Icommenced my own transformational odyssey in 1962 when at age 12 my Irish father bought me a 110 pound set of weights for Christmas. I wanted to transform myself from what I was—an average boy—into what I wanted to be—a muscular giant. I was a daydreamer, a comic book reader, a superhero worshipper and in my mind’s eye I would visualize myself transformed into Herculean proportion.
As a preteen I read Greek, Roman and Norse mythology and became a sport idolater. I wanted to become larger than life and instinctively sought out the tool that would enable me to achieve my imaginary physical goal: a barbell. My extremely supportive father enabled me to remake myself by purchasing the weights. He was a widower who worked long and hard and because of his work schedule I grew up with a lack of parental supervision.
Being a baby boomer, I had lots and lots of neighborhood mates and cohorts. Preteen males, we formed a roving tribe of “lost boys” and we actively and enthusiastically engaged in all types of organized athletic games. In those days parents sent children out to play; mothers particularly wanted the boys outside to preserve their sanity. Every single day we had enough male participants to form full football or baseball teams. The younger boys stood on the sidelines, anxiously awaiting their turn to be rotated into these massive sandlot games.
Once I obtained the tool of my transformation, my weight set, I set up a training area in my unfinished basement. Immediately my comrades and I began working out and my basement became training central, a subterranean wolf’s lair for all our tribal activities. My Dad was a lonely, stoic type who had seen combat in WWII and won a silver star. Whereas the homemaker mothers of the nuclear families in my neighborhood wanted peace and serenity my dad welcomed and enjoyed the beehive buzz of young boys in the basement lifting weights and socializing. We even had guys come by who didn’t train; they would arrive, meet and greet, then sit on one of the picnic benches that lined the concrete walls and watch the always intense, apparently entertaining, lifting action. We competed every single day amongst ourselves and always strove to improve. We pushed each other mercilessly to see who could lift the most.
We sought increases in strength, increases in muscle size and improved athletic performance. Progress became the benchmark, the report card as to whether or not our methods were working. I would walk to the newsstand once a month to buy Strength & Health muscle magazine for training information. We were in the informational Stone Age as far as bodybuilding and strength building techniques were concerned. In retrospect this was a blessing in disguise. Nowadays there is a very real problem with informational overload; there is literally too much information and it makes it difficult for the serious individual to sort through the possibilities and find truly effective methods. Back in those days there was very little confusion. The lack of sophistication and lack of choices (regarding exercise theory, modes, equipment and tactics) turned out to be an absolute advantage.
What information we had tended to be sound. The lack of choice kept us focused on the things that mattered: we lifted hard; we lifted heavy and we lifted often. We used basic barebones barbell exercises because we had no other equipment. We ate like young colts because we were young colts. The copious calories we continually ingested kept us anabolic and in a constant state of Positive Nitrogen Balance (PNB) though we had no earthly idea what anabolism or PNB were or why it was beneficial.
The huge amounts of food we ate caused us to recover quickly from the eternal pounding we subjected our bodies to. As a direct result we grew muscle and became inordinately strong. Fat kids, back in the day, were the exception; nowadays they are the rule. Our young metabolisms were akin to nuclear reactors: we could eat anything without consequence. We participated in innumerous athletic activities, both organized and informal. Our cardio was simply a natural outgrowth of our eternal participation in football, basketball, baseball and wrestling. We thought nothing about running for miles or biking for hours to get where we needed to go.
Our games were deadly serious and of the bone-bruising variety. We were athletic kids unwittingly melding intense cardio with intense weight training and ‘supporting” all the intense physical activity by eating and eating and eating. In retrospect the area that modern knowledge could have benefited us the most was nutrition: we ate too much saturated fat and sugar. We were ignorant idiot savants; primitive kids who came up in primitive times and used primitive tools and primitive methods; we were spared the curse of too many options.
Raised without any feminine counterbalance in a harsh, stark masculine environment, I naturally evolved into an alpha male. I was never a follower. I was the leader and the schemer, the guy who got the games organized and the guy who other guys looked to for the next move. I never demanded it. My status was bestowed upon me by the others. Having no mother or any feminine influences, I unwittingly became a Spartan boy.
I was popular yet I never had any problem being alone or by myself. My wife says I was raised by wolves and in some ways that is dead on accurate. In my pre-driving years, if no one was around or nothing was happening, I might shoot 500 baskets or bounce a tennis ball off a street curb with great precision. I could make the tennis ball rebound fifty feet back and shoot twenty feet into the air. I would sprint and leap to catch the crazed rebound. I could entertain myself this way for hours.
Luck and circumstance conspired to catapult me into adult athletic competition at a very early age. I entered high school at age fourteen, the same year a new teacher arrived. This guy was a bon vivant Italian Wildman named Roy Patmalnee. He started a weightlifting club and my wild boy tribe showed up en masse and simply took over. As Sonny Barger once told Ken Kesey when asked how Hell’s Angel’s were selected, “We don’t select ‘em, we recognize ‘em.” My crew and I were recognized—immediately.
We were not suburban pussies; we were street toughs who fought with each other often and swore and smoked and pushed each other into the creek for no reason. We’d already made phenomenal physical progress. Roy looked like Robert De Niro and treated us like mates, not like children. He rubbed his hands gleefully and unleashed us on other schoolboys. He began trucking us around to intramural Olympic weightlifting competitions. As a team we went undefeated, eventually winning the Eastern Regional United States high school team title. Other teams would compete in cute uniforms and bring cheerleaders. We’d show up with our hair greased back with Brylcream, wearing black leather jackets and Chuck Taylor high top shoes. We made overt passes at the cheerleaders. We were aggressive and physical. We were primordial archetypes, “Here little man; hold my 1st place trophy while I French kiss your cheerleader sister.”
Soon the “basement boys” were entering adult male Olympic lifting competitions. Suddenly we were comrades in arms with adult men and this accelerated the maturation process of already mature youngsters.
There was a ferocious Olympic lifter named Robert Lancaster who went to Howard University and later became a fighter pilot. He lifted at the time in the 181 pound class. Roy entered our team into the DCAAU Potomac Valley Regional Senior Men’s Championships in order for us to get bitch-slapped in open men’s competition. “This mauling will be good for you.” I remember him telling us in a philosophic moment during the van ride to the meet.
I was given a life lesson that day, one that still serves me well. It was a demonstration of the relationship between muscle strength and muscle size. We were at the competition beforehand preparing to weigh in when AAU President Pete Miller excitedly said, “Marty! Hurry! You’ve got to see this!” As I followed, Pete explained, “Hey Marty, have you ever wondered why Robert Lancaster can lift so much more than you?”
Before I could answer we turned the corner into the men’s locker room, “That’s why!” Pete pointed at Bob stepping down off the scales in a pair of shorts looking positively Herculean, like Arnold Schwarzenegger on his best day. I turned to Pete and said, “DUH! Of course he can out lift me! With those massive muscles and that low body fat percentile, next to him I look like a point guard or a baseball second baseman. I got to get a lot more muscle and lose a lot of body fat if I’m going to look and lift like Lancaster.” That was a profound formative moment for me.
The functional muscularity Lancaster displayed that day became my lifelong physical benchmark. Lancaster’s physique had function: He could clean and jerk 410 when the world record was 413 and at 5’8” could slam-dunk a basketball.
Roy had been insistent that we undergo this trial by fire. We were scared shitless, ready to pee our pants. Lancaster was in my division and his degree of dominance created the “flee” phenomena as grizzled veterans in the know avoided his weight division. At the competition I pressed 215, snatched 195 and clean and jerked 260 weighing 171. Bob missed all three of his presses with something like 315 and was out of the competition. I ended up beating the remaining lesser lifters and won the Senior Men’s title at age 14 to become the youngest winner in the history of the DCAAU. To my coach and my mates, it was as if I had miraculously beaten Cassius Clay or run 85 yards for the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl.
I became a boy sensation. Needless to say this lucky win fired me up and caused me to redouble my efforts. I went on to win my first National Teen title at age 17, pressing 260 and snatching 225. Both were AAU National Junior Olympic records at the time. I cleaned and jerked 315, but was disqualified for “press out.” I dead-hang cleaned 295 for a triple weighing 193 at age 18. I was a holy terror and my status in the male community could not have been higher. When we got our driver’s licenses, our whole world changed. We rode around in 400 horsepower muscle cars without seatbelts smoking Marlboros, drinking booze and throwing the empties out onto people’s lawns. We trained hard, but now drank, smoked, fought and chased women who didn’t run away too far or too fast. As Balzac noted in Cousin Bette, “All men are conscious of a woman’s susceptibility to pugnacious masculinity.” I personally can attest to the validity of that aphorism.
I had zero interest in high school studies. I was struck hard by wanderlust and romantic ideas about travel. As soon as high school was over, I hit the road. The lone wolf alpha male left home on good terms as soon as I turned 18. My dad remarried and I was happy for him. I hitchhiked back and forth across the country three times before I turned 20 and lived in a commune for many years. It was the sixties and I was a free spirit, a restless youngster who made male friends easily. I ended up in Portland, Oregon living in the twilight world of professional musicians and dope dealers.
I eventually ended up back in Maryland and got deeply involved with martial arts for five years. I studied under an internationally famous master of the Chinese “internal” martial arts, Robert Smith, a senior student to T’ai Chi God, Chen Man Ching. I became immersed in that world, but it was not my world and eventually I came full circle and got back into competitive lifting at age 29. Within 11 months of commencing powerlifting I squatted 600 raw weighing 198 pounds. I began writing articles on weight training and was published right away. I had always been a voracious reader and as a teen had been introduced to Hemingway, Conrad and Jack London. Getting published caused me to broaden my literary horizons. I had the good fortune to come across the Russian short story writers. They were the perfect mentors for a guy who wrote magazine articles. I needed to tell my training tales in 1500 to 2500 words and the plain-speak short stories of Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Chekhov (to lesser degree Dostoyevsky) gave me a template for my own Iron Tales.
Most people hear “Russian Literature” and mistakenly think it dense and obtuse, akin to wading through Emanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Not so. The Russian Masters were plain-speak writers who told their tales quickly, efficiently and with great economy and precision.
I stumbled across Turgenev’s “A Sportsman’s Notebook” early on and his compact density and passion for his subject matter made him my article writing mentor. Tolstoy’s Hadji Murid and Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler provided further literary benchmarks for my own tales. Later Anton Chekhov had a huge impact on me: his ability to underplay, his subtleness, his humanity, his humility, everything about the man moved me deeply. I read a quote of his I use to this day as a guideline. “One should write so that the reader requires no explanation from the author. The actions, conversations and meditations of the characters need be sufficient.” I took that to heart. In the Iron World where I lived there were plenty of great characters and I needed to let them speak, unimpeded, without any of my feeble embellishments.
Another great writer, Truman Capote, gave me another applicable writing formula when he talked about writing In Cold Blood. “I am bringing fictional techniques to reportage.”
I immersed myself totally within my chosen field. I was passionate and knowledgeable and continually excited about my little pie sliver of expertise: muscle, strength and how to acquire it.
I wrote of the men and events that populated this strange uber-masculine world. I was able to get paid to quiz my strength idols about how they morphed themselves! I was an insightful interviewer. I had a real point of view and I was, as Alfred Kazin once said of William Blake, “Like so many self-educated men, he was fanatically learned. But he read like a fundamentalist—to be inspired or to refute.” That was me cubed. I had a voice and a viewpoint and considerable life experience at a young age. Some writers are incredible technicians, but have no worthwhile life experiences to draw upon; others are real adventurers with tales worth retelling, yet they can’t communicate.
I never sought to write “over my head” and I never sought to write about anything that I was not intimately familiar with. I wrote of the world of weights and lifting and men who excel at it and my episodic training treatises were recognized and well received right from the start.
Hugh Cassidy was instrumental in helping me shape my craft. He focused my thoughts in my initial articles. He tore my prose apart as surely as he tore me apart in the gym. He was a tough taskmaster who taught me that the goal was clear communication and communicating trumped trying to impress.
In the intervening decade I continued a parallel course: furthering my own competitive aspirations while writing about what I learned from the world’s best. I had ambitions and was driven to learn more and more and more. This made me an ideal interviewer. I knew my stuff and when I talked with athletes about their training they sensed immediately that I understood them. I created persuasive and compelling articles because I took the time to capture their idiosyncrasies, patois and mannerisms. I related with precision and care what it was about their training or nutrition that differentiated one great athlete from another.
I would suppose that it is no exaggeration to say that I have interviewed over 1,000 athletes about how and why they train the way they do, about how and why they eat the way they eat. I also had the privilege of coaching hall-of-fame strength athletes, often in the very competitions at which they turned in their all-time best performances. Certain men, it seems, are driven to improve upon the human body they are given. I was one of them.
What was it that drove myself and men like me? What was it that I was writing about? Was there an irreducible core question? Is that not the question: how best do we trigger physical transformation?
I made my bones by competing, by observing, by listening and by trying new things. I have come to a basic conclusion that in this day and age of unlimited choices and unlimited distractions, some very important and productive strategies have been obfuscated, discarded or ignored. I have come full circle in my attitudes and choices and now feel certain that those who earnestly seek to transform themselves physically can benefit from using my Retro Man Methodology, much of what I first stumbled on as a boy-child.
Those ancient methods turned out to be timeless. If you scrape away all the different rationale and reasons people engage in fitness-related activities, the bottom line is that they want to modify their physique, change their body from what it is into what they want it to be. Being dissatisfied with their physical status quo, they will rearrange their lives and devote time, money and effort towards triggering transformation. In almost every case they fail miserably.
People who successfully transform physically transform psychologically. I’ve seen this phenomenon occur repeatedly: self image undergoes an astounding metamorphosis when a successful physical metamorphosis is achieved. People who make radical physical changes reinvent themselves, not just physically but psychologically and emotionally as well.
For 45 years I’ve been in hot pursuit of those methods and modes that trigger physical transformation. I have come to the conclusion that the finest methods for triggering true transformations are based on modified versions of those ancient, purposefully primitive ultra-basic modes of training and eating I first stumbled upon four decades ago.
People nowadays chase their metaphorical tails in feverish pursuit of change, using fragmented and ineffectual methods. There are just too many choices and too many slick marketers with silky smooth raps that they relate with great conviction. They tell the gullible with pompous profundity that they have discovered a secret method. They disguise fallacious facts with absurd pseudo science and are seductive and persuasive.
People run in crazed circles all around the fitness Mulberry Bush, chasing one exotic mode, method, procedure or product after another. They all seek the mythical magic bullet of fitness: a method or mode that will enable them to effect a transformation without the disciplined deprivation, without the teeth-grinding physical effort, without the struggle. Life is struggle. I love what my Purposefully Primitive brother-in-arms, Ori Hofmekler says, “Life in paradise should be rugged!” We are primordially programmed for struggle yet we seek to avoid struggle at all cost. Struggle is the precursor to true transformation: without struggle there is no transformation.
45 years later and so many of those ancient adolescent epiphanies still ring true and still strike me as profound. Basic barbell and dumbbell exercises done with incredible intensity then backed up with lots of calories result in the construction of new muscle. If you are selective about the ample calories you eat, if you practice periodic cardiovascular exercise, stored body fat is mobilized and oxidized. If eating and training are perfectly attuned to one another, synergy takes hold and results are dramatically accelerated.
