thenaturalone’s BodyBlog

I tried this new bicep workout that is actually a very old workout but new to me and it only took 5 minutes to complete and by the end of this brief workout my biceps were blown up like cannon balls and they stayed pumped for the next 2 days! I came accross this workout when researching some training styles that were used by my favorite bodybuilder of all time, The Legend Larry Scott. Larry Scott had in my opinion the most perfectly developed arms of any bodybuilder in history. Larry Scott was very impressive in his days back when he won the 1965 and 1966 Mr. Olympia. He stood 5′8" and weighed 205 lbs with a 29" waist and massive 21" arms which was unheard of back in the days before steroid use got so heavy. Alot of bodybuilders now days would have to reach a body weight of 280 lbs or more to reach an arm measurement that big. I read a very interesting article Larry had written talking about his favorite bicep routine and was curious to see what it would be like to try it out so I did. Here is how it went. I began by setting up for the workout. I grabbed a well padded preacher curl bench, one that has a rounded top versus the kind that have a pointy crown and slant straight down. I grabbed a set of heavy dumbbells, I used 75’s. Then I took a straight barbell loaded with with about 80-85% of the weight that the 2 dumbbells weighed together which came to 125 lbs. Then I grabbed an E-Z curl bar and loaded it with a weight that was 60-65 % of the weight that was on the straight bar which ended up to be 80 lbs, then I grabbed a set of dumbbells that was equal to the weight that was on the easy bar which would be the 40 lb dumbbells. Every thing was set so here’s what I did. I grabbed the 75 lb dumbbells, 1 in each hand and put my elbows just past the crown of the preacher bench right where the pad starts to slant down, then keeping my elbows close together with a 75 in each hand pointing outward at about shoulder width with my palms facing up, I lowered both dumbbells simotaniously and completed 6 reps of curls letting the weights slowly lower all the way down until the wrists uncurl at the bottom of the movement and then bringing the weights all the way to the top into the begining position. Ounce I finished that I did 3 partial reps with the dumbbells where I only lowered them half way down and then back up. Immediately following that I grabbed the straight bar with the 125 lbs on it and with the same form having the elbows close together and my grip almost shoulder width apart I performed 6 full reps still on the preacher bench and then 3 partial reps. Right after that I put the barbell down and grabbed the E-Z curl bar with the 80 lbs on it and held the bar with a reverse grip and performed 6 full reps of reverse grip preacher curls and then 3 partial reps. By this time my biceps were so engorged with blood and so tight I barely move my arms! Next, without any rest I put down the E-Z curl bar and grabbed the 40 lb dumbbells and performed 6 full reps of double arm hammer style preacher dumbbell curls (palms both facing inward towards each other), then I performed 3 partial reps and that was all she wrote! My biceps were cooked! Fully pumped, skin tight, and veins a bulgin, that was the most wicked bicep pump I’ve had in a long time! And yes the total time it took including set up was just 5 minutes! It’s all about quality not quantity. If your looking to add more size and thickness to your biceps I recommend giving this bicep routine a try. If you get a chance go ahead and google Larry Scott and check out those classic 21" guns. If you look closely at his photo’s the condition his arms were in for that time period were absolutely incredible! One final note here, unless chemicaly enhanced, I recommend doing this super-duper-set for just one go cause it is very taxing! Repeating this cycle of exercises for over 1 super set at a time could lead to over training and be counter-productive. I would limit this workout to no more than once per week. A training partner can be very helpful doing this routine as well. I’m looking forward to doing this workout again as soon as my biceps fully recover! Best of luck to everyone!

