Strength and Physique

"I read your Ectomorph Training article on Bodybuilding.com and had a few questions I wanted to ask you regarding what you wrote. I hope you don’t mind answering these questions for me. I’m quite new to bodybuilding and consider myself an ectomorph, I’m tall (6 feet, 2 inches) and weigh about 75kgs which I think is around 165lbs. I have worked out previously but have always struggled to really notice much of a gain in muscle size. But I found your article very interesting, because what you described about ectomorphs needing a low set workout, with long rest periods made a lot of sense to me. Sometimes I think my previous workouts may have been too demanding and involved (especially for beginner workouts), and I was spending too much time running around the gym doing different exercises instead of concentrating on a few solid compound movements. Anyway here are the questions:

1) How long should someone relatively new to bodybuilding follow the program you have outlined in your article? I’m thinking at least 3-6 months, or is that to long?

2) What kind of weights should be used for the pyramid rep range of 10-8-6-15? I’m thinking that the first set is relatively heavy, with the second and third set where you really hit the heavy weights hard and then drop it back for the final set of 15. Can you please clarify this for me?

3) Are there any additional exercises that should be thrown into the workout in your article to change things up a bit, or is everything written there sufficient to continue growing for the entire length of the program?

“I personally would love to give your workout a shot and continue doing it for as long as it is going to continue being effective. It sounds like a great program! I am also about to purchase your book on Amazon.com and hope that your book will contain further answers in my quest to building a bigger/stronger body.”

Thanks,
Sven

My Answer: Well Sven, if you’re new to bodybuilding, then give the Hypertrophy Training for Ectomorphs program a try for 4-6 weeks at most. Three to six months would be way too long, and you would stagnate within the first 2 months. Newbies can stay with a given program a lot longer than older lifters and still make progress. But 3-6 months would be way too long, even for a newbie.

To extend the effectiveness of this program for an extended period of time, you can rotate your exercises for each body part. So you can change the exercises from workout to workout, as long as you stick with just 4 sets of one exercise for each muscle group. This will add some variety to the program without overburdening your nervous system with too many exercises.

With regards to the amount of weight used for each set, you’ll have to find out when you lift. Choose a weight that you think you can perform 10 reps with. If you can do ten or more for the first set, then add some more weight to hit the next set’s target: 8 reps. Just add or subtract weight to hit the target rep for whatever set you’re performing.

"Hello! A friend of mine just directed me to your web page. I have some questions, but this might be too much to ask from you. I’ll try to be brief. I’m a 40 year old female, I’ve been weightlifting for 6 years, I’ve competed in strongwoman competitions including nationals, and some powerlifting competitions. I’m 185 and 25% bodyfat. I’m in the process of applying for the police academy here in Wichita which will start in January. I am working on my conditioning through hill sprints, running, calisthenics, some weights, etc. usually with 2 a day workouts. I still have to pass the Cooper’s run (1.5 miles in under 14 minutes).

"Here’s the big question: I feel like I need to lose about 30 pounds to be really lean and mean. I’ve already lost 40 since last September, mostly using low carb, but also a 4 week ultra low calorie diet. For the past month or so I’ve been doing something more like the Zone. Did you find that you could support your daily LEO activities when you were on the metabolic diet? Would you recommend it for me in my current situation? Any advice would be greatly appreciated."

Thank you!

Michelle Smith
Assistant District Attorney
Wichita, KS

My Answer: Well first off congratulations on losing 40 pounds! That is a huge achievement, so keep up the great work. To answer your question, I experimented with the Metabolic Diet (Anabolic Diet) prior to my law enforcement career. When I was on that diet at the time, it was a logistical nightmare, because nobody had heard of low carb dieting and there were no products to help with low carb dieting. Had I been in law enforcement at that time, it would have been hard to prepare and pack lunches for patrol. I would have tied a large animal to the hood of my patrol car and eaten my 5-6 meals that way.

The Metabolic Diet is a cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD). CKD’s are excellent for fat loss and muscle preservation, but I would not recommend it if you are an athlete who needs to train all day every day and needs to be at peak performance. I have a fellow officer on a CKD, and the resulting changes on his face and waistline were almost immediate.

What I would suggest is that if you want to give the CKD a try, then follow the diet primarily for fat loss from now until you’re accepted by the academy. Once you start the academy, up the carbs. The Zone Diet would be good for this. This way you get enough carbs for the high volume of physical work you’ll do in the academy. But if you find that you can stay on the CKD and perform fine athletically and not tear people’s heads off, then by all means stay on it.

