Richie continued with his instructional diatribe: "First
of all, keep your body completely vertical. Don't lean back
at all. Pull only with your lats. F-e-e-l the lats as you
pull down. Hold it and squeeze. Now release slowly, fight
the negative, let it back slowly, lean forward and stretch…now
pause, hold the stretch, hold it, keep holding it. Ok, now
pull, no momentum, don't lean, just pull with your lats.
Pull straight down, squeeze, hold the squeeze, now slowly
let it back, lean forward and stretch. Concentrate. Focus
on the muscle not the weight."
I heard everything he said, but I guess I still wasn't
doing it to his satisfaction because he stood right behind
me and stuck his hand between my shoulder blades (so I couldn't
lean backwards). When I got into the extended position,
he pushed me forward and said, "drop your head, lean
forward, and S-T-R-E-T-C-H! I felt a tearing sensation in
my lats under my armpits like the muscle was going to rip
right off the bone - I had never experienced anything like
it. I grimaced in pain while Richie smiled sadistically.
Rep after rep we went on like this.
On the last rep, he made me just hold the weight in the
stretched position while he stood there counting the seconds
on his watch. Finally, I couldn't even hang on anymore and
I had to let go of the bar like it was red-hot molten steel.
I rubbed my aching lats as a burning sensation shot through
muscle fibers I never knew existed. Then I looked at the
weight stack - it was set at a humbling 170 lbs. That meant
that the other 80 -105 lbs. I was originally lifting was
from pure momentum - or pure cheating I should say.
And that was just the beginning of a 40-minute "torture
session." Richie continued the pain with close grip
chin ups (his way), dumbbell pullovers (his way), T-bar
rows (his way) and some kind of heinous backward incline
bench pulldown exercise I had never even seen before (not
even in Bill Pearl’s massive encyclopedia of exercise
variations). There were slow reps, supersets, tri-sets,
descending sets, ascending sets, isometric holds, loaded
stretches and a variety of other tortuous intensification
techniques. Every exercise was done with moderate or even
light weights with the same fanatical attention to slow
speed, perfect form, stretching and squeezing.
The very same night, my lats got so sore I could barely
put my shirt on. And with God as my witness, I swear by
the next day, they grew out an inch from that one single
workout.
The moral of this story is simple: heavy weights are not
always necessary to build muscle. What’s most important
is that the weight you are using "feels" heavy
to the muscles being worked. I know this statement may sound
blasphemous to bodybuilders who are sold on the "heavier
is better" mentality, so please allow me to elaborate.
If your goal is simply to lift a weight from point A to
point B, then you would want to use every trick in the book
to accomplish that. Powerlifters are a perfect example:
In a bench press competition, powerlifters speed up their
reps, wear bench shirts, arch their backs, tuck in their
elbows, push with their delts and tris, drop the bar low
on their chests and do anything else they can think of to
get the weight up without seeing a red light. By the time
they've used all these tricks, some barrel-chested, short-armed
powerlifters only have to move the bar about 6 inches! Their
concern is not exhausting the pectorals – it is lifting
the weight. But that's not bodybuilding!
Form is the difference between bodybuilding and simply
lifting weights. Poor form with too much weight takes the
stress off the target muscle; momentum moves the weight,
not the muscles. Bodybuilding is accomplished best with
strict form, controlled tempo, optimal tension, and total
concentration.
If muscle size is your number one priority, you must do
everything in your power to make the exercise harder, not
easier. You must select the path of maximum stimulation
– which also happens to be the path of most resistance,
effort and pain. My trainer Richie put it this way; "When
you are child, your parents tell you to keep your hands
off the stove - they tell you not to put your hand into
the flame – because if you do, you’ll get burned.
If you’re serious about bodybuilding, you have to
un-learn what you were taught as a child. When I train people,
basically I’m telling them to put their hand right
into the fire and keep it there. I have them train into
and beyond the pain zone. That’s what makes you grow."