Significant change without significant struggle is a fitness myth perpetuated by people looking to sell you products. When I thought about writing this book, I posed myself a question: how simple could the transformational process be made without losing effectiveness? What would you need? How little could you get by with, in terms of tools, time, and effort? The answer was you would need a barbell and food from the grocery store. No need for personal trainers; no need for a gym membership; no need for a treadmill; no need for miracle devices or magic bullet products. You need a few tools, some regular food and a plan. I can provide the plan.
Old School Tools of the Trade
In this age of high-tech glitz and dazzle, the quest for physical transformation can confuse and confound the most astute and analytical individual. A serious fitness devotee seeks nothing less than complete physical renovation, but awash in a sea of conflicting methods and modes, who can sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff, the real-deal from the jive, the effective from the ineffectual?
Commercial gyms and omnipresent fitness infomercials continually churn confusion and purposeful obfuscation, promoting one exercise mode, machine or device after another, endless types and varieties, each presented as “the ultimate.” Use of the device, we are told with the easy assurance of the unconsciously ignorant, makes transformation quick and effortless. If rapid and radical physique renovation were so damned easy the planet would be overrun with Arnold-clones and that just ain’t so.
The cold truth is the process is damned difficult and the old cliché still rings true: success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Human nature is fickle and always seeks the path of least resistance. True physical renovation requires that we seek the path of maximum resistance, both figuratively and literally. Given a choice humans will always choose to sit or lie down when exercising and equipment manufacturers purposefully cater to this subconscious psychology.
Here is an irrefutable truth: any machine that mimics a free weight exercise can never equal the results from a free weight exercise. Why? Machines eliminate the third dimension of tension, control of side-to-side movement. This in and of itself makes machines that mimic 33% less effective than the corresponding free weight movement from a kinesiological standpoint. Machines are seductive, but not nearly as effective.
Good old barbells and dumbbells blow machines that mimic them into the weeds, every single time. It boils down to biomechanics and hard science. A machine locks the user into a super-specific, motor-pathway, a preordained groove that confines, constricts and eliminates any sway in the stroke path. A machine groove has two dimensions: up and down. Free weight training adds the critical third dimension: side-to-side control. In addition to up and down, the free-weight user fights to avoid wayward lateral movement. When a free weight is pushed, tugged or hoisted, it follows a path of its own making and the user has to prevent the weight from straying from the proscribed technical boundary.
From a muscle-building standpoint adding the third dimension is a marvelous thing and as a result free weight exercise always trumps the mimicking machine. The third dimension of tension activates muscle stabilizers that keep the poundage proceeding along the proscribed path. Triggering stabilizers results in additional muscle fiber stimulation which converts into additional muscular growth.
Can unglamorous Old School tools and tactics compete with splendiferous exercise machines that allow you to engage in fitness-lite always while sitting or lying? Are free weights a hopeless anachronism and are practitioners the modern incarnation of John Henry versus the steam engine drill? Not if results still count.
Does any of this inspire or kindle within you an urge to bail out of the subtle seduction of all-machine/all-the-time training to which so many are addicted? If you had a thousand dollars to construct a serious free-weight home gym, here is how I’d advise you spend that hard-earned disposable income. Here’s a further tip: you could likely cut the $1,000 amount in half by purchasing equipment described used. Try used sporting goods stores that have sprung up everywhere. Look in the newspaper want ads under “exercise equipment.” People are always looking to unload fitness equipment they no longer use.
1. Olympic Barbell
At some point if you use free weights you’ll need to graduate from the pedestrian “exercise set” to an Olympic style barbell. The ball-bearing sleeves allow smooth, non-binding rotation of the load and the seven foot length is necessary for use in a power rack. Downside: the empty bar weighs 45 pounds so for exercises requiring less poundage you’ll need to use dumbbells.
2. Dumbbells
We’ve selected six pairs of fixed poundage cast iron dumbbells, one pair each of 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40 pound dumbbells. You can save money by buying empty dumbbell handles and loading plates onto the handles for each set. Given a thousand dollars to work with and the ease and quickness of fixed poundage dumbbells, a $140 dollar investment, seems well worth the expense.
3. Bench
On an adjustable bench you can do flat benches, incline presses, seated curls and overhead presses. Pick a bench that allows you to add a plate-loaded leg extension/leg curl device and an incline curl pad. This piece of equipment is invaluable, enabling you to perform twenty plus free weight barbell/dumbbell and machine exercises.
4. Power Rack
The key critical piece of equipment, a power rack is a steel cage with four vertical posts set two feet apart. Seven feet in height, round holes are drilled every two inches. Two long bars are inserted in the holes allowing you to do every imaginable variation of squat and bench press safely. The ‘pins’ are set in such a fashion that if you miss a rep you simply ride the poundage down to the pre-set pins and walk away. Ours is equipped with supplemental pulleys allowing various types of pulldowns, triceps press-downs, seated cable rows and pulley curls. The front crossbar serves as our pull-up and chin bar and can be used for hanging leg raises. For serious free-weight training a power rack is not an option. It is invaluable and irreplaceable.
5. Jump Rope
We had a few dollars left and decided to purchase a leather jump rope for indoor cardio. Jumping rope is a lost art and when it comes to generating an elevated heart rate, the goal of all aerobic exercise, continual hopping is amazingly effective at raising the HR.
Our final purchase was the deceptive and devilish Ab Wheel. Available at any sporting good store for around $10; this simple device is deadly effective when it comes to building core strength. Kneel down and motor forward rolling on the little wheel until your nose touches the floor. Pull back to the starting position. This killer exercise strengthens the entire abdominal region while simultaneously stimulating the latissimus dorsi.
For a thousand dollars you can build a Retro Old School home gym and perform every imaginable progressive resistance exercise: buy it all used and save 50%. That is a lot of bang for the buck. The correct use of a power rack allows you to train alone and in complete safety—assuming you utilize the correct pin settings, adhere to proper exercise techniques and stay within reasonable poundage and repetition limits. The muscle-building attributes of three dimensional free weight training are unbeatable and irrefutable. An unbelievable variety of free weight exercises can be performed using our simplistic set up. The possible variations boggle the brain and are enough for a lifetime of study and application. The possessor of this Old School home gym will be limited only by imagination and motivation. Our rustic set up provides every conceivable tool for transformation, all right at your fingertips, nestled just a few steps away in the comfy confines of your garage or basement.
Don’t Apply Chronologic Boundaries to an Organic Undertaking
People often ask, “How long should a resistance exercise session last?” Is there a tipping point, a point of diminishing returns where energy nosedives so dramatically that further exercise effort is futile, if not downright counterproductive? The answer is yes. Experience and science converge on this one.
After 45 to 60 minutes, for someone in reasonably good condition, energy starts to fade quickly, strength plummets and performance begins to suffer so badly that logic dictates that the session should be ended.
Those in better physical condition might be able to prolong the point when the muscular fatigue curtain falls. Those in poor physical condition might only last 10-15 minutes before running up the white flag.
Hypertrophy-triggering resistance training is a body shocking, muscle fatiguing experience that obeys its own dictates and has zero respect for your puny preconceptions. Trainees new to hardcore resistance training come to an initial session crammed full of preconceptions and bright ideas and the grim reality is shocking—like an ice-cold shower or a hard slap across the face. Real resistance training, the kind that actually strengthens and grows muscle tissue is all about effort…teeth-grinding, pants-splitting, eye-popping, ball-busting effort. We push and pull on heavy objects with all our might, using every bit of available strength. This kind of effort saps strength and energy at a rapid rate.
Traditionally we take a few warm up sets using sub-maximal poundage before the all out effort(s.) Preliminary sets serve a variety of purposes: they raise the core temperature of the target muscle and grease nerve synapses and neurological pathways. Warm-ups are critical. A proper warm-up ensures specific muscle motor pathways are greased and opened and crisp technical execution is ingrained before the main event: the Top Set or Work Set. Everything prior to the top set is exercise foreplay; necessary to maximize top set performance, but on their own the preliminary sets do not cause growth. These sets lay the technical, physiological and psychological groundwork for the real work: the hypertrophy-triggering, strength-infusing top set.
In order to perform a top set at maximum capacity, the warm-up sets need to be done with real concentration. One easily observable difference between a real Iron Pro (regardless their discipline) and rookie trainees, is how the elite handle warm-up sets. Rookies will slap-dash their way through the warm-ups using sloppy technique and piss-poor form. Pros “pretend” the warm-up sets are maximally heavy and treat the lightest poundage with maximum respect. Though they might be going to hit 755 for 5 in the deadlift, they will handle 135 and 255 as if it were 755. This is a lesson lost on beginners.
Once proper warm-up sets are dispatched in the correct fashion, as true dress rehearsals, the top set should be, needs to be, must be a stone bitch to complete! Purposefully difficult, we seek to stretch the lip of the limit envelope in some manner or fashion every time we train. The physiological aftereffects of all out physical effort are devastating. There are only so many top sets an individual can perform during a workout before physical disintegration occurs. When this happens, the uninformed continue the workout and the informed call it a day.
Novice resistance trainees, stuffed full of platitudes and preconceptions, try and apply chronological boundaries to an organic undertaking. “I weight train for two hours per session six times a week.” The novice might boast. The experienced man hearing this goes, “Well if that’s the case, you can’t be handling jack shit in terms of poundage.”
A powerlifter, Olympic lifter or strongman competitor does not think in terms of time. His body will tell him when it’s had enough. The tip off is performance: when strength nosedives and poundage plummets, when reps regress and performance cannot come within a country mile of capacity when fresh, it is then time for the weight trainer to cease weight training. If a man is capable of 350x10 in a particular lift when fresh and rested and when he gets around to that exercise, deep into the session, he can only push or tug 310x10 or 340x6, that man is crispy fried and should pack it in.
There is no hypertrophy to be triggered or strength to be gained wrestling with poundage or reps 30% less than what the individual is capable of when muscles are fresh. If a fatigued trainee insists on handling big poundage in a weakened state, there is a real risk of catastrophic injury. I’ve seen a man’s trembling arms collapse while holding 550 at arms length and the leftovers of that wipeout ain’t a pretty sight. It’s “Someone call 911!” time. Being a tough guy and insisting on manning-up when no one is asking you to man-up is asking for trouble. I’ve seen biceps ripped on a bounced deadlifts (a ripped biceps rolls up like a Venetian blind) and I’ve seen legs collapse with 800 on a man’s back. Each accident was attributable to pushing too long and too hard.
Experience teaches us if you are in reasonably good shape and really blast away in the gym, going hard and heavy the way you’re supposed to with enough training intensity to grow muscle and amass strength gains, after 40-60 minutes strength starts to flee fast. Fit guys can go a little longer; overweight, out-of-shape or anemic types won’t make it much more than 20 minutes before hitting the wall.
Generally there are two types of trainees: those who generate the requisite intensity and reap results and those who train in a not-so-intense fashion and reap nothing of any real significance. 90% of all weight trainers fail to train intensely enough to trip the hypertrophy switch that triggers muscle growth. Most trainees are genuinely unaware of the sheer physical effort required to trigger tangible results. No one has ever taken them aside and said, “Look—unless you really extend yourself—I mean REALLY extend yourself—unless you press the effort accelerator to the floorboard, unless you take it to the limit and beyond, consistently and repeatedly—nothing of any real physical significance is going to occur.
If you train with the requisite effort, you can’t go very long. If you can, you’re not going hard enough.
Going through the motions, i.e., using the same poundage in the same exercises for the same number of sets and same number of repetitions, week after week, doing the same things in the same ways, is going to net zero results. Only by pushing the body past current capacity, only through dogged struggle, only by attempting to equal or exceed your previous best, will anything of muscular significance occur.
Keep in mind that capacity is a shifting target. On an “off” day, capacity might be 15% less than when you have an “on” day. That’s okay and needs to be taken into account. Trying to hit or exceed 100% of maximum capacity on an “off” day is dangerous. Capacity can be breached using different strategies. Look around when you go to the gym. If by simply performing the same number of reps using the same poundage in the same exercises triggered the adaptive response, the gym would be crawling with muscle monsters.
The human body does not favorably reconfigure itself in response to ease and sameness. The body only grows new muscle and becomes stronger when pushed into new territory. Those who go through the motions (staying within their comfort zone) can train for a long time. Those who train intensely enough to trigger hypertrophy have between 30 and 75 minutes before the sheer intensity of the effort causes them to run out of energy. Super hard and super heavy training drains physical energy and also drains psychic energy. Only the trained, experienced individual, a member of the athletic elite, can train hard longer than an hour.
Science has shown that serum testosterone levels plummet when the body is pushed past a certain point. The Bulgarian Olympic lifters put their medical people on the case and they recommended that training sessions be limited to 45 minutes. Before you get too excited about that particular training time limitation, be aware that Bulgarian National Coach, Ivan “The Butcher” Abadjiev, said, “Fine. We’ll limit national team lifting sessions to 45 minutes per session—but we’ll have six sessions per day.”
Exercises done at the beginning of the session are attacked hardest because energy levels are at their peak. Exercises done at the end of a long hard session inevitably and invariably suffer. Energy is a finite substance and is depleted by all-out effort. Attack the most important exercises first, while energy is high and always start with the big, sweeping, compound, multi-joint exercises. Then follow up with the less intense isolation exercises.
The Purposeful Primitive knows the energy clock is always running, the sands in the hour glass are shifting and sliding downward, imperceptibly, inevitably, and time is not on our side. Never compromise on expending intense effort in order to artificially extend the length of the session. Get through the important compound movements before the endurance gas tank runs dry. A good rule of thumb: train hard enough to trip the hypertrophy switch; energy is going to start heading south at about the 40 minute mark. An insider trick-of-the-trade: drink a “smart bomb” shake during the workout (combination of protein and carb powder). Come to grips with the physiological fact that if you train correctly, hard and intense, you only have about an hour!
The Only Thing Better Than a Hardcore Training Partner …Is a Group of Hardcore Training Partners
Any athlete that has played for a winning team knows that a group of athletes can develop a collective synergy that needs to be experienced to be truly appreciated. The optimal group dynamic creates a hurricane of momentum as players play over their heads and exceed realistic expectations on a routine basis. As a result of athletic synergy the grand total exceeds the logical sum of the combined individual parts. Team synergy can be replicated in resistance training by lifting with like-minded, highly motivated individuals regularly and repeatedly. A training partner, or better yet, a group of training partners, accelerates gains way past your wildest imaginings.
If the chemistry is right, if the person or persons pushes you and demands the best from you, if they do so without being reckless or hurtful, if they inspire you to do more than you would on your own, and do so without veering into injurious training practices—you are in for the most productive physical training period of your entire life. It is a predictable phenomenon and for this reason the athletic elite cluster together to train. It’s only natural for the strong and capable to seek each other out.
