oxidant.

Plant foods contain the richest sources of antioxidants because they’re synthesized in the plants as protection against various oxidant sources, such as sunlight. The human body also contains built-in antioxidants, such as superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione. When you consider that the average cell must endure an average of 10,000 oxidant hits per minute, it’s not hard to understand how the body can easily be overwhelmed. When that happens, diseases related to out-ofcontrol oxidation emerge—everything from rapid aging to cancer to cardiovascular disease. Most degenera-

Coffee—number 44 in antioxidant content. tive diseases are now known to have underlying inflammation, which is bolstered by oxidative reactions.

We’re constantly bombarded with external sources of oxidation—tobacco smoke, environmental pollutants, food impurities, drugs, alcohol and radiation. They can overwhelm the natural defenses of the body but can be dealt with through the liberal intake of antioxidants. Those may include the usual assortment of vitamins and minerals, but many useful antioxidants are available only in foods. The question is, Which foods offer the richest array of natural antioxidant activity?

A recent study analyzed the antioxidant activity of 1,113 food samples obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Food and Nutrient Analysis program. The highest levels of natural antioxidants were found in spices and herbs, nuts and seeds, berries, fruits and vegetables. The top 50 antioxidant foods, in order, are as follows:

50 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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GROW Nutrition With a Get-Big Mission 1) Ground cloves 2) Dried oregano 3) Ground ginger 4) Ground cinnamon 5) Turmeric powder 6) Walnuts 7) Dried basil 8) Ground yellow mustard 9) Curry powder 10) Pecans 11) Unsweetened baking chocolate 12) Paprika 13) Chili powder 14) Dried parsley 15) Dark molasses 16) Black pepper 17) Prepared artichokes 18) Dark chocolate 19) Blackberries 20) Whole-grain cereal 21) Cranberries 22) Chocolate cook-and-serve pudding mix 23) Bran cereal 24) Chocolate Power Bar 25) Sugar-free chocolate 26) Raspberries 27) Strawberries 28) Blueberries 29) Cooked red cabbage 30) Red wine 31) Organic barley malt syrup 32) Prunes 33) Sour cherries 34) Cooked red peppers 35) Chocolate cookies with vanilla cream filling 36) Cocoa Krispies cereal 37) Chocolate chip cookies 38) Prepared yellow mustard 39) Milk chocolate candy 40) Pistachios 41) Plums 42) Kiwi fruit 43) Cornflakes 44) Coffee 45) Frozen spinach 46) Ground or milled flaxseed

47) Rice and corn cereals 48) Toasty peanut crackers 49) Chocolate cupcakes 50) Grape juice Clearly, many of these foods would not be typical of a bodybuilding diet—regardless of their antioxidant content—as they contain either too much sugar or too much fat. Some of the listings differ from past ratings of antioxidant foods, such as the low rating of blueberries (28), which placed first on past lists. On the other hand, in another list in the same study, which measured antioxidant content of foods per serving,

Bran cereal—number 23 on the list.

blackberries placed first. Blueberries placed ninth in the serving list, while coffee placed sixth. Different tests of antioxidants would produce—and have produced—completely different results.

Cooked broccoli placed next to last in one list. Broccoli is considered one of the most potent of all antioxidant foods. That means either that cooking broccoli destroys most of its protective antioxidants or that the list doesn’t account for certain potent antioxidants, such as that found in broccoli.

In fact, the authors do mention that the method of analysis used may have overlooked some natural antioxidants.

—Jerry Brainum

Red wine—number 30 on the antioxidant scale.

Halvorsen, B.L., et al. (2006).

Content of redox-active compounds (i.e., antioxidants) in foods consumed in the United States. Am J Clin Nutr.

84:95-135.

www.ironmanmagazine.com \ DECEMBER 2006 51

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Eat to Grow NUTRITION NOTES

Food Facts

Even working out produces free radicals, so be sure you take in enough antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.

Neveux \ Model: Michael Semanoff

That can affect your workouts, weight and wellness

WARRIOR NUTRITION AND EXERCISE

Bodybuilding Boosters For extra protection against free radicals and to accelerate detoxification, people should take certain vitamins and antioxidants in the morning or during the day: •Ester C with bioflavonoids. It is best to take vitamin C in the morning (500 to 1,000 milligrams).

•Grapeseed extract (100 to 300 milligrams). An antioxidant, it is believed to be more potent than vitamin C or E and can aid in the detoxification process and eliminate free radicals.

•Multivitamin. Many people suffer from vitamin deficiencies. Stress, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking and intense physical exercise may deplete your body of its B-vitamins and vitamins C, E and A. Taking a good-quality multivitamin every day is a way to ensure that you get an adequate vitamin supply. Nevertheless, I recommend that people take a few extras as well, simply because the amounts of certain vitamins (such as C) in some multivitamins are too low. You can take the multivitamin in the morning or at night with your main meal. Those who work out in the morning or during the day may want to take it afterward because exercise depletes essential vitamins from the body.

[Note: For a new multivitamin-and-mineral supplement designed specifically for bodybuilders, see page 134.]

—Ori Hofmekler Editor’s note: Ori Hofmekler is the author of the books The Warrior Diet and Maximum Muscle & Minimum Fat, published by Dragon Door Publications (www .dragondoor.com). For more information or for a consultation, contact him at ori@warriordiet.com, www .warriordiet.com or by phone at (866) WAR-DIET.

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Trans fats reminder: These mutated fats increase the tendency of blood platelets to clump and cause clots that can lead to heart attacks. Look for the words partially hydrogenated in the ingredients list. If you see them, don’t eat it.

Fiber can make you feel full, eat less and stay regular. Try to get about 25 grams of fiber a day. Good sources are oatmeal (one cup has four grams), whole-wheat toast (two slices has six grams) and apples (one large has five grams).

—Becky Holman www.X-tremeLean.com

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Eat to Grow RIP IT!

Team Universe Diet

Contest-prep eating tips from Jeff Rodriguez, T.U. middleweight runner-up

The balancing act between losing fat and keeping muscle is a daunting and sometimes complicated task for competitors.

For the ’06 Team Universe, I decided to keep things simple and concentrate on gradually reducing calories and conditioning my body to process large amounts of water.

I began dieting for the show eight weeks out by eating 3,200 calories per day—440 grams of protein, 315 grams of carbs and about 20 grams of fat. I reached my lowest calorie level— about 2,400 per day (380 grams protein, 190 grams carbs, 13 grams fat)—by subtracting approximately 100 calories from my diet every week, mostly in the form of carbs, although there was a slight reduction in protein and fat as well.

For the entire eight weeks my protein came from egg whites, canned tuna and whey powder. My carbohydrates came from oats, cream of wheat, rice cakes, broccoli and dextrose. The fat was from the amounts contained in the above foods.

As the show got closer, I avoided feeling hungry by choosing high-volume vegetables—such as broccoli—for my carbohydrates. I was able to put more food on my plate and in my stomach while staying within my carbohydrate limit.

Another important aspect in getting ready for the show was increasing my water intake. I conditioned my body to process more water by working up to drinking five gallons per day. I made drinking large amounts of water enjoyable by adding Crystal Light. On show day my body was so used to processing several gallons of water that I was able to keep full and hydrated by drinking one gallon of water without looking bloated.

—Jeff Rodriguez

SUPPLEMENT SAVVY

Comstock

Editor’s note: You can find a detailed breakdown of Jeff’s water intake at GraphicMuscle.com.

PREVENTION

Priming the Pump Bran and Your Blood A lot of bodybuilders take nitric oxide supplements because of the enhanced pump NO creates during a workout. It has that effect because it helps relax blood vessels. Now there’s another bonus to taking NO. Arterial plaque, which consists of fatty deposits in arteries, is what usually causes heart disease. NO is an antioxidant that helps reduce the inflammation that promotes plaque. So taking NO is good for not only your pump in the gym but also the pump in your chest—that is, your heart.

—Becky Holman

You may already know that all whole-grain foods contain cholesterol-lowering soluble and insoluble fiber. What’s at the top of the list? Food analysis shows that oat and rice bran contain the most soluble fiber, which has the greatest cholesterollowering effects. Research shows that a diet rich in oat bran can reduce total cholesterol levels by 10 percent and LDL, the so-called bad, cholesterol levels by 8 percent. Pass the oatmeal.

—Becky Holman

54 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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PERFECT POSTWORKOUT MEAL

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Eat to Grow ANABOLIC DRIVE

I’m sure you’ve seen the ads: “Muscle pumps that will make you swell like an allergic reaction to a bee sting.…” Yeah, you’ll just blow up, with blood flowing through your arteries and veins like a tsunami.

The fact is, there is a readily available product that will give you astonishing results—without costing you big bucks. As in the popular show “CSI,” all you gotta do is follow the evidence.

I’m talking about the single best food you can possibly eat: fish. Fish with lots of omega-3 fats. You should eat fatty fish at least two times a week. Mackerel, lake trout, herring, sardines, albacore tuna and salmon are high in two kinds of omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). At the least, get about one gram of EPA plus DHA per day, preferably from fatty fish; and if you don’t like visiting the local sushi bar, take a friggin’ pill! I’d say go as high as five grams a day if you can.

Why am I excited about fish fat? First of all, it’s damn good for you. It makes you happy and is kind to your heart. It gives you a big pump too. In a recent study 18 men with a history of heart attacks were randomly placed in groups that took a placebo or an omega-3 fatty acid supplement (585 milligrams of docosahexaenoic acid and 225 milligrams of eicosapentaenoic acid) for two four-month periods in a crossover design. Omega-3 fatty acids decreased heart rate at rest from 73 to 68 beats per minute

and improved oneminute heart rate recovery after exercise.

In a very cool study, though, scientists tested the hypothesis that six weeks of dietary supplementation with DHA (2.0 grams per day) and EPA (3.0 grams per day) enhances exercise-induced increases in brachial artery diameter and blood flow (that’s the big artery in your arm) during rhythmic exercise.

Researchers assessed the blood pressure, heart rate and brachial artery diameter, blood flow and conductance (i.e., the ease in which blood flows through your vessels) in seven healthy subjects before and during the last 30 seconds of 90 seconds of rhythmic handgrip exercise (30 percent of maximal handgrip tension).

They did the same assessment in six other healthy subjects who took a placebo for six weeks. Placebo treatment had no effect on any variable, while DHA and EPA supplementation enhanced contractioninduced increases in brachial artery diameter, blood flow and conductance.

Bottom line: Take fish or fish oil pills daily. You’ll get a better pump—in more ways than one.

—Jose Antonio, Ph.D. Neveux

Fish Flush

Omega fats can give you a big pump—in more ways than one

Editor’s note: You can hear Dr. Jose Antonio and Carla Sanchez on their radio show Performance Nutrition, Web and podcast at www .PerformanceNutritionShow.com.

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The bigger and stronger a muscle gets, the more carnosine it needs to perform at higher intensity levels. You must keep your muscles loaded with carnosine to grow larger and stronger. It all boils down to intensity and the ability to buffer waste products—hydrogen ions and lactic acid—so the muscle doesn’t shut down before growth activation.

Straight carnosine supplements degrade too rapidly to reach the muscles; however, more than 20 new studies document that beta-alanine is converted to carnosine very efficiently. All it takes is 1 1/2 grams twice a day, and you’ll see new size in your muscles and feel the difference in the gym—you can double or triple your growth-rep numbers! Imagine how fast your size and strength will increase when you ride the Dragon!

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Eat to Grow PROTEIN PROS AND CONS

Fighting Dieting Doldrums

Is protein a bad-mood food?

Neveux \ Model: Sagi Kalev

Let’s face it: Dieting is never fun.

The decrease in food intake often leads to adverse effects on mood, such as irritability, fatigue and increased anger, likely the result of perceived food deprivation. Since high-protein diets are popular among bodybuilders and other athletes, researchers compared the effects of a high-protein diet and other diets on mood. The research was presented at the 2006 meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in San Francisco.

The subjects were 12 men who reduced their calories by 1,000 for FAT LOSS

Do Frequent Feedings Fight Fat? Neveux \ Model: Joey Gloor

A dieting adage is that the way to maximize fat loss is to eat smaller meals more frequently. That idea was tested in a study presented at the 2006 ACSM meeting. Seventy-five sedentary overweight adults went on a reduced-calorie and -fat diet. They noted everything they ate in a food log, including the frequency of meals and snacks, over a 20-week period.

Eating smaller meals more often led to lower bodyweight; that is, those in the study who ate more frequently weighed less than those who ate fewer meals. Since all the subjects consumed the same number of calories daily and didn’t exercise, the only difference was in their pattern of meals.

One obvious weakness of the study, however, was the reliance on food logs as the primary source of evidence. Some subjects may not have been completely honest in recording their food intake.

—Jerry Brainum Mohr, C., et al. (2006). The effects of meal periodicity on weight loss. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 38:S465.

a week through increased exercise rather than a change in their diets. Five of the subjects were put on a moderate-protein diet—0.9 grams per kilogram of bodyweight, or about the suggested level for most people. The other seven men went on a high-protein diet—1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. That’s still less than the typical bodybuilder gets, averaging only 91 grams of protein daily for a 200-pound man. Both groups took in the same amount of carbohydrate, while the fat intake was adjusted for the high-protein group to ensure that both groups got an identical number of calories daily.

Both groups lost an equal amount of weight and experienced an increase in the levels of fatigue and depression. The higher-protein group, however, showed a decline in vigor, an increase in anger and an increase in mood disturbance that amplified over time. The authors could not explain that negative effect induced by the higher-protein intake.

—Jerry Brainum

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© 2005 IRON MAN Magazine

It’s a big blast of workout information, motivation and muscle-building science in your e-mail box every week—and it’s all free! Tons of practical training tips, analysis and size tactics are jam-packed into this e-zine from the IRON MAN Training & Research Center, where there’s more than 50 years of training experience to get you growing fast! Here are a few of the latest editions’ titles (online now):

A Bodybuilder

Is Born How to Squat

Episode 17

“W

ait until you see this guy squat; he’s like a damn freight elevator. Strong as a gorilla!”

Randy was excited because his old workout partner, John, was going to join us for leg training. John had gone to a university out in Illinois somewhere for his graduate work and only made it back to Boston for holidays. So the day after stuffing ourselves with turkey, which in turn had previously been stuffed with stuffing, we gathered to blast quads and hams. I felt the need to exert some extra intensity to offset the two large hunks of Boston cream pie I’d been unable to resist. Then there was that ice cream cake with the Oreos in it. I think I blacked out around the time that was cut and came back to awareness nearly an hour later with an awful bellyache. Either I’d eaten too many desserts or a nest of vipers was writhing in my gut. Though I can’t say for sure, I am fairly certain reptiles had nothing to do with it.

Randy and John had trained for over a year in the B.R. era—the dark ages Before Ron. Pompous as that sounds—and it probably is—Randy had been making a lot of fundamental mistakes in his training and eating before he came under my wing. One of these days I will have to get that darn wing removed—it hides a lot of detail on that side when I hit a rear double-biceps pose.

Anyway, John had apparently been much stronger than Randy, especially on leg work.

Once I finally saw him, I understood why. John was built like a fireplug, and my first thought was, “Does Ed Coan know about his long-lost son?” He was about 5’6” and 210 pounds, not terribly lean but not sloppy either. A lot of that weight had to be in his bones. His hips were wide and solid—exactly as wide, in fact, as his shoulders. His wrists were thick, and his hands were like mitts, making me self-conscious about my own slender, girlish wrists and small hands. I couldn’t see his knees, as he was wearing loose Adidas pants, but they were most likely thick and clunky like his elbows. Yes, Randy was right: John looked like he was built for strength.

Randy had put on quite a bit of muscle since John’s last visit. After John and I were briefly introduced, Randy spent the next few minutes telling him about each and every improvement he had made, flexing various bodyparts to demonstrate as he did so. It was almost like watching a woman show off her new hair color, diamond ring and designer handbag to her friends, except that these were all things he had worked his tail off for in the gym, not bought at a store. Once all this had subsided, I mustered the troops.

“Okay, we start with squats.”

After chatting with him for a couple minutes, I suspected that John’s training was definitely more geared toward pure strength, even though he’d never taken any interest in competitive powerlifting. He’d been a lineman when he

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Model: Chris Cook

by Ron Harris Photography by Michael Neveux

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A Bodybuilder Is Born

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Model: Lee Apperson

A Bodybuilder Is Born a wide, thick leather powerlifting belt and had his knees wrapped.

“Hey, can I use your belt and your wraps for a set, John?” Randy asked.

“I wanna try a little more weight.”

I just sat back and observed for the time being. Randy stole a glance at me to see if I was scowling in disapproval, but I kept a poker face and said nothing. John had to help him with the wraps, as Randy had never used them, to my knowledge. John’s belt looked enormous on Randy’s small waist. I was reminded of old men with their trousers pulled up to their chests.

Randy had handled 275 on the bar moments before, but now he added a full 45 to each side to bring the total to 365. I knew Randy couldn’t squat that weight, and I thought he had already learned that it was best to use weights he could handle, but, obviously, he was feeling wimpy around his friend and felt the need to prove himself.

After a dramatic buildup, with John yelling in his ear and slapping him on the back, Randy snarled and got under the bar. He had trouble walking it out from the rack, and then couldn’t decide

To squat like a bodybuilder and get the most quad involvement, you should place the bar high across your back, keep your torso upright, and go deep. played high school football, despite his short stature, and had always enjoyed the thrill of becoming more and more powerful in the basic lifts.

And he was powerful.

Lucky for us there were several squat racks all in a row in the gym, because taking plates on and off for all three of us would have been tiresome. Randy used about 225 to 275 for his work sets, while I was up around 405 for mine. We were all taking turns spotting each other, though I didn’t feel comfortable spotting John. Randy and I were working in the eight-to-12 range on our work sets, while John was doing two to three reps on his. Once John got to five plates a side, Randy started getting fidgety. John was wearing

Bodybuilders are concerned with muscular development first and strength and power secondarily.

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A Bodybuilder Is Born

If the bar creeps down your back, you will get more forward lean and involve your glutes and lower back more.

New research says that lifting belts can help you achieve more intra-abdominal pressure to support the spine as well as more quad activation. what to do with his feet. We always squatted with our feet just outside of shoulder width, while John had been doing all his squats with a much wider stance. Randy suddenly spread his feet further apart in awkward little shuffling side steps. This

was getting uglier by the minute. Yet it was like a train wreck—I couldn’t look away. Randy started descending with a fairly upright torso, but right away he lurched forward under the strain of all that weight. He didn’t come near parallel and needed John to get under his armpits in order to stand back up and rack the weight.

“Awesome job, bro!” John congratulated him. Randy looked to me. I know he couldn’t have been expecting me to clap and cheer—but I think he was.

“These wheels are gonna grow now!” he declared.

“I am afraid not, Randy.” I hated to do this because now John might take offense, but clearly Randy was confused and needed to be informed.

“What you were attempting to do is squat in powerlifting style like John does,” I explained. John was a graduate student and no caveman, so I wasn’t surprised to see him listening attentively.

“If you want to move the most weight possible, you would want to take a wide stance and bend your torso forward so that the glutes and lower back are in their most powerfully leveraged positions. You would also wrap your knees tightly to give yourself a little spring out of the bottom of the rep. All that is great for becoming stronger but not so great for a bodybuilder trying to craft the best legs he is capable of.

“The quads and hams don’t get worked in powerlifting-style squats anywhere near as hard as they do when we squat as bodybuilders. And your goal is to build a great physique, not to be the strongest man in town. So you are better off using less weight and doing them in bodybuilding style.” I had a flash of inspiration. Rather than alienate John, why not get him into the discussion?

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Model: Derik Farnsworth

A Bodybuilder Is Born

Squatting correctly bodybuilding style is like sitting down on a low chair.

Go to parallel or even a bit below, and then blast it up, always keeping a tiny bend in your knees.

“What do you think, John?”

Pleased to be included, he mimed his squatting form for us with no bar and then tried to imitate the more upright stance with a narrower foot stance. “Yeah, that all makes sense. I really could not care less about shaking my ass all oiled up for a crowd so they can admire my legs,” he joked. “I’m all about putting up the weight.”

“Like they would want to see your ass shaking,” Randy quipped.

“On the subject of asses, squatting like a powerlifter will eventu-

ally develop the glutes to their maximum size, which can throw off the lines and symmetry of a bodybuilder,” I added. “Trust me, I know.

I used to squat more like John does, and my butt got so huge, it looked like I was smuggling bowling balls back there.

“And, Randy, you know how I feel about depth. If you’re only going to do half-reps, don’t bother squatting at all. I will overlook it this time because I think if you went all the way down with all that weight, you might never have gotten back up.” I stripped my bar down to 135 so I could give Randy a refresher course.

“Okay, this is how a bodybuilder should squat,” I began. “First is the bar position. Powerlifters set the bar further down, but we want the bar to go right across our traps, about four inches below the bottom of your neck. You have to stand

pretty upright this way or else the bar would go rolling down your back. Now we get under it and walk it out.” I stepped back from the squat rack.

“Set your feet now, just outside shoulder width and with the toes angled away a little. You basically have to experiment to find the exact foot position that feels right for you. Now we descend.” I dipped down, talking all the while. “It’s like sitting down on a low chair.

You can go to parallel or even a bit below and then.…” I drove back up to a standing position. “Blast it up, always keeping a tiny bend in your knees.”

“What about the reps?” Randy asked. “Can’t bodybuilders ever go lower on reps?”

“Of course,” I replied. “The legs respond to a variety of rep ranges.

Tom Platz, the man with the best legs in history, would do anywhere

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If you’re only going to do half-reps, don’t bother squatting at all. Deeper, strict squats will create more aesthetic quad development. from five to 50 or even 100 reps on squats at various times. Using heavier weights and lower reps for planned cycles of a few weeks a couple times a year is a great change of pace, and you’ll come back stronger on your higher-rep work afterward. But I insist that you still have to squat with bodybuilding form and do full reps no matter what. That’s important for keeping your legs developing with the aesthetic proportions we want.” John was smirking.

I could tell he thought bodybuilding was an immensely vain undertaking—which it is in one aspect, to be sure.

“So don’t worry that you can’t use as much weight as John, or me, or anyone else. As long as you’re gradually adding weight to your squats and your form is good, those legs will keep growing like they have been.” We did a few more exercises, and then John and Randy took off. I think they were planning to get lunch and then hit the mall on the busiest shopping day of the year.

Have fun in that crazy crowd, I thought. I get claustrophobic in crowds like that and start thinking there isn’t enough oxygen for all of us. Meanwhile, I had to get in a solid 45 minutes of cardio to atone for the sins of all those desserts the day before. And of course, there were many turkey-based meals to come over the next few days to get rid of the leftovers. I think green Jell-O with turkey bits is my favorite, although turkey tacos ain’t bad either. I only pray that by Monday I won’t be answering, “Gobble gobble,” to anything I’m asked. IM

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Its complete power has remained dormant, but something has awoken it...

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Muscle-Training Program 86 From the IRONMAN Training & Research Center • by Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson • • Photography by Michael Neveux • ast month we explained Eric Broser’s Power/Rep Range/ Shock system and how we were planning to incorporate it into our next serious mass-building phase. We also said that we were going to experiment with it while training each bodypart only once a week. Here’s a brief summary of each week in the P/RR/S system:

Models: Jonathan Lawson and Steve Holman

Week 1: Power. Train every exercise with straight sets—no supersets, tri-sets or drop sets— and reps stay in the four-to-six zone. We use slightly higher reps on endurance-oriented muscles like calves, abs and forearms.

Week 2: Rep Range. For the first exercise you pick a weight that allows you to get seven to nine reps. For the second exercise you do 10 to 12 reps. On the third exercise you move the rep range up to the high-end of fast-twitch recruitment—13 to 15.

Week 3: Shock. This week is for putting your muscles through the meat grinder with supersets,

negatives, X Reps, drop sets and so on. Broser says, “The goal [of Shock week] is the utter annihilation of every fiber, from slow-twitch to the fast-twitch type 2As. You’ll force your body to release growth hormone like water from a collapsed dam.”

Reps for most muscles stay in the eight-to-10 range, but extendedset techniques are a must.

We decided to use the same solid Positions-of-Flexion program each week and adapt it to whichever P/RR/S protocol was called for. As we write this, we’re just finishing our first three-week cycle, and it’s given us some excellent strength gains so far—like 80-pound dumbbells on incline flyes—not to mention variation that’s all over the map! Our size is holding, and we’re hoping for a mass surge in a few more weeks, after we put our muscles through a few more cycles. As Arthur Jones, the creator of Nautilus machines, used to say, strength comes first, and size soon follows.

The first three weeks were a bit inefficient because we misjudged

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Train, Eat, Grow / Program 86 a lot of poundages. That’s to be expected and part of the drill.

We wrote down all weights, so it should be smooth sailing through the second cycle with proper poundages.

In this installment of TEG we’ve outlined our Rep-Range-week workouts. As we said last month, the RR protocol is ideal for Positions of Flexion, which consists of efficient 3D full-range bodypart routines.

For example, here’s our upper-chest workout:

Midrange: Smith-machine incline presses 3 x 7-9 Stretch: Incline flyes 1 x 10-12 Contracted: High cable flyes 2 x 13-15 After you do those sets, you’ll know that every fiber in your upper chest has been blasted! Warning: You will get sore.

Hitting all three rep ranges is pretty intense, especially after we add X Reps or a Static X to at least one set in each position. In fact, if you look at each week in the P/RR/S

system, every one appears intense in its own right. Broser suggests doing three cycles before taking a break, so that’s nine weeks of all-out balls-to-the-wall intensity. Regular readers of TEG know that we suggest downshifting to a medium-intensity phase every four to six weeks to give our bodies time for an anabolic reload. That doesn’t appear to happen in the P/RR/S system, or does it?

Before we get into a deeper analysis (continued on page 76)

Model: Jay Cutler

In our version of Eric Broser’s Power/Rep Range/Shock system, we use seven to nine reps for the big, midrange exercise during Rep Range week.

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Train, Eat, Grow / Program 86 (continued from page 70) of our

new program, let’s backtrack and discuss phase training and its significance in building mass.

In putting together our new ebook, 3D Muscle Building, we were reminded of the necessity of downshifting intensity to allow for anabolic supercompensation. That hit us between the eyes when we saw some early impressive beforeand-after photos of Jonathan (see page 84) and recalled exactly what he did to rapidly build his base bodybuilding structure.

In our new e-book we take a critical look back at Jonathan’s transformation program, which he used in the ’90s to pack on 20 pounds of muscle in only 10 weeks.

One of the reasons the program worked so well is that it consisted of two different workout strategies: •Phase 1, the first five weeks, was a big, basic three-days-per-week program, with no stretch-position exercises.

