Beyond Bodybuilding: Muscle and Strength Training Secrets for The Renaissance Man

alternating two-week cycles of pushups with two-week low rep strength cycles.

Ten to twenty-five pounds of extra poundage is about right. If, for instance, you can do fifteen unweighted pullups, a quarter will bring you down to below ten but not as low as five. Alternating pullup workouts with and without extra weight will bring about the greatest gains.

Do not interpret the above as an admonition not to do back-off sets! Do them by all means, just keep them in the ballpark of the top sets.

attempting to maintain top condition is detrimental to future progress!

the athlete’s body adapts much better if it is presented with a focused and limited training objective, rather than a host of often conflicting demands –

The idea of a ‘finisher’ does not sit well with the periodization model either.

The inverse relationship between the loading volume and intensity (’you can’t sprint a marathon’) is a myth. All volume/intensity combos serve their purposes.

Roughly two out of three workouts should be dedicated to building mass with medium reps. Other workouts can zero in on ultra high or ultra low repetitions.

Since different rep ranges have a specific effect on the muscles – low power reps increase the muscle density, medium reps build the contractile proteins, and high reps develop mitochondria, sarcoplasm, and capillaries -the obvious implication of this discovery on bodybuilding is not to spread your workout over a large rep range.