I cant tell you just how many articles I’ve read in bodybuilding books and magazines about how you can achieve muscle growth by using muscle confusion and or muscle tricking techniques. Articles such as these seem to suggest that each muscle fiber has it’s own little brain and can think for it’s self to the point where when you train that your actually in a war of wits with your muscles and need to invent some clever strategic plan in order to trick your muscles into a growth response, ya know like a game of chess your having with your muscles where each muscle fiber is it’s own entity that can outwit you if your not slick enough for it’s formitable intelligence. I just have to laugh, roll my eyes and shake my head when I hear and read about theories like this. There does not exist one single iota of scientific evidence that suggests that it’s even a remote possibility to confuse your muscles. The only confusion thats taking place is the confusion that bodybuilding enthusiasts have when they read obsurd articles in books and magazines that suggest muscle confusion is real. The fact of the matter is that it is absolutely impossible to confuse a muscle! Our muscles are not that technical. Our muscles have only two fuctions, they contract and they relax, that’s it! Yes, you heard me correctly, contract and relax, that’s all! Although progressive resistance or muscle overload is absolutely necessary in order for your body to have an adaptive response to grow bigger muscles, there is no way, shape or form that you can confuse your muscles. Muscle growth occurs through a very simple process. You workout, you perform weight training exercises and if your going about it the right way you progressively increase the intensity of your training by subjecting your muscles to either heavier weights than what they’re used to or by using a the same weights for a higher rep range than they are used to in order to warrant an adaptive response by the body which is to ad more muscle to the body part under a now more stressful work load, in order to protect that body part from further assault that you may subject it to. Ounce you’ve tore up a muscle with progressive overload the next step is to get out of the gym, make sure you give the muscles sufficient time to recover so that they can actually grow, take in the precise amount of protein and nutrients to fullfill your muscles maitainance and growth needs, and ounce your fully recovered your muscles will now be bigger and stronger and you go back into the gym and follow this process all over again but now working with a heavier work load than last time, and it’s that simple. Don’t ever let anyone make you think that muscle growth is more complicated than that because it isn’t! One last note here. If when you go back into the gym to repeat a given workout, and your not stronger than you were the last time, then it’s because your muscles haven’t fully recovered yet and you need to incorporate more rest days between all future weight training sessions!

One of the most common myths in the bodybuilding world is that because you obtain a pump while weight lifting means that you’ve stimulated muscle growth. This is not the case. The pump sensation you get from lifting weights is just a temporary edema or swelling of the muscle in response to weight training. If getting a pump meant that you stimulate muscle growth then you would be coming into the gym bigger, better and stronger literaly every single workout. Just think of all the regular lifters you see at the gym that obtain a pump every single day but haven’t gotten any bigger or stronger for months or even years. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the pump, in fact I love the feeling of fresh oxygenated, nutrient rich blood flowing throughout my muscles when I lift, however, the positives that come along with obtaining a pump aren’t enough to stimulate muscle growth. Progressive resistance where intensity is increased via using heavier weights or doing more repetitions with a particular weight that the muscle isn’t used to is what it takes in order for the body to create an adaptive response by stimulating more muscle growth. Combined of course with adaquit rest and recovery time and the proper nutrition. Just to give you an example, every single time I train my arms, I move up and become stronger every single arm workout. Every one! The thing is here that I train my arms ounce every 3 weeks. This is not B.S! With the weights I use thats how long it takes to recover enough in order to produce muscle growth. I see other guys in the gym that train arms 3 times per week but yet haven’t been able to increase the strength or muscle mass in their arms for months to years even though they pump them up hard 3 times per week. So you see I’m seeing much better results pumping my arms ounce every 3 weeks vs others who pump their arms 3 times per week. Those extra days of pumping may not only not give you better results, but it could be counter productive. The only way to gauge whether or not your stimulating muscle growth is by whether or not your stronger any time you repeat any given set of exercises. If your not stronger every workout, then chances are your over training even though you may be obtaining the pump much more often. And yes folks, in order to get bigger you must get stronger. I had a guy tell me that training my way may make you stronger but it wouldn’t make you bigger. My response to him was "Ok, if you dont get bigger by getting stronger, than how do you get bigger? By getting weaker?" He didn’t have much to say after that. You see a little logic can go a long way when it comes to bodybuilding. Best of luck training to all!