Models: Jonathan Lawson and Steve Holman

•Phase 2, the second five weeks, was a more extensive, everyother-day 3D POF program that included midrange-, stretch- and contracted-position exercises for every muscle.

The workout changes from phase 1 to phase 2 were dramatic, and that was one reason Jonathan’s gains kept piling up at a furious pace. Another mass trigger was the scheduled intensity downshifts.

During the first week of each phase he performed all the workouts and did all the exercises, but he stopped each set a few reps short of exhaustion—no training to failure.

The medium-intensity workouts rejuvenated his nervous system and prepped his muscles for the next four all-out hell weeks. They enabled his body—and his mind— to fully supercompensate from previous high-intensity workouts.

In other words, the downshift revitalized and refreshed him—and it triggered a huge growth spurt, especially between phase 1 and phase 2.

A supercompensation week every few weeks is mandatory no matter what program you’re on. If you keep pushing hard continuously, your

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Model: Nathan Detracy

Train, Eat, Grow / Program 86

body will never have a chance to fully replenish from previous weeks of intense workouts, and you’ll spin into an overtraining, muscledraining downward spiral. Not a good thing.

Dr. Hans Selye, a renowned stress researcher Mike Mentzer brought to our attention years ago, describes it as the General Adaptation Syndrome, with the three stages of any stress (like intense weight training) being alarm, resistance and exhaustion.

The key to continuous growth is to downshift your intensity before you hit exhaustion. Cycling a hard-soft approach and moving from alarm to resistance should result in a rapid accumulation of muscle mass—just as Jonathan achieved on his 10week program.

IRON MAN Training & Research Center Muscle-Training Program 86 Monday (Rep Range): Chest, Calves, Abs Incline presses (X Reps) 3 x 7-9 Incline flyes (X Reps) 1 x 10-12 High cable flyes (X Reps) 2 x 13-15 Bench presses (X Reps) 2 x 7-9 Wide-grip dips (X Reps) 1 x 7-9 Flat-bench flyes (X Reps) 1 x 10-12 Low/middle cable flyes (X Reps) 1 x 13-15 Knee-extension leg press calf raises (X Reps) 3 x 10-12 Machine donkey calf raises (X Reps) 2 x 13-15 Hack-machine calf raises (X Reps) 2 x 16-20 Standing calf raises (X Reps) 2 x 16-20 Seated calf raises (X Reps) 2 x 10-15 Incline kneeups (X Reps) 3 x 10-12 Ab Bench crunches (X Reps) 2 x 13-15 Twisting crunches (X Reps) 2 x 16-20

Tuesday (Rep Range): Back, Forearms Wide-grip pulldowns (X Reps) Parallel-grip chins (X Reps) Undergrip pulldowns (X Reps) Machine pullovers (X Reps) Behind-the-neck pulldowns (X Reps) Nautilus rows or cable rows (X Reps) One-arm dumbbell rows (X Reps) Bent-arm bent-over laterals (X Reps) Barbell shrugs (X Reps) Reverse wrist curls (X Reps) Wrist curls (X Reps) Behind-the-back wrist curls Rockers

3 x 7-9 2 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 1 x 7-9 3 x 7-9 1 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 2 x 13-15 3 x 10-12 2 x 10-12 1 x 13-15 1 x 13-15

Thursday (Rep Range): Quads, Hamstrings Machine hack squats (nonlock; X Reps) Leg presses (nonlock) Smith-machine sissy squats (X Reps) Leg extensions (X Reps) Lunges Stiff-legged deadlifts (low partials; X Reps) Hyperextensions (X Reps) Leg curls (X Reps) Lower-back machine (X Reps)

2 x 7-9 2 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 3 x 13-15 1 x 7-9 3 x 10-12 1 x 10-12 3 x 13-15 1 x 13-15

Friday (Rep Range): Delts, Triceps, Biceps Rack pulls (X Reps) Dumbbell upright rows or laterals (X Reps) Incline one-arm laterals (X Reps) Forward-lean laterals (X Reps) Behind-the-neck presses (X Reps) Bent-over laterals (drop set; X Reps) Dips (X Reps) Decline extensions Overhead dumbbell extensions (X Reps) Pushdowns or kickbacks (X Reps) Preacher curls (X Reps) Cable curls (X Reps) Incline curls (X Reps) Concentration curls (X Reps) Cable hammer curls (X Reps)

2 x 7-9 2 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 2 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 7-9 1 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 2 x 7-9 1 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 1 x 10-12

Note: Where X-Reps are designated, usually only one set or phase of a drop set is performed with X Reps or an X-Rep hybrid technique from the Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building e-book. See the X-Blog at www.X-Rep.com for more workout details.

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Stretch-position exercises, like incline flyes, get 10 to 12 reps. We do the stretch-position move second in each bodypart program based on an animal study in which one month of stretch overload produced a phenomenal 300 percent increase in muscle mass.

ITRC Program 86, Abbreviated Home-Gym Routine Monday (Rep Range): Chest, Calves, Abs Incline presses (X Reps) Incline flyes (low partials; X Reps) Incline flyes (top squeeze; X Reps) Bench presses or decline presses (X Reps) Decline flyes (low partials; X Reps) Decline flyes (top squeeze; X Reps) Donkey calf raises (X Reps) One-leg calf raises (X Reps) Seated calf raises (X Reps) Incline kneeups Weighted full-range crunches (X Reps)

3 x 7-9 1 x 10-12 1 x 13-15 2 x 7-9 1 x 10-12 1 x 13-15 3 x 10-12 3 x 12-20 2 x 10-15 2 x 10-12 2 x 16-20

Tuesday (Rep Range): Back, Forearms Chins (X Reps) Dumbbell pullovers (X Reps) Undergrip rows (X Reps) Bent-over barbell rows One-arm dumbbell rows (X Reps) Bent-arm bent-over laterals (X Reps) Shrugs (X Reps) Reverse wrist curls (X Reps) Wrist curls (X Reps) Rockers

3 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 2 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 2 x 13-15 2 x 10-12 2 x 10-12 1 x 13-15

Thursday (Rep Range): Quads, Hams Squats Sissy squats Leg extensions or old-style hack squats (X Reps)

3 x 7-9 2 x 10-12

Front squats or lunges Stiff-legged deadlifts (low partials) Leg curls (X Reps)

1 x 7-9 3 x 10-12 3 x 13-15

Friday (Rep Range): Delts, Triceps, Biceps Dumbbell upright rows or rack pulls (X Reps) Incline one-arm laterals (X Reps) Seated forward-lean laterals (X Reps) Dumbbell presses (X Reps) Bent-over laterals (X Reps) Decline extensions Overhead extensions (X Reps) Kickbacks (X Reps) Preacher curls (X Reps) Incline curls (X Reps) Concentration curls (X Reps) Incline hammer curls (X Reps)

3 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 2 x 7-9 1 x 10-12 2 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 2 x 7-9 2 x 10-12 2 x 13-15 1 x 10-12

Note: Where X-Reps are designated, usually only one set or phase of a drop set is performed with X Reps or an X-Rep hybrid technique from the Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building e-book. See the X-Blog at www .X-Rep.com for more workout details.

Note: If you don’t have a leg extension machine, do oldstyle hacks, nonlock style. Use partner resistance, towel around the ankles, if you don’t have a leg curl machine.

2 x 13-15

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Model: Daryl Gee

Train, Eat, Grow / Program 86

Train, Eat, Grow / Program 86

Fast-forward to our new strategy.

We see that same size-surge capacity in our current P/RR/S sizebuilding program, even though all work sets every week are taken to muscular failure. To reiterate, week 1 is Power: You do every exercise heavy for four to six reps. Week 2 is Rep Range: You do your first exercise for seven to nine reps, your second exercise for 10 to 12 and your third for 13 to 15. Week 3 is Shock: You do medium reps (eight to 10), but you incorporate supersets, tri-sets, drop sets and multirep rest/pause sets to blast the muscles into oblivion (we add X Reps and X-hybrid techniques to a few sets every week).

After week 3 it’s back to week 1, Power week. So where’s the intensity downshift? We just explained its critical importance, but the P/RR/S routine doesn’t appear to include

one. Well, if you try the program, you’ll see (and feel) that week 1 is it. It’s essentially a camouflaged intensity downshift.

How can using heavy weights for low-rep sets taken to failure be medium intensity? As we explain in 3D Muscle Building, research shows that low reps don’t tax the muscles as much because the nervous system craps out way early—much earlier than sets of, say, nine reps. Sure, if you do set after set after set of low reps, you’ll tax your system and muscles much more, but we stick with only one to three sets of each exercise. That’s the supercompensation key.

Two to three sets of four to six reps won’t do a whole lot to overstress your metabolic system, but that’s exactly what you want every few weeks—so your body’s

supercompensation can ramp up to a higher level. (Try our Power workouts, which we provided in the last issue—also on pages 103 to 106 in 3D Muscle Building—and you’ll notice that you don’t feel drained at all, only more powerful.)

Even with a few X Reps or a Static X here and there, which we think are mandatory to force the need for seven days of recovery and to get some muscle burn for anabolic hormone release, you won’t be overstressing your muscles or systemic recovery ability. As we said, though, you’ll feel damn strong as you pile on the poundage! It’s a change that revitalizes—it should be just enough of a downshift to trigger more muscle supercompensation.

We’re very excited about the new program. Broser says he’s had clients gain up to 10 pounds of

Model: Moe Elmoussawi

Contracted-position exercises, like machine flyes, provide the most continuous tension and, ultimately, occlusion. We use 13 to 15 reps and do the contractedposition move last in each bodypart program for a killer pump and burn, which, research shows, triggers anabolic hormone release.

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Train, Eat, Grow / Program 86

with us, see Chapter 15 of 3D Muscle Building.

Editor’s note: For the latest on X Reps, including X Q&As, X Files (past e-zines), before and after photos and the X-Blog training

journal, visit www.X-Rep.com.

To order the Positions-of-Flexion training manual Train, Eat, Grow, call (800) 447-0008, visit www .Home-Gym.com, or see the ad below. IM

BEFORE

AFTER Jonathan Lawson

10-week results achieved in the late 1990s.

Jonathan Lawson

muscle after only nine weeks—three three-week cycles. And we think that with our 3D POF tweaks and X-Rep streaks, we’ve got a supercharged version guaranteed to build X-treme mass.

Speaking of supercharged, if you’d rather go with a proven mass-building attack instead of experimenting along with us on our new P/RR/S program, you may want to try Jonathan’s 20pounds-of-muscle-in-10-weeks program, either in its classic form, the exact routines he used, or in the new souped-up version. The turbocharged version includes Mass F/X, new Positions-of-Flexion tactics and, of course, X Reps and Xhybrid techniques on key exercises.

Visit www.3DMuscleBuilding .com for more details.

Note: Our Rep Range week is outlined on page 78. For our complete P/RR/S program, which you can print out and take to the gym so you can experiment along

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GO

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ODIN

Dave’s Diet •5:30 a.m.: First thing (on empty stomach): GH Stak •On the way to the gym: 1 Starbucks Venti Red Eye •Breakfast (when I get to the gym): Labrada Lean Body Bar

RIPPED Drug-Free Pro Bodybuilder Dave Goodin Has a Knack for Staying Sharp and Shredded—Even at Age 47

by Steve Holman • Photography by Michael Neveux

D

ave Goodin flew to L.A. from Texas last May to shoot with Michael Neveux, and to say that Mike was impressed would be an understatement. After the shoot he called me immediately to rave about Dave (Dave and I have known each other since college). “The guy was incredibly ripped and full,” Mike said. “He’s got to be one of the best over-40 drug-free bodybuilders in the country.” I agreed wholeheartedly.

Dave apparently had nailed his condition perfectly for the photo shoot, but Mike had only one day with him. He said he’d like to shoot Dave again

the next time he’s peaking, so I scheduled something for a few months later—and damned if Dave didn’t nail his condition one more time. He was cut to the bone again! Most bodybuilders get in that gnarly, grainy, shredded condition once, if they’re lucky, and then bloat up to an unrecognizable blimp only a few days later. Not Dave. He seems to be close to contest condition always, able to leap Dunkin’ Donut shops in a single bound.

Is it genetics? Is it discipline?

Is it taste-bud-removal surgery?

I had to find out, so I made it my mission to uncover the secrets of Dave’s nutrition plan.

Weekend breakfast: 4 servings Egg Beaters with 3 ounces grilled chicken and 1 grapefruit •30 minutes before workout: 1 serving Ribose Size •During workout: 16 ounces water with 25 grams carbs (Gatorade), about 10 grams protein (Pro-Fusion) and a half serving titrated creatine (CreaSol) •Postworkout drink: 1 serving RecoverX or one serving vanilla Pro-Fusion with 40 grams carbs (orange Gatorade) mixed with 1 serving CreaSol and one serving Ribose Size Also takes 3 Omega Stak gelcaps (essential fatty acids) and 3-4 Cort-Bloc caps (phosphyatidylserine for cortisol control) •Lunch: 10-12 ounces grilled chicken breast, green salad, 1 apple, 1 peach •Midafternoon: Labrada Lean Body Bar or Pro-Fusion shake with 25 grams carbs (Gatorade) •Late afternoon: 10-12 ounces grilled chicken breast, 1 apple, orange or grapefruit •Evening meal: 10-12 ounces grilled chicken or 96 percent lean ground beef, spinach salad, 2 pieces fresh fruit Also takes 3 Omega Stak gelcaps and 2 Pharmanex LifePak Nano vitamin pack •Evening snack: fresh fruit •Before bed: 4 capsules ZMAT (zinc/magnesium supplement for testosterone support) Editor’s note: For more information on many of the supplements in Goodin’s diet, visit www.Muscle-Link.com or www .Home-Gym.com.

www.ironmanmagazine.com \ DECEMBER 2006 97

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IM: How tall are you, and what did you weigh at your last contest?

DG: I’m 5’7”. I weighed in at 165, but I stepped on stage at 170.

IM: Have you always been lean, even when you were young?

DG: I was a fat baby, but I was skinny starting around age five. I’ve been under 10 percent bodyfat most of my life.

IM: Within how many pounds does your bodyweight fluctuate when you don’t have any shows coming up?

DG: I prefer to stay fairly lean.

I’m usually under 8 percent bodyfat in the off-season. A couple of times I’ve gotten 25 to 30 pounds over my contest weight, but that was because my metabolism was crawling from dieting too long and too hard. I generally stay about 10 to 15 pounds out of contest shape in the off-season.

“I prefer to stay fairly lean. I’m usually under 8 percent bodyfat in the offseason.”

IM: Does your diet stay the same in the off-season, when you’re trying to add more mass?

DG: The main difference in the off-season is that I add starch—rice or pasta—to two or three meals a day. I love grilled chicken and fresh fruit, so I eat it nearly every day, even off-season.

GOODIN RIPPED

IM: Your diet doesn’t appear to be low in carbs. Do you reduce your carbs as a show gets closer, or do you just increase cardio?

DG: I call it a moderate-carb diet.

If I have to trim down calories as I get closer to a show, I usually cut down on the number of bars that I eat. I’ll also increase cardio.

IM: So what are the macronutrient percentages you’re getting and about how many calories are you putting down per day?

DG: I used to keep meticulous diet records, but I haven’t done that the past few years. I eat pretty much the same every day when I’m dieting for a show. I would guess that my percentages are 42 percent protein, 42 percent carbs and 16 percent fat.

My calories are around 2,500 per day.

Red Eye Refreshment?

When he’s dieting, Dave Goodin likes to have a Venti Red Eye from Starbucks on his way to the gym. What the heck is that? For those unacquainted with the extreme-caffeine scene, here’s a description from the Web site www.BBC.co.uk: Someone who can drink (i.e., choke down) a Red Eye deserves your respect. This drink is basically a cup of coffee (already well caffeinated) with either one, two, or three espresso shots added for good measure. People who drink these are either clinically dead and need resurrection or are writing a doctoral thesis or something equally mindnumbing.

Or maybe they’re just preparing for a ballbusting workout!

—S.H.

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IM: How much cardio do you do? And do you do cardio throughout the year?

DG: I don’t do any cardio in the

off-season. When I start preparing for a show, I start with 20 to 30 minutes first thing in the morning, usually on my Lifecycle at home.

If my fat loss stalls, or I feel that I’m behind, I will add another 30minute session at the end of the day.

On days that I don’t weight train,

GOODIN RIPPED

(continued on page 104)

“I have a lot more muscle now, so I’m able to consume a lot more calories while dieting than I did when I was in my 20s.”

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I’ll often do a 60-to-75minute walk.

IM: Let’s talk a little about contest prep. Do you manipulate your water intake the last week before a show? What about sodium?

DG: What I do the week of a show to avoid water retention is this: Monday through Thursday I increase my sodium intake by adding some extra salt to my food—I do normally use salt. The day before the show I cut the salt and make sure that I don’t eat anything that has added salt. I also switch to distilled water on Friday. I usually end up drinking 1.5 to two gallons of distilled water on Friday. The day of the show I drink it when I’m thirsty. I never restrict my water.

GOODIN RIPPED

IM: Is there anything else you do before a show or photo shoot to thin the skin and get that grainy-hard look you seem to attain with ease?

DG: Getting the hard, thinskin look is a matter of getting superlean. A lot of people diet down to a fairly lean state but tell themselves that the last little layer is water. In order to get superhard, you have to diet and train down to a superlean state. Then you take a few steps to make sure that you don’t have any water retention on the day of the show—or photo shoot. One thing I do to guard against water retention is, I take an antihistamine, like Claritin, on Friday night and another on Saturday morning.

bar a cheat meal, then yes. [Laughs] I do much better just sticking to my diet. I like all the foods on it.

IM: You drink a carb-andprotein mixture during your workouts. Why? DG: That I do under the recommendation of Dr. John Ivy. You had a great article that Ken

O’Neill wrote on Dr. Ivy and his book Nutrient Timing in a previous issue of IM [“Nutrient Timing and the Anabolic Switch,” August ’05].

The carb-protein mixture turns on protein synthesis, while the insulin elevation you get from the carbs also helps suppress cortisol.

IM: Does your diet change on

“The carbprotein mixture [I sip during my workout] turns on protein synthesis, while the insulin elevation you get from the carbs also helps suppress cortisol.”

IM: You eat a lot of chicken.

Do you ever substitute tuna or anything else?

DG: I hate tuna! (Sorry, Dave Draper.) Sometimes I’ll substitute 96 percent lean ground beef.

Sometimes I’ll have some grilled fish.

IM: Do you have a cheat day or cheat meal during the week?

DG: If you call an extra protein

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much though—usually only 200 to 300 calories a day.

GOODIN RIPPED

IM: Have you had to change anything about your diet since you were in your 30s or younger?

DG: Well, one thing is that I have a lot more muscle now, so I’m able to consume a lot more calories while dieting than I did when I was in my 20s.

I also stopped doing carb depletion and loading 12 years ago. When I started competing as a pro in the WNBF in ’94, there were no weight classes.

The carb depletion left me flat, even though I was extremely hard. In order to get noticed in the lineup with guys who were 200-plus pounds, I had to come in fuller, so I quit doing the carb depletion the week of the show. That worked wonders, and I’ve stuck with it ever since.

nonworkout days?

DG: No, it’s pretty much the same every day.

IM: So you don’t zig-zag your calories, or does eliminating the postworkout drink on nonworkout days create the fluctuation?

DG: My calories fluctuate a bit depending on how hungry I get, but

I don’t eliminate my postworkout drink. On days when I don’t weight train, I’ll have it after a cardio session. I do, however, skip the drink I have during a workout. On some days I’m just hungrier, and I’ll have more fruit and/or sometimes more protein drinks. On days that I’m not as hungry—or get superbusy at work—I’ll not eat as much if I don’t feel I need it. The variation isn’t that

IM: It all sounds logical and methodical.

As my wife tells me often, You must be a robot! Are there any other secrets to getting shredded you can share?

DG: I have skinfold calipers, and I measure my skinfolds weekly when I’m preparing for a show.

I know exactly what my skinfold measurements have to be for me to be ready. Sometimes I can look in the mirror and think I’m looking ripped. But the skinfold measurements have to be on. Those things don’t lie!

I always try to be ready two to three weeks early. If you’re shredded several weeks out, then you can always cut back on cardio or increase calories. If you try to time it exactly for the day of the show and you don’t quite get lean enough, well, you just missed out. IM

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Mr. Natural Olympia John Hansen’s

Naturally Huge

SingleProgression Training Q: I just bought your book, Natural Bodybuilding, and I have a question about workload. I’ve been doing a two-days-a-week workout—half the body one day and the other half the next day—for about two years. I do only two to three work sets per bodypart. For example, for chest I do three sets of bench presses, and that’s it. I use the single-progression system: If I do three sets of five reps with a given weight, I add one pound to the bar the next week. Do you agree or disagree with that method?

I’m 5’5” tall and weigh 195 pounds with a 42-inch waist, 46-inch chest, 16-inch arms and 23-inch thighs. I’m 47 years old and work as a firefighter.

My goal is to go from 24 percent bodyfat down to around 15 percent—or less. I read your stuff on endomorphs, and that is me all the way—overweight, prefers low reps and heavy weights. Help.

A: Progressive resistance is the best method for making gains in muscle growth and strength. Your workout plan of adding one pound a week to the bench press exercise for three sets of five reps follows the concept, albeit at a slow

Neveux \ Model: Todd Smith

Bench presses are good, but incline work is a necessary adjunct if you want complete pec development.

pace. If your goal is to gradually increase your strength— and then add muscle mass—without the risk of overtraining, then I think you’re using a good method.

Nevertheless, I don’t think you’re doing enough to stimulate growth. Performing only three sets a week of one exercise is actually undertraining. By the time you do that workout again, the muscles have regressed. Even though you’re adding one pound a week to your bench press, your muscles, in my opinion, are adapting to the very small workload increase and won’t gain strength and size.

I find that when I miss a workout and train a muscle after more than seven days, I’ve regressed. I’m actually weaker than my last workout. My poundages and repetitions are down from the last time I trained that muscle.

Training a muscle once every six to seven days is good for advanced trainees who are using a lot of intensity in their workouts. That amount of rest is also good for bodybuilders who are in their 40s and older because the body needs more rest as we age.

I think you might see faster progress if you slightly increase workload while still adhering to the progressive-resistance method. You could add another exercise or two for two to three sets and still see progress each week without overtraining.

Another drawback to your current method is that you’re not developing all areas of each muscle group. Although the bench press is a great basic movement, you’re primarily building up the lower pecs, along with the anterior delts and triceps.

If you add an incline-press exercise with either barbells or dumbbells, you increase your mass stimulation by hitting more upper-pec fibers. If you do three sets of incline presses along with your three sets of bench presses, you won’t risk overtraining—you’ll continue to make progress each week.

As for your goal of losing bodyfat, that’s diet. I don’t know how you’re eating, but following a nutrition program that’s designed to eliminate bodyfat while maintaining or building muscle tissue is the real key to getting lean.

I found that as I entered my 40s, controlling my carbohydrate intake became critical to losing bodyfat. I never believed in eating a low-carb diet when I was younger, and, in fact, I ate a relatively high-carb diet even when I was preparing for a bodybuilding contest. It wasn’t unusual for me to eat 300 to 400 grams of carbohydrates when I was dieting to get ripped 10 or 15 years ago.

All that changed when I got to my late 30s. I discovered that diet was no longer applicable. The high-carbohydrate intake was preventing me from losing bodyfat, and my progress was painfully slow.

In order to overcome the change in my metabolism, I limited my carbohydrate intake to 150 to 200 grams per day. At the same time, I increased the amount of protein and good fats that I was taking in.

Instead of getting 50 percent of my calories from carbohydrates, I only got 25 to 30 percent total from carbs. My protein intake, on the other hand, increased to 50 percent of my total calories, and my fat intake went from as low as 10 to 15 percent to 20 to 25 percent. (continued on page 102) I recommend that you eat a minimum of six times a day. You can supplement your meals with protein drinks such as Muscle Meals or Pro-Fusion protein powder. It’s often difficult and inconvenient to eat whole-food meals six times a day. You could alternate protein drinks with

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Mr. Natural Olympia John Hansen’s

Naturally Huge

Q: I’ve been doing a three-day routine for about two months that consists of: Sunday: Chest and arms Flat-bench barbell presses or incline presses Incline dumbbell presses or flat-bench dumbbell presses Flat-bench flyes or incline flyes Tuesday: Back and shoulders T-bar rows or one-arm dumbbell rows V-bar cable rows or wide-grip cable rows Wide-grip pulldowns or close-grip pulldowns Friday: Legs Squats Leg presses Leg curls Leg extensions Calf raises On Sunday and Tuesday I rotate the first group of exercises with the second group on a week-to-week basis for variety. I lift heavy, going with six to nine reps and three sets of each exercise. Once I can get 10 reps, I increase the weight. I eat five to six meals

a day and am a typical hardgainer. I’m 41 years old, 5’10” and 140 pounds, and I work in an office. I take aminos, a multivitamin, zinc, fish oil, creatine and whey protein. I also take glucosamine for joint therapy. I’m making gains that I am satisfied with except for my upper chest. I try to prioritize, working that area first, but I’m still not making the gains that I see with my other bodyparts. My lower chest seems to be developing okay. How should I change my routine? I just had my yearly physical done and am at about 5 percent bodyfat.

A: If you want to prioritize your upper chest, I suggest a couple of changes to your current chest workout. For the first workout do incline dumbbell presses first in your routine, followed by barbell bench presses and then dumbbell flyes.

I also recommend adding two sets of dumbbell pullovers at the end of your routine. It’s a great finishing movement for the chest, and it adds more size to the upper, inner area of the pecs.

For your second chest workout do the opposite. Hit dumbbell bench presses first, and then do the incline barbell presses followed by incline flyes. Training both incline movements back to back will keep blood in your upper pecs and produce more growth in that area.

I like the exercises that you’ve chosen; however, I think you should change the order of exercises in your back routine. Try doing the movements for width, such as wide-grip chins or wide-grip pulldowns, first. That will help warm up the lats before you begin the heavy rowing exercises.

Also, I didn’t notice any exercises listed for your shoulders or your arms. Here’s what I recommend, in the rotating manner you described: Arms: pushdowns or close-grip bench presses, lying extensions or seated extensions, incline curls or seated dumbbell curls, barbell curls or preacher curls Shoulders: seated military presses or seated dumbbell presses, lateral raises or seated lateral raises, barbell shrugs or barbell upright rows Editor’s note: John Hansen has won the Natural Mr. Olympia and is a two-time Natural Mr. Universe winner. Visit his Web site at www. naturalolympia .com. You can write to him at P.O. Box 3003, Darien, IL 60561, or call toll-free (800) 900-UNIV (8648). His new book, Natural Bodybuilding, and new training DVD, “Real Muscle,” are now available from Home Gym Warehouse, (800) 447-0008 or www.Home-Gym .com. IM Neveux

your meals so your daily diet plan looks something like this: Meal 1: breakfast; meal 2: protein drink; meal 3: lunch; meal 4: protein drink; meal 5: dinner; meal 6: protein drink.