The elite know that loafing or giving less than 100% effort is less likely when training in front of individuals who are your athletic equal or preferably better than you. If possible or given a choice, seek to train with individuals stronger and more knowledgeable than you as they will drag your game upward. When it comes to stimulating your own physical progress, it is far better to be the small fish in the Big Pond than the Big Fish in the small pond. Nothing seems to make that insurmountable 400 pound squat barrier (your personal best) seem slight and insignificant as when training with people who squat double that poundage for reps.
At first glance it might appear intimidating but once you swallow your ego, training with better athletes is a real advantage. If you live in a tiny pond where everyone is in awe of you because you squat 400, it is a lot harder psychologically to view 400 as just a step and not an ultimate destination. Ever wonder why so many times the youngest brother in a large family becomes the best athlete? This is an example of the benefits of playing with athletes bigger and better than you. It forces the little ones to “up their game” in order to hang. In the end that is a good thing, athletically speaking.
When you have a larger frame of physiological and psychological reference, you come to understand that by striving, by continually and unrelentingly pushing yourself in order to keep apace with your betters, you improve—or you break down, physically or psychologically. A good training partner has a responsibility to himself and to his partners. You are required to show up on time at the designated training venue, ready, willing and able to blast the living dog-shit out of some muscle, lift or body part.
Muscle growth and additional strength lies in those reps barely made, the stuff you’d be crazy to try on your own.
Practicing primitive free weight barbell and dumbbell exercises collectively, each in turn stepping into the spotlight to lift as the others watch, critiquing each other immediately after the set, is an intimidating, daunting and exhilarating experience. Your ego is flattened when more experienced training partners tear you to shreds with blistering critique before rebuilding you with constructive criticism prior to the next set. To have someone “spot you” on the potentially dangerous lifts allows you—inspires you—to give 110%. We all pick up our game when another person or persons are watching us do something and watching us intently. The attention makes us perform at a different level, a higher level.
A spotter allows you to extend yourself. Lifting by yourself when bench pressing or squatting, requires you to leave a rep or two “in the bank”—you need some reserve strength left at the end of each set. You cannot afford to get pinned under a heavy weight and that means you never try that questionable rep. With a spotter you are now liberated to try that extra growth or strength producing rep that safety and sanity won’t allow when training solo. Muscle growth and additional strength lies in those reps barely made, the stuff you’d be crazy to try on your own.
With spotters the dangerous reps become plausible and beneficial. You don’t need a spotter for a 40 pound leg curl or a 15 pound triceps kickback, but you damned sure need them when you are attempting to handle 405x6 when the most you’ve ever done is 405x5. Spotters allow you to go where no timid man should venture: into the productive danger zone of extended reps and increased poundage.
Purposeful Primitives instinctively push against the limits of the poundage and rep envelope: that is where the gains reside. Anyone performs better when all eyes are riveted on them during a heavy lift. As my old Zen power coach once said, “You only think you’re training hard until you get sucked into a training group, a group way smarter and way stronger than you.” Better to train in a dump with Supermen than in a posh palace surrounded by low-pain tolerance politically-correct metro-sexual sissies.
Recently I’ve had to do something I hadn’t done in decades: introduce folks who’ve never lifted weights in their entire lives to my peculiar ways and methods.
Working with clinically obese folks caused me to undertake an unexpected reexamination of my own Purposefully Primitive methods and procedures. Could I break the basics of an already ultra-basic system down even further? Was it possible to create a framework sparser than the spare template already in place? Could I create a skeletal framework so limited that it could be used effectively by the untrained; people who work full time jobs, people with large families and lots of responsibilities? How simple can you make the physical renovation process without losing effectiveness?
My back-to-basics immersion caused me to deeply reconsider procedures and philosophies done for so long and so regularly that, in some cases, I’d forgotten why I do things the way I do them. I’ve lifted weights since the age of twelve and at age 57, I’ve accumulated 45 years of hands-on, in-the-trenches experience. That’s good and bad. Anytime a person does something for that long they tend to get pretty damned good at it. On the downside they tend to become a bit dogmatic, automatic and pedantic. Elemental modes and procedures should not be taken for granted. It had been a long time since I’d pondered how, what and why I do what I do in the way that I do.
When I started explaining to the stone-cold beginners why I wanted them to do things in a certain way, I noted that I could rattle off reasons and rationales like an auctioneer at a cattle sale. But it somehow seemed hollow to me. I was being superficial and rote. I said things without thinking and decided that I needed to reevaluate how and why. Dealing with total beginners, something I had never done, caused me to rethink much of what I’d taken for granted for so long.
It was as if someone had opened a window in a room full of stale cigar smoke and a fresh breeze had blown in: hard, cold, chilly and bracing. It felt good to reexamine my treasured orthodoxies. Normally I only work with elite weight trainers. These are very experienced athletes who without exception have a tremendous amount of progressive resistance training under their belts before they seek me out. I’m purposefully obscure, hard to find and off the beaten track. When an ardent lifter or athlete makes their way up to the mountains to see me, they are looking for fresh direction on a journey already long underway. I see these seekers for four or five hours then they head back to their world. I’m sort of a one-man Iron Finishing School: a guy who might be able to alert an elite athlete to some heretofore unconsidered offbeat angle or progress-stimulating approach.
This time it was different. This time I’d decided to work with complete beginners with zero fitness experience. These were local folks from right in my neighborhood. To compound complexity, I was looking to extract maximum xresults in a relatively short timeframe. I’d worked hard and diligently to remove myself from society. I purposefully constructed a rural, isolated lifestyle in order to get really good at my many solitary pursuits. Now life suddenly took a sharp left turn. Circumstance presented me with an opportunity to give something of value to folks who could really use some assistance. This required I reenter the societal world I purposefully left.
Fitness folks that come to me for advice are a savvy lot. I don’t spend time going over why I do the things I do. Like a celebrity chef I have my particular style of cuisine and my very own repertoire of signature dishes. A certain segment of the public loves what I do. All was right with my relationship to the world insofar as maintaining my comfort groove.
Then along comes a gaggle of stone cold beginners that have no freaking idea who I am; people that have never ever touched a weight; and now I’m put in charge of maximizing physical progress of a little gang of totally untrained regular people.
All of my beginners were clinically obese, i.e. carrying a 30% or greater body fat percentile. Some of my new clients had 50% body fat percentiles. My goal was to see if it was possible to spark a substantive physical makeover in obese individuals using minimalist methods. The process would take ninety days and I would stay true to my Purposeful Primitive philosophy. That these methods worked for elite athletes was beyond dispute; grounded in biology, the methodological effectiveness is rooted in scientific “cause and effect,” do this and that must happen. I believe in biological imperatives. Lift weights in the proscribed fashion and muscles are required to grow. Perform cardiovascular exxercise as instructed and organ function and caloric oxidation must improve. Eat with precision and discipline and stored body fat must be preferentially oxidized. Put all three modes together and the human body must reconfigure itself. Subjected to proper procedures executed in the prescribed sequence the human body has no physiological choice other than to build muscle and oxidize excess body fat.
With four decades of empirical experience under my belt, I know what works. I also know what procedures are a waste of time. My self-imposed challenge was, could an already sparse methodology be pruned and pared, trimmed and reduced, without losing the essential essence? This was a challenge that excited me in a way that I hadn’t been excited in a long time. It has proven to be a literal lifesaver for people whose bodyweight was jeopardizing their health and threatening to prematurely kill them.
Was there a way to reduce Purposefully Primitive methods to an irreducible core essence that could be used by obese individuals to solve their bodyweight dilemma? Could I create a user-friendly, time-efficient training and nutritional method for use by untrained obese folks that would provide maximum bang for minimum time investment?
I wanted to make my test as tough as possible. Again, how little could we do and still elicit results? I wanted to train them as little as possible using only a barbell and the fewest number of exercises possible. I wanted cardio exercise to be limited in duration and confined to walking. I wanted to use only foods available at the grocery store. No pills, potions or supplements. No more than five cumulative hours per week would be dedicated to training. I broke this out into three weekly weight training sessions of 30 minutes each. Weight training would consist of three exercises done three times a week. Three sets of 10 reps in the squat, bench press and deadlift. Seven weekly cardiovascular sessions of 30 minute duration would be the sole aerobic activity. Cardio exercise was outdoor walking. Insofar as diet, they would eat only food purchased from the grocery store. No nutritional supplements. I showed them how to cook delicious lean protein dishes and fiber carb dishes. None of the participants had ever lifted weights or participated in a serious fitness program.
Started off weighing 241 pounds standing 5’9.” This 48 year old Mack Truck factory worker was able to squat 95, bench press 95 and deadlift 135 for reps on day one. On day 88 Ron squatted 245, bench pressed 225 and deadlifted 400 weighing 175 pounds. Ron took 3rd place in his age and weight division at the 2005 AAU World Powerlifting Championships.
Started off weighing 305 pounds standing 5’2.” This 61 year old grandmother was unable to walk 50 steps without stopping to catch her breath for 15 minutes. She was unable to perform a single squat with zero weight. She could perform one incline pushup with no weight and was unable to squat down to grab a deadlift bar. On day 88 she won her age group at the AAU World Powerlifting Championships with a 205 pound squat, a 100 pound bench press and a 195 pound deadlift. She was able to walk the circumference of a 154 acre farm without stopping and weighed 264 pounds.
Started off weighing 183 pounds standing 5’3.” This 39 year old mother of five boys was able to squat and deadlift 75 pounds on day one and bench press 40 pounds. On day 88 Connie won the AAU World Powerlifting title weighing 148 pounds. She squatted 185, bench pressed 145 and deadlifted 185. In training she had bench pressed 95 for 10 reps.
Started off weighing 305 pounds standing 5’8.” This 33 year old computer programmer on day one was able to do 10 incline pushups with no weight. She was able to perform one full squat with no weight and one deadlift with the empty 45 pound barbell. On day 88 Jen won her weight class at the AAU Championship squatting 200, bench pressing 105 and deadlifting 280 before barely missing 300. She weighed 271.
All final lifts were done under the strict scrutiny of three judges in high level powerlifting competition. No suits, belts, wraps or bench shirts were used in training or competition and no one ever did any lift other than the squat, bench press or deadlift. Sessions were done thrice weekly and everyone walked outdoors everyday for 30 minutes. Ron made the most gains and I think this was attributable to his sticking the closest to the diet. Ron opted for a Parrillo-style multiple-meal eating schedule. He lost 65 pounds of bodyweight in 90 days. In fact his progress was even more astounding in that he added 12 pounds of muscle. Using the add-back equation reveals that Ron lost 78 pounds of fat and added 12 pounds of muscle to end up at a scale weight of 175 pounds. At the competition he missed a 3rd attempt squat with 275 pounds. Betty’s progress in some ways was more astounding. While she didn’t lose the bodyweight that Ron did, her health went from feeble and life-threatening to strong and empowered.
Progress is Difficult to Generate, Tough to Keep Going and Sure to End…
Physical progress is an ebb and flow proposition. The only surefire bet in the world of fitness-related pursuits is that all progress eventually grinds to a halt, no matter how sophisticated the program or how great the individual effort.
Any untrained individual who suddenly subjects themselves to an intense progressive resistance program will generate substantial progress—for a while. The trick is recognizing when progress ceases and knowing what to do about it when the inevitable stagnation arrives. The real pros have a veritable arsenal of exercise routines and diets ready to roll out when the proverbial well runs dry. The real pros are so physically attuned that they actually anticipate stagnation before it takes root and have new modes and methods all ready for inclusion and rotation whenever the current approach plays out. Progress is difficult to generate, tough to keep going and sure to end.
Regardless the sophistication of your approach, regardless the amount of workout intensity you are able to generate, regardless the sheer amount of time you devote to the pursuit of physical training, eventually all routines and all diets cease delivering results.
Repeating the same eating and exercise procedures creates a habit pattern and the Soft Machine will eventually figure out the habitual pattern and produce a physical antidote. The human body is a miraculous organism and given time and exposure to a particular mode or method, it always finds a way to neutralize the training effect.
The trick is to not allow the body to generate the antidote; change modes and methods before the body solves the puzzle. Human beings are creatures of habit. Legislating periodic change runs contrary to basic human nature.
Proper training and effective eating favorably alters the shape and composition of the human body. It does so by imposing biological imperatives. Do this and that will happen: simple scientific cause and effect. The biological imperative is the physical expression of the Hegelian Dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The status quo thesis (your body as it is) is impacted by something radically different, the antithesis (a new system of training/nutrition.) Eventually that which was once radical and different morphs into the new status quo and becomes the synthesis. The synthesis becomes the new thesis and the process repeats itself.
If we are to keep the progress ball rolling, new modes need to be periodically rolled out. “New” is no guarantor of better. As Krishnamurti points out in an appropriate analogy, “Just because the window is open there is no guarantee the breeze will blow in. However if the window remains shut—there is no possibility the breeze will enter.” Recognizing stagnation is terrific, embracing change is noble, but that in and of itself is no guarantee the changes selected will be the correct ones that will stimulate new progress. Effort is no substitute for success.
To trigger progress, consistently and consciously examine the current status quo and assess if progress is proceeding apace. When a radical new procedure is implemented it needs to create dramatic contrast to the current status quo. If the contrast is sufficient the organism will undergo an adaptive response. Slight variations in current procedures are insufficient to trigger the adaptive response. Rearranging the contents of the box is not enough. To create contrast sufficiently contrary to the current status quo requires stepping outside the box entirely. Radically new exercise and/or eating procedures are needed. The antithesis needs to possess significant contrast to the thesis.
New and different stresses need to be imposed and once the new and different stresses are no longer new and different, once the contrasting procedures are no longer innovative and shocking, measurable physical improvement is over! The theory of the adaptive response also applies to nutrition. We need to periodically institute radically new and different dietary procedures. Perhaps changing the amount of food consumed, or changing the type of foods selected or changing when we eat. Once the body becomes used to nutritional or training procedures progress peters out. The truly attuned continually rotate in new protocols and procedures.
No single exercise routine or system, no single dietary approach or eating protocol, trumps all others. There is no such thing as a single exercise or eating strategy that is so effective that it can be used forever. Yet those who make fitness devices and market fitness products would have you believe that they have invented a product or a system that beats all others and will deliver incredible results endlessly. This is another fitness myth.
Here is a fitness truth of the first magnitude: no one system trumps all others and no one system can deliver progress ad infinitum. That is a fitness fact-of-life. Progress must be nurtured and stagnation recognized. Savvy transformation masters know that periodically the body needs to be jolted out of its complacency. Pablo Picasso once said, “Occasionally a man needs to be jerked out of his torpor.” These are words to live by in life and in all fitness and nutrition-related pursuits.
When those protocols once shocking, jarring and exhilarating morph into old and familiar, when what was once radical has now become tired, it is time to institute radical change: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Learn to embrace change and cultivate continual contrast. Most fitness devotees labor under the illusion that once they stumble upon a system or mode that delivers substantive change, that system can and should be used on an exclusionary basis ad infinitum. After all, “I know it works for me.” The devotee develops a rabid allegiance to that initial mode or method that provided that initial burst of physical progress.
Here is a salient point grounded in fact: when any untrained individual suddenly subjects themselves to a ‘serious’ training regimen (or a radical diet) virtually any system will deliver results—for a while. An appropriate fitness cliché is… “It’s not so much what you do as how hard you do it.” Any untrained individual suddenly subjecting themselves to an intense resistance program will trigger gains for a period of time.