There are so many magazines out there that I read articles by pro bodybuilders talking about what a great benefit it is to do forced reps as part of your muscle building regimen and for the pro’s who are saying this that may be the case for them but because of one simple reason. That reason is anabolic steroids. Doing forced reps will cut such a deep inroad into muscles recovery ability that there’s just no way that inroad will be able to be filled in or compensate (put back what was already there), in order to over compensate (put back more than was there before), which is what we know to be muscle gain. At least not by natural means anyway. I’ve never known of a drug free bodybuilder who has ever gotten anything out of doing forced reps. In fact in each case I’ve seen where this was practiced it was actually counter-productive. It is very catabolic to the muscles of a natural bodybuilder. Anabolic steroids are very powerful chemicals that drasticaly alter the chemistry of the body by greatly enhancing nitrogen retention, protein synthesis, and also supressing the release of cortizole, a very catabolic stress hormone that breaks down muscle tissue. And no there arent any supplements out there that non hormonal that can produce the same anabolic effects that steroids can. This makes steroids sound really good however the cost of the benefits of using them wont compare to the price of the negatives one would experience from using  them. On another note about forced reps, it can also be very annoying to the person being asked to help the person doing the forced reps. Yes I’m speaking from experience. I had a guy come up and ask me to help him do some forced reps on the bench press. I dont know why but I agreed. I don’t mind spoting someone but I don’t like doing their workout for them. Anyway, he had 225 lbs on the bar so he got under the weight and told me that he would do 2 reps on his own and then wanted me to assist him forcing out another 3-4 more reps. I’m thinking to myself ok who’s gonna be doing the work here? Just as I suspected he lifted off and managed to get just 1 rep on his own and while struggling he said "ok, 4 more! Help me! Basically what happened is I ended up doing a set of deadlifts while he rested his hands on the bar and went along for the ride. I wasn’t too happy either cause I had just done super heavy deadlifts the day before and my back and traps were in knots! About 10 minutes later he came over and asked be to help him do some more forced reps on the bench and this time I said "no!" He gave me a puzzled look and asked "why not?" I said " because it wont do either of us any good." I then explained to him the science behind over training and that that’s what he was doing by using forced reps and he would never see any meeningful gains by doing them. I also explained to him that he wasn’t actually the one doing the set, I was actually doing a set of dealifts with him hanging on the bar. He told me that this how the pro’s do it and he was gonna keep doing it this way and that it would work. The following week I saw him in the gym maxing out at a bench press of 205 for 1 rep. So yes, he lost 20 lbs off his bench in one week. Impressive hey? So unless you want to end up like that guy, dont do forced repetitions if your a natural bodybuilder!

Training with light weight and doing high reps will get you more defined. This is one myth that will just never die. Gaining muscular definition has mainly to do with your diet and not anything to do with using light weight and doing high repetitions with it. If anything, training with heavier weights is the most important way to gain muscle density and achieve a harder, more defined look on a restricted calorie diet. The reason being is that your body doesn’t  want to keep any extra muscle on it’s frame because it’s just higher maintenance for your body to keep up with. For every extra pound of muscle you have on your body, your entire endorcine system including your heart, liver, kidney’s pancreas and gall bladder must work harder in order to support each additional pound of muscle that it has so your body will try to quickly let muscle mass go in order to maintain it’s equalibrium. You cant really blame your body because think about it, would you rather pay the heat and electric bill for a one story 1400 square foot house or would you rather pay it for a two story 2200 square foot house? Of course you would rather pay for the energy being used by the one story 1400 square foot house. It’s no different with your body. It doesn’t want to pay the energy bill for the extra active tissue (muscle). Now how does this relate to training with heavy vs. light weights? Your body will lose extra muscle if it has no reason to keep it. If your body is put under heavy weight loads, say heavy sets of 4-6 reps, then your body will retain that extra muscle to compensate for the heavy weight load that it knows it will be subject to. If you use light weight and high reps all the time then your body doesn’t need the extra muscle to move light weights that it can handle for 15-20 reps so your body will let that extra muscle slip. Now with muscle being active tissue that burns calories 24/7, it would make sense that when you lose muscle your metabolism will slow down and therefore be counter productive to trying to obtain a nice hard, defined physique. The leanest I ever was for a competition getting down to 4% bodyfat, I did so by lifting very heavy weights and despite the fact that I had lost 60 lbs for this contest, I didn’t lose hardly any strength. I hope this information can be helpful to those who have been sold on that rumor that light weight and high reps are better for hardness and definition. 