You need a high-quality protein source for each of the three solid-food meals—eggs or egg whites, chicken, turkey, tuna, lean beef or salmon.

A high-protein intake is essential for building muscle mass and strength as well as increasing your metabolic rate.

In addition to protein, you need complex carbohydrates to supply the energy for training and aid in the recuperation process. Oatmeal, sweet potatoes, brown rice and vegetables are excellent sources of complex carbs that are also high in fiber and low glycemic, so they don’t produce a big insulin response, which can lead to fat storage.

The last key ingredient is essential fatty acids. Omega-3 fats are found in foods such as flaxseed oil, natural peanut butter, salmon, mackerel and sardines. I always make sure I have two tablespoons of flaxseed oil per day with my protein drinks, and I eat fish that is high in omega-3s every other day. These essential fatty acids make the muscle cells more insulin sensitive, which means they attract the carbs into the muscle cells instead of the fat cells.

If you make these changes in your workout and diet, I think you’ll reach your goals of adding more muscle mass and reducing your bodyfat faster. Slightly increase the workload on your muscles without overtraining, and modify your diet so you’re eating fewer carbs and more protein and essential fats.

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John Hansen John@NaturalOlympia.com

Unlocking the Riddle of Bench Steel Part 2: From a 315 Max to Reppin’ 405 in One Year!

by Ryan “BenchMonster” Kennelly and Sean Katterle

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Neveux \ Model: Mike Morris

Monster Bench

We hope you got a chance to read Part 1 of this series last month. If you didn’t and you can’t find someone who has a copy, the article is available online at HardcorePowerlifting.com (thanks to IRON MAN’s permission to reprint). The first year of this training mega cycle was for lifters who could max-bench 225 pounds but had yet to break the 315-pound barrier. This installment is for those who now have a max bench press of 315 pounds and want to break through the daunting 405 barrier. (Note: A max bench press is what you can bring down to a dead stop on your chest, pause and then drive to lockout with your butt on the bench throughout the entire lift.) www.ironmanmagazine.com \ DECEMBER 2006 117

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Monster Bench

Board Presses for Blastoff Power Pictured here is Kenny “86’D” Dinolfo, working 400-plus pounds for reps off of a three-board. For reference, Kenny’s best no-bench-shirt gym bench is a 405, and he routinely benches 365 to 405 in training. Kenny’s gone over 500 pounds in sanctioned, drug-tested contests using a single-ply RageX bench shirt. He competed at BenchAmerica 3 (which aired on Fox Sports Net), and he took the bronze medal in the 181-pound class. Kenny normally competes in the 198- or 220-pound divisions, and he was called in as an alternate a month out from show time, so his placing third after dieting down 20 pounds or so in 30 days was doubly impressive.

The following is excerpted from The Kennelly Method (Spokane, Washington: Monster Muscle, 2003): Go to your lumber store and get some two-by-six boards.

They are available in eight-foot-long strips. Buy four or five of them, and have the store cut them into four 3.5-foot-long pieces and 10 15-inch pieces. Next, purchase 50 2.5-inch wood screws.

When you get home, take the first 3.5-foot board and stack one of the 15-inch boards on top so the ends are lined up.

Screw these two boards together with six of the wood screws that you purchased. This is a two-board and it will be used for the two-board press.

Simple so far? Next make a three-board press in the same fashion. Take another 3.5-foot board and stack one of the 15inch pieces on top with the ends lined up. Again, screw the boards together with six wood screws. Then stack another 15inch piece on top of the 15-inch piece that is already attached to the long board, line up the edges and screw them together.

This is a three-board (as in the photos) and will be used for three-board presses. Do you see a pattern developing here?

Good; keep going and make a four-board and five-board by using the same process.

The main purpose of the boards is to break up the bench press into five different points along the pressing action. For instance, you can place the two-board on your chest, and then have your lifting partner hand the bar off to you and lower the bar to the board. Let the bar come to a complete rest on the board, and then press it back up to lockout. When a weight is at a dead stop, it takes more power to get it moving upward than it does to keep it moving upward. By working on pressing from a two-board height above your chest, you will develop explosive power at this point, and your competition press will exhibit more force when the bar passes upward through that portion of the lift.

Everyone has a sticking point on the bench. In my lifting career my worst sticking has been the last six inches of the press. That’s the height of four boards, so I trained a lot with the four-board press and overcame the sticking point. Remember, when you use the boards on the bench, you must pause when you reach the board. Then, when you start pressing, explode straight up.

To review, the main purpose of the boards is to build and strengthen your lockout power by overcoming sticking points.

Reporter’s note: Though you’re letting the bar come to a complete stop on the boards, you’re not relaxing your muscles.

Stay tight, and keep control of the weight so that you’re able to safely begin the pressing motion with the poundage you’re using. Your lats should be flared, and the rest of your supportive and benching muscles tensed for takeoff the whole time.

We also employ touch-’n’-goes when the weight gets to be too heavy to pause, but it’s important to keep the majority of your board press sets as one-to-two-second pause reps.

—S.E. Editor’s note: All board-press pictures courtesy of Josh Winsor of HardcorePowerlifting.com.

118 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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For the second phase of this bench-training odyssey, you’re going to be training twice per week, as opposed to once a week, which was the protocol during the initial 48-week 225-to-315-pound mega cycle. Your training sessions will gradually increase in per-set intensity, and your individual workouts will decrease in duration and volume as you progress through this cycle—but never to the point that you will become unconditioned. This will continue to

be a power-building program with mass-building potential, so never fear that your physique will suffer from following our guidelines.

At this point in the program we’re going to set your one-rep max (without a bench shirt) at 315 pounds. Here’s the breakdown of the complete cycle into rounds of training intensity.

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Monster Bench

The Program Works!

A training program isn’t properly tested in the lab; it’s tested in the gym and on the platform. Leon Josaitis and Levi “the Magical Liger” Van Dyke have been my training partners when I’m working out of our Spokane, Washington, office for the past three years. When I first met Leon, he weighed roughly 140 pounds and was benching around 225 without a bench shirt. After almost 367 months of training powerlifting style, he has lower bodyfat, but his bodyweight is up to the 165-to-180 range (depending on where he is in his training cycle), and he’s benched 315 pounds without a bench shirt, 480 pounds with a bench shirt (at 165 pounds bodyweight). In competition he’s squatted 625 and deadlifted more than 500 pounds. And Leon has always competed at drug-tested events and has passed every drug test he’s taken.

I met Levi Van Dyke at 24 Hour Fitness, and he was already strong, weighing a solid 200 pounds and benching 315 for four to six reps (sans bench shirt), but now he’s benching 405 for six solid reps (again, no bench shirt), and he weighs 230 to 250 pounds at 5’8”! Both of these guys are 23 years old, and their progress, especially for that age, is very, very impressive.

What’s the secret? No secret, just the basic barbell rules: Lift medium-heavy with good technique; take in a ton of protein and quality nutritional supplements; eat four to six meals a day that consist of an intelligent formula of protein, carbs and fats and that are made up of as many whole, natural foods as possible; get at least six to eight hours of sleep per night; and stay hydrated 24-7. Both Levi and Leon use some of the training methods discussed in this series, and their success speaks volumes for the thinking behind the program.

—Sean Katterle

Week 1, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 20, 135 x 12, 160 x 10 x 10 On the work sets you use roughly 50 percent of your one-rep max for 10 sets of 10 reps each. This week should be kind of a break for your muscles and joints, so to speak, so enjoy the light lifting and focus on your technique and on getting motivated to train heavy.

5-board presses: 160 x 5, 185 x 5, 205 x 5, 225 x 5 x 2 This will seem really easy and pointless, but the goal is to concentrate on getting used to using the boards and pausing the bar on the boards for a second without relaxing your muscles.

Week 1, Day 2 5-board presses: bar x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 12, 205 x 5, 225 x 5 x 5 Pause each rep for a second or two on the boards, but keep your muscles flexed throughout the lift.

Week 2, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 20, 135 x 12, 175 (roughly 55% of 1RM) x9x9 5-board presses: 175 x 5, 185 x 5, 205 x 5, 225 x 5 x 2

Week 2, Day 2 5-board presses: bar x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 12, 205 x 5, 225 x 5 x 5 Rack Lockouts (with the pins set at halfway between where the bar touches your chest and lockout): 225 x 5 x 5 Pushdowns (using various handle attachments): 6 x 12-20 The last few reps of each set should really burn!

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Week 3, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 20, 135 x 12, 165 x 8, 190 x 8 x 8 5-board presses: 190 x 5, 205 x 5, 225 x 5, 245 x 5 x 2 Week 3, Day 2 5-board presses: bar x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 5, 205 x 5, 225 x 5, 245 x 5x5 Rack lockouts (with the pins set at halfway between where the bar touches your chest and lockout): 225 x 5, 245 x 5 x 4

Pushdowns (using various handle attachments): 6 x 12-20.

The last few reps of each set should really burn!

Week 4, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 7, 205 x 7 x 7 Feel free to take more time for your rest periods between sets if your schedule allows for it.

4-board presses: 205 x 5, 225 x 5, 245 x 5 5-board presses: 265 x 5, 285 x 5

Ryan “BenchMonster” Kennelly I worked with Ryan “BenchMonster” Kennelly from 2001 through the spring of this year. His training and competition lifts are legendary, as the level of his intensity and poundages have only been matched by a handful of elite super champions. In the past Kennelly benched 670 pounds without a bench shirt in the gym. In competition he’s bench-pressed 600 pounds sans shirt (an easy opener that he took before putting his bench shirt on for his second contest attempt) and a staggering 902.5 pounds with a multi-ply shirt, and at BenchAmerica 3—where the athletes were drug-tested and given six months prior to the show to clean up, if needed, and where the bench shirts were limited to single-ply fabric only—he’s hit a 777 and, in my opinion, got 815 but the judges didn’t give it to him because they claimed he brought the bar down too low on his torso.

In material published on Universal Nutrition’s official AnimalPak .com Web site, the supplement maker summed up Kennelly’s brute strength like this: “On a side note, Ryan Kennelly put on a little show himself. For those of you who don’t know who Ryan is, he’s one serious monster. He wanted one of our ‘the Cage’ T-shirts, and Sergeant Rock told him that he had to win one by getting on the bench and doing 315 for 30 reps.

So what did he do? He hit 40 f**king reps at 315. All this after benching over 800. Gotta give that brother props. When it comes to benching, he’s an animal.”

I had the privilege of being the editor for Kennelly’s book, The Kennelly Method—Building a Monster Benchpress. It was Kennelly who first introduced me to power rack lockouts and board presses, and I give him credit for a lot of the ideas and training cycles shown in my powerbenching articles. My company, HardcorePowerlifting, LLC, filmed, edited and produced Ryan’s DVD, The Road to the Arnold, and I encourage you to look to it for bench-pressing inspiration. In that film, Kennelly performs such amazing feats as a 635 no-shirt bench, back-to-back sets of 315x20 and then 405x20 (wow!), not to mention his winning the Arnold Classic World Bench Press Championships for the second time and his taking gold at the first Mendelson Classic, which was held at the ’06 IRON MAN FitExpo in Pasadena, California. You can order this DVD from Home-Gym.com.

—S. K.

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Monster Bench

Week 4, Day 2 4-board presses: bar x 20, 85 x 12, 135 x 12, 185 x 5, 225 x 5, 245 x 5 5-board presses: 265 x 5, 285 x 5 Rack lockouts (with the pins set at halfway between where the bar touches your chest and lockout): 225 x 5, 245 x 5, 265 x 5, 285 x 5 x 2 Pushdowns (using various handle attachments): 6 x 12-20 The last few reps of each set should really burn!

Week 5, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 6, 205 x 6, 220 (roughly 70% of 1RM) x 6 x 6 4-board presses: 225 x 5, 245 x 5, 265 x 5 5-board presses: 285 x 5, 305 x5 Week 5, Day 2 4-board presses: bar x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 5, 205 x 5, 225 x 5, 250 x 5

Legendary strength athlete and World Powerlifting champion Bill Kazmaier is behind the efforts to bring back no-bench-shirt contests.

5-board presses: 275 x 5, 295 x 5, 305 x 5 Pushdowns (using various handle attachments): 6 x 12-20 The last few reps of each set should really burn!

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Neveux \ Model: Daryl Gee

Steer clear of machine benching—unless you do it for triceps as part of your assistance work.

Week 6, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 12, 135 x 10, 185 x 8, 205 x 6, 225 x 5, 240 x5x5 3-board presses: 240 x 5, 250 x 5 4-board presses: 275 x 5 5-board presses: 305 x 5 Week 6, Day 2 3-board presses: bar x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 5, 205 x 5, 225 x 5, 250 x 5 4-board presses: 275 x 3 5-board presses: 305 x 3 Rack lockouts (with the pins set at halfway between where the bar touches your chest and lockout): 250 x 5 x 5 Week 7, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 12, 135 x 10, 185 x 8, 205 x 6, 225 x 4, 250 (80% of 1RM) x 4 x 4 3-board presses: 250 x 5 4-board presses: 275 x 5 5-board presses: 305 x 3, 315 x 3x2 Now that you’re working with your starting 1RM bench press weight, you don’t have to pause those particular reps. Instead, focus on really exploding with controlled motion off the boards as soon as you feel the bar connect. You want

to start psychologically preparing yourself to blast 315 pounds back into the lockout position, as you’re going to be tripling this weight in less than two months.

Week 7, Day 2 3-board presses: bar x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 5, 205 x 5, 225 x 5, 250 x 3 4-board presses: 275 x 3 5-board presses: 305 x 3, 315 x 3x2 Pushdowns (using various handle attachments): 6 x 12-20 The last few reps of each set should really burn!

Week 8, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 12, 135 x 10, 185 x 8, 205 x 6, 225 x 4, 250 x 3, 270 x 3 x 3 3-board presses: 270 x 3 4-board presses: 305 x 3 5-board presses: 315 x 3 x 3 Week 8, Day 2 3-board presses: bar x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 5, 225 x 5, 275 x 5 4-board presses: 305 x 3, 315 x 3 Rack lockouts (with the pins set at halfway between where the bar touches your chest and lockout): 225 x 5, 250 x 5, 275 x 5 x 3

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Monster Bench Week 9, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 12, 135 x 10, 185 x 8, 205 x 6, 225 x 4, 250 x 3, 285 x 3 x 2 3-board presses: 285 x 5 x 3 4-board presses: 315 x 3 x 2 Take day 2 off on week 9 and rest

Week 10 Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 12, 135 x 10, 185 x 8, 205 x 6, 225 x 3, 250 x 3, 275 x 3, 300 x 3 x 1 3-board presses: 315 x 3 x 5 Week 10, Day 2 2-board presses: bar x 20, 135 x 12, 185 x 5, 225 x 5, 275 x 5

4-board presses: 315 x 3 3-board presses: 315 x 3 2-board presses: 315 x 3 Pushdowns (using various handle attachments): 6 x 12-20 The last few reps of each set should really burn!

Take six days off between week 10, day 2 and week 11, day 1

Joe “the Benching Machine” Luther weighs 165 at 5’8”. He can bench more than 400 pounds and has passed drug test after drug test.

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Monster Bench

Neveux

The roar of the crowd, the rattle of the iron, the rush of adrenaline.

Week 11, Day 1 Bench presses: bar x 20, 85 x 12, 135 x 10, 185 x 6, 205 x 3, 225 x 3, 250 x 2, 275 x 1, 305 x 1

5-board presses: 315 x 1 4-board presses: 315 x 1 3-board presses: 315 x 1 2-board presses: 315 x 1 Bench presses: 315 x 3

Is a world-record-setting mega bench press in your future?

You’ll never know till you train correctly to move big iron. As the saying goes, What you believe, you can achieve. (continued on page 130)

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This program is for taking your max bench press from 315 to four big wheels—405 pounds.

At this point you will have tripled your previous one-rep max! Your new 1RM will be roughly 110 percent of 315, or 345 pounds. So go back to the beginning of the above 11-week cycle and start again but with 50 percent of 345—which is 170 pounds—and then add 15 to 20 pounds (about 5 percent) to each top set on your bench press and work through the 11-week training cycle again. When you can triple 345, your new onerep max will be 380, and then six weeks later, when you can triple 380, your new one-rep max will be 415. You’ll be pressing four plates!

This entire program will take you 33 to 52 weeks to complete. Why more than 33 weeks? Because there will be weeks where you can’t complete the stated number of sets and reps. If that happens, drop day 2 of that week’s bench program, giving you more rest time. Then increase your calories and the number of hours of sleep you get per night, and retry that week’s requirements on the following day 1 in your cycle.

At the end of each 11-week train-

(continued from page 126)

ing cycle you may also want to take a week or two off from lifting to give your body a break. This one-year program allows for that. So, to restate, you’ve got 19 weeks of “credit” for repeating day 1s and for taking time off for additional rest and recovery. Use those extra weeks wisely.

As for the assistance work in this program, you can walk into any gym in the country and see someone performing pushdowns, so there isn’t much point in my describing them here. Rack lockouts and board presses, however, are only common in powerlifting gyms. If you’re not sure about them, get an experienced powerlifter or bencher to demonstrate them for you in the gym, or at least follow these instructions carefully before going at it.

Rack lockouts. Place a flat bench in the power rack. Then set up the power rack safety rods so that, when the bar is resting on them, it’s about halfway between your chest and lockout. Perform your reps by pressing the bar to lockout, using the safety rods as your starting point. When you bring

the bar back down, let it pause on the rack pins before pressing it back up into lockout.

Rack lockouts are similar to board presses in that you’re working the top half of the bench press movement, and that will build strong front delts and triceps. You’ll want to make sure to stay tight under the weight. You can expect the weight to sometimes stall out on the pins.

If you keep your lats and legs flexed and continue driving against gravity (don’t go too crazy and blow a fuse), often the bar will suddenly rise again after a grueling few seconds of effort. [Note: For a description and photos of board presses, see page 118.]

Real bench pressing—as opposed to shirt benching—is making a comeback in the competition world.

For example, the WPO (the federation that runs the powerlifting and bench press contests at the Arnold Classic) is sanctioning a no-benchshirt bench press contest at the ’06 Mr. Olympia Expo, and on the East Coast the Atlantis Foundation is running a series of competitions

130 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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Monster Bench

Monster Bench titled the New England Record Breakers. There was quite a bit of controversy leading up to this year’s New England Record Breakers— mostly by the lifters who can’t lift big weights without the artificial help of support shirts.

It’s our opinion that the secret to making bench pressing one of the most popular sports in America is making the shirts illegal in competition. That way the truly strongest lifters will rise to the top, the physiques of the pros will improve— dangerously overweight shirt specialists wrapped up like zombie mummies will vanish from the main stages of the country—and the millions of people who bench in gyms all over the country will be able to relate to what they’re watching live and on television. Even the great Bill Kazmaier, a multiple National and World Powerlifting champion, multiple World’s Strongest Man winner, 661 Raw Competition Bencher and the master of ceremonies for the

stage at the Arnold Classic (WPO’s Bench Press Championships), on Fox Sports Net for the inaugural BenchAmerica championships and at some of the largest casinos in Las Vegas and Reno (WABDL Worlds), and he’s currently training to bench at the first pro bench contest being held at the Mr. Olympia Expo. He can bench-press more than 400 pounds at a bodyweight of 165 pounds and keep his six-pack abs year-round.

So stop making excuses. Get motivated, and go after that fourwheels bench! I know I’m running the risk of sounding cheesy, but it’s true: If you believe, you can achieve!

Your perceptions control more of your future than you realize.

Editor’s note: Sean Katterle has been a TV commentator for bench press competitions shown on Fox Sports Net and Comcast Sports Net. He’s also the owner of HardcorePowerlifting.com, and he’s had strength-sport articles and interviews published in BodyTalk, Monster Muscle, Powerlifting USA and Speed Strength Sport. IM

Neveux \ Model: Omar Deckard

This entire program will take you 33 to 52 weeks to complete—but your incredible strength surge will be worth it.

New England Record Breakers, has said he will make a comeback to help the no-bench-shirt cause.

Regarding this second phase of our mega program—from 315 to 405 pounds—quite a few readers will begin consciously or subconsciously coming up with reasons for why they’re not going to succeed with the much-sought goal of benching four plates without a shirt (despite the hundreds of claims made on Internet forums around the world, a 405-pound bench is a rare animal indeed). Before you decide that you’re not big enough to press that kind of poundage, consider Joe Luther.

Joe “the Benching Machine” Luther weighs in at a ripped 165 pounds at around 5’8” (see his photos on page 124). He’s passed a dozen-plus steroid tests over the years, from when he competed in the United States Powerlifting Federation as a teen to his current situation, competing in the open class in the World Association of Benchers and Deadlifters, the federation started by Gus Rethwisch.

Joe’s competed on the main expo

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IRON MAN Research Team

Multi-Vita Muscle Builder New Breakthrough in Multivitamin-and-Mineral Supplementation Can Increase Muscle Gains, Strength and Workout Productivity—and Even Accelerate Fat Loss

Y

ou work out and eat properly because you know that the foods you eat play a critical role in helping you build a strong, muscular, hard physique. But are you overlooking a critical piece of the bodybuilding puzzle—a multivitamin? If you do take a multi, it’s more important than ever to arm yourself with the right one to support your weight-training goals. Though the rest of America can take a basic multivitamin-andmineral for general health, you need more than that.

New Designer Enzymes— the Future of Bodybuilding Nutrition You’ve probably heard of enzymes, but you may not know why they’re so important for you, the bodybuilder, or what they have to do with multivitamins. New research suggests that bioengineered enzymes can allow your body to use more protein to stimulate muscle growth, get more energy from carbs and

convert more fat into energy. That’s right, enzymes are no longer just for people with digestion issues.

A newly discovered enzyme blend has found its way into a progressive bodybuilderfocused multivitamin formula, Anabolase, an enzyme blend protected by two U.S. patents and backed by scientific studies from major universities. Here’s how it works: Your goals of building lean muscle, reducing bodyfat, increasing energy and endurance and maximizing performance depend on the proper intake and percentages of the macronutrients—protein, carbohydrate and fat. Anabolase is an interactive food optimizer that’s been shown to actually improve the absorption and utilization of the proteins, carbohydrates and fats you eat, so you can make better and faster use of your meals. In effect, it makes your body more efficient at breaking down nutrients to build muscle.

The anabolic enzyme system comprises three advanced enzyme components: aminogen, carbogen and lipolase. Taken before meals, each of the three enzymes provides a specific function to help your body make better use of the food you eat.

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by the Editors

www.ironmanmagazine.com \ DECEMBER 2006 135

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IRON MAN Research Team Aminogen. As a bodybuilder you have a greater need for protein than a sedentary person. While you may be eating enough protein, your body may not be using it efficiently. If you aren’t using it, you aren’t going to gain the muscle and strength you’re looking for. Luckily, scientists have discovered a new protein enzyme that makes better use of your proteins. Aminogen improves the use of protein from meals and increases the amount of amino acids delivered to your muscle tissue for stimulating growth and recovery.

environments. Lipolase’s fullrange pH action allows for the breakdown of fats throughout the entire digestive system, maximizing energy and minimizing bodyfat storage.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Multivitamins Regular multivitamins are deficient in many areas. In choosing a multi, you should be aware of these seven multivitamin credibility tests.

1) Maximum nutrient amounts.

Multivitamins should have at least 100 percent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s established daily value for vitamins A, C and E and the B-vitamins, most notable of which include thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, folic acid, vitamin B12 and biotin.

Minerals like magnesium, zinc and chromium should also be at 100 percent because they all play a role in muscle metabolism.

2) Maximum absorption/ utilization.

Carbogen. Carbohydrates are highly anticatabolic—they prevent the use of dietary protein and muscle tissue for energy. That’s why research suggests that athletes and physically active people get at least 40 percent of their calories from carbs. In the absence of carbs your body will begin feeding on protein and muscle tissue through a process called gluconeogenesis.

That will have a negative impact on your energy, endurance and ability to build lean muscle. Carbogen increases the conversion of carbs to muscle glycogen so your body doesn’t have to tap into its protein stores for energy. Carbogen also decreases lactic acid by 275 percent, enabling you to work out harder and longer. It helps athletes perform at their peak longer during competition.

Lipolase. This enzyme enables your body to use dietary fat as an efficient energy source rather than storing it. Lipolase is a proprietary pH-resistant bioactive enzyme with a unique ability to break triglycerides into fatty acids to be utilized by the Krebs cycle for energy in both low- and high-pH 136 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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3) Exponential synergies.

Biochemists and nutritionists use this term to describe the high impact of certain vitamins and minerals when they’re combined in precise amounts. Here’s how it works: Certain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytochemicals have the unique ability to work together, or synergistically, to produce a greater effect than if taken alone. If proper nutrients are combined in the proper ratios, they can reenergize and recycle one another—they’re replenished

and nd utilized ov over and over, creating onential ssynergies. Examples exponential of this include vitamins C and E in the correct ratios to give greater antioxidant power. Another example: Different forms of vitamin A work better in your body than just one form alone.

4) Fully reactive vitamin C mineral ascorbates.

Most multivitamins include inferior forms of vitamin C (such as ascorbic acid) that don’t circulate in the body that well. To circulate properly, the intermediate forms need to react with minerals present in the liver to form mineral ascorbates of potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, zinc and other trace elements.

Unfortunately, that minimizes absorption and robs your body of the precious minerals you need for such functions as electrolyte balance and (continued on page 140) enzymatic

©2006 American Body Building LLC

Did you know that the typical multi gives you forms of vitamins and minerals that your body is not ready to use? Instead, your body has to convert them through a series of metabolic processes before they become active or usable.

That means usability, absorption and potency are ultimately compromised.

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www.ironmanmagazine.com \ DECEMBER 2006 137

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IRON MAN Research Team The best form of C is the kind that’s already reactive with all of those minerals so that your body doesn’t have to pull them from other places.

5) Neutrally charged amino acid–chelated minerals.

A chelated mineral is one that bonds to an amino acid. Chelation is the body’s natural means of transporting minerals across the intestinal wall to maximize absorption. Amino acid chelates are superior to other kinds because other forms of minerals lose integrity during digestion, become unstable and therefore lose their bioavailability. Also, the body can’t use mineral compounds in their natural state. Any mineral sulfate, oxide or carbonate must be broken apart and restructured for it to be transported through the intestinal wall. In addition, the mineral compounds have an electrical charge and can deactivate other important nutrient factors, such as vitamin E, ascorbic acid and various

Lipolase is included in Activite because it’s an enzyme that enables your body to use dietary fat as an efficient energy source rather than being stored as fat.