The trick is not in generating progress initially—but rather how to revive progress once that initial burst subsides.
When an individual suddenly and consistently trains the body intensely using new methods the body responds. I’ve seen people obtain incredible results from lousy exercise systems by generating incredible training intensity and applying Herculean physical effort. I’ve seen other people obtain terrible results using incredibly effective exercise strategies as a direct result of sub-maximal effort and piss-poor application. The best of both worlds is to combine a superior training regimen with gut-busting effort and consistent application.
Result-producing exercise routines and effective diets need to be rotated on a regularly reoccurring basis. Using a favored mode, method or tactic exclusively and ceaselessly, is stagnation-on-a-stick. Sameness is the progress killer and the athletic elite accept the inevitability of becoming stagnant. They actually anticipate stagnation ahead of time and figure its arrival into future plans. They know that when stagnation arrives the best way to rekindle momentum is to construct a new exercise or dietary approach that contrasts dramatically with what they have been doing.
One mistake repeatedly made by fitness buffs (too clever by half) is to alter the current effective approach ever-so-slightly. They do not understand the need for a dramatic alteration. Dramatic contrast jolts the body and stagnation morphs into momentum. Slight modifications are easily neutralized by a body that has figured out the status quo antidote. It is a relatively easy thing for the organism to adjust to a slight change in the current status quo. It takes guts to jettison a program that has been proven effective. It is psychologically difficult to toss a system we’ve grown to love. But we don’t throw it away forever: categorize it as effective and simply set it back on the shelf for future use. The athletic elite have an arsenal of proven effective training and eating regimens, hung in their philosophic closets like a row of clean shirts on hangers.
People fall into a reoccurring trap: they obtain spectacular results from a particular resistance, nutrition or cardio program and attempt to turn the effective regimen into a religion. They become acolytes and adherents and feel compelled to use the precise regimen that worked for them at one time in the past. They develop an unhealthy allegiance that often veers into religious zealotry—this despite the mathematical fact that any meaningful results have long since dried up. They refuse to change, or if they do change, the changes are so minor, so cosmetic and minute that the antithesis remains virtually indistinguishable from the original thesis. This rearranging of the deck chairs never works.
Periodically institute a complete and total overhaul of what you are doing. To trigger results requires significant deviation from current protocol. Real results require real change. At best, continued usage maintains the status quo. Someone said stupidity is repeating the same behavior over and over while expecting different results. Stimulating progress requires the institution of a new regimen that significantly contrasts to the current status quo.
Generally speaking most exercise and diet routines lose effectiveness after 4-6 weeks, but this can vary. Knowing when to change comes with experience.
The more training cycles you have under your belt, the better you’ll be at identifying the signs of stagnation. Don’t use change as an excuse to change every thing every week. Three to four weeks is the absolute minimum to stay on a selected course. Anything less and you can be accused of not giving the approach a decent tryout. Humans are creatures of habit and when left to their own devices prefer to follow a path they know. The iron elite are attuned to the body’s subtle rhythms and patterns and they know that blind allegiance to a particular system, mode, methodology or approach is progress suicide.
The Purposeful Primitive understands that while anyone can design an initially effective training or eating regimen, the real secret to prolonged physical success is in knowing what to do when the initial burst of progress ceases. After a while the trainee becomes aware of the natural ebb and flow of training and eating and gravitates naturally towards a holistic system that provides a reinvigorating change of pace every 4-6 weeks.
Embracing change eventually becomes something we look forward to: it becomes exciting to try radically different modes and methods. The journey of self discovery positively impacts the physique in ways you never thought possible. Embrace change and become comfortable with the fact that Contrast is King. Over time come to understand that there’s a natural ebb and flow to training and eating—and life itself.
In my experience there are two distinct types of post-weight training aftershock: Direct muscle soreness (DMS) and deep muscle fatigue (DMF.) Both are the result of training intensely enough to trigger muscle hypertrophy. High repetition training is the culprit for DMS: I have never experienced “sore to the touch” muscle trauma using low rep sets, even when using multiple sets. Direct muscle soreness is fiber trauma related to high repetition training. DMS is caused by performing high rep sets that equal or exceed capacity in some fashion. This type of training creates intense muscle soreness that is a result of cellular micro-trauma.
Are the cells torn apart or pressurized? Forcibly expanded? Forcibly contracted? Ripped or shredded? The medical people can’t seem to agree, but one thing is for sure, some sort of micro-cellular calamity is occurring. Deep muscle fatigue, DMF, occurs when a particular muscle or muscle group is hit so hard using low reps and heavy poundage, that the entire body is engulfed in waves of fatigue. For days afterwards the afflicted athlete feels as if their limbs are made of lead or that they are moving through mud or water. Overcoming DMS and DMF requires sleep, food and avoidance of further weight training until the sore to the touch or leaden feeling subsides.
Sometimes the intensity of DMS/DMF becomes so severe that it debilitates the athlete. The muscles are traumatized to such an extent that the athlete actually experiences mild forms of paralysis. In both cases nutrients, rest and often therapeutic remedies such as heat, water and massage can accelerate recovery. Traumatized muscles and fatigued muscles need to heal, repair and regenerate before subjecting them to any further weight training.
I first crossed swords with the debilitating effects of direct muscle soreness when as a 13 year old man-child I found a 10 pound solid dumbbell (talk about a life omen) on my grandmother’s hardscrabble Arkansas farm. I just found it in the burn pile one day. It was black and solid. Being a dumb kid who was already reading Strength & Health magazine,
I proceeded to do 50 repetitions of one-arm curls for each arm every hour on the hour for something like 10 straight hours. It seemed like a cool and potentially productive idea. I wanted to build big guns in the worst way and in my young, innocent mind this seemed like a hell of a good idea. I loved the arm pump I was getting every hour on the hour. I would run to the bedroom to pose in a small mirror. My little guns would swell and I loved the way the veins appeared.
The exhilaration on Monday went out the window Tuesday morning when I awoke in intense pain. Something was terribly wrong. I sat up in bed with both fists involuntarily clenched next to my face. My arms had locked up; each arm had frozen in the contracted position. The biceps would not, could not relax. Flex your biceps with your fist next to your cheek as hard as humanly possible as you read this: now imagine this extremis flexion lasting for two days. My trauma was so complete and intense that both biceps remained involuntarily contracted for 48 straight hours.
Any attempt to straighten my arms even a few inches resulted in excruciating pain. Nothing could be done for me and I tried to hide the fact that I had racked myself from my 80 year old grandma and my needlessly cruel brother and hillbilly cousins. That was easy as her eyesight was bad and she was kindly and not suspicious. My brother and cousins sniffed out my dilemma like a pack of wolves separating a young caribou from the herd for a kill. They used the occasion to pay me back for what they mistakenly perceived as the horrible things I, the oldest and strongest, did to them on a regularly reoccurring basis.
The easiest payback was to simply grab my hands and tug them downward. This sent spasms of intense pain shooting up my arms and spasms of glee across their satanic little faces. It was oppressed sibling payback time. The inmates had rioted and taken control of the prison camp capturing the commandant. They sincerely hoped my condition would last for the rest of my life.
My grandmother kept asking what my periodic screams were all about. My male pride kept me from saying anything and the gleeful torturers weren’t about to fess up. On day three I awoke and the pain was gone. I lay in bed and plotted. I slipped away to the woods before anyone arose and set up an elaborate payback scheme. I pre-positioned garden tools I swiped from the shed. I returned and pretended to still be asleep and debilitated. I faked pain for the first couple times they pulled on my arms and pretended to run away to avoid them. I ran into the woods behind the farm. They ran after me like a lynch mob.
They were quite shocked when after getting out of earshot of the farm I ambushed them and beat them bloody. I stacked them up like cordwood and tied them up. While roped together at the ankles like a chain gang, I made them dig a shallow hole in the sandbank next to the creek with a shovel I’d stashed there earlier. I then buried them up to their necks.
Only their heads protruded above ground. I told them I was going to run over their heads with a lawnmower. They screamed like sissies when I fired up the mower. My tools of mayhem were pre-positioned and I took several close mower passes by their heads. I made them cry. One actually pissed his pants. They ran home bawling and sandy. I told my grandmother that they had ruined their clothes and soiled their britches. They told her outlandish tales of beatings and burial and lawnmowers that sounded so ridiculous that she dismissed them as lies.
I laughed as they got whippings. Good clean kid fun.
I had to ride out my muscle soreness until my shattered biceps eventually relaxed. This taught me a lesson about resistance training that has lasted me a lifetime.
I use milder versions of muscle soreness to determine if the exercise used is targeting and isolating the intended muscle in the way I want. Muscle soreness tells me two things: did I train intensely enough to generate soreness, and if so, is the soreness where it should be? I will often perform a single resistance exercise and wait and see if, when the muscle soreness arrives, it is centered on the targeted muscle. If I do barbell rows does the exercise generate soreness? If not, I am disappointed. Secondly, if there is soreness, is it located on the targeted lat muscles? Has the exercise totally missed the target muscle? Perhaps I feel the soreness in the traps or rear deltoids.
Before every set of every resistance exercise I identify the target muscle and strive to make a mind/muscle connection. Soreness is the targeting report card issued later. Soreness determines if the muscle targeting has been accurate. If I become sore in other than the target area, that means I need to change the technical execution of the exercise. If there is zero soreness then I know I need to train harder. I will tell myself that perhaps the mind/muscle connection was ill-defined, unrefined or not focused enough. The Iron Elite understand that soreness is a natural part of the resistance landscape. The modern “split routine’ was born as a direct result of the soreness phenomena. With both types (soreness/deep fatigue) I have found that light to moderate cardio exercise helps flush toxins and waste products out of afflicted muscles.
Accelerating circulation within a sore muscle stimulates recovery. If deep fatigue prevents me from blasting away, moderate intensity power walking super-oxygenates the body and, along with food, accelerates fatigue recovery. Use your common sense and be aware that Purposeful Primitives pay heed to fatigue and soreness. You can actually use it to your advantage.
Old School Method for Total Back Decimation
Compound multi-joint progressive resistance movements done with a barbell or a pair of dumbbells are without question the most effective exercises ever devised for building muscle. No system of exercise produces the muscle growth free weight progressive resistance training delivers. This is a flat statement of undeniable scientific fact.
In my opinion the most effective single progressive resistance routine ever devised specifically for building the muscles of the back are progressive pulls. I was exposed to this routine around 1965 in an article in Strength & Health magazine. In the interceding decades I’ve added a few subtle twists. Anyone that I’ve gotten to use this program the way it is supposed to be used has gotten fabulous results.
Progressive Pulls will grow back muscle on a steel post and nothing more is needed than a barbell and a big pile of plates. This is hard and heavy work and if done correctly (regardless your current degree of fitness) builds and strengthens every muscle on the human posterior. The sheer effort and intensity should knock the tar out of you physically. If it doesn’t you’re not doing the various pulls hard enough or heavy enough.
The human back is a complex conglomeration of large, medium and small muscles. Over time, nature and biomechanics have taught us unconsciously to allow the back muscles to act in a synchronized fashion in order to accomplish whatever muscular task is undertaken. To build a massive powerful back requires compound movements that take advantage of this naturally coordinated synchronization.
Ironically, nearly every ‘expert’ recommends isolation exercises for the back. This common mistake ignores the back’s biomechanical strengths and panders to its biomechanical weakness. The best way to blast the back is as a unit, and all at once, not piecemeal.
Let’s examine the component parts:
The trapezius muscles sit atop the collar bones and run downward to mid-back
The rear deltoids lie behind the anterior deltoids
The rhomboids and teres are nestled in and around the shoulder blades
The latissimus dorsi starts at the armpits and end at the buttock muscles
The spinal erectors run from traps to tailbone and are shaped like twin Anacondas
The back muscles need to be shock-blasted using big, raw, sweeping, free weight exercises that cause the back muscles to work explosively and in sequential fashion. We pick movements done with two hands that require you to move a heavy object over a maximum range-of-motion (ROM) pulling and tugging upwardly. This stimulates back muscles with a thoroughness that needs to be experienced. This is a timeless routine and all of us, regardless our level, need to perform this routine identically. The poundage used varies according to ability, but technique does not.
A concentrated dose of Progressive Pulls does physiological wonders. This is a “Big Man” routine and as my comrade Kirk Karwoski might say, “Time to put away the pretty pink plastic Barbie dumbbells and get freaking serious!” Obviously a Purposeful Primitive will routinely perform the Progressive Pulls. If done with the requisite gusto this routine should only be done once a week. The idea is to establish initial poundage baselines in each exercise using crisp correct technique. Over time you increase poundage with no erosion or degradation of technique.
Increase poundage or reps on the top set of each exercise for six straight weeks (or longer). Avoid technical disintegration: if execution gets sloppy and you persist in continuing, nasty injury awaits you. Welcome to the Thunderdome. Are you ready to bite into something substantial? Can you wean yourself away from all that happy-time, cotton-candy machine-centric back training? Can we toss the lat pulldowns? Do you want to take a seat at the adult table? To make dramatic physical progress you will have to stroll into the pain zone. Actually the pain zone should more accurately be called the discomfort zone. Pain, real pain, is the indicator to immediately stop what you’re doing.
You cannot trigger muscle hypertrophy (the irreducible root-core goal of progressive resistance exercise) by training sub-maximally. Unless you brush up against the lip of the limit envelope you can forget all about altering the shape of your body. The body does not favorably reconfigure itself in response to sub-maximal effort. Each day is different and limit capacity might differ significantly day to day, week to week. Regardless the limit of capacity on a particular day, if the stress imposed is not significant, nothing of significance will occur.
Limits can take many forms: reps, number of work sets, rest interval between sets, speed of the individual rep…all could be used as stress inducers and stress benchmarks. Do you have to go to failure or use forced reps on the top set of every single exercise? No, absolutely not. There are no forced reps in this routine. Establish baseline benchmarks in each exercise and consciously and continually seek to improve. Plan ahead; project future performance using periodization principles. Here is a hypothetical poundage scenario for an “average” person. If you are stronger or weaker, alter the baseline benchmarks.
Over the life of the six week periodization cycle, reps are dropped and poundage increases. This routine peaks power and strength and triggers a concurrent increase in muscular size and is best used during a mass building phase. Taking in extra calories is highly advised. I would also advise average size men push their bodyweight up one pound a week in order to ensure positive nitrogen balance. Power training combined with ample calories and sufficient rest is the ticket for amassing massive back muscles.
Once you’ve built some muscle to work with, something worthy of defining, double back and “lean out” using a periodization program designed to melt off body fat. Let’s acquire some muscle before we get hung up on ripped abs and shredded deltoids. Who cares about seeing ripped abs on some guy who looks like he just broke out of a Viet Cong Prison Camp after being held in a tiger cage for six months? Who cares about defining a 14 inch arm? Here’s the technical rundown on the lifts and their proper running order. Keep them in this sequence and on every rep of every set, strive for total technical perfection.