Strength and Physique V1 available on Amazon.com

Just a heads up: I’ve got a new article here on Bodybuilding.com titled Hypertrophy Training for the Ectomorph.  In the meantime, here are the answers to yesterday’s quiz.

So which is healthier: Regular coffee or decaffeinated? Believe it or not, regular coffee is actually healthier for you than decaf. Why? Because decaffeination does 2 things: it removes a lot of the antioxidants and the decaffeination process leaves behind chemicals which have been known to cause cancer. Unless you’re prone to tremors and hypertension, regular coffee has lots of health benefits: lots of antioxidants, you’re less prone to kidney stones, it offers some protection against the onset of Alzheimer’s and you have more sex (I’m not kidding). If you really want to maximize the health benefits and minimize the risks with regular coffee, then go for organic coffee and limit your intake to 1-2 servings early in the day.

So which is healthier: a hot dog or a hamburger? It all depends on how you make your hamburger, of course. But if we’re just talking about real ground beef (not McDonald’s soy/thousand cow blend), then a hamburger would be healthier than a hot dog. The hot dog is made up of all sorts of miscellaneous cow parts and preservatives. Ground beef is just beef ground up. There is less of a process involved with ground beef as opposed to hot dogs. Ground beef (without the buns) was actually a staple in bodybuilding diets in the old days when they followed low carb (before even Atkin’s himself). If you can, then go for ground beef from a grass fed cow. Grass fed beef has a better omega 3 to omega 6 ratio.

So which is healthier: tofu or edmamame snaps? If you don’t know, edmamame snaps are those green pea pods (soybeans) served as appetizers at Japanese restaurants. There has been a lot of controversy of the health risks of soy. There is a lot of evidence suggesting that soy not only adversely affects male hormones (converting testosterone to estrogen) but infant development (no soy formulas please) as well as cognitive function late in life. Soy does have a lot of health benefits, but it is better to have edamame snaps instead of tofu. Edamame is soybean in it’s natural state. Tofu is soybean after a long and lengthy process. If you learn one thing about healthy eating, it is this: don’t **** with mother nature, or she’ll pay you back in spades. Tofu is concentrated soy, so the health risks that come with soy are more pronounced with tofu and other processed soy products.

So now that you know my philosophy of food (the less of a process, the healthier it tends to be), the rest of the questions should be easy to figure out:

Roast chicken over fried chicken. Aside from the frying, fried chicken is less healthy due to the extra carbs in the batter.

T-bone steak over roast beef deli meat. A steak is just a slab of meat. Roast beef slices are cured and has preservatives.

An orange over orange juice. Eat your fruit, don’t drink it. Drinking fruit juice will elevate your insulin levels and an overactive pancreas will age you.

Strength and Physique V1 available on Amazon.com

So here’s a little game I play with my clients. It’s a quiz that helps you think about good food choices. I’ll provide the answers at a later date.

Which is healthier?

Regular coffee or decaffeinated coffee?

Hot dog or hamburger?

Tofu or edamame snaps?

Roast chicken or fried chicken?

Roast beef or a T-bone steak?

An orange or orange juice?

If you’ve read my book, then you know why certain choices are better than others. Like I said, I’ll provide the answers at a later date.

Many clients ask for my advice in setting up a home gym. Working out at a home gym has many advantages over a commercial gym:

1) You save time. For a commercial gym, you have to drive to there and from there. For a home gym, however, your commute time is ZERO.

2) You can workout whenever you please. Whereas most commercial gyms have business hours, your home gym is open to you 24/7. So you have no excuse to miss a workout.

3) You save money. Once you make the initial investment on the home gym equipment, that’s it. No initiation fees. No membership fees. Many commercial gyms require initiation fees, which often cost as much or more than the cost to setup a home gym. By setting up a home gym, you save money in the short term and even more in the long term.

4) You get a better workout. How often have you worked out at a gym and waited for the equipment to be free? Do you think you’re getting a good workout if you have to wait 5-10 minutes between every exercise? In your home gym, you don’t have to wait. You don’t have to put your workout on hold, because some screwball is curling a barbell inside the squat rack.

5) You have no distractions. There are no sweaty, obnoxious people in your home gym (unless you happen to be one).

If setting up a home gym interests you, then let me make some suggestions to help you minimize the cost. First and foremost, always go with free weights. Machines are costly and take up a lot of space. Dumbbells and barbells, however, are versatile and can work every bodypart.