B-vitamins, as well as important medications. Chelation solves that problem. The body is very efficient at absorbing amino acids, and by chelating minerals to amino acids, it enables the aminos to cross the intestinal wall and bring the minerals with them. The transport system allows the minerals to be protected and carried across the intestinal lining into circulation for use.

6) Activated B-complex coenzymes.

The body must process Bvitamins and turn them into their coenzyme form before using them.

Once they’re in coenzyme form, they’re easily absorbed and readily enter cells. The problem is, the B-vitamins in most multis require a process to activate them. Make sure your multi has activated forms of all B-vitamins.

7) Free-radical-scavenging antioxidant blend.

During exercise, oxygen consumption greatly increases, leading to increased free-radical production. If that’s not controlled, a substantial amount of muscle can be damaged, and that can hinder performance, muscle growth and recovery. The good news is, antioxidants work to protect cells from free-radical damage. They scavenge, or round up, the free radicals and kill them off. The power of an antioxidant is determined by its oxygen radical absorbance capacity, which measures its effectiveness at quenching free radicals. Make sure your multi is armed with a potent free-radical-scavenging blend with a high ORAC rating.

Activite, and it’s made by MHP, one of the biggest pioneers in sports nutrition today. Pro bodybuilder and top-five Mr. Olympia contender Victor Martinez swears by it: “I’ve been taking this multi for about six months now, and it’s the only multi I’ve ever taken that I actually feel.

My meals go down smoother—no stomach upset—my muscles feel fuller, and I feel more energy than ever before, so I know I’m getting better utilization of my protein and carbs.”

Activite is the world’s first anabolic-enzyme-activated multivitamin-and-mineral complex designed exclusively for bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts who train hard and demand more from their multi.

After all, when you’re in pursuit of the Mr. Olympia title, like Victor Martinez, you can’t rely on a weak or one-dimensional multi to fuel muscle growth.

The real muscle behind Activite is Anabolase, the patented anabolic enzyme system and interactive food optimizer with designer enzymes aminogen, carbogen and lipolase. Remember, those enzymes are critical to the bodybuilder because they maximize protein, carbohydrate and fat utilization.

Activite is the only multi to date to contain this breakthrough anabolic enzyme blend.

Activite is also precisely formulated to deliver a properly balanced full spectrum of vitamins and minerals. It combines a handselected blend

A Multi With More Muscle Neveux \ Model: John Hansen

(continued from page 137) reactions.

Although a lot of multis on the shelves of vitamin stores are deficient in one or more important areas, there’s one multi that’s flexing big muscle in the circles of some big bodybuilding names. It’s called

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of the world’s most powerful and precise micronutrients—vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytochemicals—in the exact ratios for maximizing their synergistic effect and creating exponential synergies.

Activite provides a full-spectrum infusion of activated vitamins, amino acid–chelated minerals and high-ORAC antioxidants for improved muscle recovery and immune support. That means that the vitamin B and C and mineral complexes in Activite are already in their fully active states, making for full usability, absorption and potency. The “fully reacted” vitamin C complex includes mineral ascorbates of potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, zinc and chromium, which provide the ultimate transport system for vitamin C. The coenzyme B-vitamins used in Activite are in a form identical to what your body uses and are in many cases the only form of B-

vitamins that will work. Activite’s entire complex of B-vitamins are already in their coenzyme form, eliminating the need for processing by the body.

Its mineral complex employs neutrally charged amino acid– chelated minerals, which are highly bioavailable and therefore more effective. To top off its multifaceted multi, MHP has included a blend of high-ORAC free-radical-scavenging antioxidants to maximize performance, trigger muscle growth and speed recovery.

If you’re looking to get the most out of your training and active lifestyle, choose Activite as your multi. It’s the only multi with muscle.

Editor’s note: Try Activite at a special low price. Get two 120cap bottles for only $39.99 plus shipping. That’s half price—like getting one bottle free! Call (800) 447-0008 and ask for the Activite Research Team Special. IM

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The real muscle behind Activite is Anabolase, the patented anabolic enzyme system and interactive food optimizer.

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More Grow Repping Into the Mass Zone With Beta-Alanine – Part 2 by Jerry Brainum Photography by Michael Neveux

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art 1 of this discussion identified carnosine as an intramuscular buffer consisting of two bonded amino acids, L-histidine and beta-alanine. By buffering acid in muscle, carnosine enables you to push a set further, getting more reps. The ramifications for bodybuilding and other anaerobic sports are enormous—and many new studies show that oral betaalanine loads muscle tissue with carnosine. Beta-alanine is especially synergistic with creatine, producing more muscle power and the ability to stimulate more muscle growth in any one workout.

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Beta-Alanine: The Evidence

Power

Muscle tissue adapts to exercise in various ways—for example, by secreting less cortisol with continued training. That’s significant because cortisol is a primary hormone involved in muscle tissue breakdown. The decrease in cortisol secretion lets you do more intense training and improves your recuperation. Since intense training also creates more muscle fatigue by-products, such as lactic acid, it stands to reason that trained muscle would likewise adapt to the increased intramuscular acidity levels induced by exercise.

Studies have confirmed that muscle does indeed adapt to higher acidity levels. That occurs primarily during activity done at a high intensity for short periods, as exemplified by sprinting and typical bodybuilding training. A recent study that compared six nationallevel competitive bodybuilders to six untrained control subjects found that the bodybuilders had muscle carnosine levels twice as high as the control subjects.1 The bodybuilders showed an average increase of 19 percent in musclebuffering capacity. Isolated to type 2 muscle fibers, the effect would represent a 40 percent increase in muscle-buffering capacity. A study of speed skaters found that only 12 days of intense training led to an 87 percent increase in muscle carnosine content.

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A study found that subjects who took four to six grams a day of beta-alanine had a 64 percent increase in muscle carnosine after four weeks. Several other studies suggest that betaalanine is synergistic with creatine in increasing muscle-training efficiency.

that the increased carnosine in the bodybuilders was probably related to an increase in type 2 muscle fibers or possibly to the use of anabolic steroids. A past study in which the subjects were given testosterone resulted in a 268 percent increase in muscle carnosine. That could be the result of a change in muscle fiber composition, such as upgrading the activity of carnosine synthetase, the enzyme that produces carnosine in muscle. Another possibility is that steroid use upgrades the amino acid transport system, increasing the uptake of beta-alanine. In the study histidine levels were elevated in both the bodybuilders and controls, leading to the speculation that hard training alone increases histidine retention in muscle. On a more simplistic level, it could be said that the histidine is already present in muscle. What’s needed for carnosine synthesis is beta-alanine.

Another study found that subjects who took four to six grams a day of beta-alanine had a 64 percent increase in muscle carnosine

after four weeks. Several studies suggest that beta-alanine is synergistic with creatine in increasing muscle-training efficiency. An unpublished study examined the effects of beta-alanine supplementation combined with creatine on neuromuscular-fatigue threshold.

The study, which lasted for 28 days, featured 51 men randomly assigned to one of four groups:

1) Placebo 2) Creatine alone, in which subjects took 5.25 grams of creatine monohydrate plus 34 grams of dextrose (sugar) 3) Beta-alanine plus creatine, in which subjects took 5.25 grams of creatine, 1.6 grams of beta-alanine and 34 grams of dextrose 4) Beta-alanine, in which subjects took 1.6 grams with 34 grams of dextrose Participants took the supplements four times a day for six con-

secutive days, then twice per day for 22 days. Beta-alanine alone proved effective in increasing the threshold before neuromuscular fatigue sets in, and creatine provided no additional effect.

While intense training alone appears to elevate muscle carnosine, several studies show that taking supplemental beta-alanine elevates muscle carnosine considerably above what training alone generates.

One example is a study involving cycling capacity.2 Researchers gave supplemental beta-alanine to 13 male subjects for four and 10 weeks.

Muscle carnosine increased by 58 percent and 80 percent after four and 10 weeks, respectively. While carnosine increased in the subjects who took beta-alanine, no increase in muscle carnosine levels occurred in those who didn’t. The study also showed a 13 percent increase in total work capacity after four weeks in the beta-alanine group, which rose another 3.2 percent after the subjects had been on the supplement for 10 weeks.

In an(continued on page 148)

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One study showed a 13 percent increase in total work capacity after four weeks in the beta-alanine group, which rose another 3.2 percent after 10 weeks on the supplement.

(continued from page 144) other study,

12 trained cyclists took either beta-alanine (4.8 grams daily) or a placebo for 12 weeks while engaging in endurance (five hours a day, six days a week) and weight training (three days a week). Training alone achieved no changes in muscle carnosine levels, but they increased by 65 percent in those who took betaalanine. Both anaerobic threshold and endurance also increased.

In a study featuring 20 male subjects, some took four grams a day of beta-alanine for one week, followed by another nine weeks of taking 6.4 grams a day, while some took a placebo. Muscle biopsies showed a 58 percent increase in muscle carnosine levels in the betaalanine group by the fourth week and 73 percent by the 10th week.

Total work increased by 13 percent and 16 percent after the fourth and 10th weeks, respectively.

Another study examined the effects of two weeks of beta-alanine supplementation on the isometric endurance of the thigh muscles.3 For 14 days 20 subjects, average age 25,

took either a placebo or 1.6 grams of beta-alanine four times a day. They also took each dose with 45 to 65 grams of carbohydrate, since simple sugars stimulate insulin release and increase the uptake of beta-alanine, just as they do for creatine. The betaalanine group experienced an 11.4 percent increase in isometric muscle endurance.

Several recent studies show the beneficial effects of beta-alanine.

One analyzed the effects of 10 weeks of beta-alanine supplementation during a strength-training program. Among subjects in the control group, who didn’t take the supplement, muscle carnosine levels didn’t change. In those who did take it, however, the levels increased significantly.3 So what can we conclude about these studies? Intense training alone does increase muscle carnosine, but it depends on what type of training is involved. An increase in muscle carnosine is more evident in activity that leads to an increase in muscle size, such as bodybuilding training.

Carnosine appears to have a relationship with anabolic hormones.

Testosterone promotes increased muscle carnosine levels, probably through an increase in amino acid transport of beta-alanine. Insulin’s promotion of beta-alanine uptake into muscle explains why researchers suggest beta-alanine supplements should be accompanied by a source of simple sugars to promote an insulin release.

According to researcher John Wise, Ph.D., another reason to consider taking beta-alanine with simple sugars is that doing so may decrease the one noticeable side effect linked to beta-alanine use: a minor flushing of the skin—a lesser version of what some people experience when they take niacin, a B-complex vitamin. The tingling sensation—evidently a sensory nerve stimulation in the superfical skin layers—appears rapidly after beta-alanine intake but resolves just as quickly. The higher the dose of beta-alanine, the greater the flush. Also, since beta-alanine peaks in the blood after two hours,

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Unlike creatine, which should be cycled because of a downgrade in the muscle creatine transport protein, you can take betaalanine year-round with no decrease in absorption.

multiple daily smaller doses, averaging 800 milligrams, are suggested.

The beneficial intake range of beta-alanine is 3.2 to 6.4 grams a day. According to Dr. Wise, however, studies completed thus far show no apparent advantage to taking more than 3.2 total grams. Unlike creatine, which should be cycled because of a downgrade in the muscle creatine transport protein, you can take beta-alanine year-round with no decrease in absorption. In fact, since the effects of beta-alanine are cumulative, the supplement should be used year-round for best results.

The one caveat: Take beta-alanine separately from other amino acids; it competes with taurine for uptake. So don’t add it to a protein drink. Instead, take it at least one hour before or after a meal or protein supplement. On the other hand, the concern that taking larger amounts of beta-alanine might cause the body to excrete taurine hasn’t been confirmed by research.

Several studies that provided supplements containing both betaalanine and taurine revealed no evidence of taurine excretion.

Several writers have suggested that for best results, you should take histidine with beta-alanine, since histidine and beta-alanine combine with carnosine synthetase to form carnosine in muscle. But according to Dr. Wise, trained muscle seems to retain histidine, and there’s more than enough to provide the raw material for carnosine synthesis. The true limiting factor is beta-alanine.

Time will tell whether beta-alanine proves to be the new creatine in terms of effectiveness. If you compare the early studies of creatine with current research on beta-alanine, beta-alanine shows more ergogenic promise than creatine did. Roger Harris, who introduced creatine to the athletic world by publishing many of the early creatine studies, concurs. The one undisputed fact about beta-alanine is that it increases muscle carnosine beyond what training alone can do.

That results in increased training efficiency, added muscle endurance and strength due to less muscle fatigue and possible long-term health benefits.

Editor’s note: The patented formula of beta-alanine is available in the new supplement Red Dragon, $29.95 for 120 capsules. To order, call (800) 447-0008, or visit www .Home-Gym.com.

References 1 Tallon, M.J., et al. (2005). The carnosine level of vastus lateralis is elevated in resistance-trained bodybuilders. J Strength Cond Res. 19:725-29.

2 Hill, C.A., et al. (2006). Influence of b-alanine supplementation on skeletal muscle carnosine concentration and high intensity cycling capacity. Amino Acids. In press.

3 Kendrick, I., et al. (2006). The effect of b-alanine supplementation on muscle carnosine synthesis during a 10 week program of strength training. Paper presented at the third annual conference of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, Las Vegas, Nevada. IM

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-FILES -FILES Shorter Workouts and Anabolic Acceleration

by Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson •Photography by Michael Neveux

o many people want to be more muscular but simply don’t have the time. As we’ve explored the Xrep concept, we’ve developed a number of solutions that can help reduce workout duration—for example, X Reps combined with programs that contain only the big, ultimate exercise for each bodypart (as listed in The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book). In fact, we developed a two-set system for the ultimates that very efficiently covers most of the muscle-building bases with 30-minute mass-building routines. The two-set quick-hit system goes something like this for each bodypart. Perform these sets after a warmup set or two:

S

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Set 1: Do your first work set to exhaustion (nine to 12 reps), adding X Reps—eight-inch pulses—at the end of the set, right at the semistretched point, near the turnaround on the stroke.

Set 2: Do a drop set—do a set to exhaustion, reduce the weight by about 20 percent, and immediately do another set to exhaustion—adding X Reps to the second phase.

You get max-force generation on set 1, along with semistretchedpoint overload with X Reps (more fiber recruitment). Then on the second set you get more force production on the first phase, and, by adding the drop phase, you get extended tension, which helps develop the endurance components of the fast-twitch 2A fibers, something that’s neglected by most trainees. (As we explain in our e-books, neglecting endurancecomponent development is a big reason gains are so slow for most—they train only the anaerobic components with lower reps and straight sets, leaving the endurance components dormant.)

On set 2 you can eventually graduate to a double-drop—two weight reductions—for even more extended-tension mass effects. But don’t get carried away with that. You may want to save it for stubborn bodyparts only.

The beauty of the 30-minute routine is that you use only one exercise—the best, or ultimate, move—for each bodypart. As we’ve said in the past, however, stretchand contracted-position exercises can add to the mass-building effect. So while staying in the timeconfined state of mind, you can add those stretch- and contractedposition exercises to one or two bodyparts to get a bigger mass bang.

For example, say you need more arm size (hey, don’t we all?), and say you’re using the Basic Ultimate Mass Workout 3 from The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book.

That’s a Monday-TuesdayThursday-Friday program, with

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Dips is an ultimate exercise, as defined in The Ultimate Mass Workout. Use it as your appropriate stretchcore triceps-mass builder. Do the first set and contractedwith X Reps and the second as a drop set, position exercises with X Reps on the second phase. after the ultimate exercise for another bodypart that needs an extra size boost— say, shoulders (a rounder set of delts will complement those bulging arms nicely!).

How long should you use each expanded musclespecialization schedule? Four to six weeks should build you some significant new mass in a specific bodypart; then you can move on to another. This type of rotating-muscle specialization is a great way to keep your workouts short while still getting you size surges in various “important” muscles along the way.

Editor’s note: The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book is and the 20-Pounds-of-Muscleavailable at www.X-Rep in-10-Weeks program visit .com. For new information on www.3DMuscleBuilding.com.

3D Positions-of-Flexion training IM

Model: Luke Wooda

X

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lower body and abs worked on Monday and Thursday and upper body worked on Tuesday and Friday.

You only do one exercise—the ultimate exercise—per muscle for two work sets, so your workouts are short and efficient (especially if you use the two-set system outlined above). So if you want to pack on some new arm size, simply add one set of a stretch-position exercise and one set of a contracted-position exercise after your ultimate triceps exercise or after your ultimate biceps exercise—or after both.

For triceps the Basic Ultimate Mass Workout calls for two sets of parallel-bar dips. Do them in the manner described above—set 1 with X Reps, set 2 as a drop set with X Reps on the second phase. Then add one set of overhead extensions, for the triceps’ stretch position, and one set of kickbacks for the contracted position. Now you’ve trained the triceps through its complete arc of flexion with two powerful anabolic accelerators—stretch overload and isolated continuous tension. You can do the same for biceps if you really want to kick up your arm size—and those few extra sets won’t take much extra time.

After you add an inch or so of extra muscle to your arms, you can go back to using the ultimate exercise only and add the

Model: Daryl Gee

To specialize for more arm size, add overhead extensions for stretch overload and kickbacks for continuous tension. One all-out set of each should do the trick.

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Muscle Medicine Doug McGuff, M.D., Discusses High-Intensity-Training Dose/Response for Muscle and Strength - Part 1

by John Little

Balik \ Model: Mike Mentzer

I

first heard of Doug McGuff, M.D., through Mike Mentzer’s Web site. Mike raved about a book titled Ultimate Exercise that had been authored by an emergency room physician in South Carolina.

Once he started reading it, he couldn’t put it down, Mike said. It was chock full of “completely new ideas, fresh perspectives and wide-ranging deductive inferences” that riveted him. As Mike was not easily impressed, I took his enthusiasm seriously.

After Mike died, Joanne Sharkey, the CEO of Mentzer-Sharkey Enterprises Inc., asked me if I’d like to see a video seminar that Dr. McGuff had done. Remembering Mike’s enthusiasm for the man’s work, I said yes, and Joanne sent a copy to me.

It was a busy time for me, what with writing, film production, operating a training facility and family responsibilities, so I didn’t get around to watching it for some time. Once I played it, I could have kicked myself for having not watched it sooner, as I fully understood why Mike had been so enthusiastic.

I’d never before seen such a brilliant presentation of the realities of bodybuilding science from a medical perspective. Shortly thereafter I acquired a copy of the book.

Like Mike, I read it from cover to cover in one day. That led me to visit Dr. McGuff’s Web site, where I devoured every article posted there. In time, I developed questions and also a strong desire to bring this man and his work to the attention of others who might desire a more rational, scientific and noncontradictory approach to exercise. This interview is the result.

In addition to his medical duties, Dr. McGuff has operated a one-on-one highintensity-training center for almost 10 years. His knowledge of how the body responds to stress—such as the stress of exercise—in terms of its biological subsystems holds profound relevance for anyone who wants to better understand what it takes to achieve optimum muscle size, strength and fitness. He is, in my estimation, one of the world’s premiere authorities on high-intensity training and has broken new ground. www.ironmanmagazine.com \ DECEMBER 2006 159

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Powerful Muscle Medicine

Balik \ Model: Mike Mentzer

“Mike Mentzer was a turning point for bodybuilding because he was the first bodybuilder who addressed the contribution of genetics to his success.”

JL: Tell us about your work as an emergency room physician.

DM: I work with Blue Ridge Emergency Physicians. We’re a group of 10 physicians that contracts with a community hospital.

We provide 24-7 coverage for their emergency department.

JL: How did you become interested in the science of exercise?

DM: My interest in human physiology can be traced back to Arthur Jones. Around 1977 a Nautilus gym opened up close to my home. I had just become interested in weight

training to improve my performance in a sport, and I wanted to train there rather than in my garage.

At my age, and at my station in life, I couldn’t afford to train there, so I went to the owner and bartered janitorial services for membership.

Now, at the time I knew nothing about Nautilus training principles or training at all, for that matter, but as I was cleaning up in the facility one weekend, I saw a yellow manual

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“Mentzer challenged the dogma of the time, which was extremely high levels of training volume.” sitting on top of the owner’s desk that looked interesting to me. It was Nautilus Training Principles Bulletin 2 by Arthur Jones. I picked it up and started flipping through it, and it was very interesting, so I asked the owner if I could borrow it.

I took it home, read through the whole thing in one sitting, and it was a life-changing event. It’s what led me to major in biology in college, and it’s what ultimately led me to have an interest in medicine and go to medical school.

JL: Did Mike Mentzer have an influence on you?

DM: Mike had a huge influence on me. I kept track of the muscle magazines, and I knew that he was someone who had picked up on Arthur Jones’ principles and had popularized them in the bodybuilding media. He immediately became the bodybuilder I most looked up to and wanted to emulate. I read everything that was written about him or that he wrote.

Mike was a turning point for bodybuilding because I think he was the first bodybuilder who addressed the contribution of genetics to his success and challenged the dogma of the time, which was extremely high levels of training volume. And just his orientation toward life and knowledge had a

profound impact on me.

We tend to see training and response to training through our personal experience only, and Mike had the intellect and the honesty to be able to say, “Look, not everyone responds the way I do.” And he could devise a training protocol that worked for him and then say, “I understand the biology of exercise, and therefore I can create a training protocol or modify a protocol in such a way that people of more average potential will have results from training as well.” And I think that’s a very unusual thing—for someone who has a gift to be able to view the training process as it applies to people who do not have that gift. (continued on page 164)

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Neveux \ Model: David Yeung

“The stimulus for muscle growth is multi-factorial.

There isn’t only one key stimulus.”

Arthur Jones.

(continued from page 161)

JL: If Arthur Jones is the pioneer of the fundamental principles of intensity, volume and frequency, and Mike has that distinction with regard to the genetic element and perhaps even the modification of those principles for the trainee who is not genetically gifted, what do you see as your biggest contribution?

DM: Well, I don’t think I’ve had that much to add of consequence. I guess, if I were to pick things that I might have contributed that were of importance, I would say the concept of global metabolic conditioning.

That’s probably the thing that I feel is most important and that I’m most proud of.

And what I mean by that is just that there are other metabolic systems in the body than the aerobic metabolic system. There’s been a huge emphasis in the past on the link between aerobic metabolic conditioning and improvements in health, and there’s been a huge neglect of how properly performed strength training can produce other metabolic adaptations that are as beneficial as aerobic adaptations—and in many cases more beneficial—and contribute in a more global sense to the overall health of the organism. I think that’s one big thing.

JL: Realistically, how much muscle can be gained in the course of one year?

DM: The response side of the equation is going to be highly variable and dictated by genetics. But let’s spread out all of the possible responses on a bell curve. The problem is, when you do a scientific experiment to answer those sorts of questions, you can select a thousand subjects, but if you have one “curve-blower”—one person who’s two standard deviations out to the right—it’s going to skew your response very badly. But I would say, just hypothetically speaking, if you put everyone on a bell curve and focus on the middle of the bell and look at the average response that someone could expect with proper training over the course of a year, it’s possible that maybe, if it was done really well, 18 or 20 pounds of muscle.

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JL: And would that assume, say, someone who is just starting training?

DM: Yeah, I would run it based on that assumption. And people will say, “Ah, no! That doesn’t sound like very much!” But you’ve got to remember that our expectations of what a good response is have been entirely warped [by the top bodybuilders]. What they’re doing is taking already very good genetics and pouring on top of that very large amounts of anabolic steroids, very large amounts of growth hormone.

And you’re seeing these 250-to-270pound competitors with single-digit bodyfat winning the contests. That has hugely skewed our expectation of what a good gain is.

If you want to, say, take an average person who has added 18 to 20 pounds of muscle in the course of a

year—which is possible—and you say, “Well, that’s not that great,” go to the grocery store and pick up a pound of ground beef. Then stack up 18 of those and look at what that is. Then imagine putting that onto the frame of an average person.

That’s an astounding amount of muscle.

JL: What’s been your greatest success in terms of muscle gain at your training facility?

DM: My instructor Clay Brunson just blows up, and like all guys who are genetically gifted, he’ll quit for months at a time and just not care.

He’ll come back and train for a few weeks and just blow up. So he’s one extreme responder.

Another is a stockbroker we had

who stopped coming because he had to buy a new wardrobe, and he couldn’t get his thighs into his slacks anymore. He probably gained 25 or 30 pounds of muscle in the span of a year and got leaner in the process. I mean, he was huge.

There were markers that he had that kind of potential; in the past he’d been a professional mogul skier, and he had a tennis scholarship when he was in college. So he was an athletic guy.

JL: And he was on the same three-to-five sets, once-a-week program you have everybody else on?

DM: Yeah, he did five sets once a week for probably six to eight months, and then we took him down to three sets once a week.

“Our expectations of what a good response is have been entirely warped [by the top bodybuilders].

They’re taking already very good genetics and pouring on top of that very large amounts of anabolic steroids, very large amounts of growth hormone.” www.ironmanmagazine.com \ DECEMBER 2006 165

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Powerful Muscle Medicine

JL: What have you found to be the stimulus for building muscle?

DM: I think the answer is that the stimulus is multi-factorial. One of the biggest mistakes that we make when we try to optimize the stimulus is kind of a reductio ad absurdum way of thinking. That is, that there is “one” key stimulus. I don’t really think that’s the case. I think it is multi-factorial. Some of the elements are: Load—the muscle being loaded with a large amount of weight— seems to be important. And that is borne out by the research that shows that the hypertrophy model in animals is stretch—where they just have a weight hanging on a limb for a protracted period of time done at intervals, and that produces a very good hypertrophic response. That argues that “load” is the issue.

Inroad is also a key stimulus.

That’s the momentary weakening of muscles—a sign that you are recruiting motor units and fatiguing them in a sequential pattern.

When you start lifting a weight, the first motor units you recruit are the smallest ones, which are composed of slow-twitch fibers. As those fatigue and fall out of the equation, you recruit intermediate-twitch fibers, which are slightly larger motor units. As those fatigue and fall out, you recruit the largest, fastest-twitch motor units and fatigue those out. As that happens, you become progressively weaker.

If you’re lifting a weight of 200 pounds, your strength level may be starting out at 320 pounds. But you lift and lower it, and lift and lower it, and as you do, you’re recruiting and fatiguing motor units and progressively becoming weaker.

When your force output drops to 199 pounds because you’ve recruited and fatigued so many motor units, you have reached muscular failure. Even though you’re lifting

200 pounds of weight, you’re only producing 199 pounds of force. So, clearly, inroad has to be part of the component just as load has to be part of the component.

