TRAINING

THE BASICS.


You lift weights to injure muscle. That might sound extreme, but that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re doing it on a perfect scale however, where the damage can be repaired between workouts, and your body can develop new muscle in preparation to better cope with future exercise.

 What most people don’t realise however is that lifting for strength is different than lifting to grow muscle. While lifting big weights will ultimately lead to an increase in muscle mass, it won’t do so as fast as lifting specifically for bodybuilding.

 To improve strength, your rep range is generally 4-6 reps, this tells your body that it needs to get stronger, as it could be subjected to future lifts of this weight.

To improve muscle mass however, we need a rep range of 8-12 reps. This causes microscopic tears in the muscle, which when repaired will have new muscle built in these tiny little gaps. While that isn’t an overly scientific explanation, it’s definitely something you need to get your head around when you’re trying to increase the weight too fast.

 Lifting big weights is definitely of benefit, but for the majority of your sets you should be aiming for 8-12 reps. If you can do 12, then increase the weight so you can only do 8 – in your next workout you may be able to do 12 of this weight, and once again you keep upping the weight and gradually improving.

 You do however need to get your strength level to a certain level before you will be achieving the body of your dreams. To help in increasing the strength and speed up the process, for your last set of an exercise, you can try increasing the weight so you can only do 4-6 reps. This will help you in getting your weights up to a respectable level, and from here you can get the maximum muscle gainzzz.

Leave your ego at the door

When training at a gym it is quite easy to see big guys lifting big weights, and to match them. You need to look at why you’re lifting weights – you’re doing it to become aesthetically beautiful. How many times has a girl come up to you and said “how much do you bench?” – It doesn’t happen, and it doesn’t matter. You lift to get big, so lift correctly, and get big.

 Cheat reps can be okay, but this is an advanced technique that you don’t need to be using to start off with, and should only be used for the last 2-3 reps.

 You need to focus on a number of things when lifting. Firstly you need to focus on the timing of the rep. Generally it is best to aim for 1 second up, and 2-3 seconds down. This will seem like an eternity to some – but you’re not trying to throw the weight, you’re trying to maintain complete control and focus on using the correct muscles.

 You should have complete focus on the target muscle groups, for example when you’re doing a bicep curl, you should feel as though you’re flexing while you do the exercise, you should also only be using your bicep, not letting your body use it’s momentum to help you lift the weight.

 Pretend that you are a statue, and only the necessary muscles make the movement. Next, stop focusing on lifting the weight, and start focusing on your body making the correct motion and movement.

 Without this level of focus, you will not be adequately activating the muscle, you’ll be cheating yourself, and not putting enough attention on the muscle where it should be aimed at.

 The main thing to remember is, you’re not there to impress anyone, you’re at the gym to build a better body. It’s one thing to push yourself, it’s another to kid yourself. Cheat reps aren’t real reps.


The Power of the Negative Rep

Most of my gains have been made during the negative phase of the lift, and this is largely neglected, especially by people new to the scene. By lowering the weight slowly and having complete control, you push your muscles to the next level. You are also taking momentum out of the equation during a negative rep. This is because you may be unknowingly using your body to throw the weight during the positive phase of the rep, but during the phase when you’re lowering the weights, this is fundamentally impossible, and thus you are truly making the most out of the motion. The negative rep should also take at least twice as long as the positive portion, and this allows the negative to increase blood-flow to the muscle dramatically, and to ultimately lead to more hypertrophy (development of new muscle).