You will find detailed exercise descriptions for the power clean, deadlift and row earlier in this chapter. For high pulls and stiff-legged deadlifts we offer the following descriptions…keep in mind that in the broadest sense all progressive pulls are identical—regardless the height to which the barbell is pulled, regardless the configuration of the body as the pull is being done—the barbell moves (or should move) upward in an absolutely straight line. Here are exercise descriptions of two exercises not explained previously…
After finishing power cleans, we add poundage and continue onward into high pulls for 2-3 successive sets. A high pull is identical to a power clean. The difference being that the barbell is not being pulled high enough to wrist-snap and rack. Pull the barbell to belly button height or higher on each rep. Add poundage for each subsequent set. If the bar can only be pulled to crotch height—bag it! High pulls hit the erectors, rhomboids, teres and upper and lower lats. Try and go up on your toes and shrug your shoulders at the top. The poundage should be too heavy to arm pull. The arms should be thought of as hooks that hold the poundage, not arms that lift the poundage. Use the legs to start the weight moving and keep the arms straight and extended throughout—don’t bend the elbows. Pull straight up with a tight, arched back.
You have gone upward in poundage from power cleans to high pulls to deadlifts. Now it’s time to strip some weight off the bar and head back down in weight. A stiff-legged deadlift is a lower back and hamstring developer without peer. I would reduce the conventional deadlift weight by 35 to 50%. If you deadlift 400 x 5 perform stiff-legs with 200-250 x 5. Pull the first SL rep to completion using standard deadlift technique. Stand erect with the bar in deadlift fashion on the 1st rep. Now lower the barbell downward on semi-straight yet rigid knees, allowing the bar to break away from the body. Lower slowly with straight arms until it touches the floor, gently. No bouncing the plates off the floor to create rebound.
Upon touching the floor, quietly, begin an immediate rising up using a tight arched back. Pull to complete lockout. As you lower, pay attention and push the hips push rearward. At the turn-around, where descent becomes ascent, use the hamstrings and lower back to power you erect. I think of the stiff-leg dead as a “hip hinge” exercise. Everything below the hip hinge stays rigid and tight (the legs) and everything above the hip-hinge stays rigid and tight (the torso.) The hip joint is the fulcrum. Strip weight off the bar between the first and second set. This exercise done right is a hamstring and erector developer without peer.
After 2-3 sets of power cleans, 2 sets of high pulls, 2-3 sets of deadlifts, 2 sets of stiff-leg deadlifts and 2 sets of bent-over barbell rows, you should feel physically decimated. If you aren’t exhausted, drained, battered and ready for a nap, I would strongly suspect you’re not handling enough poundage. Done correctly and completely this routine will lay low the mightiest of Iron Warriors.
You must Smart Bomb immediately after training in this fashion. Your battered back muscles are screaming out for regenerating nutrients. Drink a protein/carb liquefied shake to amplify workout results. This is not an option. I consume my shake after the deadlifts to forestall energy nosedives on stiffs and rows. So there you go…a brutal back training program that works every single time it is performed in the way in which it was designed. If you want to build a powerful back you need to perform powerful exercises. Avoid the seductive traps of performing a few sets of lat pulldowns and seated cable rows, perhaps some effete machine pullovers and congratulating yourself on a “great” back workout— that’s sissy stuff appropriate for 12-year old boys brand new to the resistance training game. If you are a man then train like one!
Ionce received a lesson in power and strength that lasted less than 15 seconds and provided me mental fuel that has burned for twenty years. In the mid-1980’s I was at a powerlift competition coaching a friend. Coaching another lifter was George Hechter, the number one ranked heavyweight lifter in the world at the time. He was a smart, sharp guy and a protégé of iron icon Bill Starr.
Dozens of athletes and coaches were backstage scurrying around getting lifters ready. George and I had just gotten our two lifters through the emotional rollercoaster of the squats and now done, we were filtering backstage. George and his athlete were walking ahead of me. As we passed the warm-up area, a squat bar still sat on the racks loaded to 505 pounds. It had been the last weight one of the lifters had used to warm-up. George walked over to the loaded bar, dipped under it, stood erect, took a step backwards and did ten perfect, no sweat reps. He wore street clothes. No belt, no warm-up, no spotters, no knee wraps, no dramatic psyche up and no big deal. He repped the weight and replaced it before anyone noticed. I noticed and as he fell back in step to catch up to his lifter I said, “You could have asked for a spot George. Shouldn’t you have warmed up a bit?” I prodded. He was dismissive, “It was only 500 pounds Marty.” That hit me like the old Zen joke: “What is the sound of one hand clapping? The answer? “A slap across someone’s face”
A few weeks later I saw George squat 975 pounds at the Potomac Open as if it were 500. He was good for at least 50 pounds additional pounds on that day. In the intervening years I’ve replayed that 500 squat set in my brain, so casual, so easy, so effortless—still it was 500 pounds for ten reps! The lesson I took from it was this: George had built his absolute strength upward to such an astounding level that 500 was “only” 50% of his single repetition maximum. To put that in context, I myself could squat 50% of what I am capable of at any point in time without any warm-up or drama. I would not need spotters nor would I be in any great danger with 50%. So what’s the lesson? I wonder if, over a protracted period of time, rather than attempt to raise the absolute strength ceiling, the 1 rep max, what if you sought to raise the 50% base strength level? Would this reverse approach, over time, allow you to increase the absolute 1 rep maximum? If you could squat 400x1 and could squat 50% 200 for say 20 reps, could you increase the 400x1 limit by working the 50% 200x20 limit to say 200x25 or 250x20 over time? Would tweaking the 50% poundage translate into increased absolute strength? I’ve deliberated on this Zen Koan for decades and it’s provided me with mental fodder I still ponder. I eventually would like to try this approach out on some crazed young athlete who is gutsy and game to try something completely bizarre. If a man increases his 50% weight by 50 pounds would that push his absolute poundage upward by 50 pounds?
Don’t Lie Down In That Field Of Fragrant Poppies… You Might Never Wake Up!
They say that variety is the spice of life. In the world of resistance training this old cliché is often used as an excuse to avoid mastering tried and proven ultra-basic free weight exercises. Training with barbells and dumbbells using compound multi-joint exercises remains the most effective way ever devised for growing and strengthening muscles.
Thematically, mastering basic free weight exercise is the foundation on which all future resistance training efforts need to be constructed. Yet most young fitness devotees labor under the mythical illusion that using machines that mimic the basic free weight exercises are just as effective as the free weight exercises they mimic. This is a muscle myth of the first magnitude. There are a whole host of physiological reasons why free weights trump machines: the human body has to work harder, much harder, to keep a barbell or a dumbbell locked into a specific motor-pathway. Free weights force the user to cut their own repstroke groove through time and space. Machines eliminate what I term The Third Dimension of Tension: side-to-side resistance control. By removing the need for muscle stabilizers to activate in order to control the third dimension of tension, results are reduced 20 to 30%.
This critical distinction, elimination of muscle stabilizer activation, creates vastly different results for what appear to be (superficially anyway) identical efforts. A mimicking machine has a predetermined groove frozen into place and the user’s only job is to keep the resistance moving either up or down; no side-to-side control is necessary. Having to work hard to keep the weight confined within a groove is a good thing when it comes to building muscle.
Easier is not better in the world of muscle building and muscle strengthening. This is why free weights trump mimicking machines every single time. Machines have become so popular that many should require you purchase a ticket beforehand, like an amusement park ride.
“Wow! Smell that rich Corinthian leather; feel the exquisite way the resistance travels up and down on the ball-bearing expressway to a powerful lock-out! Wow! That was 400 pounds? That was so easy! I must be getting so much stronger! When I use this machine the poundage feels so much lighter and the reps are so much smoother and easier! I love using this machine and I hate doing the same exercise using those cumbersome, antiquated, stone-aged barbells!”
Hey! Dude! Wake up! You’ve fallen asleep in a field of fragrant opium-infused poppies and you now need to stagger to your feet and get moving over to the free weight section of the gym. Otherwise you might become a hopeless exercise machine addict. The reason machine repetitions are so smooth and easy and light is because they are smooth and easy and light! The actual poundage is literally lighter than advertised; all as a result of modern technology, superb mechanical efficiency and precision engineering. When resistance travels over a super-efficient ball-bearing pathway, 100% of your available strength and energy can be allotted to pushing or pulling. No effort whatsoever is required in order to control bothersome side-to-side movement and things are made a hell-of-a-lot easier.
Easier is not better in resistance training. Optimally resistance should be rough, tough and heavy. If all things were equal machines would surely be the way to go: no fuss, no muss, no mess, no plates to load or unload, no need of spotters, no danger, safe as drinking warm milk. Expensive machines certainly keep the user safe and fear of injury is a big concern to timid civilians. If safety is your biggest concern, perhaps bowling or golf might be a more appropriate use of your time.
Machines are sultry seductresses…you get to sit down or lie down when you use a machine and people love to sit down, or better yet, lie down when they exercise. If all things were equal people would pick machines over free weights every single time. Hell I would too! But all things aren’t equal, not even close! And that is the point. Accept the irrefutable biological fact that free weights are physiologically superior to machines. Understand that the vast majority of our training time must be spent doing basic free-weight exercise. The typical beginner or intermediate trainee often complains, “I’m burnt out doing the same free-weight exercises over and over; I use machines in order to get some variety into my training.” Nice try Gilligan.
An entire Cosmos of exercise variety exists within the basic, barbell/dumbbell compound multi-joint exercise universe. By varying foot stance (we love free-weight exercises done standing on two feet) or by altering grip width, by making slight technical changes in specific exercise techniques, by altering velocity, rep speed, range-of-motion and rest time between sets, we can create enough variation to provide the trainee unlimited variety. There are enough variations in the free weight squat alone to keep a serious athlete busy for years. It took me a decade to perfect my conventional deadlift technique.
All this and we haven’t even touched on modulating training volume or session frequency or exercise placement. Something as simple as consciously altering the speed with which we push or pull a repetition drastically changes the muscular effect. Muscle fiber is stimulated in a totally different way when we alter the variables. Combine subtle and overt technical alterations with rep-speed and volume alterations. There is a universe of free weight possibilities. Put it all together and you have a mind-blowing menu of variation within the free weight world. If you are inventive, clever and determined, you can inject an amazing degree of variety into standard barbell and dumbbell exercises. Variety is limited only by imagination.
Too often trainees fall into a rut and perform the same basic barbell and dumbbell exercises in the same identical fashion all the time. A serious fitness acolyte should seek to elicit different physiological effects by modifying base techniques. Don’t be seduced by sultry exercise machines with their lotus-eater seats and pads, all things are not equal in the wide wonderful world of resistance training and as the old saying goes, “If something seems too good to be true, likely it is.” Harsh, hard and difficult are the way to go when it comes to maximizing results from resistance training. Thomas Hobbes once quipped, “Life is nasty, brutish and short.” I would expropriate this dictum and say “effective resistance training sessions should be nasty, brutish and short.”
Some machines are not machines at all: cables and pulleys, used for lat pulldowns, cable crossovers, triceps pushdowns, etc., are not machines under my elastic definition. Cables allow you to cut your own groove through space and therefore cable exercises are exempt. Ditto dip apparatus, ditto pull-up or chin bars, ditto incline sit-up boards, power racks or prone hyperextension benches. These are devices that allow you to perform an exercise, but don’t confine you to a precise and exact pathway. Plus these devices allow for tons of technical variation.
Whenever I hear some rookie complain how bored they are doing basic barbell and dumbbell exercises I just shake my head and muse about the ignorant folly of youth. George Bernard Shaw said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” And I sometimes have to agree; so please, if you are a weight trainer bored to tears doing the same old exercises in the same old way—blame yourself! You can infuse as much variety as needed into your very next free weight workout and the only thing stopping you is your imagination. Stop the clinging adherence to tired old ways and methods. Be on the continual prowl for new and better modes and methods; those who are semi-serious whine and complain, clinging to old comfortable ineffectual methods, they gaze longingly at those shiny exercise machines that beckon seductively, “Come hither! Sit on me…come lie down on me…push or pull half-heartedly…I’m just as effective as those nasty old barbells and dumbbells…Meow!”
Those who allow themselves to be seduced by machines are doomed to fall asleep in the fragrant poppy field of eternal exercise sameness. Those who find ways to inject new techniques into Old School free weight exercises will bust through to the next level of physical development. The choice is yours.
The Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Guilty
As told to Marty Gallagher by GRILLMAN
While one who sings with his tongue on fire,
Gargles in the rat race choir,
Bent out of shape by societies’ pliers,
Cares not to come up any higher,
But rather get you down in hole he’s in!
—Dylan
My name is Grill so they call me Grill Man. I’m 6’2” and weigh 350 pounds. I have a 14% body fat percentile and can dunk a basketball with either hand. My goal is to deadlift 800 in a powerlifting competition. I have done 771 officially and 780 in training. So I’m close. I’m serious as a heart attack when I walk into the gym. I go to the local Steel House at the same time of day every day five days a week and have done so for 15 straight years.
All through the Christmas Holidays my training had gone splendidly. I was preparing for the Mountaineer Open Powerlifting Championships in March. I always put a big red circle around January 2nd on my training calendar because I need to prepare myself mentally for the onslaught of the Mullet influx that strikes my gym. I have come to expect the migration and try to make allowances in advance. I was determined this year not to allow the annual mullet infestation to derail my Mountaineer Open training efforts. I’m an Iron Pro and can rise above just about anything. I need to train and I need to train hard. Each training week is critical and I cannot afford to lose three or four weeks of effort dicking around with mullet-mania. I will not allow these Lilliputian slackers to prevent me or hinder me from achieving my goal. Deadlifting 800 pounds is no freaking joke! Distractions are the enemy of progress and I hate enemies.
This year’s infestation was particularly gruesome and horrific. As I parked my monster truck in the parking lot, I knew they had arrived. The parking lot, normally half full, was stuffed to capacity with Volvos, Hybrids, Mercedes Benz station wagons and other assorted weenie-mobiles. As I walked through the front door of the gym on the day after New Year’s, the cacophony was ear splitting. I stood at the front desk trying to get my bearings; three days ago the joint was deserted. Now it was packed with dweebs moving about frantically, emitting a collective high pitched hum. They flittered about like a swarm of mosquitoes on crystal meth.
As I stood slack jawed, a mullet face-dancer actually bumped into me. Of course he didn’t bother excusing himself. He just looked up at me with those vacant, hollow eyes (think ‘Children of the Corn’) before he rebounded off me and spun off in another direction. I can go an entire year without being bumped into by anyone—yet here on my home turf, my home away from home, I suddenly have some dork bump into me inside of sixty seconds of walking through the door.
I felt soiled and defiled.
In my mind’s eye I envisioned a water buffalo about to be swarmed and eaten by a horde of ravenous fire ants or perhaps attacked by a school of Piranha. Mullets attack fitness facilities every year, ostensibly in search of building muscle, but I know better. They supposedly seek to become big and strong because they are weak and small. Since they are incapable and unwilling to exert themselves in the slightest, they seek to drag everyone else down into the hole they are in…as Dylan prophesized back in the 60’s. Dylan’s my man. “Don’t follow leaders, watch your parking meters.” I’ve lived by that code for decades.