The metabolic by-products of exerting yourself that way are also part of the stimulus—the production of lactic acid, the lowering of the pH, creates an environment where certain enzymes and hormones that are part of the growth stimulus come into play.

I think that all of these things are factors, and you can’t just reduce it to one. The urge to reduce it to one thing is, 1) kind of like looking for a holy grail that’s going to bring us the results that we want; and 2) something that allows market niches to develop. If you can build your training system around a specific key stimulus and make a good argument for it, you can create a unique niche. I also think that even if you try to emphasize only one of those elements, you’re going to be involving the other elements as well, just by the carry-along factor.

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JL: What have you found to be the ultimate training frequency?

DM: An ultimate, or optimal, training frequency would fall anywhere between every fourth day and every 14th day—depending on the subject—with the average for most people being in the middle of the bell curve—every fifth to seventh day. That would be just about optimal, kind of floating back and forth between the two.

Let me explain that further.

What we found when we trained clients once every seventh day is that there are a significant number of people who are recovered by the fifth day. But we still train most clients once every seven days. The reason is that going every fifth day has workouts falling on days of the week willy-nilly, and that just doesn’t work for most people. The additional two days of rest don’t really, in my experience, result in any significant decompensation.

Early on, when we opened Ultimate Exercise—my professional training facility in Seneca, South Carolina—within the first couple of years we were really pushing the volume and frequency question.

We wanted to know if the whole theory was going to fall apart at a certain level. So we decreased volume and frequency right from the get-go. We had a whole cadre of clients whom we trained every 14th day right from the start, and they actually showed a rate of progress and a rate of strength gain that was on par over time with the people who were going every seventh day—but they only had to show up once every two weeks.

What was different, though, was that the people who were coming every 14th day were having an unpleasant metabolic experience from the workout; they would get very winded and nauseous, and they would have to lie down after their workout for 15 minutes just to recover, whereas the people who were coming once every seventh day were doing just fine.

What I came to understand is that the muscular adaptive response—because you’re actually building tissue—occurs over a longer span of time than the metabolic adaptations that support that kind of work. I read a case article about a man from the Himalayas who traveled to Los Angeles to house hunt; he wanted to live in America. He was there for two weeks, decided that he really didn’t

like it, so he flew back home. After being gone for only two weeks— and remember he’d lived there his whole life—he died of high-altitude cerebral edema.

That just goes to show you that metabolic adaptations—those are enzymatic adaptations—are not metabolically expensive to incur; they ramp up and they ramp down very quickly. We may find that to be the case that in terms of productive strength training; that is, training that stimulates strength increases and hypertrophic response could be done every other week or maybe once a month—as you cut your hair—providing that you do some sort of interval training that preserves your metabolic adaptation in the meantime.

Editor’s note: In Part 2 Dr. McGuff discusses the studies on once-a-week training, the speed of muscle growth, more on metabolic adaptation and techniques for accelerating hypertrophy.

John Little is one of the leading fitness researchers in North America. He and his wife, Terri, own and operate Nautilus North Strength & Fitness Centre in Bracebridge, Ontario. He is the innovator of the Max Contraction Training system of bodybuilding exercise (www .MaxContraction.com). IM

Neveux \ Model: Joey Gloor

“An optimal training frequency would fall anywhere between every fourth day and every 14th day— depending on the subject.”

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HEAVY The

Wisdom Of Mike Mentzer

by John Little

Individual Stress Tolerance Q: A friend of mine recently had a phone consultation with you in which you set him up on a training program that has worked spectacularly well—for him, at least. When I tried the same program, I did all right, but nothing like his results. Where he improved his strength by 25 to 100 percent on all exercises and gained 11 pounds of muscle in four months, I only gained five pounds in the same period.

Why?

A: More likely than not, the program that I put your friend on isn’t perfectly suited for you.

To avoid any confusion here, I’m going to make a very important point: While the scientific principles of Heavy Duty highintensity training are applicable to all—thus making it the best, most productive method for all—genetic variations among individuals require the application of the principles to vary slightly from one person to the next. Or, as Mike often used to say to his phone consultation clients:

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DUTY

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HEAVY DUTY considerations and goals.

Based on my analysis, I’d possibly start you on Mike’s baseline Ideal Routine, which works quite well for the majority.

One month later we’d have a follow-up call, during which I’d evaluate your progress. If you haven’t made satisfactory progress, I’d suggest certain modifications, which, I assure you, would put you on a path of very gratifying progress.

If, however, after the first month of training on Mike’s Ideal Routine (or sometimes even during the first consultation), I ascertained that your innate tolerance for high-intensitytraining stresses was not as good as most, I’d switch you to Mike’s Consolidation Program. That way you’d be performing even less training volume and frequency to compensate for your Genetic lesser tolerance for variations exercise stress; i.e., among recovery ability.

The program individuals would work all of necessitate the major muscle that the groups primarily with compound application of exercises. the principles Here’s Mike on will vary the subject: “Remember, just slightly from as there are some one person to who obviously the next. do not tolerate exposure to highintensity-sunlight stress as well as others, likewise there are some who do not tolerate high-intensityexercise stresses as well as others.

They are usually—in 99.9 percent of the cases—people who have more linear physiques; i.e., a bit more on the straight-upand-down side Neveux \ Model: Jose Raymond

Neveux \ Model: Jim Schiebler

“Only God, if there is one, would have the luxury of being able to look inside of your body, read your genetic material, your DNA, and say to you with absolute certainty, ‘Thou shalt perform three sets per workout once every 101 hours. Any more or any less, sir, will compromise your progress.’ The main point here is that I don’t even have the luxury of seeing you or working with you in person, let alone reading your genetics as God might; therefore, I can’t guarantee anyone that I’d start him on the same baseline, startup program that the Almighty would.

I’m not so sure it would be all that different, however, in that we’d both be clear in our understanding of the fundamental principles of exercise and bodybuilding science.”

Were you to have a phone consultation with me, I’d start by getting some background information, including your age, height, weight, recent and past training history, nutritional

than either round or muscular.

My Consolidation Program has worked so exceedingly well with ectomorphs—the typical hardgainer—that I’m convinced I’ve finally solved that problem.

“I believe all of the aimless talk and alleged research on muscle fiber types to be somewhat misguided.

While fiber type certainly may be of some importance, fiber density is just as crucial or even more so.

Hardgainers, I contend, are those who have less muscle fiber density, which may make them less tolerant of high-intensity-exercise stress, just as those with less density of skin pigment are less tolerant of highintensity-sunlight stress.”

By the way, if you check the literature, no one, not from the bodybuilding orthodoxy or from the exercise science community, has ever identified everything Mike stated above. Every advocate of every other training approach has all trainees starting out with exactly the same routine and has them stick with it endlessly—regardless of physical type, training history, nutritional needs, goals and whether they have experienced progress with their particular training principles.

Do Fats Make You Fat? Q: I have mastered Mike’s theory of training and am achieving great practical

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results. I’ve gained 17 pounds of muscle in the past three months, and my strength has gone through the roof. In fact, I actually gained 28 pounds but lost 11 pounds recently because I put on too much fat. It seems that if I stray from a strict, “clean” diet and eat any fats, I get fat immediately. I enjoy whole eggs and a big, juicy steak occasionally, not to mention an ice cream cone every now and then. Did Mike have anything to say about this—or am I doomed to a bland, fatless diet for the rest of my life?

A: For someone who claims to have “mastered” Mike’s theory of training, you seem to know little of what he believed regarding nutrition. Mike would have been the first to tell you that fats, per se, don’t make you fat; nor do the other macronutrients, protein and carbohydrates. Something else is at work here. Allow me to recount an anecdote of Mike’s that might put things into perspective on the fatsmake-you-fat myth. As he told the story: “Years ago, I had a training partner who went off to Montana every other winter to climb mountains daily for a month. When he left for his (continued on page 182)

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HEAVY DUTY

(continued from page 179) mountain-

Neveux \ Model: Todd Smith

climbing interludes, my friend was always pudgy; and one month hence he’d return very lean—not shredded but devoid of any visible bodyfat. During his month of rugged activity he subsisted predominantly on animal fats—things like bacon, butter, eggs and fatty beef. Obviously, he was expending more calories through his rigorous mountain climbing than he was consuming; as a result he lost bodyfat.

“The ‘problem’ with fats is that they contain nine calories per gram, as opposed to only four calories per gram for carbohydrates and protein.

If you aren’t carefully monitoring your intake of fats, the total number of calories you’re consuming can skyrocket very quickly; and before you know it, you’re accumulating fat and smoothing out. It is excess calories—those you consume beyond maintenance and growth

needs—that result in fat deposition, whether they come from protein, carbohydrates or fats.”

Mike often advised his clients to keep a food diary for five days and establish an average daily calorie intake. If during that five-day period you don’t gain or lose any weight, then your daily average is also your daily maintenance level. In order to provide the growth mechanism with the nutritional values it requires to produce growth, you may want to increase your daily calories by 300 above your maintenance level. If, after two weeks of the additional calories, you find that you’ve gained a pound or two, go up another 200 to 300 calories.

Another point: No matter what your daily calorie budget happens to be, approximately 60 percent of it should come from carbohydrates, 25 percent from protein sources and the final 15 percent from fats. Fats, let it be known, are crucial to many physiological processes and thus play a key role in a well-balanced diet.

As Mike said, “Enjoy that occasional steak, candy bar or ice cream, but do so within the confines of your daily calorie budget.”

Is Heavy Duty Dangerous?

Q: It appears as though Mike’s impassioned advocacy of highintensity training created a revolution in the bodybuilding and fitness world that was long overdue. My only concern with Heavy Duty high-intensity training is the safety factor. It would appear to be brutally hard, which I don’t mind, as I simply love hard training. Some of Mike’s detractors, however— usually those selling their own training systems—claim that Heavy Duty may be hard on the joints and connective tissues.

A: While it can be argued that any training program has the potential for injury if a bodybuilder doesn’t know how to use the equipment properly (be it free weights or machines), Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty, high-intensity training, with its emphasis on proper form during exercise, is very, very safe. It’s not like a typical powerlifting program involving very heavy weights and only one to three reps—that would be properly designated a high-

“It is the first few reps of a set, when the trainee is freshest and can exert the most force, that are the most dangerous.”

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HEAVY DUTY

intensity, high-force program. The level of force imposed on the joints, connective tissues and muscles would be very high, and if extreme caution were not exercised and any bouncing, jerking or yanking occurred, the impact could multiply several times that of the actual weight itself and, of course, possibly cause an injury. A properly conducted Heavy Duty workout, however, uses weights that let you get up to 10 (or more) reps to failure.

With such an approach the forces are low to moderate and so quite safe. As Mike correctly pointed out a number of years back: “Some are reluctant to embark on a high-intensity program because they mistakenly believe that the last rep of a set carried to a point of momentary failure is dangerous. On the contrary—the last rep of a set carried to failure is the safest because by the last rep the trainee is at his weakest, barely able to generate enough force to complete the rep. It is the first few reps, when the trainee is freshest and able to exert more force than is

A properly conducted Heavy Duty workout uses weights that let you get up to 10 (or more) reps to failure. With such an approach the forces are low to moderate and so quite safe. momentarily required to move the weight, that are the most dangerous.

“If, for instance, he’s doing a set of barbell curls with 100 pounds for 10 reps to failure, no rep will require him to exert much more than 100 pounds of force to complete it. Usually, on the first few reps, when the individual is fresh, he’ll complete them relatively easily, exerting well above 100 pounds

of force. On the last rep he is barely able to move the weight at all, exerting just enough force to complete it—maybe 101.1 pounds.

Therefore, the last rep is the safest so long as proper technique is employed.”

Editor’s note: For a complete presentation of Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty training system, consult his books Heavy Duty II, High Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way and the newest book, The Wisdom of Mike Mentzer, all of which are available from Mentzer’s official Web site, www.MikeMentzer .com.

John Little is available for phone consultation on Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty training system. For rates and information, contact Joanne Sharkey at (310) 316-4519 or at www.MikeMentzer.com, or see the ad on the opposite page.

Article copyright © 2006, John Little. All rights reserved. Mike Mentzer quotations provided courtesy of Joanne Sharkey and used with permission. IM

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Jerry Brainum’s

Bodybuilding Pharmacology

To T or Not to T?: Is That the Question? Part 2 The cardiovascular effects of testosterone are controversial. Because men die of cardiovascular disease more often than women, most assume that it must be because men produce higher levels of testosterone than women do. In addition, an optimal level of estrogen in younger women provides a degree of CVD protection, largely through increased nitric oxide production in blood vessels. Older women, who lack estrogen, are just as much at risk for CVD as men are.

The relationship of testosterone to CVD isn’t clear cut.

In fact, many studies show that optimal levels of testosterone can protect men from cardiovascular disease. For example, men with atherosclerosis, a primary risk factor for CVD, often have lower-than-normal levels of testosterone. Testosterone helps dilate the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart muscle. That would improve blood flow to the heart.

Other studies show that low testosterone levels in men lower their ability to dissolve the blood clots that are the primary cause of most heart attacks and strokes. C-reactive protein (CRP), a blood marker of inflammation that’s considered a risk factor for CVD, is lowered by testosterone. Testosterone also has an inverse relationship with levels of total blood cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein, meaning that total cholesterol and LDL rise as testosterone levels drop. It also lowers lipoprotein (A), which is considered a risk factor for CVD. Most forms of testosterone-replacement therapy don’t adversely affect CVD risk factors—with the exception of oral anabolic steroids, which always lower protective high-density lipoprotein by stimulating a liver enzyme that rapidly degrades HDL.

Many studies show that testosterone has protective effects against cardiovascular disease.

Forms of TRT Here are the current and future forms of testosteronereplacement therapy, along with their advantages and disadvantages: 1) Oral therapy. The oral forms of testosterone, represented by various forms of anabolic steroids, are considered too risky for routine use in TRT. The one exception is testosterone undecanoate, trade name Pantestone. Unlike other oral steroids, which first pass through the liver, testosterone undecanoate is absorbed through the lymphatic system, enabling more drug to get into the blood. The drug must be taken in doses of 40 milligrams, four times a day, and produces short spikes in blood testosterone, however. The lack of consistent blood testosterone levels is considered a drawback.

2) Buccal therapy. The term means that the drug is placed alongside the gums in the mouth and is gradually absorbed into the blood through the oral mucosa. A newer form with an improved delivery system, sold under the trade name Striant, delivers 30 milligrams of testosterone over a 12-hour period. It’s taken twice daily.

3) Intramuscular therapy. Injectable T, such as testosterone enanthate and cypionate, is a long-acting form of the drug reaching peak levels in only 10 hours, then leveling off and subsiding to near baseline levels after two weeks. Injections are usually 200-milligram doses every two to three weeks. The primary side effects are pain and bleeding at the injection site. Intramuscular delivery requires some knowledge of injection technique (for instance, injecting the drug slowly causes less residual pain at the injection site).

The problem with injectables is that they lead to superphysiological levels immediately, followed by subtherapuetic levels two weeks later. So a more optimal pattern would require weekly injections. While doctors consider the temporary high testosterone levels a negative aspect, from a bodybuilding perspective they’re a good thing, leading to rapid strength and size gains. Also, injectables are the only form of TRT that can provide higher-thannormal blood levels of testosterone (other than oral anabolic steroids). That explains why they’re the only form of testosterone used for athletic purposes.

Newer forms of testosterone injections, such as testosterone undecanoate and buciclate, last much longer than current forms—as long as 12 to 16 weeks. An experimental microencapsulation injectable can provide even levels of blood testosterone for 11 weeks or more.

4) Testosterone pellets. These are surgically implanted in the skin of the lower-abdominal wall, upper thigh, deltoid or glute muscles. One brand is called Oerton. The pellets must be implanted two to four times per year, making them an unlikely choice for most men.

5) Transdermal delivery. Applying testosterone through the skin avoids the first-pass breakdown in the liver, as well as the possible pain and inconvenience of injections. Transdermal forms of testosterone more closely mimic the natural pattern of testosterone release in the body. Scrotal patches, which are placed on shaved scrotums, are now avoided because of the frequent skin irritations they caused. Another problem was that the scrotal

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Jerry Brainum’s

Bodybuilding Pharmacology

A new study proved what athletes have discovered empirically: Testosterone is syngergistic with growth hormone. skin contains the enzyme 5-alpha reductase, which converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone. DHT is linked to such side effects as malepattern baldness, acne and prostate enlargement.

Androderm is the trade name for a nonscrotal patch introduced in 1996. The drug is applied in the evening, rotating sites on the back, abdomen, upper arms and thighs. It has 16 percent efficiency, delivering 60 percent of testosterone during the first 12 hours after application. It effectively mimics the natural pattern of testosterone secretion. The primary side effect is mild redness at the application site in 50 percent of users.

Those effects are more likely to occur if the drug is applied to a bony prominence or parts of the body subject to prolonged pressure during sleep or sitting. Levels of testosterone drop to previous levels after 24 hours.

AndroGel is a form of testosterone for application directly to the skin.

Once applied, it dries in five minutes and is stored in proteins just under the skin for several hours. About 9 to 14 percent of the testosterone contained in the gel is available, and it doesn’t affect DHT levels. A newer gel form, Testim, using an improved delivery vehicle, provides 30 percent more testosterone than Androgel. An

even newer form, Opterone, can be applied to smaller areas of skin than earlier versions of gel, thus reducing the chance of transferring the hormone to children and women.

Looking Ahead Future potential forms of TRT include nasal delivery in spray form.

Another possibility is pulmonary delivery, as with a metered-dose inhaler currently used in asthma therapy.

A recent study proved what many athletes have discovered empirically: Testosterone is synergistic with growth hormone.1 The study provided four participant groups with a placebo, GH and a placebo T, T and a placebo GH or a GH-T combo. Big T was administered via a transdermal patch, while GH was injected. Of the 80 subjects, aged 65 to 80, those who used the combination of GH and testosterone had a 28 percent greater total-fat-mass loss than those who used testosterone alone—about the same as would be experienced with higher doses of growth hormone alone. In addition, the GH-and-testosterone group showed the highest gain in muscle mass and a significant improvement in maximum oxygen intake, an event that didn’t occur

in either the GH- or testosterone-only groups. Most important, the low doses of both hormones prevented the development of significant side effects. It may be a useful HRT for the future.

Those concerned with the safety aspects of TRT should be monitored at regular intervals by a physician. Important tests include monitoring testosterone blood levels, liver function (if oral steroids are used) and prostatic-specific antigen (every six to 12 months); conducting a digital rectal examination (every six to 12 months); and running a blood hematocrit (if using injectable testosterone in doses above 200 milligrams per injection).

It’s also useful to get repeated tests of testosterone levels before undergoing regular TRT. Thirty percent of men who initially display low-testosterone levels have normal levels when retested. Even 15 percent of younger men can have below-normal testosterone levels over a 24-hour period because of factors such as stress and lack of sleep. A lack of sleep alone can temporarily lower testosterone by 40 percent in young men. Those who really want to know how their T production rates may consider tests of free, or bioavailable, testosterone, also known as equilibrium dialysis. Since that particular testosterone measurement isn’t routinely provided in blood-testing procedures, it would have to be a special order from a physician, likely an endocrinologist or hormone specialist.

The thing to remember about TRT is that its primary goal is to bring lower testosterone levels to a midrange normal level. Doing so avoids nearly all possible problems and side effects linked to higher-than-normal testosterone levels but provides the quality-of-life benefits linked to testosterone.

1 Giannoulis, M.G., et al. (2006).

The effects of growth hormone and/ or testosterone in healthy elderly men: A randomized controlled trial.

J Clin Endocrin Metabolism. 91:477484. IM

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Good Vibrations

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Good Almost-Effortless Muscle and Strength Gains: Old Movers and Shakers of Exercise Vindicated by New Vibration Technology

Neveux \ Model: Tamer Elshahat

by Jerry Brainum

or the less motivated, the search for an easy way to get fit, lose bodyfat and even gain muscle never seems to end. How else to explain the apparent success of late-night infomercials that promise to deliver all the goals of exercise with minimal effort? Those who refuse to exert the necessary effort to achieve physical goals, whether building muscle, losing fat or both, are easy prey to inflated claims. Never mind that the muscular and fit models shown using worthless contraptions got that way through regular and frequent gym sessions and a clean diet. That part of the equation is never revealed.

The quest for a magic machine that will make exercise as easy as possible isn’t new. Back in the 1940s, a machine was introduced that purportedly enabled you to spot reduce stubborn fat deposits on the waist and lower-back areas.

You’d stand on a platform, and then slip into a belt that would encircle your waist. Turning on the machine

caused the belt to vibrate intensely.

The idea was to shake the recalcitrant superfluous fat off your body.

All you had to do was stand still and let the machine do the work.

Passive exercise, as it was called, was quickly condemned by scientists and exercise experts. Authorities noted that the calorie burn was negligible and no actual muscle was involved. Without a suitable level of muscular involvement, fitness simply could not be attained. Eventually, the vibrating-belt machines were relegated to the Dumpster, no longer seen but fondly remembered as symbolic of an era when you could get a tank of gas for less than a buck.

Even so, vibration as a means of obtaining fitness and health was in vogue long before the appearance of the vibrating belt. The ancient Greeks treated injuries by wrapping a saw in cotton fabric, vibrating the saw, then applying the vibrating padded saw to a wound with the idea that the vibrations that resulted had healing properties.

In 1857 a Swedish doctor named Gustav Zander built 70 different steam-powered exercise machines, some of which transmitted vibrations, for use in physical training.

They were introduced at world exhibitions in 1876 and 1878, leading to the development of Zander Institutes, an early form of health clubs that featured Zander’s machines and proved so popular that they were opened in various cities around the world. The Netherlands alone had nine Zander Institutes.

The eccentric health educator and cornflakes co-inventor Dr. John Harvey Kellogg also invented a whole-body vibration machine at his Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan in 1895. A special chair violently shook but also allegedly cured such ailments as constipation, headaches and back pain. The machine was touted as a way of increasing tissue oxygenation. Kellogg also had a standing vibrating platform that was used to stimulate the inner organs.

In 1912 Arnold Snow published

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Good Vibrations

A Swedish doctor named Gustav Zander built 70 different steam-powered exercise machines, some of which transmitted vibrations, for use in physical training.

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Neveux \ Model: Nancy DiNino

the book Mechanical Vibration, which talked mostly about the benefits of massage but also noted the many benefits of vibration for health. Fast-forward to 1960, when East German scientist Beirman developed a technique called rhythmic neuromuscular stimulation, which was the forerunner of today’s vibration-exercise techniques.

Vibration was further developed by the Russians, who observed that cosmonauts often returned to Earth after extended space missions in a debilitated physical condition. Many were so weak that they needed assistance in walking after emerging from their spacecraft.

Lack of gravitational force led to muscle weakness and loss, along with considerable bone loss. Russian scientists reasoned that providing a form of therapy that featured a hypergravitational force could effectively treat and possibly prevent space-related side effects. The solution turned out to be the application of vibration.

Vibration at its most elemental level involves a recurrent change of position, with the oscillation being either up and down or side to side. Vibration involves several specific physical factors: amplitude, frequency and time. When applied to muscles, it imposes a hypergravity effect because it affects the muscle spindle, which promotes rapid changes in muscle length. You normally activate muscle spindles,

Good Vibrations the exercise, the improvement was attributed to an enhancement of neural factors from the vibration stimulus.

An interesting effect of vibration exercise is enhanced blood flow to

muscles. One study showed that whole-body-vibration exercise increased muscle blood volume by 100 percent.2 That not only results in greater muscle pump but also promotes lymphatic drainage. Pro-

Moving Conclusions These research conclusions are from the Zenergy Vibes literature. Zenergy Vibes is the most popular vibrating-platform equipment. For more information visit www.Home-Gym.com.

1) Mitochondrial and lysosomal volumes were significantly increased in vibrated cells. These ultrastructural changes, generated by a physiologically valid vibration stimulus, provide an anatomic link between the clinical observation of increased back pain and the biochemical alterations involving pain-related neuropeptides. (Spine. 19(13):1455-61; 2005) 2) Squats performed on a vibration platform have an apparent superiority to squats done without vibrations in terms of maximal strength and explosive power as long as the external load was similar in recreationally resistance-trained men. (J Strength Cond Res. 18(4):839-45; 2004) 3) Whole-body vibration is reported to increase muscle performance and bone mineral density and stimulate the secretion of lipolytic and protein anabolic hormones, such as GH and testosterone. (J Endocrinol Invest.

27(4):323-7; 2004) 4) Whole-body-vibration’s reflexive muscle contraction has the potential to induce strength gain in knee extensors of previously untrained females to the same extent as resistance training at moderate intensity. (Med Sci Sports Exerc. 35(6):1033-41; 2003) 5) Applying 26 hertz vibration during exercise on vibration platforms appears to elicit an alteration in neuromuscular-recruitment patterns, which apparently enhances neuromuscular excitability. (Clin Physiol Funct Imaging. 23(2):81-6; 2003) 6) Vibration exercise enhances specific oxygen uptake and subsequently muscular metabolic power and muscle activity. (Int J Sports Med. 23(6):428-32: 2002) 7) A 12-week study found that strength gains from vibration exercise (maximum of 20 minutes, three times a week) were equivalent to one hour of conventional exercise. (Med Sci Sports Exer. 35(6): 1033-1041; 2003) 8) Knee rehabilitation patients gained nearly twice as much strength (+ 126 percent) after vibration training than those using regular rehabilitation exercises (+ 78 percent). (Clinical Physiology. 21(3): 377-382; 2001)

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Neveux \ Model: Nancy DiNino

which are embedded in the connective tissue that lines muscle fibers, during stretching movements.

Muscle responds to vibration by contracting to offset the stress it imposes.

The total effect is called the tonic vibration reflex. Vibration at a certain frequency stimulates the muscle spindle structures to contract reflexively, a compensation that increases muscle tone and strength.

Many studies show that muscle electrical activity recorded on an electromyograph machine is much higher when vibration is applied to a muscle than can be achieved with a normal voluntary muscle contraction using weights. The implication is that applying vibration to a muscle makes it contract more powerfully.

Much of the level of force in a muscle contraction is based on greater synchronization of motor units, or how hard the muscle is stimulated by neural input. Vibration increases the synchronization while also inhibiting antagonist muscle activity that would otherwise limit the muscle contraction.

If you think about it, lifting weights also increases gravitational force on muscles, but other factors, like the antagonist activity, limit the extent of contraction possible with weights.

