Building muscle is not a social ritual

Building muscle is not a social ritual

I remember it like it was yesterday... the first time I saw the dungeon.

I was about 14 years old and had just joined the YMCA. My parents thought it would be a great place for me as there was a pool, billiards, table tennis and many other things to do. There are many courses etc. However, I had other ideas. It was the first time I saw Roger DeCarlis.

Roger was a Mr. America caliber bodybuilder with a phenomenal physique. To me, a young man, he looked larger than life.

The weight room at the Y could be considered a dungeon. No heat in winter and no air in summer. On some summer days the temperatures reached almost 100 degrees and it was advisable to get in and out early.

They had to go down a cement staircase and entered a 14 x 14 room. The walls of the room were blocked...painted yellow. Connected to the first room was another room measuring approximately 20 x 14 which contained additional equipment. This was legally a powerlifting gym and all you saw were 100 pound plates, Olympic bars, power racks, squat racks, benches and a variety of dumbbells with no visual value whatsoever...again it looked like a dungeon. This included a plate-loaded leg extension machine that doubled as a leg curler. There was a cable machine, a leg press, no sled... and a set of diving bars. Everyone was dressed in rust. That was the extent of it. The windows on just one wall... three, I think, were about shoulder height and faced the street where passersby would look in. There they observed screaming, grunting, clattering, chalk everywhere and the smell of ammonia capsules. Deadlifts or bench presses should be performed before a record squat. This wasn't a namby pamby gym you'd find today that has alarms if you grunt! Absolutely not! This was serious stuff!

In those days we were considered a different kind of culture, little understanding why we would subject our bodies to this type of physical stress. Little did they know that in the deepest parts of our souls we were competing against ourselves.

Roger got up from the leg extension machine and I could hardly believe my eyes. He looked like a superman to me. The first thing I saw was a huge chest, thick shoulders and massive arms. His tiny waist added to the symmetry of his body and made everything appear even larger.

Roger usually weighed around 190 at 5'7 but was always rock hard. Over a 30 inch waist with arms close to 19 (yes, I saw them measured) he was amazing. His legs were large but not as developed and with the muscular separation of his upper body, but certainly not because he didn't work them hard. I saw him do 20 reps with 640 pounds on the squat under each rep parallel. Remember this for a bodybuilder weighing 190! Throughout his bodybuilding career, Roger literally went through hell to use his legs to develop his upper body. His back was also a sight to behold, huge thick erectors and a thick, wide bib that spread out and was full of traps. It was all Roger's business, as I would soon find out. He wouldn't say a word while at the gym in any social way and his focus was on an obsessed man. You always thought he was just crazy, but the funny thing is that he really didn't care what you thought... the only thing that mattered was his mission that day... training! I learned focus and discipline from this man.

It didn't take long to figure out that this wasn't a social ritual. I must have been a real pest back then because Roger finally got tired of all my questions and agreed to let me train with him. Our workouts were exactly as I saw them when I first met Roger...all business. There was absolutely no tinkering during training. Each rep was intentional, without momentum, and I learned to focus each rep with my mind, visualizing and feeling the rep. Roger moved with very little rest, although he used poundage in exercises that were almost ridiculous. He was extremely strong. He built his entire body using barbells and dumbbells, but attributes his sharpness to his mind and focus.

Fast forward a few years...it's no longer around 1971, but around 1977. Roger and I, although we no longer train together, are still good friends...as we are today. Meanwhile, I was introduced to high intensity training by people like Mike Mentzer, who were taking the bodybuilding scene by storm. He called his version Heavy Duty and that was it. After working with Arthur Jones, Mike turned bodybuilding on its head. He showed bodybuilders how to utilize their critical thinking skills while proving that the theory of more is better does not apply to bodybuilding. Further proof that we don't have to be our own scientists, as Muscle Magazine implies...searching in the dark for what works for us. His theory of high-intensity training lives on today and his rational approach to bodybuilding is a guide for everyone. He was considered the thinking man's bodybuilder.