Recovery

There are two portions to recovery. There is recovery during sets, and recovery after training. In between sets, you should be spending between one minute and two minutes to recover. Any longer and you’re training for strength – what we’re trying to achieve is maintaining bloodflow to the muscle, and keeping our pump. By pushing to this intensity, you will notice your strength dropping set after set, but ultimately you will be achieving more and more stimulation to the muscle. Recovery outside of the gym is incredibly important also. You need to be sleeping a minimum of 8 hours a night, and aiming for 10. You don’t grow in the gym, you grow while you’re sleeping. You also need to give your muscles on average an entire week to recover from a workout, but you’ll see later on how this is managed by having a good workout cycle. A lack of recovery leads to improper healing, and eventually to overtraining

Exercises

Machines Vs. Free Weights Machines

...are your worst enemy. While they can serve a purpose for advanced techniques such as pre-exhaustion, you are not getting a full range of motion with a machine, and also not building smaller controlling muscles which help support your overall strength. You need to start with free-weights, and use machines purely to supplement this training when needed, but generally they are completely un-necessary, and are tools to lure you into paying to be at an expensive gym with new equipment.

The Big Seven

The big seven are your staple exercises. If you weren’t able to do more than 7 exercises, you would pick these, as they give an overall improvement to the body. All of which stimulate a combination of muscle groups, and lead to massive benefits in your bodies’ production of growth-promoting hormones, such as Growth Hormone and Testosterone.

 Squats

Squats work many parts of your body, but put a large focus on your legs, your lower back, and your glutes. Squats consist of sitting a barbell on your traps, and squatting down until your glutes almost touch the ground. The most common issue with new guys and squats is not getting low enough. You need to get incredibly low until you feel it completely in your glutes, and do a completely slow and controlled movement. Don’t increase the weight until you are doing it properly, and ensure you maintain a proper arch in your back during the entire motion.

Deadlifts

Deadlifts are a life-changing exercise, but require perfect form or they can be very dangerous. With a deadlift, a barbell is gripped and slowly lifted to just above your knees from a squatting position. The main fatal mistake is to not maintain a proper lumbar curve during the exercise. You need to retain an arc in your lower back throughout the entire motion, otherwise you are putting incredible stress on your lower back. The other common mistake is lifting until your legs are completely straight, this places undue stress on your lower back. You need to maintain a slight bend in the knees during the entire motion.

Bench Press

The bench press is probably one of the first exercises you ever completed, however it is probably one that you have never paid proper attention to. The chest is made up by many different quadrants, and by doing different angles (i.e. incline, flat, decline) you hit specific parts of your chest. While performing the exercise you shouldn’t throw the weight, you need to maintain complete control and go very slow, especially during the negative. By doing this, and focusing on your chest opposed to your triceps, you will see dramatic gains in the size of your pecs.

Barbell Rows

Nothing will add mass to your lats as fast as the barbell row. The exercise is done by maintaining a 90 degree bend and lifting in a controlled motion up to your body from the ground. This will predominantly hit your lats, but also puts load on your traps and biceps. One thing to watch out for is that you need to maintain a proper lumbar curve, much like you do with squats and deadlifts, in order to stop undue stress on your ower back.

Dips

Dips predominantly hit your triceps, and are done by lowering yourself on a dip bar. The main tips are to keep your elbows tucked in close to your body, and stay as straight as possible. Leaning forward puts more focus on the chest, but the idea of the dip is generally to hit the tricep as hard as possible. You should be adding weight to your dips with a weight-belt to keep your rep range from 8-12.

Chin-ups

Chin-ups are the best back-widening exercise that exists. If you want the V-shape, you need to do chin-ups, as painful as they may be. Don’t mistake chin-ups for pull-ups – with chin-ups you are doing an overhand grip, and going as wide of a grip as possible. Also don’t fall into the trap of throwing your body, this is supposed to be a slow (and painful) exercise that is incredibly controlled. To build up your reps fast, you should use a modification called “lowers”. Because it can take some time to build up your chin-ups, you simply do as many reps as you can, and then jump up to the top of the rep, and gradually lower yourself. Try to take 2-3 seconds for the lower (negative rep) and to do 8-12 reps – you’ll be building up in no time!

Barbell Curls Barbell

Curls help predominantly in building biceps, but also put load on the stabiliser muscles in your front delts. This is simply a bicep curl using a barbell, but has some common mistakes as simple as it may seem. The most common mistake is to rock the body to get the weight up – avoid this at all costs, as you won’t be putting the correct load on the biceps, and can also throw out your back. The next common mistake is moving your entire arms. Your elbows should stay pinned in the air at one spot the entire time, if they move slightly at the top of the rep to get the final crunch, then that is fine, but make sure this is a completely controlled motion. Also focus on a slow negative.