Several studies have shown considerable improvement following vibration training. One experiment used a special vibrating cable for biceps curls. Subjects included both elite and amateur athletes, who trained on the vibrating-cable device at 44 hertz intensity; hertz is a measure of vibration. The elite athletes experienced a 10.4 percent increase in muscle power, the amateurs a 7.9 percent increase.

In a similar study maximal force increased by 49.8 percent and flexibility by 43.6 percent.

A study of six female volleyball players tested the effects of vibration on a leg press machine using various loads. The presses were done one leg at a time, with one leg being exposed to vibration. There was a significant enhancement of velocity, force and power. Since the athletes performed presses in their usual workouts and weren’t new to

Good Vibrations

The volume of the mitochondria, the energy generators in cells, significantly increased with vibration training.

The fact that vibration exercise is involved in a process called the stretch-shortening cycle in muscles became the basis for a study of whether it can also increase muscle flexibility.8 The hamstrings are frequently strained or injured during sports and exercise. Subjects using a type of stretching called the contract-release method first contracted, then released and stretched the hamstrings. One group did that

type of stretching alone, while the other combined it with squats performed on a vibration platform. The range of movement in the hamstrings increased by 30 percent in the vibration group and 14 percent in the stretch-only group.

So vibration training appears to increase strength, muscle size and flexibility, but can it affect body composition—for example by promoting (continued on page 204)

Vibration training can also improve neuromuscularrecruitment patterns.

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moting blood and lymph circulation provides optimal nutrient and energy exchange at the metabolic level, along with enhanced waste and toxin removal.

But can training on a vibration device aid bodybuilding progress?

Several studies suggest mechanisms through which vibration training can offer benefits. A fiveweek trial featured subjects who did squats using a Smith machine either in the conventional style or on a vibration platform.3 While both groups showed strength increases, the vibration group tended to make greater gains.

Another study sought to determine the optimal vibration frequency for stimulating muscle.

Vibration frequencies of 30, 40 and 50 hertz were applied to the vastus lateralis of the front thigh. The greatest muscle involvement occurred at a frequency of 30 hertz.4 In a direct comparison wholebody-vibration training proved slightly superior to conventional leg extensions and leg presses in promoting increased muscle strength.5 Researchers noted that vibration training leads to a more rapid activation of high-threshold motor units, which means that it may activate the fast-twitch fibers most amenable to growth more rapidly than conventional training, and it may also be useful for increasing muscle power. Studies done with rats show that vibration training does lead to significant growth in both slow- and fast-twitch fibers.

The muscle contraction induced by vibration is involuntary, unlike that of weight training.

Another study compared training on a vibration platform to doing low squats, high squats and onelegged squats.6 The researchers found that vibration exercise led to a higher level of muscle activity, especially during the one-legged squat. Leg muscles closer to the vibrating platform were affected more. For example, calf muscles were more strongly affected than thigh muscles.

Vibration exercise may foster efficient and rapid warmups as well, according to a study that also found that training with vibration increases jumping power in athletes.7

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Good Vibrations on a vibration platform, while another group of women did 15 to 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, along with leg presses and leg extensions. Both groups trained three times a week. After 24 weeks neither group showed any significant changes in bodyfat percentage, although the vibration group experienced increases in fat-free mass and strength.

A study of 40 cyclists demonstrated that vibration exercise is no way to train the cardiovascular system. Scientists compared the effects of vibration training to cycling and found a lower heart rate during vibration exercise, along with a lower maximum-oxygen intake. So it appears that vibration exercise is not suggested as a means of losing bodyfat and training the cardiovascular system.

From a hormonal perspective, the initial findings related to vibration proved provocative and exciting. The first study found a 361 percent increase in growth hormone, a 7 percent rise in testosterone and a 32 percent drop in cortisol following vibration exercise.11 That hormonal profile suggests a potent anabolic context for increased muscle size and strength.

A more recent study of subjects doing squats alone and on a vibrating platform showed increases in testosterone.12 Growth hormone response was (continued on page 208)

(continued from page 201) bodyfat

In one study wholebody vibration was shown to increase knee flexor power to the same extent as resistance exercise.

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Neveux \ Model: Dave Goodin

losses? That would be a particularly attractive feature, harking back the old-fashioned vibrating machines with the belts.

Studies show that whole-body vibration increases oxygen consumption, heart rate and blood lactate and norepinephrine levels.9 With the exception of blood lactate, those effects are all associated with a loss of bodyfat during exercise.

The amount of energy used during a typical vibration session is comparable to walking at moderate intensity.

A study looked at the effects of 24 weeks of whole-body-vibration training on body composition and muscle strength in 48 untrained women.10 The whole-body-vibration group did various exercises

Good Vibrations (continued from page 204)

highest following the squats performed on the vibrating platform, but that was the only form of exercise that also led to a rise in cortisol levels. The cortisol increase was likely related to higher intensity level and would be offset by the rise in testosterone and growth hormone.

Another study, however, found that vibration exercise increased muscle glucose uptake and norepinephrine levels but had no effect on any other hormones.13 Differing results can be attributed to the subjects’ state of fitness, the vibration exercise protocols or even the type of vibrating machine.

Present evidence shows that the optimal vibration range for muscle stimulation is between 30 to 50 hertz. Too much vibration for too long can have negative effects, such as muscle weakness.

You want to avoid wearing shoes with shock-absorbing soles, since that decreases exercise efficiency by up to 50 percent. The exercise is contraindicated for anyone who has cardiovascular or spinal problems or who’s had recent surgery.

Companies selling various types of vibration machines suggest that vibration sessions shouldn’t last more than 20 minutes and should not be done daily. You need to rest be-

tween sessions for optimal improvement. In truth, the best training pattern for vibration exercise remains unclear.14 If you have access to a vibration apparatus, however, it may serve as a useful adjunct to weight training. It may also be useful on days when you just don’t feel like training hard but still want a good workout. Looks like we haven’t come that far from the old vibration belt after all.

References

1 Bosco, C., et al. (1999). Adaptive responses of human skeletal muscle to vibration exposure. Clin Physiol.19:183-87.

2 Kershan-Schindl, K., et al.

(2001). Whole-body-vibration exercise leads to alterations in muscle blood volume. Clin Physiol. 21:37782.

3 Ronnestad, B.R. (2004). Comparing the performance-enhancing effects of squats on a vibration platform with conventional squats in recreationThe amount of energy ally resistanceused during a typical trained men. J vibration session Strength Cond is comparable to Res. 18:839-45.

4 Cardinale, walking at a moderate M., et al. (2003). intensity.

Electromyography activity of vastus lateralis muscle during whole-body vibrations of different frequencies. J Strength Cond Res. 17:621-24.

5 Delecluse, C., et al. (2003).

Strength increase after whole body vibration compared with resistance train-

ing. Med Sci Sports Exer. 35:1033-41.

6 Roelants, M., et al. (2006).

Whole-body-vibration-induced increase in leg muscle activity during different squat exercises. J Strength Cond Res. 20:124-29.

7 Cormie, P., et al. (2006). Acute effects of whole-body vibration on muscle activity, strength, and power. J Strength Cond Res. 20:25761.

8 Van den Tillaar, R. (2006). Will whole-body-vibration training help increase the range of motion of the hamstrings? J Strength Cond Res. 20:192-96.

9 Rittweger, J., et al. (2000). Acute physiological effects of exhaustive whole-body-vibration exercise in man. Clin Physiol. 20:134-42.

10 Roelants, M., et al. (2004).

Effects of 24 weeks of wholebody-vibration training on body composition and muscle strength in untrained females. Int J Sports Med. 25:1-5.

11 Bosco, C., et al. (2000). Hormonal responses to whole-body vibration in men. Eur J Appl Physiol.

81:449-54.

12 Kvorning, T., et al. (2006). Effects of vibration and resistance training on neuromuscular and hormonal measures. Eur J Appl Physiol. 96:615-25.

13 Di Loreto, C., et al. (2004).

Effects of whole-body-vibration exercise on the endocrine system of healthy men. J Endocrin Invest.

27:323-27.

14 Luo, J., et al. (2005). The use of vibration training to enhance muscle strength and power. Sports Med. 35:24-41. IM

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Eric Broser’s

If you find something on the Web that IM readers should know about, send the URL to Eric at bodyfx2@aol.com.

>www.DanielleHollenshade.com I am quite proud to present to my fellow IRON MAN readers the official Web site of IFBB figure pro Danielle Hollenshade. Danielle is a friend of mine, and at one point I was her contest-prep coach during the ’04 season. She is one of the sweetest gals you could ever meet but a tenacious warrior in the gym. I remember training with her several weeks out from a contest, and she’d regularly rep out with five plates on each side of the leg press, 35-pound dumbbells for curls and a 75pound dumbbell for one-arm rows. I never had a client display as much heart during a workout as she did.

She knew exactly what she wanted and went after it with every ounce of her being. In 2005 her dream came true, as she won the overall title at the Figure Nationals and was presented with her IFBB pro card. If you go to her site and click on her free gallery, you’ll quickly see that Danielle has one of the most pleasing and beautiful physiques in the field. Her smile and dramatic looks will grab your attention and not let you go, so please reserve the time you spend on her site for your lunch break, or you’ll never get any work done.

I also recommend keeping a napkin close by to wipe up the drool from your desk. Click the store link and check out her hot photos for sale, as well as her online training programs. Or, if you’re in the South Florida area, set up your own personal-training session with her to learn the finer points of sculpting a near perfect physique. I predict that 2007 will be a big year for Danielle and that she will climb her way in to the upper echelon of her sport. Check out her site, and I’m sure you’ll become a big fan as well.

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>www.Dennis-James.com Dennis James is one of the most popular pros competing today. He combines outrageous mass and excellent conditioning with reasonable proportions and symmetry. Dennis is a top threat in any show he enters, but he’s one pro who, I feel, hasn’t yet brought his best package to the stage. He’s become legendary for posting his pictures on the Internet weeks out from the Olympia, looking as if he’s going to be the one to push Ronnie to his limits. By show time, though, Dennis always seems to lose too much ground. Once he nails his perfect combination of size and hardness, very few athletes will be able to stand in his way… and if they do, they might get trampled by 260 pounds of granite muscle.

There are some truly amazing photos of Dennis on his site, especially from the ’03 Olympia, where he may have been at his all-time best. Very few, if any, IFBB pros can match him in the most muscular pose. One interesting fact I learned about Dennis is that if he weren’t a bodybuilder, he’d be playing professional soccer in Germany. Most bodybuilders come from a background of football, powerlifting or wrestling rather than an unrelated sport like soccer. I think my favorite part of the site is Dennis’ “thank you” page. It’s always great to see athletes acknowledge the people who have helped them reach the level that they have. It is nice to see that he mentions his wife, daughter and entire family, along with tons of recognizable names from the bodybuilding industry, including IRON MAN’s own Lonnie Teper.

>www.LanasEggWhites.com I don’t have to tell you how important protein is for building muscle…and if I do, please put this magazine down and pick up Golf Digest or Good Housekeeping. The egg white is one of the best sources of muscle-building protein on the planet. It has high biological value, zero fat and just a trace of carbohydrate. The only problem is that it can be pretty inconvenient to obtain.

First, there is only about 3.5 grams of protein per egg white. Second, it’s a real hassle to have to separate the yolk from the white—not to mention wasteful. In recent years the situation has gotten a bit better for us egg-whitemunching bodybuilders, as supermarkets have begun carrying liquid egg whites in eight- and 16-ounce cartons, which contain the equivalent of 14 to 28 whites. But now you can purchase a tub of 165 egg whites—and at a lower cost than supermarket brands. Head to this site, and for $29.99 (plus shipping) you can have one or more tubs of pure, USDA-approved, preservative- and chemical-free, salmonella-tested egg whites delivered right to your doorstep. And for those of you with one or two extra refrigerators in your garage, they offer a buy-16-get-4-free deal. By my calculations that’s about 3,300 egg whites. That should last a week or so, huh?

If you doubt for one second the quality of Lana’s liquid egg whites, check out who else uses them: Jay Cutler, Mark Dugdale, Monica Brant, Jen Hendershott, Roland Kickinger, Shawn Ray and more. So if you’re serious about feeding your body top-quality protein, stop wasting your time with tiny cartons of egg whites, and start buying your new muscle by the tub.

>www.MuscleMayhem .com/forums/index.php If you’re a bodybuilding message board junkie like me, you probably know about this site, but for those of you who haven’t visited it, you don’t know what you’re missing. The forums at Muscle Mayhem are owned by none other than contest-prep guru Chad Nicholls. You may have heard of a few of his clients, including such pros as Ronnie, Gunter and Melvin (no last names necessary).

His wife was also a pretty decent bodybuilder at one time—as in multi-Ms. Olympia winner Kim Chizevsky. While many bodybuilding message boards are basically the same, Muscle Mayhem is a standout. With more than 22,000 members, it’s one of the most highly trafficked boards anywhere on the Net. In fact, Mayhem (as most members call it) was the very first site to break the Craig Titus/Kelly Ryan murder story. (And I’ll give you a little hint about who actually started that topic. He’s the writer of this very column. That’s right, I’m guilty. Well, guilty of breaking the news, but nothing else…I swear.) I’ve served as a moderator on Mayhem almost since day one, and it’s been an honor to do so. With members that include pro bodybuilders Toney Freeman, King Kamali, Mark Dugdale and Bob Cicherillo; natural stars Skip La Cour and John Hansen; bodybuilding scribes Shawn Perine and Ron Harris; Web gurus Dante and Troponin and dozens of beautiful fitness and figure gals like Pauline Nordin, Jennifer Searles and Debbie Leung, you never know what you’re going to read.

There’s a plethora of entertaining news, interesting gossip and insider bodybuilding knowledge shared on Mayhem on a daily basis, a lot of which you’ll find nowhere else. So join in the Mayhem. IM

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Lonnie Teper’s

NEWS & ViEWS ’06 Nationals Preview

Evan Centopani.

Evan Handed Folks whose memories haven’t faded yet will remember that the Swami correctly picked Phil Heath to win the ’05 NPC USA, despite having only seen Bill Comstock’s pics of the then-25-year-old wunderkind, taken when he flattened the field at the ’05 Junior Nationals.

Can history repeat itself? Yesiree. I’m looking at Comstock’s shots of this season’s Junior National champ, Evan Centopani, and am predicting that the 5’11”, 240-pounder out of Trunbull, Connecticut, will win it all in Miami Beach on November 10 and 11 at the ’06 NPC Nationals.

The 24-year-old Centopani, who certainly has a fitting e-mail address—Bigdog250@msn.com—has a terrific upper body, has gotten lots of press (including a cover shot from Muscular Development) and has the desire to bring up his wheels, which should do the trick for a victory in Florida.

Comstock is sky high on the kid and backed it up by betting me a dinner that Evan will whup “the Gift,” as Heath is known, and become the 2010 Mr. Olympia.

If you’ve ever seen Comstock eat, you know I won’t get off cheap if his prognostication becomes reality. I don’t call him Big Bill for nothing.

That said, it’s still not going to be easy for the new wunderkind. I really liked Desmond Miller, last year’s fourth-place finisher to Bill Wilmore in the superheavyweight class. If Dense (as in muscle) Desmond shows up with a much improved lower body, things will get interesting. And James “Broadway” Bivens, only four points out of second last year (and my personal fave, since he was a student of mine at Cal State, Los Lionel Lionel Angeles, many moons ago), will also have something Brown.

Brown. to say about the outcome.

Of course, you can never count out Jerome “Hollywood” Ferguson, one of the precontest favorites at this year’s USA, who’s out to prove that his fifth-place finish behind eventual overall winner Omar Deckard was a fluke. I always like it when Jerome competes; no matter how many times he does his “Who Let the Dogs Out” routine, it wakes up folks in the seats. As for Rudy Richards, third a year ago, L.T. likes Broadway.

I’m not sure he’ll be back.

Darrell Terrell hates my pick in the heavyweight class—because it’s not him. It’s Lionel Brown, and the L Train will be moving at full throttle 214 DECEMBER 2006 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com

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Desmond Miller.

Photography by Bill Comstock

Swami says Centopani can duplicate Heath’s ’05 USA feat in Miami

Jerome Ferguson.

MR. O MATERIAL? Who was that masked man?

Page 216

POLITICS Just whose arm is Steve twisting?

Page 218

Ron Avidan

BODYPARTS Best arm at the Europa Super Show?

Page 217

Terrell is official long shot.

Robert E. Lee.

Garrett Allin.

Shaun Crump.

after a close second-place finish to Mike Ergas at the USA. I’ve always like Shaun “Ain’t No Chump” Crump’s physique as well and am giving all fair warning to keep an eye on him.

Back to Terrell. The Oklahoma City standout does have a lot to offer. He is, after all, coming off a strong third-place landing at the ’05 festivities, in Atlanta. And he was walking hand in hand with new figure pro Natalie “Halle” Benson at the Europa Super Show, so he’s already a champ in my book. Darrell, you always do much better when I don’t pick you to win (remember the shot with the boxing gloves?), so you should be very happy you’re entering this one as a Swami long shot. I also like Sebastian Zona and Kent McLean, so this will be one helluva battle.

Stan McQuay has one of my fave physiques and— again—says he’s going light heavyweight this year. Which means he’ll end up right back in the middleweight class, where he’ll battle Garrett Allin for the crown. Speaking of light heavyweights, I think California’s David Truley truly has a shot at winning that class.

Another guy who’s ready to earn his pro card (all class winners get one) is the General, Robert E. Lee, a frequent training partner of Ronnie Coleman’s, and the best-built hairdresser in Texas, who will lead the troops in the lightweight class. In the bantamweights I’m going with Dandy Dave Candy, a former Teen, Collegiate and Junior National class winner. He was second in his class in this show a year ago, so this pick seems sweet to me.

Stan McQuay.

Dave Truley.

Dave Candy.

Europa Super Show

THE FUTURE IS NOW—I gave Toney Freeman the moniker “the Future” when I first set eyes on the 6’2”, 240-pounder and his great shape at the ’94 NPC Nationals. When I introduced him at the finals, I told the crowd, “The future is now.” He finished fourth in a class won by the late Paul DeMayo in that one and then repeated that landing the following season, making it look as if I might know what I was talking about. For the next few years, however, Toney was nowhere to be found.

Freeman popped up again in Atlanta at the ’01 Nationals and finished eighth; a year later, in Dallas, he copped the overall crown, tipping the scales at 252 pounds. The new National champ entered the pro ranks and slowly but surely climbed up the ladder. Early in the ’06 season he took seventh at the IRON MAN, ninth at the Arnold Classic and fifth at the San Francisco Pro. He was told he needed to be bigger, so bigger he got. All the way to 289 pounds for the Europa Super Show on August 26, he claimed. Now, it’s no secret what I think about competitors’ weight claims, but in www.ironmanmagazine.com \ DECEMBER 2006 215

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Texas at the Super Show, Freeman was the largest I’ve ever seen him. And the judges felt he was conditioned enough to win his first pro show, which qualified him to compete in his first Mr. Olympia. As I write this, the Big Dance is two weeks away, and I say Toney could battle for a top-six finish.

Everyone marvels at how Ronnie Coleman’s physique looks— at 42. Freeman recently turned 40, so once again bodybuilding is proving to be an industry where 40 is the new 30. Quincy Taylor, a youngster at 37, was in his best shape in years and finished second, his highest placing ever on the pro level. Johnnie Jackson, 35, finished third but came out on top in the online voting that took place in conjunction with Bodybuilding.com’s Webcast, picking up a thousand bucks in the process. A week later Jackson scored his first victory as a pro in Montreal.

The biggest surprise of the contest was Darrem Charles’ fourthplace finish. Darrem, 38, competes more than any pro on the circuit, and it’s understandable that he can’t be in top shape at every show.

Art Atwood, now also living in Texas, rounded out the top five.

I got my first look at Germany’s latest import, Dennis Wolf, and saw a lot of potential in the guy who ended up in seventh. I predict that by the time you read this, Dennis will have made his Mr. O debut.

The women’s events were held on Friday. Hats off to Heather Foster, Amanda Savell and Tanji Johnson, who topped the bodybuilding, figure and fitness lineups, respectively. For more on those contests, see Pump & Circumstance on page 244.

As was the case in 2005, promoters Ed and Betty Pariso brought all the female competitors onstage Friday night, and we (yes, we!) had a dance-off. I did my best to stay out of it, but head judge Jim Rockell personally requested that I get down as well. I finished eighth in the men’s division, behind champion pop-locking Ed and the six male dancers who were part of a featured troupe. I have no idea how my room key fell out of my suit jacket, but figure contestant Jennifer Becerra was quick to pick it up and give it right back to me, pronto.

AMATEURS DEPT.—The NPC Super Show was just that as well, with the impressive Daryl Jones (men’s bodybuilding), Janetta Thompson (women’s bodybuilding), Amber Jarrell (figure) and Brenda Santiago (figure) taking top honors. Jones also won the masters division. Santiago, I was amazed to find out, is a longtime friend Art of Adela Garcia—the two met in Puerto Rico 15 Atwood. years ago and remain friends today. Brenda is a super performer, too, and could be on a pro stage, competing against her pal, in no time. For photos and coverage of both the pro and amateur Super Show events, including a full slate of audio reports, log on to GraphicMuscle.com.

Darrem Charles.

ADD EUROPA: EXPANSION—Things are said to be bigger in Texas, and it’s true of this show. If you heard my audio interview with Ed Pariso done at the Super Show, you heard the news first—the prize money will double next year, and the weekend bash, with 17 new events slated, is moving to the Dallas Convention Center. The best news of all, natch, is that Ed said, “We’ll have you back next year [as emcee].” Well, at least the best news for me. That’ll be four (as in years), and ready for more.

As I’ve said, Texas has become a home away from home for me—a lot of nice, helpful folks and some of the best competitors in the country.

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Freeman executes his first victory.

Dennis Wolf.

Quincy Taylor.

ited Pariso said. “We have a crew that helps us the day of the show, but up until that we do everything ourselves.” How Betty keeps her energy and focus on the show when she’s also preparing for the Ms. Olympia just weeks away is a sight to behold. You go, kid.

Kudos also to Europa’s Eric Hillman, who continues to support the event as title sponsor. Eric was smiling throughout the weekend, so it’s safe to say he’ll be back next year too.

Miscellaneous

Johnnie Jackson.

L.T. and Angela Semsch.

Gene X Hwang

Victor Martinez and Lance Johnson.

Ron Avidan

Smilin’ Eric Hillman.

619 MUSCLE DEPT.—Pete Ciccone has been an excited young man of late. The NPC middleweight standout has a new lady, NPC Figure star Meriza Goncalves, and a new center for sports nutrition, 619 Muscle.

“We’re located at what some might call the last bastion of true hardcore gyms—World Gym, San Diego,” Ciccone says.

“It’s old school, that’s for sure. No initiation fee, prices have been the same for the past 10 years—but it’s great. We have many big names who train here, including IFBB pros Garrett Downing, Gina Allioti, Derik Farnsworth and top level NPC competitors like P.D. Devers, Meriza and, of course, Pete Ciccone.” That last remark was said with humor, in case you didn’t get it.

“We carry all the major product lines and are the only retail source for the full line of Biotest products.

619 Muscle offers everything needed for the competition stage, from tanning products and Bikini Bite to custom posing suits by the popular suit designer Michael Mercado. We also have posing coaching, precontest prep and general fitness training.

“So, come on by and check us out when you’re in the neighborhood, or call or e-mail if you need anything—we also do mail order. Check us out online at www.619muscle.com.”

The Bikini Bite got me, Pete—I’ll be down soon!

Ed and Betty.

NPC Europa champs (from left):

Labor of Love Smokin’ Joe Wheatley put on a smokin’ show at his Muscle Beach

Meriza and Pete.

Jones, Jarrell, Thompson and Santiago.

Photo courtesy of Pete Ciccone

Ron Avidan

CORRECTIONS DEPT.—In the October issue, Gerard Dente’s MHP nutrition company was identified as MPH in the picture page of the sponsors for my Junior California Bodybuilding and Figure Championships. And, since I have a photo I wanted to run anyway of a biceps posedown between Victor Martinez and MHP’s Lance Johnson, here is the perfect opportunity to set the record straight. So, who wins?

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Franco and the Gov salute Joe Weider.

John Balik and Leroy Colbert.

Shawn Ray’s Pro Fitness Golf Tournament, benefiting Children’s Hospital of Orange County, logged in another success, as the ’06 event, held July 15 at the Black Gold Golf Course in Yorba Linda, California, raised another $25,500 for the hospital, making the total donation for the contest’s two years of existence to be $55,500.

Shawn and wife Kristie, along with the irrepressible Asia Money, er, Monet “Sting” Ray, the couple’s one-year-old daughter, organized the tournament, with Team Vyo-Tech returning as title sponsors. The foursome of Tom Garrity, Tony Licata, Jeff B. (Shawn still doesn’t know his last name!) and Zhanna Rotar repeated as champions from 2005; Balik and McLish. well, almost, anyway—Zhanna replaced Timea Majorova, who was unable to attend this year, on the championship quartet.

Additionally, Jeff B. also won a BMW 535 for making a hole in one. The car was supplied by Motorcars Direct in Irvine, California, through Tim Sladeck, a former competitive bodybuilder who took his class at the Orange County a few seasons back.

I was going to make my golfing debut at the event, shoving Jeff B. to an inferior foursome, but had to leave for Houston, where I hosted the Texas State. Next year you folks won’t be so lucky, since the contest is moving to October.

Some of the name players who showed up to hit the links include Kevin Levrone, David Henry, Mary Lado, John Brown, Bob Cicherillo, Christine Pompanio-Pate, Pro World Arm Wrestling champion Travis Bagent and Melvin Anthony. Also in attendance: James “Flex” Lewis, Nasser El Sonbaty, Chris Cook, Idrise Ward-El, Lauren Powers and Ron “Yogi” Avidan.

Rachel salutes Gene Mozée.

Comstock

Swing Time

Muscle Beach photography by Jerry Fredrick

Labor Day festivities. Not only did Joe Weider come out to Venice to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from Wheatley, but Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger showed to tell the huge throng that gathered at Muscle Beach, Venice, about how Joe had been such a big influence in all aspects of his life. He also mentioned that there were more cameras at the shindig than “at one of my press conferences.”

The Bill Fiege video of the September 4 ceremony, which is posted at GraphicMuscle.com, is an emotional one, with Arnold and Franco Columbu helping Joe up to the podium. Weider, 85, had major back surgery a couple of years ago and says he’s still recovering, but he reminded the crowd how tough bodybuilders are.

Rachel McLish, the first ever Ms. Olympia (people are still talking about her April ’06 IRON MAN cover), joined Leroy Colbert and Gene Mozée as Muscle Beach Venice Hall of Fame recipients, with IM Publisher John Balik presenting the awards to all three.