The biggest myth in bodybuilding, and there’s alot of people out there that tell me they believe this to be true, is that there’s no such thing as overtraining, only undereating! Ok, so if this really is true then why not just train hard for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, and consume about 10,000 calories per day, and do this for 6 months straight and get your IFBB pro card and achieve Mr. Olympia status in less than a year? I remember there was a guy at the gym ounce that asked me how he could lose more body fat and that he was training on weights 3-4 times per week and doing cardio 3 times per week but still couldn’t lose enough body fat to have any abdominal muscles show. He was at the time taking in 4000 calories per day. My response to him was that was eating way too much, especially for a guy that weighed 240 lbs with a 38 inch waist on a 5′10" frame. He seemed dumbfounded when I suggested that he cut his calories down to around 2500 per day and he would see much better progress. He said he would think about it. The next week I saw him at the gym again and he came up to me all exited that he had spoken with an NPC pro bodybuilder that told him that the reason why he wasn’t losing fat wasn’t because he was eating too much, but that he was eating too little and that if he consumed 10,000 calories per day and put about 10 more hours per week in weight training that this would some how stimulate huge muscle gains which would really stimulate his metabolism and he was gonna get huge and shredded he explained to me. I told him there’s no way this was gonna work, it would only make him super fat. He told me this guy was a pro and he knew what he was talking about and he was going to enthusiasticaly follow his advice. I told him he’d be sorry. A month went by and I hadn’t seen this guy around until one day I saw him come walking in the gym looking as fat and depressed as ever and I asked him how his new fat loss plan was coming along and he told me he gained an additional 25 pounds of fat, brought his waist up to a 44", and had severve tendonitis in both shoulders from over training and had use these exercise bands to train because the weights hurt too bad now. The only workout he got that night was soaking in the hot tub. You see the biochemical resources that the body uses to recover and grow are strictly limited. Force feeding the body with massive amounts of food will not speed this process at all it will only make you fat. The body can only process food, and utilize nutrients so fast. This is a time consuming process that happens little by little and though it’s true that extra nutients such as protein are needed for bodybuilders who train hard, it’s ridiculous to think that it’s necessary to force feed yourself 10,000 calories in a day and gain any benefit. No bodybuilder needs 10,000 calories a day, I dont care how big he is! I currently weigh 213 lbs and I’m very active and train hard and heavy, and I can still put on muscle and make gains taking in between 2300-2400 calories per day. And yes some supplements can help you utilize nutrients better but to a lesser extent. The body’s recovery that takes place among the basic nutrients is not a fast process no matter how much you eat or how much you train.

It has always been a common practice to reach for a bottle of ibuprofen, tylenol or naproxen when we get a headache or have other pains in our body due to inflammation. These over the counter drugs may give us temporary relief from pain and or inflammation, however, if your trying to build muscle these drugs can be your worst enemy! This is why: When you train hard and feel soreness in your muscles or if you have an injury like a strained muscle for example, the reason why you feel pain is due to hormones that are released in your body when your body has been subjected to some sort of physical stress or injury. These hormones are called prostaglandins. Prostaglandins are actually cell signaling hormones that are released when we’ve trained hard or have been injured and play a vital role in our body’s ability to activate protein synthesis, recover, heal, and grow. Prostaglandins, when released, trigger the necessary biological functions to put our body’s in an anabolic state, and stimulate nitrogen retention , protein synthesis , growth and repair. The problem is that when we take those over the counter pain killers, though they do provide pain relief, they do so by reducing the level of prostaglandins in the body which reduces inflammation, but also stops protein synthesis and or muscle growth dead in it’s tracks. If post workout soreness and or pain is bearable then do your best to cope with it so you get the most out your bodybuilding. If the pain is so extreme that it’s killing you to the point that you cant sleep at night then that’s a different story. In such a case you may have to break down and take pain killers but don’t expect much muscle growth if any at all. Only you can decide for yourself if it’s absolutely necessary to take pain medications. Hopefully this information can help some of you out. Best of luck to all! 

In addition to long term goals such as reducing bodyfat by another 6% or trying to increase your bench by 50 lbs, you should have short term goals at each workout. Having goals for each workout gets you focused and exited about training. You should never go into a workout and still figuring out what your going to do. Instead, know exactly what your going to do before you get started as well as what you want to accomplish. Goals increase focus and determination. Training is not the place to be lost and aimless. Be sure to keep a workout journal and record every exercise, every weight, and every rep so that way when you go to repeat those same exercises again you can look back to see what you did the last time and strive to break those old records from the last time you performed those same exercises.