Although I knew nothing about the theory of high-intensity training beforehand, my workouts were short, infrequent, and necessarily intense. At that time, my goal was to become the biggest and strongest I could. The only way to do this was to rid my training of all the fluff exercises that got in the way and drained my energy and focus, and only performed the movements that made me strong. And I became strong.

It was and is all about focus! I only did one working set...i.e. one set that failed for each exercise. I just did the basics...bench presses, squats, rows, deadlifts, leg presses, close grip benches, dips and partials. I completely removed all direct biceps exercises, shoulder exercises, calf exercises, shins, dumbbell movements like flyes, etc. from my workout. I only did what would help me become stronger. And if you know that strength and muscle size are relative...what do you think happened? You got it! I grew and became my strongest yet and therefore my tallest yet. At the time I was training maybe three days a week...sometimes two...which I later learned was still too much. I did about three sets per workout...period...but with immense focus...it was all business, as I had learned early in my career.

Oh yes, others came into the gym and went through the motions with no mental focus...true...but they never changed, they lacked the same focus and vision that would lead them to their goals...it was a social ritual for them. They enjoyed being there. Maybe their goals and objectives didn't exist or they didn't know how to focus on them... I guess we'll never know, it doesn't matter.

My preparation for each training was like a planned mission. I would concentrate and actually see what I was going to do. I would keep a log and go over the weights. I performed a self-hypnosis visualization routine every day to prepare for the next workout. This alone helped in an amazing way to reprogram my mind for success. When I went to the gym it was all business. I never spoke to anyone and everyone knew it. It was like the movie “Over the Top” with Sylvester Stallone when he gets ready to arm wrestle and turns his cap backwards with the visor as if he was flipping a switch, which was his cue that it was time to do business. In fact, 35 years ago I was given a shirt with the Tasmanian Devil on it... you know, that Looney Tunes character that spins! The twin brothers who gave it to me told me that when I went to the gym and started my workouts, I resembled that... like a possessed person.

I still train like this today. It's all business and certainly not a social ritual. Of course, these days I have a good understanding of anaerobic exercise and now understand that exercise is just an incentive and always a negative in the equation because it takes away growth reserves. When I look back like a wise man in a movie, I think to myself... "If I had known then what I know now," I would have trained less often with more rest.

My personal workouts now last about 7-15 minutes... done every 6-8 days, thanks to the wisdom of Mike Mentzer and his work on high intensity training theory.

I often see trainers (not all) waste valuable time with clients in the gym... burn an hour... probably because it's how they recharge. The sad thing is that it really is a social ritual. They have them do dumbbell curls while balancing on a ball (only half exaggerated)...stand on their heads and talk about how the weekend was while throwing the weight up and down. Their understanding of anaerobic exercise is so limited and their focus passed on to their clients is less than desirable in achieving their intended goal. My clients don't train for more than 7-15 minutes because it's impossible to train more than that.

As Greg (Anderson, another HIT trainer and colleague in Seattle) said in his article "High Intensity Strength Training: More Aerobic than Aerobic...", it usually takes a few training sessions for the client to understand the depth and extent of possible cardiovascular involvement with strength training. As one of my trainees recently remarked (after a series of squats to complete failure, followed by 20 seconds of straining against the bar in the bottom position): "My God! (gasp, gasp...) This is more aerobic than aerobics..."

When we spoke a few weeks ago, we giggled about how little exercise is necessary when you're focused and working hard, not long hours. One of them was about another athlete in Seattle I think...a HIT who trains for minutes every 9 days.

Building muscle is nothing more than a stimulus. Stimulate the muscles with intense exercise and then leave the gym to allow adaptation to occur...i.e. the entire body needs to build additional muscle for the next attack. This requires focus and vision and is the furthest thing from a social ritual. And the most important thing is that the body has the ability to increase strength by about 300%, while the ability to recover increases by at most 50%. So as you get stronger, you need to reduce both volume and frequency to further reach your genetic potential. There is never a need to take a layoff due to overtraining because overtraining never exists when managed properly.

If you are serious about your progress, beat it hard, 7-15 minutes is all (H)IT takes! And don't forget to focus and prepare for your mission!

Inspired by Bill Sahli