In the physique contest portion of the day, Danny Hester took the men’s division, Kimm Winn won in women’s bodybuilding, and 19year-old Melanie Garcia topped the field in figure.

Thumbs-up to Wheatley and all those involved in making this perhaps the most exciting day in Muscle Beach history.

Joe Wheatley and Joe Weider.

Shawn Ray (center) and the rest of Team Vyo-Tech hit the links to benefit Children’s Hospital of Orange County at Shawn Ray’s Pro Fitness Golf Tournament. And you thought bodybuilders weren’t swingers.

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UP, DOWN AND ROUND THE ’06 EUROPA SUPER SHOW Photography by Ron Avidan

3

2 Isaac Hinds

1

4

7

5 6

10 8

11

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Neveux

1) Kim Perez, Colette Nelson and Tonie Norman put the super in Super Show.

2) Adela Garcia, L.T. and Tanji Johnson get dance fever.

3) Ron Avidan greets Mercedes Khani.

4) IM’s Bill Comstock admires Ron’s technique.

5) Quincy Tailor holds up the world.

6) Jen Searles shows her claws.

7) MD’s Steve Blechman and Isaac Hinds re-live a painful memory.

8) Big apples from the Big Apple: Rodney St. Cloud and Steve Weinberger.

9) Carolyn Bryant dares folks to get close enough to read her Tshirt.

10) Monica Brant shows off hubby Scott Peckham’s sexy midsection.

11) Webcasters Dan Solomon and Bob Cicherillo star in “Blazing Microphones.”

12) Valerie Waugaman looks as good in clothes as she does in her posing suits. IM

12

To contact Lonnie Teper about material possibly pertinent to News & Views, write to 1613 Chelsea Road, #266, San Marino, CA 91108; fax to (626) 289-7949; or send e-mail to tepernews@aol.com.

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IRON MAN Hardbody

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Timea Majorova Sends the Temperature Rising

Story and Photography by Bill Dobbins - www.BillDobbins.com

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One of the problems with women’s physique competition is that it tends to produce very few stars.

It used to be that champions like Rachel McLish, Cory Everson, Sharon Bruneau, Lenda Murray and Anja Langer got lots of magazine coverage—and covers. Nowadays very few of the top figure and fitness women, let alone the female bodybuilders, get much attention in print. That means they have trouble promoting themselves to real star status.

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IRON MAN Hardbody

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IRON MAN Hardbody A major exception is Timea Majorova. Timea showed up at the Fitness Olympia one year and was immediately the center of attention—at least on the part of the fans, journalists and photographers. The judges didn’t score her well because they felt she was—can we all say this together?—too muscular.

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IRON MAN Hardbody Timea wasn’t a gymnast and so wasn’t able to win many pro fitness shows. By the time figure came along, she was so in demand as a model and spokesperson that she decided that competition was no longer necessary.

Obviously, she’s still motivated to promote her career. Drive out to the desert for a photo shoot and get up at 4:30 a.m. for makeup? No complaint. Heat, rough terrain, thorns in her foot? No problem. All she had to say was how glad she was to be out shooting in such a beautiful landscape.

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IRON MAN Hardbody

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Timea is always thinking about her career. We stopped at a department store so I could buy some batteries. While I was standing in line, she found and bought four cute little outfits. The more good outfits, the more good photos. Rust never sleeps—and when it comes to promotion, neither, apparently, does Timea. IM

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IRON MAN Hardbody

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PROS SHOWS

CONTEST UPDATE

Fitness Drama Texas style

Comstock

Hold everything!

It’s time to see what the girls did last summer.

It’s a week before the Olympia as I tickle the Powerbook keys, and the 2006 qualifying season ain’t over yet. A continent away in “’Ranic City,” as we called it when I was a kid, the prejudging of the Atlantic City Pro contests in men’s and women’s bodybuilding and fitness have just concluded, and here in Southern California the Tournament of Champions Pro Figure is just getting under way.

Tomorrow, half a world away in Santa Susanna, Spain, another men’s show is going down, held in conjunction with the IFBB Women’s World Amateur Championships, which, incidentally, crowns its new champions this weekend. Look for results and comments from those shows throughout these Pump & Circumstance pages.

First, however, let’s talk about the two months leading up to this pre-Olympia last-ditch effort, when there was been a big NPC or IFBB event almost every weekend. We pick up where we left off last month on our Summer of ’06 Tour, with Tanji Johnson (above) winning the fitness title at Ed and Betty Pariso’s Europa Super Show on August 25 in Arlington, Texas.

Of course, a lot more than Tanji Johnson’s fourth pro win went down in the Super Show fitness battle.

Mindi O’Brien gave her strongest performance this year to date, taking third-place honors in the physique rounds and winning the two-minute routines to finish a solid second.

Julie Palmer, fifth at last year’s Olympia, scored O-bound her highest finish O’Brien. of the season by taking the numberthree spot. The top six routines, after Mindi and Tanji, were performed by, in order, Kendra Elias, Julie Lohre, Bethany Gainey and Katie Szep. The top six overall also included Amy Haddad, Angela Semsch and Stacy Simons, in order, whose scores were very close.

Comstock

Tension

Is in the air

MORE PROS

Driving Effort

Lest we forget

Liberman

Almost lost in the figure exhaustion that hit many after the NPC’s marathon Fig Nat’s-USA pro card rush at the end of July was the Motor City Pro Figure showdown on August 12 in Dearborn, Michigan. Jennifer Searles, fresh from her runner-up finish to Jessica Paxson at the New York Pro, motored ahead of the 18-woman lineup to win by 18 points.

D.J. Wallis, returning to the runway for the first time since the ’05 Cal, and Michelle Flake finished a point apart to take second and third, respectively, with Jane Awad and Melissa Frabbiele a few points behind in the fourth and fifth spots.

Meet the Michigan three (from left): D.j. Wallis, Jennifer Searles and Michelle Flake.

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Nah, but I sure chased her

Comstock

Europa?

Symmetry round in Texas (from left): Paparone, Westerfield, Foster, Columb and Nelson.

was the only real mystery of the score sheet. The elevation of Heather, Dena and Colette to the Olympia invite list was seen as a signal that the IFBB pro judges were going soft—in their women’s-physique preferences—but more likely it was just a case of what they thought was the best body onstage that day.

I’ve talked about how symmetry alone won’t bring you a title—you still have to look your best. There’s an amendment to that adage, and it’s a fine line: Even if you’re not at your very best, if you look good enough, you can beat out gals who are bigger, harder and more ripped but whose physiques are not as pretty. In other words, Foster’s may not have been the most sliced booty posing on the boards, but the panel thought her condition was sharp enough for her to beat this crowd on shape and aesthetics. Ditto for Nelson, whose not-the-biggest-babe-onstage look is what many say they’d like to see winning the top titles. The scores were high—as they were in the fitness contest—which means that the judges didn’t vote in a single voice.

For those who still think that there was a plot in Texas to advance athletes who were smaller, smoother or from New York (Colette, too, hails from them thar parts), see the comments on the Atlantic City Pro on page 247.

MORE EUROPA

Savell Is Swell!

(You can tell)

Only one winner at the Europa earned in the neighborhood of a perfect score. Dallas darling Amanda Savell quarter-turned her consistent conditioning to a second-straight win at this show, landing 10 points ahead of Michele Adams, who hit the Olympia bull’s-eye with a runner-up finish in her first try this season. Third went to D.J. Wallace, who got her invite in Michigan.

Another Texan, Houston’s Bernadette Galvan, took fourth-place honors in her second pro show, while Latisha Wilder was a point behind her to end the evening in fifth. Twenty-six contenders high-heeled it to Arlington for this year’s Super Show Figure contest. Kate Shelby, Pauline Nordin, Christine Wan, Amy Peters and Kristin Nicewarner filled out the top 10.

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Amanda is two for two at the Super Show.

Dobbins \ www.BillDobbins.com

Talk about a stage full of women chasing the Olympia dream. The postcontest Internet buzz on this event included a lot of whining that at least two of the top-three finishers had been given a gift and that this or that woman had been royally screwed.

Now, I only saw the pictures—and no matter what anyone says, there’s a big difference between that and being there, especially if you get to sit in the press pit and have roughly the same view as the judges—but I had no problem with New York’s Heather Foster getting her second-ever pro win, her first since the ’01 Extravaganza, with ’05 NPC National Light-Heavyweight champ Dena Westerfield taking second in her pro debut, and ’04 World champ Colette Nelson nailing her condition at last to get the third-placer’s Olympia invite.

Neither did my editor, Steve Holman, who glanced at the comparison photos posted at GraphicMuscle.com and said, “People don’t know why Heather’s the winner?”

The controversies went something like this: The likes-’embigger-and-harder crowd complained that Tazzie Columb and Jeanne Paparone should have landed higher than fourth and fifth, respectively, among other issues. The pushing-a-more-feminine-look crowd wondered why Kim Perez was relegated to sixth, which, as far as I’m concerned,

ATLANTIC CITY

MORE FIGURE

Julie’s Turn

Dobbins \ www.BillDobbins.com

With only 10 Nina ladies in the lineup, Luchka. the Montreal Pro Figure on September 3 may have been the smallest pro figure show of the year, but folks I know who attended had nothing but good things to report. The Europa, it turns out, was just a warmup for Michelle Adams, who finally got to take home the first-place check after three years of quarter-turning in the pros. With six Canadians, two women from South America and one Lithuanian now living in Great Britain on hand, Adams was the only competitor from the U.S., another rarity.

After this dust-up two more names were added to the ’06 Olympia invite list. Former World Amateur champ Inga Neverauskaite has been headed toward the winner’s circle all year and moved up to second this time, while Canada’s Nina Luchka (above), last seen languishing in 13th place at the Figure International, beat out the rest of her countrywomen, including Debbie Leung, to take third. That brought the list up to 22, but it was not the bottom line.

Marcia Ferguson, Over-50 Overall, winner, took fifth heavyweight at the North Americans.

For a while it looked as if there would be a pair of docs, as in Ph.D.s, picking up the top prizes at the A.C. fitness show with Dr. Lisa Aukland looking like a winner in women’s bodybuilding and Dr. Tracey Greenwood getting her customary first callouts in fitness. It also looked as if the fitness show would produce only one addition to the Olympia lineup, with Greenwood and fellow fitness stalwart Julie Palmer—fourth and fifth at the ’05 O—onstage. Fate, as they say, had other ideas.

Tracey tore a ligament in her thumb during her two-minute routine and had to withdraw. That gave Palmer, who won both physique rounds and took third in the routine rounds, a clear shot at her first victory of the season. It also left room for both Angela Semsch and Stacy Simons to get the nod, with Semsch coming in two points ahead of Simons to pick up the runner-up check and both getting ticketed for Vegas. Simons took the 90-second mandatories round; Semsch won the two-minute fitness routines, and it must have been some performance considering the talent in this lineup, including Stacy and the three balls-of-fire pictured below. It’ll be Palmer’s fourth Olympia appearance, Semsch’s second and Simons’ ninth.

Dobbins \ www.BillDobbins.com

Mary Ann Trovato, Over-60 Bodybuilding and Figure champ.

From the Masters Nationals

Liberman

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

Palmer pumps up.

Silverman

Northern Exposure

Rounding out the top six in A.C.: Katie Szep, sixth; Bethany Gainey, fifth; and Julie Lohre, fourth; all improved on their Super Show placings. A new generation of fitness flowers pushes up into the sunlight.

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MORE POSERS

Aukland Raider

Bradford

There was good news and bad news coming from the Atlantic City Convention Center on September 23 with respect to the ’06 women’s pro bodybuilding season. The good news was twofold: 1) P&C’s old friend Lisa Aukland scored her first pro win since earning her card at the ’01 North Americans; and 2) two more contestants flexed their way into the Ms. Olympia lineup, bringing the number of eligible athletes up to 14.

The bad news—depending on how you look at it—is that they were not likely to be forces for change at the top of the pecking order, at least this season.

No dis to Aukland, who presented her best package ever, according to reports, and topped all her previous performances in the pros in addition to blowing away the 26 women who were standing onstage with her.

Nor to runner-up Helen Bouchard, the ’03 Canadian National champ, who looked impressive in the photos I saw, or to the third-placer, veteran Tazzie Columb, who had clearly pulled her physique together since the Europa. The same comment goes for Gayle Moher, another vet who hadn’t been onstage for a while before the Super Show. Moher finished fourth, with Betty Pariso roundNEW PROS

She came, she flexed, she conquered ing out the top five.

For those who were looking for some kind of new trends in judging based on the results of the Super Show, though, forget it. None of the smaller-style physiques got any love from the panel, with Tonie Norman, Kim Perez, Colette Nelson, Cathy LeFrancois and Angela Debatin getting sixth through 10th.

In my Olympia preview at GraphicMuscle.com, written before this contest took place, I suggested that no one who had made it into the 2006 lineup would be able to knock the big three—Yaxeni Oriquen, Iris Kyle and Dayana Cadeau—off their mass pedestals, provided the B.T. came in shape, and the A.C. results didn’t change that opinion.

On the other hand, Bouchard is a complete unknown south of CFBBland, and her strong showing in Jersey makes a statement…maybe.

To find out how they all did at the greatest women’s bodybuilding show on earth, navigate to IM’s big-bang coverage at GraphicMuscle.com.

Sweet September. Not only did Aukland get a big notch on her lifting belt at the A.C., but she was also the focus of an “Inside Edition” segment that was scheduled to run around Olympia time. “It was more about me as a professional who happens to have this extreme hobby,” reported Lisa, who has a Ph.D. in pharmacology and works for the State of Maryland as a poison control specialist. “At least that was my take. There were no industry questions at all, which was refreshing.”

A lot of folks thought your win was refreshing—you’ve earned it! Now cruise into Vegas and move on up the ladder.

NAC TIME

Fast mover. Kim Buck took heavyweight and overall honors at the Masters Nationals in July and made her pro debut a month later at the Europa.

Darned if another of those Oklahoma firefighting female bodybuilding babes hasn’t blazed a trail into the pros. Sherry Smith won the heavies but lost the overall to her friend and fellow blaze battler Carrie Ledford Baldwin at the ’04 USA. In ’05 she took second to a shredded Heather Policky at the same show, so it’s not surprising that she set her sights on a different venue this season.

The North American Championships continues to grow under promoter Gary Udit’s guidance. Thirty-one ladies lined up to go for the one pro card up for grabs. Light-heavy winner Isabelle Turell got some positive buzz at the show, but Smith got the big prize. See you in the pros, Sherry.

Hello, gorgeous!

Liberman

Bradford

Trophy Shot

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TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

Last Cal l

Bringing the figure count at the O to 23 Only a desperately close deadline for this column could have kept me away from Jon Lindsay’s Tournament of Champions Pro Figure, which took place in Anaheim, California, on the same day as the Atlantic City shows. Fortunately for me—and you—GraphicMuscle.com’s Nga Azarian was on the scene. A careful perusal of the TOC gallery at GM makes it easy to see why the judges favored Gina Aliotta with her first pro win. Not so easy to see why Dina Al-Sabah landed in ninth in her return to competition (but see my previous caveat about judgments based on photos posted on the Web). Twenty-two fine specimens of the figure-babe phenomenon made the trek to Anaheim’s Cook Auditorium in what for most was a final attempt to qualify for the Figure O. Those who were already qualified—Aliotta, Andrea Dumont and Tara Scotti—were guaranteed to do well, so at most only one name would be added to the invite list.

After I saw that she had passed on the World Championships, which took place the same weekend, to do this show, I had a feeling it would be ’06 Figure National champ Sonia Adcock. Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that one could bet money on these things. On the score sheet Adcock was neck and neck with the consistent Scotti, who edged into second by two points. Two points also separated fourth-placer Dumon from another very recent addition to the pros, ’06 Junior Nationals class winner Mary Jo Cooke, who rounded out the top five.

Many of the ladies who didn’t make the Olympia grade at this competition were headed for John Organ’s West Palm Beach (Florida) Pro Fitness and Figure festivities on October 7 to get a jump on the 2007 qualifying season.

Silverman

Sonia Adcock.

Breakout star. How often does the overall champ at a big national figure show come from the short class? The ’06 NPC National champ Sonia Adcock is the rare bird who could get the judges to take their eyes off the E- and F-class lassies, and she followed up her win by snagging a ticket to the O on her first try.

NEW TALENT

Fast-Switch Fibers

V E RY N E W TA L E N T Speaking of rare birds

Jen Thaler has two passions—singing and health and fitness—and she brought them together in an unusual way at the USA last July. That’s Jen at left, changing from the evening gown she wore to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” to her two-piece before she hopped onstage again to be introduced with her class.

Thaler, who studied music and used to compete in opera competitions, works as a pharmaceuticals sales rep in the diabetes field. Her sideline of singing the national anthem started when she was in college, at the University of Massachusetts, and continued in her home state of Maryland, where she got to warble about the twilight’s last gleaming at the dedication of the Johnny Unitas Stadium, among other venues. Her sideline in physique competition started in bodybuilding in the late ’90s, fell by the wayside and was rekindled a couple of years ago after Jen met Monica Brant at Gold’s, Venice, on a visit to California. A week or so later she entered the NPC Bodyrock back in Maryland, and “the competition bug bit me again” (kind of like a figure fairy tale). Now living in Southern California, she found that she missed singing. She offered her services to promoter Jon Lindsay, and that led to her doing double duty at the USA—and double scrambling in the crowded backstage area where 173 or so contestants were falling into line. Fortunately for her, she’s 5’7”—her class was the last to be introduced.

Liberman

More future of fitness, the 10-to-12year-olds from the NPC Teen Nationals (from left): Daryl Stein, Alesandra Larvie, LeeAnn Thompson and Alex Stein.

You can contact Ruth Silverman, fitness reporter and Pump & Circumstance scribe, in care of IRON MAN, 1701 Ives Ave., Oxnard, CA 93033; or via e-mail at ironwman@aol.com.

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Neveux

Silverman

Thaler is taller.

Only the Strong Shall Survive

The

Olympic Press How to Put Up Ponderous Poundages

L

ast month, I listed many reasons why I believe that all strength athletes should include the military, or overhead, press in their routines. I presented some basic instruction on performing the lift and also pointed out that even though the military press is easy to learn, the form becomes more complicated once the weights get heavy.

Few have any difficulty pressing light and moderate poundages, but it’s an entirely different story when a max double or single is being attempted. At that point the technique must be perfect. The smallest form flaw will result in failure—not just sometimes but always.

If people are doing military presses as part of their overall fitness program and are not at all interested in going after a heavy single, then the guidelines I mentioned previously will suffice. I’ll review those in the event you missed that issue.

Should your goal be to press big numbers, however, then you must invest ample time in practicing this lift. When the press was part of Olympic weightlifting, athletes would spend at least one-third of their training time on it, not just to strengthen the muscles responsible

for pressing the weight but also to hone the finer form points. In the end, the athlete who had better technique would move ahead in competition, since the press was done first, before the snatch and clean and jerk.

The military press has evolved over the years. Way, way back, weightlifting contests consisted of as many as a dozen tests of strength.

The press was always one of them, and it was done in ultra-strict fashion. Athletes had to start the press with their heels touching, and they had to stay absolutely erect throughout the lift. Leaning back was not permitted. If that wasn’t enough, they had to elevate the bar at the same speed at which the head judge raised his hand. That was indeed a pure form of the press.

Over the years the rules got more lax, especially in regard to back bend. Some lifters were capable of leaning back so far that they ended up finishing the lift with their backs horizontal to the platform. They were the exceptions, of course, since it’s not easy to lie that far back and maintain balance when handling a heavy weight. Plus, an excessive back bend can be harmful to the lumbars.

Then in the early 1960s the press changed from being a test of upper-body strength to an explosive quick lift. Those who adopted the new style of pressing could drive a bar from shoulders to lockout in the blinking of an eye. A perfectly executed press moved as fast as a jerk. It was a revolution in Olympic weightlifting and resulted in world records being broken almost faster than they could be recorded. Somewhat ironically, it was the radical alteration in the way the press was done that ultimately resulted in its being dropped from the Olympic agenda.

The new form of press was called European style, but, in fact, it wasn’t a European who devised the more dynamic technique, it was an American: Tony Garcy, the middleweight champion from El Paso, Texas, who moved to York to teach and train.

Tony had developed the new style and polished his technique to a fine degree by the time he lifted on an international stage. That’s where the European coaches and lifters saw the potential of the high-skill movement and instantly adopted it.

By the mid-’60s, 100 percent of the European lifters were using the new style, so it became known as the

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Model: Bill March \ Photo courtesy of Randall Stossen, Ph.D., and IronMind Inc.

by Bill Starr

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European-style press.

The Europeans lifters trained under tightly controlled conditions.

If the coach said to use the new style of press, there weren’t any objections. In the United States things were quite different. For the most part lifters coached themselves, and only a few had the opportunity to see this style of pressing. An athlete either had to watch Tony train at the York Barbell Gym or attend a meet in which he competed—and Tony didn’t lift in a lot of meets. The quick press did spread across the country, but nowhere near as fast as it did in the rest of the world.

Eventually, it became known as the Olympic press, but I’ve always thought that it would have been fitting and proper to label it the Garcystyle press. In gymnastics they will name a certain innovative move

after the athlete who did it first.

Why not in weightlifting?

As you’ll understand when I spell out the technical points for the Olympic press, it takes a great deal of mental and physical effort to perform the movement correctly. That will help you appreciate just how much time and energy Tony spent in developing it.

I should mention that if you can’t deal with frustration, you’ll be better off staying with the military press.

On the other hand, if you like being challenged and enjoy testing your athleticism in the weight room, you’ll have fun learning the finer points of this lift. Those of us who

Neveux \ Model: Tomm Voss

Be sure to wrap your thumbs around the bar.

Gripping the bar tightly allows you much better control.

had been doing presses in the conventional way for a number of years had difficulty switching to the more dynamic style because it’s a totally different movement. With lots and lots of practice, though, most of us were able to become at least proficient on the Olympic press.

Here’s a review of the basic form points for the military press. Again, you can take the bar off the rack and press it, but you’ll find that you can use more weight if you clean it and then do your presses. I think that’s because the clean helps you get your body tighter than when you just take the bar from the rack.

A belt is a good idea. It keeps your back warm, and it gives you feedback during the lift, particularly in terms of how far you are lying back. Don’t be fooled, however, into believing a belt will save you from being injured.

It will not.

When sloppy form is used repeatedly, even the widest, thickest belt will not prevent you from hurting your back.

Your grip is right if your forearms remain vertical during the execution of the press. Be sure to wrap your thumbs around the bar—not the false grip many lifters use on the bench press and incline press. Gripping the bar tightly gives you much better control, especially when the bar tries to run forward, which usually happens when the weights get really heavy. Set your feet at shoulder width with toes straight ahead.

Clean the bar and fix it across your front deltoids. Don’t let it rest on your collarbones. First of all, that hurts, and second, the bar is not in a strong starting position there.

Elevate your entire shoulder girdle

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Only the Strong Shall Survive

Illustration by Larry Eklund

In order for the start to be effective, it must be explosive. And the bar must be driven into a precise line.

to provide a muscular ledge, and the bar should be set right where your breastbone meets your collarbones.

Keep your elbows down and close to your lats. Your wrists must be straight, not cocked. Should you find that you have trouble keeping them locked while pressing, tape them or secure them with wraps.

You’ll never press any amount of weight if your wrists move around during the lift. Your body should be vertical from feet to head, and your eyes should be forward. A common mistake many beginners make is to follow the bar’s upward movement with their eyes. Don’t do that because it carries your upper body out of a strong pressing posture.

Before commencing the press, take a moment to tighten all the muscles of your body, starting with your feet and moving on up to your traps, shoulders and arms. Squeeze the bar until you feel your forearms, deltoids and upper arms almost cramping. Take a deep breath, and drive the bar straight up so that it almost touches your nose. As soon at the weight passes the top of your head, extend your head through that gap you’ve created, and at that same instant, turn your elbows outward and guide the bar slightly backward. Not much though—just enough to keep your power base under the bar.

Here’s where the bar should be when you lock it out: Imagine a line being drawn from the back of your head directly upward. That’s where the bar should end up at the completion of the press, right over your spine and hips.

As soon as you lock out the bar, breathe. And don’t merely hold the bar overhead. Rather, push up against it forcefully and try to extend it even higher. That activates many more muscles in the upper back than when you just casually hold the bar at lockout. Hold that dynamic lockout for three to four seconds, take another breath, and then, in a controlled manner, lower the bar back to your shoulders. It’s important not to allow the bar to crash downward. It’s painful to your collarbones, and it carries the bar out of the ideal starting position.

You can cushion the descending weights by bending your knees, but be sure to lock them before the next rep. In this style of pressing, your knees will always be locked.

Make sure everything is right: feet, placement of the bar on your shoulders, body extremely tight, eyes straight ahead. Then take a breath and do the next rep. After you’ve completed all your reps on a set and have lowered the bar to your shoulders, don’t dump the weights to the floor even if you’re using

rubber plates. Lower the bar from your shoulders to your waist, pause, and set it on the floor with a flat back. Always stay in control of the bar. The only time you’re allowed to drop a weight is when you miss an attempt.

There are many similarities between military and Olympic presses, as both lifts involve moving the bar from the shoulders to overhead. Yet there are several differences as well, and those are what changes pressing from a pure-strength feat to a high-skill lift.

Your grip, where the bar is placed on your shoulders, and head positioning are the same in both styles of pressing. Other than those points, the two are as different as day from night. The feet, for example, need to be set a bit closer in the Olympic press and must be pointed forward.

That’s necessary in order for you to shift your weight from the balls of your feet to your heels and back again to the balls instantaneously.

The success of the lift depends completely on your ability to make that transition smoothly and quickly— actually, faster than quickly.

On the military press your elbows are positioned close to your body, but on the Olympic style they need to be squeezed against your lats. That forces the elbows to stay low and directly under your wrists.

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Only the Strong Shall Survive

Neveux \ Model: Greg Blount

Don’t let the bar rest on you collarbones. It hurts!

Keeping your wrists straight is even more critical on the Olympic press than it is on the military version, so much so that I think it’s a good idea always to tape them.

Set your eyes directly ahead, and never allow them to look up at the bar as it travels overhead. Tuck your chin down toward your chest, and keep it in that position until the bar reaches lockout. You’ll understand why that helps after you’ve done a few sets of Olympic presses.

The biggest change from the way you perform the Olympic press in contrast to the military press is your starting position. On the military press you’re basically erect at the start. On the Olympic press you need to get into position like this: Lock your legs, tighten your glutes and abs, and extend your midsection forward until it’s over your toes.

You want to create a muscular bow that starts at your heels, runs up through your legs, hips, midsection, back and shoulders and ends at the base of your head (see page 254).