Of course we all know how good it feels to win, meet a goal we set, or take a chance and having work in our favor, but what about when things don’t go the way we wished they would? The answer to that depends our outlook on the situation. Times we lose or fail can be an eye opening reality check for us that can help us make the necessary adjustments in order to see greater things come to pass. Whether it a be a physique competition, a personal goal you had set, a job you were trying to get, or maybe a relationship that you really wanted to work, and for whatever reason things didn’t go the way that you had hoped, and you feel a sense of loss or failure, that is the best time evaluate yourself and really focus on what the real reasons are that kept you from meeting the goal you had set. Once you come to terms with those things, you can make adjustments and improve apon the weak blind areas within you that you couldn’t see before. Granted somethings are beyond our control, however, there are many factors within ourselves that we can control in order to give our selves the best advantage down the road. Just as an example, I competed in a bodybuilding competition one year that I won and felt good about. I finished out strongly over my fellow competitors which left me with a feeling of well, maybe overconfidence. After that I didn’t think I had too many more improvements to make so I did a show the following year arriving confident that I could win being in the same condition I was in the previous year. Boy was I wrong! As soon as my weight class stripped down and started pumping up before going on stage, I knew that I was beat! There was a whole new breed of bodybuilders on scene that year that were bigger and twice as ripped as competitors the prior year. Needless to say, I got my ass kicked in that show. After licking my wounds for a few days I decided to re-evaluate my diet and training strategy. I read tons of info better educate myself on the subject of bodybuilding, nutrition and supplementation. I made some drastic changes and worker harder than I ever had and entered the same competition 3 years later which produced even better, more conditioned athlete’s than 3 years prior when I lost, and I ended up winning! You see the loss from before set me up for a bigger victory down the road. This type of pattern can occur in so many aspects of your life. We as humans were designed with the ability to heal and to grow stronger physically, mentaly, and emoitionaly. We were designed to be overcomers not under achievers. Alot of people tend to let a failure or defeat weight them down and kill their ambition, making them feel like they can’t do any better. The good news is we were designed with all the tools to make ourselves better and overcome obsticals, we just need to be positive and give ourselves a chance to use those tools and allow them to work in our lives. If we do this and don’t give up on ourselves, stay consistent, then we will bring ourselves to a much happeir more successful place in our lives. Don’t settle for less or even the same, use all tools available to you and use them to develope your talents and skills. Be honest with yourself about flaws and weak points and learn about what you can do to turn them into strengths. You haven’t come this far in your life and survived what you have been though to merely just settle or roll over and quit. You have come as far as you have in your life because your preparing for something bigger and better that will come to pass.

Of course we all know how good it feels to win, meet a goal we set, or take a chance and having work in our favor, but what about when things don’t go the way we wished they would? The answer to that depends our outlook on the situation. Times we lose or fail can be an eye opening reality check for us that can help us make the necessary adjustments in order to see greater things come to pass. Whether it a be a physique competition, a personal goal you had set, a job you were trying to get, or maybe a relationship that you really wanted to work, and for whatever reason things didn’t go the way that you had hoped, and you feel a sense of loss or failure, that is the best time evaluate yourself and really focus on what the real reasons are that kept you from meeting the goal you had set. Once you come to terms with those things, you can make adjustments and improve apon the weak blind areas within you that you couldn’t see before. Granted somethings are beyond our control, however, there are many factors within ourselves that we can control in order to give our selves the best advantage down the road. Just as an example, I competed in a bodybuilding competition one year that I won and felt good about. I finished out strongly over my fellow competitors which left me with a feeling of well, maybe overconfidence. After that I didn’t think I had too many more improvements to make so I did a show the following year arriving confident that I could win being in the same condition I was in the previous year. Boy was I wrong! As soon as my weight class stripped down and started pumping up before going on stage, I knew that I was beat! There was a whole new breed of bodybuilders on scene that year that were bigger and twice as ripped as competitors the prior year. Needless to say, I got my ass kicked in that show. After licking my wounds for a few days I decided to re-evaluate my diet and training strategy. I read tons of info better educate myself on the subject of bodybuilding, nutrition and supplementation. I made some drastic changes and worker harder than I ever had and entered the same competition 3 years later which produced even better, more conditioned athlete’s than 3 years prior when I lost, and I ended up winning! You see the loss from before set me up for a bigger victory down the road. This type of pattern can occur in so many aspects of your life. We as humans were designed with the ability to heal and to grow stronger physically, mentaly, and emoitionaly. We were designed to be overcomers not under achievers. Alot of people tend to let a failure or defeat weight them down and kill their ambition, making them feel like they can’t do any better. The good news is we were designed with all the tools to make ourselves better and overcome obsticals, we just need to be positive and give ourselves a chance to use those tools and allow them to work in our lives. If we do this and don’t give up on ourselves, stay consistent, then we will bring ourselves to a much happeir more successful place in our lives. Don’t settle for less or even the same, use all tools available to you and use them to develope your talents and skills. Be honest with yourself about flaws and weak points and learn about what you can do to turn them into strengths. You haven’t come this far in your life and survived what you have been though to merely just settle or roll over and quit. You have come as far as you have in your life because your preparing for something bigger and better that will come to pass.