I surveyed the gym and they were everywhere, a herd, a school, a tribe, a freaking army…It was go time! Blank-faced mullets gathered everywhere: sitting or lying on top of every exercise machine and bench in the facility. I actually trembled a little and got a hot flash walking to the squat rack. I wanted to lash out and attack—this was my house and these irreverent punks were desecrating the sacred Steel House. The swarm was abuzz; each one in frantic motion, using pathetic pee-wee poundage and ridiculous, goofy exercise techniques that I’ve never seen before or since. I could only compare the maelstrom to an army of muscle-less drum majorettes twirling batons, but instead of batons they were frantically waving teeny dumbbells. Normally during the annual January frenzy, the Tribe represents a small percentage of the gym population: not this year, this year the school had swelled to alarming levels. I suppose it’s attributable to the upturn in the economy.
This year the population had multiplied with astonishing rapidity. Compared to last year, the clan had quadrupled. The ancient Greeks postulated that the ideal physical proportion was sameness and the Grecian ideal was based upon geometrical perfection: the neck, arm and calf, the Grecians mused, should be identical in girth.
“Measure and proportion always pass into beauty and excellence”
Plato said that in Philibus. But Plato was flat freaking wrong Holmes! Plato never saw a modern gym mullet stroll in sporting the supposed ideal identical:11 inch neck, 11 inch arms and 11 inch calves; a 34 inch chest perfectly matched with a 34 inch waistline. Plus mullets all have outsized heads and tiny hands and feet. If Plato saw a modern mullet in all his resplendent glory, Plato would be forced to add lots of asterisks and provisos to his original thought about ‘measure and proportion always pass into beauty.’
To make matters worse, the flock is no longer demur and frightened as in the good old days of yore. Nowadays Mullets have rights! Back in ancient times, when I was coming up “beat downs” did not end in lawsuits. The modern uppity mullets are a different breed: now they have freaking Mullet Rights Groups! The stigma of being branded as a murderer, or worse, a “mullet-a-phobic” makes us predators reluctant to act for fear of legal retaliation. Guys like me do not fear other men. We only fear The Man and The System. Few are now willing to beat a mullet senseless and toss the limp carcass into the gym dumpster or out onto the parking lot as an ominous symbol for other mullets, as was once commonly practiced. In olden times, a mullet ass-whipping was our way of saying, “Danger! Little People! Danger! Stay Away!”
Now real men are even afraid to speak nasty talk to a mullet on account of Hate Speech Laws. I for one will not be silenced even if my speaking out results in being branded as a hater. Sure I hate, I hate mullets. But my bigotry is rooted in commonsense and self preservation. It’s damned difficult in this day and age for a human predator (like me) to be up on what identifiable segment of the population has been granted protection under the 1965 Civil Rights Act. If you are prone to violent encounters, nowadays you need a lawyer riding shotgun with you everywhere you go: to the gym, to the strip club, to the Chinese buffet, to the Blockbuster, to work and to the movie theater. My life morphed from restful to stressful all on account of litigious mullets.
Their credo is: do less, go lighter, quit sooner and use the recovered training time to talk about training. To a true Mullet, a seasoned and mature mullet, the credo is pure perfection: 99% of available training time should be spent talking about lifting and 1% of the time should be spent actually lifting. Regular gym mullets are normally manageable, but annually the pack gets augmented by “resolution” acolyte mullets. These newcomers spring into half-ass action and act out their fitness resolution fantasies in the weeks immediately after New Year’s Eve. Swarms of mullets attack gyms nationwide. It makes you want to quit the commercial gym scene altogether.
Is it any wonder there is a resurgence of home gym training among the Iron Elite? I was scheduled to squat with Mongo, Joe Don, Mandigo, Tex and Sonny last Tuesday, January 6th. As I made my way to the squat rack, I found five mullets clustered around the holy and sacred squat rack, defiling it, placing upon it a 5 pound aluminum bar loaded with 2.5 pound plates on each side. Sacrilege! This cannot stand! The line must be drawn somewhere! Tex was already there and before I could stop him, he took action. The Mullets were taking turns doing cheat curls. Placing a curl bar on the squat rack allows them to not have to bend down and pick the bar up off the floor, thereby wasting valuable mullet strength that could be used for the real work: the post-set conversation about how great that set of just completed curls was. Mullet gab between sets can last for upwards of 30 minutes. No sense wasting valuable conversation strength bending over to pick the bar off the floor. That would be stupid.
Since murder is wrong and maiming, even accidentally, is out of the question, (even if you beat the criminal charges, then there’s civil court to deal with) my kind have to watch our Ps and Qs. Tex was quivering. I tried to calm him down. I suggested he take some of the powerful narcotics I knew he always kept handy. He should have listened to me.
Gym owners, once our allies, now insist we must learn to peacefully coexist with mullets. When we complain, gym owners throw in our face things like, “Mullets are prompt payers whose checks don’t bounce.” The Iron Elite, gym owners are quick to point out, are actually more trouble than they are worth. The owners are always chasing the muscle men down for dues in arrears, while mullets pay in full for the whole year in advance and often in cash. Management loves mullet business: their checks clear the first time and they don’t bend up bars and curse and scream obscenities, scaring the shit out of other customers. Best of all, after a mullet pays for a full year in advance, they disappear after two or three weeks. They don’t reappear until the following January.
All in all, mullets are the perfect gym member insofar as management is concerned. When they appear, whatever mullet members want, mullet members can have. Mullets are easily insulted and will take their business elsewhere at the drop of a hat. They are litigious. Big Tex is a Hell’s Angel and was visiting with us until things cooled down back in Oakland. On this particular squat day, despite being heavily sedated, he lost control and made the mistake of slapping the taste out of the mouth of a smart-mouthed mullet. He made a bad thing worse by choke-slamming the mullet, launching him backwards at the speed of sound over a flat bench. This occurred after the head mini-me mullet made some smart-ass comment about our cursing. Until then, Tex was willing to limit his outrage to screaming. The mullet curl club was creeping through ten sets of curls taking twenty minutes between each set. Things spun badly out of control. Tex leapt up and with one hand tossed the tiny curl barbell twenty feet across the room, barely missing a small mullet herd clustered around the water cooler.
The head dumb-ass mullet just had to bait Tex, “Hey, you oafish goon!” said Dennis the tribal chief of this particular herd, “You can’t do that! You muscle-headed dreadnought!” Dennis hissed at Tex like a viper. “You better pick that barbell up and bring it back over here right now! Apologize before I call the manager over and have you banned from the club! You and your type are gene-deficient mongoloid imbeciles and if you touch me I’ll sue!” That’s when the choke-slam occurred. Tex has been sued before, plenty of times. What Dennis had overlooked is that when you have nothing (other than a Harley and a bunch of Lynard Skynard 8 track tapes) being sued is an empty threat.
Tex has been shot before. He’s been stabbed a few times in prison. He was once hit with a taser on an episode of Cops. He carries around taped copies of the show and he will autograph and sell you a copy for $20. Tex left before the paramedics and cops arrived and put Dennis on the straight board so as to not further injure his neck. Dennis the Mullet, it turns out, is a senior partner at a local ambulance-chasing law firm. Once they catch him, Tex will be headed back to San Quentin to serve out the remainder of his sentence. Since “the incident” my Mountaineer Open Plans are disintegrating before my eyes. Pray for me. I am a bundle of nerves and fear my deadlift goal is flying off the rails.
If it were physically possible, I would kick my own ass.
Life at the Muscle Factory
Symbiosis is defined as the close union of two dissimilar organisms. I have always thought that there was a symbiotic relationship between a really good, authentic BBQ shack and a really good, authentic hardcore training facility. It is about as difficult to find a really good BBQ joint as it is to find a really good hardcore gym…I can’t quite put my finger on the exact nature of the symbiosis. I am a true aficionado of both and have spent a lifetime searching for both exquisite BBQ joins and Hardcore gyms. I feel deeply qualified to expand upon my semi-incoherent thesis by relating a true tale of finding a truly hardcore gym…
Back in the late eighties I ended up taking a job in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Anyone from Connecticut knows Bridgeport was one rough freaking place. Incongruously a yacht club had sprung up next to a waste recycling plant in the heart of Bridgeport, right next to a notorious ghetto housing project. My friend Bobby relocated to Connecticut to take a job working for his brother’s import/export firm. He asked me to help crew his 28 foot, twin-screw Sea Ray from Deal, Maryland to its new home at the Bridgeport Marina. It was a terrific trip and as it turned out, it was a ploy by the brothers to lure me into taking a job with their firm. They enticed me by paying me way more than I was worth to do way less than I was capable of. On the first day at the new job Bobby walked into my office. I was nervously unpacking my stuff and trying to get my bearings.
“You look tense—let’s go get a drink!” This was 10am on Monday. But hey what the hell, he was my new boss. “Meet the new boss—not the same as the old boss.” We drove to the Bridgeport Marina in his new red Corvette. We arrived and parked. We walked towards the brand new complex of shops that lined a mini-boardwalk. The shops and boardwalk bordered a long line of docks that housed hundreds of boats. Suddenly a smell, make that a stench, hit me. It was putrid and overpowering. “Bobby, what in the hell is that godawful smell?” Bobby, a rail-thin bon vivant with a wicked Jack Nicholson smile, gestured towards a sewage reprocessing plant next to the marina; it loomed like a building in Blade Runner. “That smell is the reason the son-of-a-bitches that built this marina bought the property for so freaking cheap!” He laughed.
The shops and bars that lined the boardwalk were shiny, new and impressive. He led me to the centerpiece building, a massive bar/restaurant. We went inside and it was impressive: a huge replica of the Titanic hung over a four sided bar. Since it was 11am, Bobby ordered us a brace of Bloody Marys. The place was packed. “Welcome to your first day of work!” We clinked glasses and surveyed the decadence. I munched on the celery stalk and noted how strong and properly peppery the Bloody Mary was. I was mystified. The bar was full, the crowd boisterous and it was all happening at such an early hour. I asked semi-rhetorically, “What in the hell are all these people doing here at 11am on a Monday morning? Why are they getting crocked at a beautiful bar located in place that smells like shit?” I was serious.
Bob ogled the attractive women. “We could be back at work doing something mindless. Besides I thought you were a writer. Didn’t you ever read The Great Gatsby? We are hanging out with the idle elite. Egg Harbor is just a hop skip and jump down the road. These are the chuckleheaded parasitical offspring of Tom and Daisy Buchanan. This is the local aristocracy shaking off the effects of their fabulous weekend and starting the new week off on just the right foot. Everyone’s having a few belts before firing up their boats and heading out to sunbathe. C’mon! Get in stride and go with the flow!” He leered at a passing senorita. The June breeze whipped through the open doors and windows and would have been perfect—had it not smelled like a dead squirrel left in the sun for three days.
He pushed his way through the crowd and beckoned me to follow. We made our way out onto a huge wooden deck overlooking the marina. The sun blazed and the deck was packed. A Caribbean Steel Band mounted an elevated bandstand and started working their way through a hopped-up version of Jimmy Cliff’s “The harder they come.” The crowd whopped and the well-heeled revelers began to shimmy and bop to the infectious calypso beat. The sun was warm and the dancers moved in weird white person syncopation. A patron wearing a red beret began banging on a cow bell with a single drumstick. He appeared to be a member of the audience.
Bobby caught my fascination with this strange character: squat and stout, he was a dead ringer for Leon Trotsky. “That’s Rhythm Ray.” Bobby yelled over the cacophony, “He’s an institution. He shows up to every live band performance at the marina and plays along on his cowbell from the audience. The management lets him do it. He used to drum for Three Dog Night or some such shit.” Rhythm Ray was stealing the band’s thunder and the bass player and drummer were scowling. The band morphed into Bob Marley’s, “Lively up your self.”
Bobby disappeared and returned with two more fresh drinks. We clicked glasses. He smiled his devil grin and scanned the crowd as he lit up another Marlboro Light. He was a bachelor and a smooth-talking, good looking guy with a warped sense of humor. He jabbed me hard in the ribs and yelled, “Hey! Look at that huge bastard! You must know that guy!” How ridiculous; I thought. Here I am in a new city, first day on the job, half in the bag by noon. I’m somewhere I’ve never been to before in my life and my new boss tells me I must know some guy.
Naturally I did. Bobby Bagalino stood 6’2”, weighed 300 and was a powerlifting champion. He was known as Bobby Bag-of-Donuts. Bobby had competed at the APF National Powerlifting Championships in Tampa, Florida the previous spring and one of my athletes had barely edged out Bobby. My guy took second place and Bobby took third. I never saw Bobby Bag-of-Donuts before or since. In Florida, after the competition, we’d struck up an extended conversation at the post-meet beach beer bash. A group of lifters sat outside and drank a lot of beer clustered around a keg until midnight.
Now, eight months later and 1,000 miles from the city in Florida where I met some guy for the first and only time, fate had brought us back together. With 300 million people in the United States what were the chances of me running into him at this time and place? Big Bobby Bag-of-Donuts was wearing Ray Bans and holding court: a couple of rich dudes in shorts, expensive silk shirts and penny loafers stood around Bobby Bags. Three extremely attractive, skimpily clad women, no doubt the rich guys’ dates, appeared completely enthralled by the giant Italian’s speed rap.
I made my way over to where Bobby stood. He looked massive and thick. He was a good looking Man with a capital “M.” He oozed power. For a giant he had an amazingly streamlined body. Though he weighed way over 300 pounds he was shapely, proportional and a gawd-awful gargantuan. I later learned that he was heir to a mobbed-up trash collection firm that had offices in the waste treatment sewage plant. He glanced my way as I pushed through the crowd. I saw the look on his face morph from puzzlement to tension to vague recollection to recognition. As I pierced the inner circle he said. “Mar-tee…half-man, half par-tee! What the f#@* are you doing here!” He enveloped me with arms that must have weighed 100 pound apiece. I smiled as the gaggle of sycophants appraised me. I whispered into his ear conspiratorially, “So Bobby—where do the boys train in this neck of the woods?” He got all solemn: we were now talking the secret language of the elite Iron powerlifting brotherhood.
“There ain’t but one place…Kenny Fantano’s Muscle Factory in West Haven.”
Ken Fantano was a legendary character and for good reason. He had exploits galore and his lifting accomplishments were world class. His bench press methodology, from what I’d heard, was revolutionary. He was Old School with some new twists and I was eager to meet him. From Cassidy to Coan to Furnas, all my mentors stressed a similar message: get as strong as humanly possible in the three powerlifts using as little supportive gear as possible. As it turned out, Ken would affirm and amplify that same message.
Elite power men tend to be obsessed. Everything else in life was secondary: wives, families, jobs, responsibilities, only kids trumped powerlifting in the world of the elite brute. Fantano’s Muscle Factory was an oasis for the obsessed. I asked Bag-of-Donuts if he would be so kind as to make a formal introduction on my behalf to Ken. This was power etiquette; the equivalent of Samurai formalism in feudal Japan. He was the local Major Domo and I was a newcomer to his fiefdom. I was requesting an audience. I heard back from Bag-of-Donuts later that same week that yes, I would be most welcome and could I be at the Muscle Factory at 4 pm the following Monday. Please come alone.