You are, in effect, a coiled spring, with your weight on the balls of your feet. They form the base from which the lift is executed, and if that base is not solid, pressing a heavy weight will not happen. At York we used the analogy of trying to grip the platform with our toes much like a bird grips a limb of a tree. That helped us lock into the platform.

A powerful start is critical for success once the weights approach your best. The power for the start is generated out of the hips and legs and transferred up through the mid-

section, back, shoulders and arms into the bar. Much of that explosive thrust comes from your lats and traps, although few think of those muscle groups in connection with pressing a weight overhead.

When utilized, the lats, along with the deltoids, propel the bar off the shoulders. Then the traps help elevate it even higher. In order for the start to be effective, it must be explosive. I liken it to a short jab in boxing, where all the energy is concentrated in a dynamic move. And, of course, the bar must be driven into a precise line. That only comes with lots of practice.

Once you put a jolt into the bar, transfer your weight back to your heels as you shrug your traps and extend your body vertically. At the conclusion of the start portion of the lift, your body should be perfectly erect.

Now comes the hardest part to master. As soon as you drive the bar as high as possible, you must shift your weight back to the balls of your feet and drop back into your original starting position, bowing from heels to head. At the same time you must continue to keep pressure on the moving bar. Otherwise, it will pause or even drop, and you don’t want that to happen, as it’s often impossible to set it in motion again. Pressing the bar upward as you resume the coiled position also helps you control the line of the bar.

If you relax tension on the moving bar, it will invariably run forward, and if it moves too far out front, you won’t have enough leverage to finish

the lift.

As the weights climb upward, bring your hips back so they stay under the bar. Extend the bar on to lockout, where it is fixed directly over the back of your head. Control it and push up against it while you hold it for several seconds. Lower it to your shoulders in the same manner as I suggested for the military press, reset and proceed with the next rep.

After you have tried a few of these, you will recognize that they are nothing at all like a conventional press. One of the biggest differences is the balance factor. On a military press the bar moves slowly enough that lifters can usually manage to keep their balance, even with heavy weights, but the Olympic press consists of an explosive start, a quick move through the middle and a fast finish, with the bodyweight being shifted from front to back to front in a flash. Plus, the foot stance is narrower, which adds to the problem of maintaining balance through the Olympic press.

Those who used this style in the ’60s and early ’70s will notice that I haven’t mentioned the key form point of the Olympic press—bending the knees at the start. You may be thinking, wasn’t bending the knees illegal? Yes, it was. The knees had to remain locked from start to finish. So how did the lifters get away with it? This is what Garcy figured out.

As soon as the bar was cleaned, the lifter quickly assumed his set position and waited for the signal to press. But he didn’t lock his knees tightly, he bent them just a bit. Why couldn’t the judges see that? Because it’s impossible to determine whether the knees are fully locked or not quite locked. Keep in mind that most Olympic weightlifters had massive thigh development, with quads that lapped down over the knees in some cases. If that sounds farfetched, stand in front of a fulllength mirror and put yourself in that bowed starting position. Lock your knees. Now relax them just a fraction. They still appear to be locked. The only way you can tell they aren’t completely locked is if you saw them in the locked position before you bent them. And

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Strongman competitions are bringing back the art of overhead pressing. that never happened. Lifters knew how to get into the starting position without ever locking their knees.

The only time the knee bend was noticeable was when a lifter dipped lower during the start. Sometimes that move was missed because it happened so fast.

That slight bend helped because, when the lifter got the signal to press, he locked his knees as he hurled the bar off his shoulders.

It may not seem like much, but the move provided enough extra thrust to drive the bar higher and with more velocity, and if the rest of the lift was done with precision, it helped elevate the numbers appreciably. Some contended it added as much as 40 pounds to their presses.

Of course, the new style drove officials crazy. Since they couldn’t see the slight knee bend, they had to give lifters the benefit of the doubt.

And lifters performed the new press so fast, it was also difficult to tell

how far they had leaned backward.

Those who mastered this technique included Garcy, Tommy Kono, Joe Puleo, Fred Lowe, Bob Hise, Tommy Suggs, Ernie Pickett, Joe Dube, Bob Bednarski and Ken Patera, who blasted the bar from shoulders to lockout so fast that the lift was only a blur, Because it is difficult to learn, I only teach the Olympic press to athletes who are advanced and are very athletic. Except for rare cases I have them lock their knees at the start.

That helps simplify the lift and is still productive, Before you try learning the Olympic press, with locked or bent knees, make sure your midsection, lumbars and abs are up to the task.

Those muscle groups are put under lots of stress with the coiled start and quick return to that position.

Be sure to always do warmups for your abs and lower back prior to pressing, and while learning the

Model: Svend Karlsen \ Photo courtesy of Jonas Elmblad

Only the Strong Shall Survive

finer points of the Olympic press, stay with light weights. Remember the weightlifting adage: If you can’t use perfect form with a light weight, you’re not going to have it with heavy poundages. Since this is a high-skill movement, stay with three reps so you can concentrate on all the form points. You’ll find that Olympic presses are quite taxing mentally, which I think is a plus.

Improving the nervous system while gaining strength sounds good to me.

Finally, a word about breathing on Olympic and military presses.

When you use light weights, it doesn’t matter how you breathe, but when you’re attempting to move heavy triples, doubles or singles, it matters a lot. Take a breath just before you start the press and hold it until you have driven the bar past the sticking point or after you lock it out. If you inhale or exhale while pressing, your diaphragm is forced to relax, which creates a negative intrathoracic pressure. In other words, breathing during the lift diminishes your ability to apply force to the bar.

In that regard, be aware of the phenomenon known as the Valsalva maneuver because it occurs most often in the performance of a heavy press. When lifters hold their breath for too long during a maximum exertion, they hinder the return of venous blood from the brain to the heart. That can result in a lifter’s blacking out, which can be dangerous when you’re holding a loaded barbell overhead. Should you start feeling dizzy while trying to grind a press through the sticking point, lower the bar to the floor and go down on one knee. Don’t move around. Most injuries happen when athletes fall into a weight rack or another piece of equipment.

I had planned on presenting some sample programs for the press along with some ideas on how to make it stronger, but this ran long, so I’ll cover those topics next month. In the meantime, start pressing.

Editor’s note: Bill Starr was a strength and conditioning coach at Johns Hopkins University from 1989 to 2000. He’s the author of The Strongest Shall Survive and Defying Gravity. IM

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Mind Good Workouts—Guaranteed I

t would be nice if you could decide one day that you wanted to look like Dorian Yates or be as strong as Ed Coan, and— pop!—three months after hitting the weights, you achieved your ideal. Unfortunately, building serious levels of muscle and strength takes years. Sure, you can make amazing progress in amazingly short periods of time, but to hit peak levels, you have to be in it for the long haul. To make matters worse, there’s no contract that says if you punch in, you get paid. In

the bodybuilding game there’s a close relationship between the quality of the input (training, diet, psychology) and the quality of the output (gains in size and strength).

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that where most people break down is in their training. They either do halfhearted workouts or fall prey to the ultimate action for undoing progress—they skip workouts. Let’s take a look at one of the primary reasons most people lose it in their training. We’ll see not only how you can stick with your training but also how you can make every single workout productive.

Whether you’ve read a pile of books and magazines about training or you learned everything you know from your buddy who does curls and bench presses (nothing more, nothing less) three times a week, you understand that the essence of lifting weights is progressive resistance.

Legend has it that a character in ancient Greece, one Milo of Crotona, started carrying a calf on his shoulders every day. Nature being triumphant, the calf got heavier day by day, so Milo’s training load automatically went up at each workout. Milo went on to become a ferocious wrestler and strongman, and unbeknownst to him, his basic training principle—progressive resistance—would become the heart of a vast industry.

The principle—do more today than you did yesterday— is crucial to your long-term success, but it also leads to the undoing of many a training program. Here’s how.

Armed with the knowledge that you’re supposed to keep your training load going north, you use the classic double-progression system. It sounds like a mouthful, but all it means is that you keep trying to add reps until you hit a certain goal—12, for example—and then you add weight to the bar. That probably reduces the number of reps you can do, so you start building up the reps again. You may not have known what it’s called, but that’s how you’ve been training. Your military presses are a good example of how When you train the system works. You started off doing 100 pounds for 10 as hard as you reps. At the next workout you did 100x12, so you added can, pat yourself five pounds to the bar and squeezed out eight reps. You on the back. kept at it until you could do 12 reps, and then you added another five pounds to the bar. Sticking with that approach, you got up to 150 pounds on the bar—nothing to scare off the big boys but certainly not a mere whisper of a weight.

At your last workout you got 10 reps with the 150, so you were hoping to hit the full 12 today. Instead, you got only seven. That’s where things can break down, and it Neveux \ Model: Berry Kabov

IRONMIND

MIND/BODY

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Body starts inside your head. If you’re like most people, you chew range, drop the weight a little and finish off with the full 12 yourself out. If you’re really hard on yourself, you view it as a reps per set. If you’re more interested in keeping the weight failure, and, by extension, yourself as well. Because you’re up, stick with 150, even if it means getting five reps on the smart enough to not want to fail or think of yourself as a failnext set. Either way, you pat yourself on the back because ure, your ultimate reaction may be to quit training altogether. you’re training as hard as you can and you know that’s the That’s exactly what happens to a lot of people. They bail out way to make progress—and sooner or later the technique will at the first sign of things getting sticky. take you to 150x12 and beyond. You know that to reach your The obvious problem with the approach is that if you quit overall goals, you have to have good workouts year in and training, you’ll never achieve all you’re capable of and certainyear out, and because you now realize that having a good ly never achieve the Yates/Coan level. The more subtle—but workout means doing all you’re capable of doing—no more, more serious—problem with the pattern is that you can be no less—that’s exactly what you’re having: a good workout. absolutely certain that no matter what anyone tells you, no It’s guaranteed. matter how you cycle or even if you get yourself a set of mi—Randall Strossen, Ph.D. croscopic plates, progress is not straightforward. You’re not able to go forward without interruption. And while you might Editor’s note: Randall Strossen, Ph.D., edits the quaraccept that idea in principle, you may not accept that in some terly magazine MILO. He’s also the author of IronMind: Stronworkouts you go sideways or backward instead of forward. ger Minds, Stronger Bodies; Super Squats: How to Gain 30 To deal with the situation, you need to realize that somePounds of Muscle in 6 Weeks and Paul Anderson: The Mighttimes going sideways or backward is the way to go forward. iest Minister. For more information call IronMind Enterprises That may sound Zen-like, but it’s a secret that will help you Inc. at (530) 265-6725 or Home Gym Warehouse at (800) gain and gain. Here’s how it works.

447-0008, ext. 1. Visit the IronMind Web site at www Progress isn’t forever, without interruption, or we’d all be .ironmind.com. world champions. Still, to hit what we’re capable of means that we have to stick with our training for years and years. What sort of an idiot, you ask, is going to keep banging his head against the wall, having crummy workouts year after year? The key is to realize that even though your longterm goals always involve bigger e all know that most men are more weights and more reps, you need visually oriented than women (witto make today’s workout the best ness the boom of the porn industry you’re capable of performing. on the Web, thanks to wide-eyed males). They It’s really that simple: Make this may be more superficial than females too. workout the best you’re capable According to the July ’06 Prevention, “After of performing today, and your three months of weight training, 44 adults were long-term progress is guaranteed. asked what made them feel better about their Forget about beating yourself up bodies. Men said looking better in the mirror over what you did yesterday and or a looser waistband. Women concurred, but what you think you’re supposed they got a bigger boost from doing more reps to be doing today. All you really or lifting heavier weights [source: McMaster need is to do your best today.

University].”

So you’re back in the gym, and That explains why so many more men than you only hit seven reps with 150. women are checking themselves out in the You know you put everything you mirrors—not that I’m complaining. had into that set—which is great.

—Becky Holman If you’re interested in keeping your reps at the high end of your target

Vanity

Are Men More Superficial?

Neveux \ Model: Steven Segers

W

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Bomber Blast

MIND/BODY

Straight Talk From a Crooked Mouth

W

hat’s your plan, Stan? Where you goin’, Owen? Show me the way, Jay. Sideways, up or down, clown?

Forward or back, Jack? You have no clue, Lou? What a mess, Jess. No excuse, Bruce. You make me crazy, Daisy.

I’ll bet you never realized I had so many friends and acquaintances.

You’re not a loser if you don’t have a training plan for the winter. A loser is someone who doesn’t plan on training for the winter. And, as you know, that less-than-balmy three-month season has a way of stretching into five months of gray and cold. Can you imagine the absence of barbells and dumbbells during November, December, January, February and March?

Gives me the shivers.

And where the weights go, so goes the nutrition...into the recesses of forgotten, the deep crevices of neglect. Discipline and good habits deteriorate, the midsection takes on new proportions, and the muscles you built up slide down...your bottom.

My, what a big backside you have, Grandma.

All the better to sit on, my child.

Come springtime, you resemble a beached walrus and exhibit its graceful movements. You bark when spoken to and flop when excited. Life is delightful. Someone equipped with a clipboard and pen steps to your side and nudges you with her foot. “Here’s another one,” she yells routinely, “a fat-bellied wobbler, out of shape and hopeless. There’s an acute absence of exercise, no signs of sets or reps, and a doughnut is lodged in its flipper. Send the wobble wagon.”

You resent the assessment and look up at the intruder, your

Neveux \ Model: Moe El Moussawi

Real bodybuilders make winter training count.

whiskers bristling, “Arf, arf!” No one wants to be loaded onto the wobble wagon and carted off to join the wobbling masses—mindless, ordinary and dull.

I have a few buds—crusty, dysfunctional muscleheads— who think it’s a good idea to let the joints rest and repair for an extended length of time and bulk up before a spring training onslaught. They reference grizzly bears, as if they were a common denominator. “Grizzly bears do it; look at them,” they say.

You ever take a close look at a grizzly after a winter’s hibernation? Me neither. But from a distance you can see they are scrawny, grouchy, missing patches of fur. Growling is replaced by wheezing puffs of foul breath, and they feed on wild berries and harmless insects till they get their acts together. Pathetic.

Hibernation’s for long-haired, long-toothed creatures, not sinewy captains, mighty bombers and swift-flying navigators.

Listen up, crew: Between now and the spring, don’t lay off more than two times, or more than four days either time. Grizzlies do it, and look at them.

I know, once again you’re flabbergasted by my acute perception and keen acumen. I snatch truth from the air. I extricate facts from beneath the earth’s surface.

My mission is to inform, guide and encourage you. And not wanting to boast or mislead you, I feel compelled to apprise you of the source of my vast knowledge. It is not gained from universities. I have no degrees signified by a series of initials after my name. Certainly not. Though I am in awe of such striking acquisitions, my insights are acquired from guesswork, dreams, cheating, hearsay, Dr. Seuss, my mother, Laree, trial and error, barbells, meditation, the stars, experience, logic, accidents and injuries, occasional reading and deep conversations with friends, pets, psychics, aliens and strangers.

Now that I’ve put your minds at ease and hearts to rest and have removed the burdens of doubt from your shoulders, let’s take a peek into the future.

November, typically, is not a month we snuggle up to. It’s a rootless span, an abandoned space, a banal stretch of time that happens while we’re looking the other way. November succeeds October, a month enchanted by Halloween and falling leaves, and precedes December, a fragmented month remembered in the Western world for the holiday season, Christmas and the New Year. November, but for its turkey and stuffing, pleads to get out of the way.

Don’t be fooled, skyscrapers. November is a month for leapfrog gains in muscle and might. While some men and women drop their guards and back off (summer’s over, winter’s ahead), we stand upright with our feet well placed; we throw back our shoulders and tighten our midsections; we clench our fists and grin. The gym is ours, down on Main Street or down in the basement. November is a stable and nonintrusive month, providing the ideal conditions to grasp the weights and what they offer: a profusion of goodness for the body, mind and soul, a goodness that supports and bonds and flows one to the other.

November is a bonus month for the weight trainer, muscle builder and responsible guardian of life. Welcome it as the forerunner to the grand seasons ahead.

It’s not uncommon for a bonus to be used extravagantly, wasted or poorly invested. It’s extra, after all. Right thinking for fools, wrong thinking for bombers. I’m not cheap, and I enjoy a good time, but I hate waste and foolishness. Waste nothing today—time, energy or resource—and you won’t hustle, bor-

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row or steal tomorrow. Throw your arms around November, the provider and stabilizer. Push and pull and feel the steel. You can relax your grip, but don’t let go. Improvise, investigate and experiment in your workouts; engage, surrender and wallow in your training; regroup, reorder and restore your fitness.

A timely thought as the year shows its backside: Like you, I’m stacking the days on end and they’re beginning to look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I do something similar to a crawl to return to my vehicle after my workout four days a week. That’s okay. I’ve come to value crawling—it reminds me of my formative years. But lately I wonder if it’s wise, necessary, healthy or attractive. I’ve mentioned the predicament before and have yet to resolve it.

“Who knows?” is my response. The few paths blazed for me to follow are mostly overgrown. Then there’s the small detail; I don’t follow paths very well. I wander. I stray. Curiosity leads me away.

I do know this: Because of accumulated injuries here and there—none treacherous and disabling—I am governed in my resistance output (the weight I handle, the force I apply) and thus protected somewhat from excessively overloading my system, the muscles and their insertions. The limiting pain has a six-syllable name—dirtyrottenlousy—and I endure it as you do. It’s exhausting and frustrating, but sufficient max-muscle exertion is accomplished to support growth. Rambunctious effort under duress is central to my training achievement.

Pain is a tyrant and rules the growth of the muscular system; before the muscles are overloaded, the pain shuts down the system. A compromise is reached: Injury is spared and improvement is impeded. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been beaten adequately and fought back sufficiently for the muscles to get the message: Grow or else.

“Grow” or “growth,” in the vernacular of some species of mankind, means things like: Maintain as best you can, bucko; or, Do or die, nutso; or, Crawl forward, stumble back; or, Here today, here tomorrow again; or, I left the gym on both feet and conscious.

And then there’s this: Once a lifter withdraws from tough training, he or she compromises the efficiency of the muscular system. Oxygen absorption drops, rate of metabolism decreases, hormones are negatively affected, the neuromuscular and central nervous systems become less sharp. Upon returning to action—in itself a monumental struggle—revitalization from the collective setback is difficult and frustrating. And the gravity of the circumstance increases with the age of the trainee.

Hello, November. Let’s fight the good fight, exhibit fine skills, fancy footwork, bobbing and weaving and no low blows. Stay sharp! Go to your corner when you must, lean on the ropes if you have to, but go down for the count and the fight is over. You won’t see December coming or going. You won’t hear the bell at the end of the year or the beginning of the next. January becomes last month and February this. “Wow, time flies,” you’ll say to the refrigerator door, as it shuts in your face, “Baseball season already? It’s Miller time!”

Dig out some old secondary exercises that thump nicely instead of thud mercilessly, mix high reps with low reps, recall the slumpbusters, perfect your wide-grip bent-over rows, work calves every day, superset and multiset, train bi’s and tri’s together, stick to steep dumbbell inclines for a month—though they’re tough all over—substitute heavy weight for higher reps and quicker pace, or go heavier for lower reps and slower pace.

Invent something, improvise, seriously play, but don’t stray.

Take it as high as you want or as high as you can—your choice or whichever comes first. Never leave your craft while in operation.

Don’t break nuttin’...

Godspeed!

—Dave Draper Editor’s note: For more from Dave Draper, visit www.DaveDraper.com and sign up for his free newsletter. You can also check out his amazing Top Squat training tool, classic photos, workout Q&A and forum. His new book, Iron On My Mind, is available at www.Home-Gym.com.

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Gallery of Ironmen

MIND/BODY MIND/BODY

Reg Lewis

building competition. He continued his upward rise from there. The young physique champ was victorious in one contest after another, including the coveted IFBB Mr. America in 1963.

Ironically, it was a little-known competition, the Mr. Hercules in 1960, that would prove to be most important. One of the judges of that contest was the buxom movie star Mae West, who chose the muscular hunk to be in her 1954 nightclub show. West, Lewis and bevy of beefcake models formed an act that began in Las Vegas and then toured 12 American cities. “Quite simply, it started my career,” he recently explained.

By the early 1960s gladiator movies had taken off in a big way, and, partly because of his exposure on the nightclub stage, Lewis was asked to

Photo courtesy of the David Chapman collection

A

lthough he appeared in only a couple of films, Reg Lewis had the face and physique of a major star. Moviegoers in the 1960s couldn’t help liking the guy with the broad shoulders, bulging biceps, major pecs and trademark pompadour.

Lewis was born in the northern California community of Niles on January 23, 1936, and he began bodybuilding after physique star George Eiferman gave an exhibition at Lewis’ junior high school.

Reg was inspired to build his own physique, so he began working out, and his young body responded quickly. In 1953, at the age of 17, Lewis entered and won his first body-

star in an Italian muscle epic called “Fire Monster Against the Son of Hercules.” It was a typical Italian confection of the time, and moviegoers loved it; besides, Lewis’s physique was shown to great effect. After starring in the film, Lewis returned to California, where he tried a variety of jobs; in 1964 he became a charter pilot and flew his clients all over the country.

Lewis is perhaps proudest of his career as a personal trainer, a profession that he pioneered in 1959.

“Nobody else was doing it when I started out,” he said, “and now personal trainers are making lots of money.”

Who knew that it would develop the way it did?

Well, Reg Lewis, for one. Today, Reg is still working as a personal trainer in southern California’s San Fernando Valley. He is also still fit, strong and muscular.

—David Chapman

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New Stuff

MIND/BODY MIND/BODY

Juice Up With Prime Delight n the ongoing quest to find new supplements to help us lead longer, healthier lives, science often returns to things that have been used for thousands of years. Just recently the company that believed in adaptogens—naturally occurring substances that promote the body’s resistance to allergens and other stressors—before anyone else knew what they were launched a totally new nutritional supplement called Prime Delight.

The proprietary blend of Prime Delight is the ultimate dietary supplement, derived from the pomegranate—renowned for its antioxidant properties and the remarkable stress-fighting attributes of adaptogens. It is the first product to combine nature’s best antioxidants with seven natural adaptogens, creating a magical supernutritional drink that may have the ability to help restore cells to a functional and healthy state—diminishing the impact of physical, mental and emotional stress—maximizing your ability to perform at your full potential.

Since the release of Prime Delight, it has demonstrated a workhorse property for everyone who takes it, from the very fit to those who need a healthful nutritional alternative. Prime Delight is sold through independent distributors throughout the United States and Canada. To find a distributor in your area or to learn more about Prime Delight, go to www.ushould2 .com.

—Clark Bartram

I

www.Home-Gym.com Best Sellers Books:

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IRON MAN MAGAZINE PROUDLY PRESENTS:

MIND/BODY

The Bodybuilding Stars of Tomorrow Here Today!

Greg Jones Weight: 220 Height: 5’9” Occupation: Firefighter Residence: Salisbury, North Carolina Factoid: “I am a very simple person who loves to help others any way I can—from living a healthier lifestyle to working as a fireman. I’m competitive too and believe anything is possible.”

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Lionel Brown Weight: 224 Height: 5’8 1/2” Occupation: Personal trainer Residence: Long Beach, California Factoid: Lionel is married and has three beautiful children: Karimi, 13; Isaiah, 11; and Loren, nine. He ikes to take long drives down Pacific Coast Highway to Laguna Beach and meditate.

Photography by Bill Comstock To see more great photos of upcoming physique stars, visit

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Readers Write Piling On Mass

Editor’s note: One thing we didn’t cover in the feature on Goodin was his diet. Check out page 96 for that key info.

Amino Awe

Mike Semanoff.

My jaw was on the floor as I read the “Protein Fact and Fiction” [item by Jerry Brainum] in the October issue [Eat to Grow section]. I can’t believe that the body only assimilates 1.3 grams of protein from a raw egg per hour and only 2.8 grams from a cooked egg. Wow! That tells me I need to swallow some amino acids or have a small protein drink with my solid-food meals to get more aminos to my muscles more quickly. Maybe that’s why my gains have been so slow.

Joseph Campbell Miami, FL

Neveux

Editor’s note: Those findings surprised us too. So much so that we’re are having Brainum do more research for an updated report on protein assimilation in a future issue.

The story on Mike Semanoff [“20 Pounds of Muscle in Two Months,” October ’06] was inspiring. To gain so much without drugs and at his advanced stage of development is an amazing accomplishment. I have made some good gains with X Reps too, but Mike’s are out of this world. I’m now training harder than ever with X Reps and supersets!

Billy Clark via Internet Editor’s note: For those who missed it, that feature on Mike will soon be available in the PDF section at IronManMagazine.com. For more information on X Reps, visit www.X-Rep.com.

Solid Supplement I have been using Muscle Meals [meal replacement by Muscle-Link] for five weeks, and my strength has gone up, my triceps are up almost an inch, and my chest is more massive. It’s an awesome product and true to the advertisements. I appreciate that.

Matt Mariani Chicago, IL

Natural Notions I want to thank you for publishing that cool article on Dave Goodin [“Texas Shredder,” September ’06]. The guy is one serious competitor on the natural circuit. I was very happy to see such an extensive article on a natural bodybuilder. Reading about Dave makes drug-free bodybuilding seem more like a realistic option for those of us looking to keep our competitive edge. Dave’s physique is impressive— and possible. Thank you again.

Eric Mills via Internet

Pros and Contests I’m a 40-something drug-free bodybuilder who doesn’t agree with those who have written about banning drug users and pro contests from the pages of IRON MAN. Anyone with any common sense knows that the top guys use drugs to get outrageous development; however, their over-the-edge physiques are still inspiring. I also think we can learn from some of their training practices too. Although we can’t tolerate all the volume, some of their techniques are applicable to any bodybuilder’s massbuilding program. I vote that IM keep the mix the way it is. Continue to show the top guys, but also give us more attainable looks too, like Greg Blount on the October ’06 cover.

Barry Winslow Seattle, WA Vol. 65, No. 12: IRON MAN (ISSN #0047-1496) is published monthly by IRON MAN Publishing, 1701 Ives Ave., Oxnard, CA 93033. Periodical Mail is paid at Oxnard, CA, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to IRON MAN, 1701 Ives Ave., Oxnard, CA 93033. Please allow six to eight weeks for change to take effect. Subscription rates—U.S. and its possessions: new 12-issue subscription, $29.97. Canada, Mexico and other foreign subscriptions: 12 issues, $49.97 sent Second Class. Foreign orders must be in U.S. dollars. Send subscriptions to IRON MAN, 1701 Ives Ave., Oxnard, CA 93033. Or call 1-800-570-4766. Copyright © 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the USA.

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