Most people are on a constant search for the path of least
resistance. A drug, a supplement, a "breakthrough technique"
a new machine, a shortcut in exercise form - anything and
everything they think will help them reach their goals with
less effort and in less time. This is typical human nature.
Unfortunately, this is also faulty thinking and you will
NEVER become a champion with this type of attitude.
What follows are six ways you can use better form to develop
more muscle mass. All of these techniques have one thing
in common: they all involve ways to use better form to make
the exercise harder, not easier. Use these techniques faithfully
and you’ll be amazed at how much muscle mass you can
develop without ever needing super-heavy weights.
>>
Click here for Tom's Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle program
1. Eliminate extraneous body movement and momentum
Extraneous body movement – or "cheating"
as it is so often called, is responsible for more injuries
than perhaps any other cause. At the same time, it provides
little stimulus for new muscle growth.
Take the popular barbell curl for example: The way some
people do a barbell curl looks more like a lower back exercise
than a bicep movement. Watching some people do cheat curls,
I often wonder if their biceps are working at all.
To get a jarring realization of just how much your cheating
contributes to the weight moving and just how little biceps
force is actually being generated, then take the "post
curl" test. Stand against a post with your heels, butt,
and upper back all touching the post. Now see how much you
can curl without losing contact with the post. Don’t
be surprised if those 45 lb plates get reduced to 25’s
or even 10’s!
Controlled cheating, done occasionally, is a legitimate
way to shock complacent muscles into growth by allowing
you to use more weight than you normally would. However,
cheating should be the exception, not the rule. It’s
all too easy for "a little cheating" to turn into
totally sloppy, injury producing form. The general rule
for bodybuilding should be to avoid most extraneous body
movement. Let the muscle move the weight, not momentum,
swinging or bouncing.
2. Think "Squeeze" & ‘Contract"
With every rep you perform in every exercise, you should
mentally incant to yourself, "stretch and squeeze."
Many bodybuilders habitually shorten their range of motion
and completely miss two of the most important parts of the
exercise: the contraction (the "squeeze") and
the extension (the "stretch").
Using the technique of constant tension without locking
out can be very effective on certain exercises (as you will
learn shortly). The majority of the time, however, the bodybuilding
rule of thumb is to take every exercise through the full
range of motion from full stretch to full contraction.
The "squeeze" is especially effective on "peak
contraction" exercises such as standing calf raises,
concentration curls, tricep rope pushdowns, cable crossovers,
and Leg extensions. On these types of exercises where the
maximum resistance is placed on the muscle in the contracted
position, pausing to "squeeze" the muscle will
give you a much stronger contraction.
The stretch is most important on exercises where there
is still a full load "pulling" on the muscle in
the stretched position. Lat exercises like pulldowns or
cable rows are an example. If you skip the stretch on these,
you are not getting the full effect of the exercise (as
Richie painfully demonstrated for me on close grip pulldowns).
3. Leave your ego at the door
If it's true that the most muscle growth occurs by using
a weight that allows perfectly strict form, then why don't
people cut back the weight and use perfect form more often?
The answer is a simple three-letter word: EGO!
In his book Get Buffed, Australian Strength Coach Ian King
wrote, "I would say that most load selection in strength
training is based upon what impact it will have on those
watching, not what impact it will have on the body. If you
were more serious about your body than your short term ego,
you would take off 75% of the load and perform the movement
in a manner that had some lasting impact on your body!"
Fellow strength coach Charles Poliquin echoed King’s
sentiments when he said, "Trainees who use proper form
usually have high levels of self esteem. They show it by
their interest in progression not theatrics, and by lifting
for themselves, not for others. They are not concerned about
what the other guy thinks of him lifting somewhat lighter
loads. Successful bodybuilders feel the muscle not the weight."
Yes, it’s nice to have an audience see how strong
you are by watching you hoist up ponderous poundages, but
remember – you’re in the gym to grow, not to
show off! Keep your ego in check.
