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30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 6 - 10)
MUSCLE MEDIA
2000 EXPOSES 30 OF BODYBUILDING’S BIGGEST LIES THAT STAND
BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS!
By T.C. Luoma and Bill Phillips.
(Originally
printed in the October/November issue of Muscle Media 2000)
6 -- You don't have to be strong to be
big
For a variety of reasons,
people, even those with an equal amount of muscle mass,
vary in strength enormously. It might have something to do
with fast-twitch/slow-twitch muscle ratios, or it might
have something to do with the efficiency of nerve pathways
or even limb length and the resultant torque. But it is
still a relative term. To get bigger muscles, you have to
lift heavier weight, and you, not the guy next door, have
to become stronger -- stronger than you were. Increasing
muscle strength in the natural athlete, except in a very
few, rare instances, requires that the tension applied to
muscle fibers be high. If the tension applied to muscle
fibers are light, maximal growth will not occur (Lieber,
1992).
7
-- The training programmes that work best
for pro bodybuilders are
best for everyone.
You see it happen every
day in gyms across the country. Some bodybuilding neophyte
will walk up to a guy who looks like he's an escaped
attraction from Jurassic Park and ask him how he
trains. The biggest guy in the gym likely got that way
from either taking a tremendous amount of drugs and/or by
being genetically pre-dispositioned to get big. Follow a
horse home and you'll find horse parents. The guy in your
gym who is best bodybuilder is the guy who has made the
most progress and done the most to his physique using
natural techniques. He may still be a pencil neck, but he
may have put on 40 pounds [19kg] of lean body mass to get
where he is, and that, in all probability, took some
know-how. That person probably doesn't overtrain, keeps
his sets down to a minimum, and uses great form and
concentration on the eccentric (negative) portion of each
exercise repetition.
Many pros spend hours and
hours doing innumerable sets--so many it would far surpass
the average person's recuperative abilities. If average
people followed the routines of average pro bodybuilders,
they would, in effect, start to whittle down what muscle
mass they did have or, at best, make only a tiny bit of
progress after a couple of years.
8
-- You can't build muscle
on a sub-maintenance calorie intake diet.
It may be a little
harder, and it may require a little bit more know-how and
a little bit more conscientious effort, but it can be
done. The fact is, the obese state in humans and animals
is not universally correlated with absolute levels of
caloric intake and neither is the accrual of lean body
mass. The ability to realize changes in lean/fat ratios is
regulated by components of the automatic nervous system
working in concert with several endocrine hormones; this
is called nutrient partitioning. For example, certain
beta-agonist drugs like Clenbuterol increase meat
production in cattle over 30% while simultaneously
diminishing bodyfat without increasing the amount
or composition of their feed. Other drugs, including
growth hormone, certain oestrogens, cortisol, ephedrine,
and IGF-1 are all examples of re-partitioning agents. All
increase oxygen consumption at the expense of fat
storage--independent of energy intake!
Drugs are not the only
way to do this, however. It's true that a significant
component of this mechanism is genetically linked, but
specific nutrients, in specific amounts, when combined
with an effective training programme, can markedly improve
the lean/fat ratio of adult humans.
If you work out -- work
out intensely-- then it can take 5-10 days for the
muscles to heal. Although the following should be taken
with a grain of salt when determining your own exercise
frequency, a study in the May 1993 issue of the Journal
of Physiology revealed it can take weeks for muscles
to recuperate from an intense workout. The study involved
a group of men and women who had worked their forearms to
the max. All of the subjects said they were sore two days
after exercising, and the soreness was gone by the seventh
day, and the swelling was gone by the ninth day. After six
weeks, the subjects had only gained back half the strength
they had before the original exercise! By no means are we
advocating that you wait two months between workouts, but
we are trying to prove the point that it takes muscles
longer to heal than what you might have previously
thought. For some people, especially natural bodybuilders,
waiting a week between body part workouts might be just
what the doctor ordered for size and strength gains!
10 --
You can't make gains if
you only train with weights three days a week.
Although you probably
couldn't find a single steroid-assisted athlete who trains
only three days a week [well, I was, and I made fantastic
gains!], there's absolutely no reason why a
three-day-a-week routine couldn't work for many natural
athletes. As long as your routine attacked the whole body
and you worked to failure on each set, you could easily
experience great gains on this sort of routine. However,
you need to pay even more attention to your diet if you
only train three days a week, especially if your job
involves little or no physical activity, and you like to
spend your idle time eating. Ignore those who say
three-day-a-week bodybuilders are only 'recreational
lifters'. Think quality and not quantity.
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 1 - 5)
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 11 - 15)
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 16 - 20)
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 21 - 25)
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 26 - 30)
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