Second, take a look at the amount of space you have available. This factor will determine your equipment purchases much more than price. Here are the equipment plans I usually suggest based on space:

Apartments. If you’re living in a cramped studio apartment, then buy yourself a pair of adjustable dumbbells and a set of resistance bands. You can get a complete full body workout with just these two pieces of equipment and some bodyweight exercises.

Garage or large room (low ceiling). If the gym space you’re using has a low ceiling, then I suggest the following:
- a squat rack with a high/low pulley station (measure the height of the pulley station and make sure it will fit in your room before you purchase it)
- an adjustable bench
- an Olympic barbell
- a pair of adjustable dumbbells
- 300 lbs. of weight (or however much weight you will need)
- a calf block
- rubber matting for the floor

Garage or large room (high ceiling). If the gym space you’re using has a high ceiling, then I suggest the following:
- a power rack for squats and pull-ups
- an adjustable bench
- an Olympic barbell
- a pair of adjustable dumbbells
- 300 lbs. of weight (or however much weight you will need)
- a calf block
- rubber matting for the floor

Strength and Physique V1 available on Amazon.com

So the next time you’re at the bookstore or supermarket, pick up the latest issue of Planet Muscle. I have two articles in there: one on quadriceps training and the other on back training. The quad article is an excerpt from Strength and Physique V1 while the back article has some new material of mine on effective back exercises. Check it out the next time you’re at a Barnes and Noble bookstore or a Safeway Supermarket.

There are some foods that are used often in bulking diets, because they’re cheap, convenient and effective. Skinny college kids on a budget who don’t know how to cook can use these poor man bodybuilding staples to add extra calories purely for bulking.

Bulking means that you gain weight at all costs in the hopes that some of what you gain will be muscle. When you bulk, high caloric intake is what you want. Bulking is only recommended for skinny bastards under the age of 25. Don’t bulk if you’re fat (duh!) or even if you’re skinny but have fat deposits in certain areas (i.e. love handles). I generally don’t recommend bulking for those over 25. Only skinny teens and skinny college kids who have the metabolisms of hummingbirds on crack.

Now if you’re a rich, skinny bastard, then:

1) I hate you.
2) Your goal is to eat a high calorie diet of high quality foods and high quality protein (meats).

But if you’re on a budget and don’t mind gaining some fat, then here are some staples of the poor man’s bulking diet:

1) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
2) eggs
3) milk (but not if you’re lactose intolerant)
4) bananas
5) bagels with cream cheese (and salmon lox if you can spend the extra cash)

Eggs are cheap high quality protein that you should eat whether or not you’re bulking or on a budget. Everything else on this list will bulk you up, because of:

1) the calories
2) the carbs
3) the fat
4) the high insulin response

The muscle that you gain on this diet will not be of the highest quality, and you will gain some fat. But if you’re a poor skinny bastard, then bulking with these foods (along with a powerlifter’s training regimen) will help you blast through any plateaus in your size gains. JUST DON’T GO OVERBOARD.

Most of the time, people ask me what they should be doing to get big or get strong. Every once in a blue moon, however, I get the question, "How do you train, James?"

Through a lot of trial and error, I noticed I respond best to a certain range of reps and certain number of sets. Not all the time, but about 80% of the time, I get muscular and strong on 4-6 sets per exercise (totaling 8-10 sets per bodypart), 4-6 reps per set. I also noticed that I respond to explosive movements: power cleans, kettlebell swings, etc. I’m just geared to be fast and moving. My body just hates moving slow or being still. If I eat all the time, then my body swells up like a monster on the above parameters. If I just eat like a regular joe, then I just stay trim and lean.

Why am I like this? Well some people have a lot of fast-twitch muscle fiber, and I happen to be one of them. It means I like heavy weight and speed, so 4-6 reps is the sweet spot for me. 4-6 sets per exercise, totaling at 8-10 sets per bodypart is the amount of volume I respond to.

How much volume (number of sets and reps) you can tolerate is contigent upon how much testosterone you have. There are many other hormones that contribute to muscularity and size. But in general people with a high amount of testosterone (i.e. porn stars, violent felons) can tolerate and grow on a high number of sets. Whereas eunuchs and those who watch "the View" every morning can only tolerate 1-3 sets per bodypart. I find that 10-13 sets per bodypart borders on overtraining for most people. 3-5 sets per exercise (totaling at 6-8 sets per bodypart) is what the average lifter responds to without overtraining.