I rolled into The Muscle Factory in West Haven on the appointed day at precisely the appointed time. Ken sat on a sturdy iron stool behind a homemade wooden counter. Kenny was huge and shapely, he weighed 360 pounds and with a goatee, balding head and soft eyes, he looked like a dead ringer for the legendary turn-of-the century Canadian strongman, Louis Cyr. He sat stoically on his stool behind the counter watching the comings and goings outside the gym while keeping an eye on the lone room that comprised the business section of the Muscle Factory.
Stuffed with every conceivable piece of resistance equipment, there was not a single cardio machine of any type. This “joint” was the epitome of a hardcore lifting establishment, and the clientele the polar opposite of the Egg Harbor crowd at the marina. I strode to the counter and introduced myself. He knew of me as I knew of him. I sat down and we began comparing notes. We’d each been in the game for decades so our list of mutual powerlifting acquaintances went on and on. He appeared sullen because he was sullen. But once he knew you were one of the hardcore he allowed his sense of humor to emerge. Within twenty minutes it was as if we’d known each other for years.
We’d been talking for a few hours when a dapper gentleman of say 45, dressed in a $1,000 business suit, complete with silk tie, cuff links and a diamond stick pin, walked through the door and approached the counter. I sat in front of the counter and Ken sat behind it. Kenny glanced over to the approaching dandy and said in a flat, but loud voice.
“Not for you—take off.”
“I beg your pardon?” The business-type strode closer, “I wanted to talk to someone about joining your gym and engaging the services of a personal trainer….” He might have been a professor from nearby Yale, or a business tycoon or a doctor.
“Not for you – this gym is not for you.”
This business exec promptly identified him self by name. He was used to getting his way and he was used to being treated deferentially; he could not believe his ears.
“Is the owner around? I wish to speak with the owner.” To this man’s way of thinking it was an impossibility that this hulking behemoth behind the counter could be anything more than an 8 dollar an hour staff person holding down the desk while the owner was out getting diner.
“I am the f#*king owner F#*k face!…and I needs YOU to take off right now! NOT FOR YOU!”
Fantano stood up and the dapper man got a full view of the massive Italian for the first time. Ken’s mood was menacing and I stepped down off my stool. Was Fantano going to body slam this guy? Would I be a witness in a manslaughter case? What if he asked me to participate in the beat down and then be asked to help dispose of the body? “Help me drag his corpse to the bathtub—we’ll cut the body into little parts and dump them into the Long Island Sound.” It all ran through my head…I didn’t know Ken from Adam. Would Fantano “off” a rich guy seeking to join the gym? I was baffled and disoriented. The exec was also disoriented and his face went from indignant to the look a person gets when they find themselves alone in the woods and suddenly confronted by an enraged grizzly bear. He began back peddling towards the door. He then went into full panic mode, wheeled and ran through the door. Ken sat back down, I sat back down. The atmosphere was electric with hostility.
“Damn Kenny, you got a nice touch with the general public.” I said. He shook his head; opened the refrigerator; and took out two bottles of Miller beer. Twisting off the tops and tossing them in the trash, he sat one in front of me. “See—the problem with those types is they come in and plop down a lot of dough. Then they pay up for a year in advance and $300 bucks to them is like walking around money…we got lots of Yale type guys around here. The money is great at the time and I take it and spend it inside a week. Then I have to put up with the asshole for an entire year. They demand I drop every freaking thing from the moment they walk through the door until they leave. They bitch and complain because they aren’t making any progress, but they can’t make any progress on account of they have the pain tolerance of a 9 year old girl! They run their yaps all the time until one day I blow up and someone gets physically ejected. Then I got a lawsuit on my hands. Half of them are lawyers.” Ken, I later learned, was big on physical ejections.
Mic Golden was a USA assistant coach to Sean Scully. Mic was a Fantano protégé and had once respectfully asked Kenny to devise a bench press routine for him. Mic was maybe 20 years old at the time. On one occasion the bench poundage scheduled for that particular day and training session was 220-pounds for whatever combination of sets and reps Ken had predetermined. Mic was hitting his bench presses when suddenly Ken comes roaring out from behind the counter. He was mad as a hornet and off his iron stool waving a huge sausage finger in Mic’s face.
Ken says, “What was on the F*%King bench press schedule today?”
“220!” Says Mic.
“So why is there 225 on the bar?”
“Because with 220 I got to load up two 45s then two 35-pound plates, then two 5-pound plates then two 2.5 pound plates—with 225 I just load up four 45-pound plates!”
“The schedule says 220—NOT 225!” Ken is yelling and suddenly with snake strike quickness, he grabs Mic by the hair and spins him around like a rag doll into a neck-wrenching headlock. Mic whelps in pain, protestation and embarrassment and with 60 gym members watching, Ken wrangles Mic to the front door and flings him outside into a snow bank. Ken walks back inside and locks the front door. Mic ended up walking home that day in gym clothes.
Ken was “client selective” and refused to allow “normal people” to train at his facility. “The Muscle Factory was more of a private club than a gym for civilians off the street. “All I need is to rough up some vicious lawyer who causes me to go off. Then I get my ass sued and lose the gym. All on account of way back when, in a moment of weakness, I took 300 bucks in cash.” He looked at me with a look that said this man knew that of which he spoke. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Well you weren’t weak-minded today.” As he was about to respond, a weird sound started coming from the left rear section of the gym. It sounded like someone was torturing a cat. Ken moaned. “Oh Jesus— this is all I need— Brucie! Knock it off!” I turned and saw that the high pitched squealing was coming from an oversized goon doing triceps pushdowns. He was wearing a cassette music player with headphones and singing at the top of his lungs. Singing would be a stretch; it was more like Neil Young being subjected to some hideous torture involving water, 220 volt raw electrical power and a blowtorch.
He was oblivious, lost in the endorphin rush of the pushdowns. He couldn’t hear because music was blasting through his headphones. Ken turned back to me, “So, anyway, I am looking to enter the APF National Championships in July. I think I got a good shot at a 950 squat. My bench press training….” The singer/squealer cranked his vocal volume up a notch, “Jeeeeezus God! Shut the hell up Bruce!” Fantano was standing up now and his face had turned beet red.
“It’s the chorus from Hey Jude.” I said.
“WHAT?!” Ken yelled at me; he looked flustered.
“The chorus from Hey Jude—Naaah nah nah na na na nah! Nah na na nah! Hey Jude!”
“WHAT THE HELL!” Bruce was repping the entire stack with all his might and singing with all his might at a volume that could only be matched by a Marshall amp stack set at 10. Ken spun around to the product shelf behind the counter, looking, looking, looking…until he found what he was looking for. He wanted a throwing implement, a projectile. For the first time I noted he was left handed. He ripped a two pound canister of protein powder off the display case behind the glass counter and in one motion spun and threw a fireball that would have done a major league pitcher proud. The protein canister sailed twenty feet through the air across the gym floor towards Brucie.
“NAH! NAH! NAH! NAH! NA! NA! NAH!”
This is the god’s honest truth: the can hit Big Brucie square in the side of the head and exploded. A cloud of anthrax-like powder swirled around his head. He let go of the handle, the weight stack zoomed downward as the pushdown handle flew upward. The headphones flew off his head. An airborne powder cloud settled on his sweat-drenched torso: his shaven head, his pig-like face, his 20-inch neck—everything covered in white protein powder. He looked as if he’d thrust his sweat-soaked head into a bag of flour, like Curly in some prank gone awry in a Three Stooges episode. Big Brucie growled and crouched down; he swiveled looking for someone to bust up. He looked as if he had lots of ass-kicking experience; perhaps today he would commit his first murder. He’d calculated the trajectory and looked in my direction: he caught my eye and stared with black-death eyes through a layer of white powder. He growled loudly and dropped further into his crouched stance. He was about to attack me, maul me, perhaps even kill me; the stranger. Likely he’d rip out my throat out with his teeth. I took my right finger and pointed left. Kenny was scowling, standing right next to me. As soon as the powder-dredged maniac saw Fantano, the killer went limp. Like a dog who’d been caught stealing the turkey off the Thanksgiving table. From enraged psycho killer into submissive puppy ready to pee himself all inside of ten seconds.
It was, what I would later learn, was what the boys called, “The Fantano Effect.” Ken yelled to Bruce. “One more time with the singing Brucie and You are OUT of HERE! FOREVER! Capiche?!” Brucie said nothing. Ken was insistent: “Are you HEARING ME! Cause I ‘shore was hearing YOU!” The monster nodded. Bruce was submissive and chastised. He gathered his tape player off the floor and headed to the bathroom to towel off. Being a good sport, he cleaned up and came back out to finish his workout. Ken yelled from his seat, “And you owe me 14 bucks for the protein powder!” Brucie nodded and everything returned to “normal.” It was just another day in Ken World.
Fitness-Themed Reality TV Strikes Out
Whenever I think fitness-themed reality TV cannot possibly sink lower or become any lamer, I am proven wrong. Who would have thought the sheer cruelty of the “Biggest Loser” or the idiocy of “Celebrity Fit Club” could possibly be topped? Yet now we are presented with a new contender for the frivolity title: Workout! (On Bravo, Tuesday night at 9 pm EST) The show’s protagonist, Jackie, claims to possess a 3% body fat percentile. She doesn’t come close: try 13%. She professes to have “97% Attitude” (chutzpah) and trust me she doesn’t. She is a gawky, giraffe-limbed woman with a muscleless, albeit lean, physique. In one ad she perches spider-like atop a man doing a pushup. At the end of the TV ad she strides boldly towards the camera, flings her arms wide while wearing a skintight outfit as if to say “HEY! TAKE A LOOK AT THIS! WILL YA!” The weird part is there is no “there” there. This 39 year old couldn’t take 12th place in the easiest class of any local female bodybuilding competition held at the local high school in the gym auditorium.
Mysteriously, Jackie is a fitness superstar; unfathomably successful, she is the in-your-face Queen of Mean. She lives in a million dollar home and works her “magic” at a trendy Hollywood muscle emporium called Skysport & Spa. Jackie preposterously portrays herself and her modest gym as “The finest fitness facility in the city staffed with the top fitness trainers in LA.” Her fitness pronouncements, profoundly arrogant and at the same time aggressive and challenging in tone and timbre, roll off her tongue with astonishing ease. Her claims have no basis in reality and one is left wondering if perhaps she is afflicted with some deep-seated delusional psychosis.
One would also hope she was being purposefully outrageous in the same way a highly paid professional wrestler rants into the microphone during a Smack Down interview. One gets the strong impression that Jackie actually believes her bravado and rootless claims. In the through-the-looking-glass world of commercial fitness, a parallel universe exists wherein glitz, flash, fast footwork, fluff and filler are easily and repeatedly mistaken for substantive, tangible, measurable results.
But I put too somber a point on this unintentionally humorous show. Workout! is sublimely funny, a regular fitness Fawlty Towers with Jackie as Basil Fawlty. The Skysport Spa resembles any weight room in any local-yokel racquet and health club found anywhere across the United States. Nothing special. Neanderthal powerlifters (of whom, in the interest of full disclosure, I admit to being a tribal member) would call Skysport a “Fern Spa.” Unimaginable, unintentional, laugh-out-loud lows are repeatedly achieved by Jackie and her squad of sycophant minions.
Antics abound as Jackie and her touchy-feely trainers interact with the dazed-and-confused clientele…there is the girlfriend who bites and leaves marks, the eternal after-hour booze consumption, the limos, the never-ending litany of pompous platitudes and fuzzy fitness philosophies screamed with a harshness reminiscent of a Stalinist-era political commissar; it all combines to create unintentional slap-stick of the highest order. To put a finer point on it, clients are under-trained in the weight room with ineffectual soft-ball routines; then over-trained in cardio with mindless ‘boot camp’ enduros. All clients are then starved to within an inch of dying.
I had thought the Nazi prison guard female trainer on The Biggest Loser was the benchmark for incompetent sadists masquerading as competent personal trainers. Jackie makes a determined run for the arrogant ignoramus title. What can you say about a woman so obviously ignorant yet incongruously successful? As Oscar Wilde once quipped, “She speaks with the easy assurance of the blissfully ignorant.” The setting is Beverly Hills; specifically a private training studio perched atop a 12 story office building. High jinks ensue. Jackie continually refers to her squad of adolescent-acting sycophant trainers as “the best personal trainers in Los Angles.” Again, this is mystifying: none of the group appears to have any muscle whatsoever nor are any of them particularly lean. Jackie’s muscle manifesto consists of mindlessly beating the piss out of any client unfortunate enough to cross her path.
Her motto should be, “Do as I say not as I do.” Don’t hold your breath waiting to see her participate in the mindless boot camp exercise sequences she loves to dish out. “I’m going to break them down. I am going to see who really want this!” Wants what Jackie? She periodically intones profound asides to the camera while in the background an obese woman cries and writhes in pain. She never ever joins in any of the pain-train exercise routines she dishes out. She barks fitness platitudes interspersed with ridiculous exhortations. Her stated goal is to “run them until they fall down or throw up.” How easy is that? I could have Reilly, a 5 year old neighborhood kid, sit on his little plastic yellow chair and put adults through the most grueling “Mother-May-I” boot camp imaginable: “Mother says do 100 jumps on your left leg. Mother says jump in the air and touch the sky 50 times! Mother says do 100 pushups!” Jackie’s Boot Camp enduros (“It’s the wave of the future!”) are endless and excruciating, pure cruelty, mindless motion mistakenly labeled as effective fitness training.
Jackie tells boot camp participants that the medicine is good for them and will transform their pathetic physiques. She mistakes inducing fatigue and inflicting pain for triggering transformation. Her smug assertions are ludicrous; as if repeatedly stating something makes it true. By any measurable benchmark, Jackie and her team are weak as kittens, technically ignorant, psychologically challenged and factually wrong at every turn. It’s the “Emperor has no clothes” come to life. Empress Jackie struts down the boulevard proclaiming loudly for all to hear that she and her minute minions are the grand maestros of the art and science of physical renovation. Her grandiose posturing is groundless, her methodology mistakes effort for success; she is the antithesis of training smart. Smart training, for Jackie, appears to be an irresolvable contradiction in terms.
All of Jackie’s squad of incompetents masquerading as personal trainers feels the need to touch their clients as they train. Apparently the “PT Touch” infuses clients with extra power and strength. There appears to be a touching correlation: the better looking the client, the more the touching occurs. The Sky Spa might be “the finest facility in the city” if the city were perhaps Kampala, Uganda or Bear Claw in the Yukon. Being located in a city generally considered the epicenter of worldwide body worship makes Jackie’s claim akin to a 12 year old, 100 pound high school cheerleader proclaiming she could whip the piss out of a 240 pound, 10 year Navy SEAL vet with two tours in Iraq under his belt.
Jackie is demonstrably lame as a personal trainer. Her technical instruction is riddled with flaws, akin to watching a young child attempt to play Mozart’s Requiem on a violin in front of the school assembly. Now imagine if after butchering the piece the 10 year old strode to the front of the embarrassed (for her) audience and said, “There you go you pack of morons! The greatest interpretation of Mozart ever heard!” Jackie unconsciously personifies Karl Marx’s declaration that “Audacity is 99% of the battle.” If you are feeling dreary and need a dose of laughter to cut through the quiet desperation of day to day life, I would suggest watching Jackie and her fraud-squad of simpleton sycophants. What better tonic than uproarious laughter to counteract life’s pain?
