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

Instead of grinding out 200x5x5 sets try something like 185x5, 205x5, 195x5, 210x5, 190x5, 200x5, 185x5.

Four times a week. One of the best setups for a serious drug free iron man or woman. As gymnastics coach Chris Sommer put it, it “allows maximum work combined with substantial rest.”

if you work out for an hour a day and spend twenty-three hours sitting or lying down, do you think your looks will reflect the one hour or the twenty three hours?

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.

“Ideal training involves changing just one of many variables, until that variable reaches a constant,” writes Dr. Laurence Morehouse. “Then you change another, and then another until you reach your goal.”

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

Adaptation occurs mainly when a retaining or detraining load is used after a stimulating load.”

complex of weight training exercises provides good results for one to one and a half months, then it should be changed. But not more often than that!

Variable practice, or waving the load up and down every set, is a superior alternative.