Strength and Physique V1 available on Amazon.com

It’s really amazing how people are so susceptible to advertising and the idea of a quick fix. Folks will pay big money to get a piece of equipment or a workout system from an infomercial, but they don’t want to put the effort to pack their lunch. Like all things, succeeding in bodybuilding is about taking care of the logistics. I had an earlier blog entry on dieting for dummies, and here’s what a reader of my blog, Brian, said in response:

"Well stated bro … if you keep it simple and KEEP AT IT, it is amazing what one can accomplish just rearranging how, when and what one eats. Loads of my business clients and friends are blown away at ‘what I have done.’

"They ask how I did it, but in all reality, they know: it is just a matter of focus and doing the right thing repeatedly over a period of months and years. Enjoy your blog. Keep at it!"

And Brian isn’t just blowing smoke up your ass. He really did the above and acquired an amazing physique. Check out his bodyblog:

Pulgas Strongman

The before and after pics are truly inspirational. Bottom line is deep down inside, you KNOW what to do to obtain the body you want. It’s just a question of “Are you going to do it or what?”

People have actually told me they don’t know whether or not to buy my book, and yet these same people have spent hundreds of dollars on flashy infomercial workout systems and home gym equipment that involves bending iron rods (you know what I’m talking about). My book is only $18.95, and it is worth 10 times more than any of infomercial garbage.

But information is only worth something if you apply it. I’ve talked about exercise personalities before, and the one that bugs the crap out of me the most is the "intellectual masturbator." He talks about working out, he seems fairly knowledgeable of what needs to be done, but he doesn’t do it. The intel masturbator is a talker, not a doer, and you find them in every field, not just bodybuilding.

Success is a matter of focus and priorities. Know what your priorities are: solid consistent training and solid consistent dieting. Focus on these priorities, and you will achieve your physique potential.

"Hey, it’s Jonathan. How’s it going? I really enjoy your book that I bought about two weeks ago. The workouts are great. I’m glad I invested in your book. I have a question about the quadriceps. Should you employ the same low rep high weight frequency like in hamstrings or should you go with a different approach? I really want to work on my vastus medialis. I would love to have that tear drop effect. Thanks for your help.”

My Answer: Hey Jonathan, good to hear from you. Glad you like the book. To answer your question, yes, you can use the low rep/heavy weight to develop your quads and the vastus medialis. But the thing about the quadriceps is that they respond to a wide range of reps. How wide of a rep range? How about 1 to infinity?

Seriously though, your quads love a variety of reps, so the heavy weight/low rep approach is only half the equation. The other half is employing super high reps. This is why 20 rep squats work. This is why 4-5 sets of 40-50 reps on the leg extensions would blow your quads up like balloons.

So give that a try: alternate between super high reps and multiple sets of heavy weight/low reps. If you’re concentrating on developing your vastus medialis, then focus on the exercises outlined in Strength and Physique, V1.

"Hi James,
"A quick note of thanks to you for your arm training from your book. I just finished one month of the routine that you outlined for biceps and triceps. The direct heavy work on my bi’s and the work for the long head of the tri’s really ‘plumped’ out my upper arm. I really enjoy the comments from others who noticed. I am a 48 year old ‘blinded vet’ who has been training for 25 years. Decent arms but we always want more, right? Thanks for all the useful info.”

Sincerely,
D. A.

My Answer: Glad you’re liking the results from the program. If people are noticing your big guns, then you’ve done me proud.

“Hi James!
“I know in your articles, that you like the lying triceps extension to work the long head of the triceps. I read [from your articles] that it is better to have the upper arm angled back towards the top of the head, rather than perpendicular to the torso and the extension is also at an angle, rather than straight up.

“So what do you think about the overhead cable extensions, where you lean forward or get down on the ground with a twin pedestal bench, such as the Larry Scott method for the long head. Is the seated overhead extension as good as either of these?

“I saw a photo of you bent pressing an Olympic bar. I also do this for my shoulders and I think it is a great exercise for overall shoulder development.”

Thanks,
B. C.

My Answer: You know, I gave Larry Scott’s kneeling triceps cable extensions on a twin pedestal a try for several months. I ended up using the entire weight stack every time I did the exercise. After several months, you know what I found out? As far as developing the long head of the triceps, kneeling cable extensions just don’t work. Nothing against Larry Scott and his observations in the gym, but that exercise develops everything about the triceps, BUT the long head.

And as far as seated overhead extensions or overhead cable extensions in a lean forward stance, it’s the same thing: great overall triceps exercises, but not good developers of the triceps long head. Stick with the lying tricep extensions and variations.