4. Always think "More Tension"
Always look for ways to maintain or increase tension on
the muscles you are training. In other words, DON’T
LET THE MUSCLE RELAX OR REST during the set!
The easiest and most common way to maintain tension is
to simply avoid locking out. Here’s an example: In
the barbell squat, the top position provides close to zero
resistance on the quadricep group. The weight on your shoulders
is being supported by your entire body with bone on bone
while the quadriceps remain relatively relaxed until knee
flexion takes place. If you want maximum growth of the quads
(as compared to pure power or strength) you need to keep
the tension on the quads continuously for the duration of
the set
Another way to maintain tension is to stay in continuous
motion by eliminating the pause at the top and at the bottom.
Pausing at the bottom of a barbell curl or dumbbell lateral
raise, for example, has absolutely no purpose whatsoever.
You are simply resting between reps.
The next time you do biceps or shoulders, try a few sets
of barbell curls and dumbbell lateral raises with no pause
whatsoever. Do not stop moving until the set is finished.
You will be forced to reduce your weight substantially,
but remember, form is more important than weight. The combination
of continuous motion with not locking out will give you
a killer workout you won't forget!
>>
Click here for Tom's Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle program
5. Use a slower negative (eccentric movement)
Just slow down! Yes, it’s that simple. A slow repetition,
by its very nature, is a strict repetition and a strict
repetition is a more effective repetition. This one little
change in technique will go a long way towards improving
your form and increasing your muscular development.
An entire system of training called "super slow"
was developed based on this concept. While it wouldn’t
be wise to do super slow to the exclusion of all other repetition
speeds, I do recommend that you incorporate more slow movements
in your training on a regular basis as a means of improving
your form.
A conventional repetition is usually performed with a cadence
of one or two seconds on the concentric (lifting) movement
and three or four seconds on the eccentric (lowering) movement.
So how slow is a "slow" rep? The sky’s the
limit: You can experiment with extending your eccentric
movement for five seconds to as long as thirty seconds or
even more! Ellington Darden and Arthur Jones of High Intensity
Training (HIT) and Nautilus fame, used to recommend the
one-minute chin up as method of increasing biceps mass quickly.
(That’s right – thirty seconds up and thirty
seconds down!)
6. Use a slower positive (concentric) movement
You’re probably very familiar with the advice of
slowing down the negative portion of your reps, but have
you ever considered slowing down the concentric movement?
If you think slow eccentrics are hard, wait until you try
slow concentrics.
Slowing down your concentric can be equally if not more
effective than negatives – they literally force you
to maintain perfect form. When slowing down your concentric
movement, you will notice the biggest difference in exercises
where you usually use momentum to get the weight started.
By removing the momentum you are forcing your muscle to
generate more force - and thus more tension – just
to get the weight started.
Barbell Curls, for example, are often started with a big
heave that comes from the hips and lower back. "swinging"
the weight up launches the weight off your thighs but robs
you of much of the benefit. By performing a slow concentric
curl, you get the maximum benefit possible from every inch
of the range of motion, including the bottom portion which
is usually "wasted."
Using perfect form with less weight can be a humbling experience
at first, but if you’re interested in pure muscle
growth – if you’re a bodybuilder, not a weight
lifter - then concentrate on strict form first and weight
second. Bodybuilding and weight lifting are not the same
thing. Bodybuilding is visual, not quantitative. A magazine
article with the photo of some 270 pound monster curling
110 pound dumbbells and a headline that says, "Go Heavy
or Go Home" makes for very entertaining reading, but
it has very little to do with reality for the average person.
Yes, heavy weights are great – the heavier the better
– but only if you can keep the muscle under tension
by handling the weight with a strict, controlled movement
and good form. Then and only then should you add weight
to the bar. If you're willing to swallow your ego, slow
your movements down, stretch, squeeze, control the weight,
and concentrate, you’ll be able to take your physique
to new heights and do it injury free.
>>
Click here for Tom's Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle program
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