Individual Muscle Groups


The following are some great exercises to add into your program. While there are plenty more out there on the net, I’ll give you a summary of what has worked for me.

Chest

Flyes – These are the ultimate for building the chest of a champion. Have light weight and complete focus. Incredibly slow reps, and ensure you’re thinking about your chest the whole way through the motion. Make sure you’re going low enough to feel the stretch of your chest at the bottom of the rep. Incline Flyes – Much the same as flyes, but focus on crunching and tensing at the very top of the motion. This is how you achieve a V at the top of your chest.

Deltoids

Lateral Raises – Keep a low weight and an extremely controlled motion, and you’ll notice massive gains in the wideness of your delts. Try doing these one at a time (left and right) and on a 45 degree angle with a very light weight, and you’ll get extreme focus on the outside of your delts. Bar Raises – By using a very low weight and slowly raising it, you will get an intense burn in your front delt. Don’t lower all the way down, lower to around your hip level, and raise until just above eye level, this way you’ll maintain the stress on the front-delts the entire way through without relaxing during the set.

Biceps

Dumbbell curls – These are very straight-forward, but the main thing to remember is to have a heavy focus on form, this is a very common exercise for ego-lifting, avoid this at all costs, and flex at the top of the rep. Incline Curls – Incline curls will give you a great focus on the bottom of your bicep that you normally wouldn’t hit. Try using a very small amount of weight to start and slow reps, it’s not supposed to be a heavy-lifting exercise.

Triceps

Cable Pulldowns – the main thing to remember with this is to keep your arms pinned in position, and try not to lift too much too quick. These are an excellent candidate for drop-sets, which I’ll cover in the advanced techniques section. French Press – With this exercise, you hold an EZ-bar behind the back of your head, and have the top half of your arm point directly upwards. You then rotate your arm from straight to a 90 degree angle. The main thing to remember is to keep your arms pinned, and don’t point your elbows outwards.

 Lats

Pulldowns – This is the cables equivalent to chin-ups, and is a great way to build strength before you can manage to do chin-ups – that’s right, not everyone can do chin-ups when they’re starting out, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Work your way up until you’re doing about 75% of your bodyweight in pulldowns, and you’ve just graduated to chin-ups. T-Bar Rows – With this exercise you stand over one end of a bar, with weight on that end. You then bend to a 90 degree angle (and ofcourse, have an arched back maintaining a proper lumbar curve), and lift the end of your bar to your body. This is a great exercise to end a workout on, as you have already pre-exhausted your lats, and they will be getting the most out of this even though it’s quite heavy on the biceps.

Quads

Lunges – While holding weights in both hands, lower one knee to the ground, then raise back up and take a step. Keep walking like this doing very slow and controlled moments, and up the weight ensuring you’re not doing more than 12 reps.

Calves

Calf Raises – This is best done with a machine that allows you to put weight on your shoulders, but basically you slowly lift onto your toes raising your heels off the ground. To get the most out of this, you should have your toes on a platform allowing you to lower your calves below the level of your toes on the negative.

Traps

Shrugs – While holding a bar, keep your arms straight and slowly lift your shoulders aiming for your ears. Be careful during the initial part of the lift, as you need to lift with your legs to get the weight up, or you can damage your lower back.

Abs

Hanging leg raises – These are the ultimate for building up your abs; you hang on a chin-up bar and while trying to stay perfectly vertical raise your legs up until they are 90 degrees. This takes a lot of experience, and regular leg-raises are a good start to work towards this.

Decline Weighted Crunches – While holding a weight on your chest, slowly lower yourself down on a decline bench, on the way back up ensure you crunch at the very top and hold this for a moment. Drop-sets work well with this, and once you’re maxed out, drop the weight and keep going until you are completely maxed out.