Watch as goofy immature girls are presented as expert personal trainers and then turned loose to beat up or baby ignorant clients charged $300 per hour. Watch another Jackie PT, “The Peeler” (nicknamed for his ability to “peel off fat.” Incongruously his physique is smooth as a baby’s ass) speak in an unintentionally comedic drawl appropriate for a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie. He proclaims that his physical transformational abilities approximate that of a master sculpture. “These hands are like Michelangelo!” He dramatically intones, offering up for camera inspection the hands touched by God. It is highly doubtful Peeler could name a single work the 14th century master ever produced. It is also highly likely you could stand atop the roof of The Sky Spa and throw a medium size rock in any direction and hit another facility that has someone capable of bench pressing 300 or someone possessing less than 10% body fat. No one has either at Jackie’s Sky Spa.
I have a suggestion for the Bravo TV programmers: if they want a real fitness reality show with some substance, grit and guts, have personal trainers compete against each other using untrained individuals for 30 days. Let’s see who can generate real results for regular people using regulated amounts of training and only foods available at the local grocery store. No supplements of any type. Limit the total amount of training to say 4-6 hours per week and use real people, living real lives, working real jobs, with real responsibilities. Let’s see who can obtain the best results; success would be defined as quantifiable muscle mass increases and body fat decreases.
Establish a level playing field. Bring on the yoga instructors and Pilates proponents, bring on Jackie and her chuckle-heads; bring on the Biggest Loser prison guard. Let’s get some head-to-head fitness combat going and highlight what works and what doesn’t. Let’s expose lurking charlatans and identify effective trainers and effective methods. The ultimate winner would be the confused public. I won’t hold my breath.
Coaching Team USA
The picture on the last page is of the World Champion American Powerlifting Team after we captured the World Team Championships in Orebo, Sweden in 1991. I was one of three coaches for the US squad. I became a coach after my own powerlifting career was cut short.
In 1983 I had a horrific power accident at age 33: I was squatting with 700 for reps on a light day without spotters. After all it was only 700. Anyway, it was a hot and sticky day and my T-shirt was soaked. The bar slipped down my back. I was about to toss it backward and leap forward when a well-intentioned buddy saw what was happening and leapt to my assistance. It was a nice gesture at precisely the wrong time. He tried to wrestle the barbell while standing behind me. He wanted to save me. There is no way anyone is going to prevent gravity from taking 700 exactly where it wants to go: straight down. He and I got tangled up and I took the full brunt of 700 pounds dropped from four feet across my left lower leg. It snapped like a match stick.
I had squatted 840 the previous week weighing 250 and thought I had a real shot at breaking Danny Wohleber’s 871 world record in four weeks at the nationals. That accident effectively ended up my career as a powerlifter, at least for the next decade. I made a comeback as a master lifter (over 40 years of age) at age 42, but I never hit the heights I’d achieved before the injury.
After the accident I wanted to keep my hand in the game and rather than become an official or an administrator (never my style) I decided to coach. At the local level I helped Mark Chailliet and Kirk Karwoski rise to international prominence and as a result I was ‘drafted’ by John Black to help Coach Black’s Gym at national competitions. We captured three National Team titles in five years.
Our main competition was, always and forever, the mighty United States Armed Forces squad coached by my old Irish buddy, fighter pilot/instructor, Air Force Academy graduate, 500 pound bench presser, Sean ‘Slim’ Scully. Our team tussles were epic and over a five year period Black’s captured three team titles and the Armed Forces two.
I remember at the 1991 National Championships when Bob Fortenbaugh and I squeezed together on the top rung of the victory podium to receive the humongous 1st place team award, the much taller Scully stood on the 2nd place pedestal. Right before the anthem played I looked down and nudged Sean, “Scully, you wouldn’t believe the view from up here! It’s incredible! Maybe someday after Bob and I retire you’ll be able to stand up here once again. By the way Sean, you look as if your hair is getting real thin on top.” Sean instinctually ran his hand on his crown to check and Bob and I laughed so hard (Sean too) that we almost toppled off the podium.
As a result of coaching Black’s I was able to work with Eric Arnold, Dan Austin, Joe Ladiner, Incredible Eddie Coan, Mike Hall, Dave Jacoby, Phil Hile, Bob Bridges, (Mike’s brother) Kirk, Mark, Bob Dempsey, Dan Wolheber, Lamar Gant and a host of others who’s names escape me. Working with the very best, up close and personal in the white hot heat of national and international competition is one of the most frightening and exhilarating experiences imaginable. Six months of back-busting work are on the line and some athletes rise to the competitive occasion while others wilt in the glare. I am no fan of international travel, but when I was asked to be a coach for the Team USA. I agreed.
In 1990 my protégé Karwoski had lost the World Title to The Fearsome Finn, three times World Champion, Kroyosto Vilmi, by a miniscule 4.4 pounds. It was Kirk’s first IPF World Championships. Vilmi pulled his final deadlift of 788 to eek out the win. I kicked myself in the ass for not having gone as I am quite sure that my presence would have been good for that additional five pounds Kirk needed for victory.
The next year Kirk and I traveled to Europe looking for blood. Back then the US Team would always arrive at World Championship competitions in Europe or Asia ten days ahead of time so the athletes could adjust to the jet lag and time changes. This particular trip was a travel nightmare…buses, planes, connecting flights, more buses, dead time in terminals, more long bus rides; all this effort to arrive in a modest Swedish town in November. All the locals were sour and dour and an average lunch in an average Chinese restaurant cost $40. (I’d say $60-$70 today) I remember a group of us going to the McDonalds. I paid $22 for two Big Macs, an order of fries and a shake—shocking!
The local Swedes rode bikes or drove Volvos and seemed depressed. Even in the bars things were somber. “Who died? What is up with these square-ass people?” Kirk summarized when he and I got a beer (or ten) at a local tavern one night. Any squad of American athletes on an overseas trip is boisterous, raucous, profane and good-natured. Our squad appeared barbaric contrasted to the somber Swedes. It seemed that in this particular culture smiling was frowned upon and laughing out loud in public was considered very bad manners indeed. Well here came the American Barbarians and you’d have thought we were Jack Palance in Shane. Maybe we were. Every one wanted to see the cocky Americans whipped: unfortunately for them the only whippings administered were administered by us.
The competition was run with precision and great care…I coached Phil Hile, a dwarf PhD who at 114 pound bodyweight could squat 520. He took 4th. I then had the honor of coaching Dan Austin in the 148 pound class. Dan was the strength coach at UNLV at the time and was so dominant that the foreign guys were moving to other weight classes to avoid him. He did not disappoint. Dan not only won, but set a World Record Deadlift (688) and captured the ‘Champion of Champions’ award given to the single most outstanding lifter amongst the eleven weight classes.
We didn’t have a 165 pound lifter since we had decided to double up our entries in the 242 pound class. I remember seeing Karlo Virtanan (Jarmo’s younger brother) warming up back stage. He did a series of standing broad jumps that were incredible…he would squat down and then leap forward three times in a row…bang, bang, bang! A good athlete can perform a standing broad jump of 10 feet and I swear this guy covered 40 feet in three leaps…he did five “three-jump reps” as he felt it helped his explosiveness in the squat and deadlift. He was the deadlift World Record holder so maybe there was something to it.
In the 181 pound class Dan Wagman, an army Ranger/Paratrooper with a PhD, took 4th in his 1st World Championships. Dan later became the health and science editor at Muscle & Fitness magazine after some hard lobbying on my part. Jim Wright had left Weider to go to work for Scott Connelly at MetRx and Tom Deters, the editor in chief at Weider, was ringing his hands and agonizing, unsure if Ranger Dan would fit in with the fem-man staff at M&F. Dan got the job and had a great long run at Weider before moving on. George Herring won the 198 pound class, going nine-for-nine, nine attempts and nine successes. George was a free thinker and didn’t believe in the jet-lag theory: “Foreign food sucks and I lose strength by showing up a week ahead of time—the hell with all that!” Herring showed up less than 24 hours beforehand and proceeded to lift perfectly at what would have been 3 AM for him back home in Georgia. He did a fabulous job.
At 242 Steve Goggins bombed out when he insisted on opening his squats at 832. We tried to warn him how strict the IPF judging was, but he was beyond coaching. Bip, Bang, Boom…he was out of the competition. I worked with Dave ‘Superman’ Jacoby, the defending World Champion. Sean made a rare coaching mistake by jumping Dave from an 804 second attempt squat success to a third attempt with 832. He had a close miss. Sean called the lift without consulting Dave or I and I will never forget the look of surprise/anger/shock on Dave’s face when Sean told him his 3rd squat would be 832, “Damn that’s a BIG jump Sean! Can you change it to 819 or 826?” Too late. Dave’s close miss would later come back to haunt us. Dave tore a pectoral muscle on his opening attempt bench press and came off the platform holding his limp arm, “We got a problem.” He said. Our team doctor, Dick Herrick, looked him over and the prognosis was not good. I remember the tense huddle with myself, Dave, Doctor Dick and Sean.
Scully looked at Dave and said, “Can you lift or not? Tell me yes or no right now.” Dave thought for a minute and said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” The doc said, “Are you sure?” He was immediately cut off by Sean, “The man said he can go – so we’re f#@*ing going to GO!” No deadlift warm ups. I dropped Dave’s opening deadlift to 704 and he pulled it with great pain. As soon as he came off (in agony) we iced the pec and inched him up to 733. He made that lift, but a Norwegian, who couldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole on a good day, seized the lead. Every time Dave pulled a weight this guy would pull 4.4 more to maintain his lead. After Dave made 733 the other guy made 738 to take the lead again. Dave went out for his third and final lift in front of a packed house.
Dave went out for his third and final lift in front of a packed house. The Europeans were mad/crazy with their cowbells and air horns. They’d whistle at us, their form of booing, and clap in syncopated fashion for their Scandinavian golden boy who was about to upset the Seven Time World Champ. Dave pulled 744 pounds 7/8’s of the way to completion before it fell to the platform. No lift. I remember seeing the Norwegian jump five feet straight up in the air and yelling in ecstasy when Dave failed. The auditorium, packed to the rafters, exploded with joy. The heavy favorites, Goggins and Jacoby, had been upset. I glared at the guy. Dave was upset and in real pain as he held his damaged arm. I didn’t know what to say so I hugged him. Paybacks are hell and the next year a righteous and vengeful Jacoby lifted at the World Championships in England. He decimated the field one final time. He retired on top.
In the 275 pound class my protégé Kirk Karwoski destroyed the best competition the world had to offer. He dispatched the others with such ridiculous ease it was anticlimactic. This would be the 1st of ten straight IPF Titles for him. It was fitting that I was there: his win was the culmination of six years working together. We truly collaborated over the years: he was the ideal student. Engaged and inquisitive, he was never defensive or entrenched. Karwoski was always receptive and willing to try new things. His home brewed training had taken him to a certain level, a high level to be sure, but he knew that if he were to leap into the Big Leagues he would need to up his game to an entirely new level. The methodology needed to accomplish that lay outside his knowledge base.
I told him upfront that all his exercise techniques would need to be revamped, his training template would be tossed in the trash can and his nutrition would need to be “squared up.” He wanted it bad enough to comply. I started him off on what I would call “Modified Cassidy” training and over time morphed his training template into a mirror of the methodology used by Ed Coan and Doug Furnas. At the time I was conversing with Ed weekly and I would continually share with “The Great One” how “The Kid” was doing. I would alert Ed on how Kirk’s training had gone the previous week and seek Ed’s thoughts. I’d relate the glitches and potholes we encountered and Coan was magnificent. He would ponder with me about what had happened and would continually make incredibly insightful suggestions about how to up Kirk’s game.
Ed’s core advice was oddly resonant with my own discoveries when I first began training. John McCallum, my first Iron Mentor, had repeatedly stressed the importance of the 5-rep set. Later when I trained with Hugh, he too stressed we should get as strong as possible using 5-rep sets. My introduction to Ed and Doug’s training template was old home week when Ed indicated that the backbone of his strength philosophy was “getting as strong as possible in the 5-rep set.” Ed encapsulated the rationale: “The 5-rep set strikes the best balance between low 1-3 rep power-building sets and 8-12 rep tissue-building sets.” I anchored Kirk’s training template around the 5-rep set and he took to it with a vengeance.
The last piece to the Karwoski puzzle fell into place when he ventured to West Haven Connecticut at my beckon to learn “The Fantano Bench Press.” For some reason, structurally or psychologically, Kirk absorbed this complex method effortlessly. While it took most lifters years to master and incorporate all the subtle, interrelated complexities, Kirk picked it up in no time. It was like handing a boy who had never touched a football the ball and having him throw a 70 yard “frozen rope” bullet pass on his first effort.
Nutritionally he needed help. He was massive but fat and eventually we hooked him up with a monstrous bodybuilder named Anthony D’Arrezo (RIP). Anthony got Kirk squared away on a big man nutritional regimen that dropped Karwoski’s body fat percentile from 20% to 10% without any degradation in muscle mass. Karwoski morphed into a power Terminator and just as I had been there when he commenced his national domination, it was fitting that I was there when he began his world domination. We captured the world team title with ease.
At the awards banquet afterwards, the greatest non-USA powerlifter in the World, the Finnish 181 pound World Champion, Jarmo Virtanen, came up to Dan Austin immediately after Dan came offstage after being awarded the Champion of Champion’s award. Virtanen had his Finn posse with him and these genuine bad asses sauntered over to Dan and I. Jarmo looked like Charles Bronson and was in a confrontational mood. He swilled a double vodka with one hand while he chain smoked Marlboros with the other. I thought he was going to offer congratulations; instead he ignored our handshakes and glared at Dan, “So, Don, I see you have my Champion of Champions award; be a good boy and hand it over!”
Silence…I didn’t know if I had heard him right or if Virtanen was aware of the racial insensitivity he was displaying towards my African-American comrade, but he spoke good English and he knew our swear words and slang so I always suspected he knew what he was saying. I instinctively settled into a back-loaded fighting stance as I really thought these nasty, inebriated Finns were going to throw down on us. One of our young team managers innocently wandered into our midst, drunk, laughing and began poking the stock still Austin with a playful finger, this distracted him enough to break the deadly mood. I’ve always wondered if Virtanen’s real intention was to pick a fight at the awards banquet. That would have been one hell of a Pier Nine bench-clearing brawl. There was no love lost between the Finns and us.
The Russians would have loved a reason to mix it up with their Finnish northern neighbors. Whereas the Russians and the Ukrainian’s were fierce competitors, they were good guys immediately after the competition. The Finns and the Russians had some serious differences of opinion about everything. The US lifters were hated because we always stood between the Finns and the World Team Title. Too bad! I drank hard with Kirk and the Russians (what a combination) and the next day was a hangover blur. We had to commence our god-awful trip home, this time exhausted and with exploding heads. It was a terrible way to end a successful trip.
