|
|
|
Trainer of Champions - September 2004 |
|
|
|
|
Written by Charles Glass
|
|
Thursday, 26 April 2007 |
I go to a very large fitness center in Chicago. Most of the trainers have their clients doing all kinds of exercises on a Swiss ball or on these wobble boards, and every time I'm around I hear them talking about "core strength" and how it's the most important thing to work on. The funny thing is, I don't see any of their clients looking any different as the weeks and months go by. You are known for getting results, so what's your opinion on all this stability training people are so high on right now?
I think it's great to develop stability and core strength, but there will never be a substitute for good old-fashioned resistance training. Working on exercise balls and wobble boards teaches you good balance and how to find and connect with your center of gravity. But if you ask if these techniques will help you build muscle or lose fat any more effectively than conventional training methods, I would have to say no, they don't.
I do have people use the Swiss balls for abs, as you can get a fuller range of motion on crunches on one of these than you can on the ground or on a sit-up board. That's because they allow you to get a better stretch of the abs before you start curling your torso back up. I will even have some clients do a little bit of dumbbell work on the ball if they need to improve their balance and coordination. This is often the case when someone has had a bad injury on one side of their body and has developed an uneven gait or bad posture. But after a little work there, we move on to machines and free weights for normal training on the tried-and-true exercises.
So, to sum up my opinion, improving your balance and your core strength can be useful, but don't get too high on them if your main goals in the gym are to improve your appearance with muscle gain or fat loss. As you pointed out, those who concentrate too much on balance and core strength inevitably lose out on other areas. If you are reading MD, my guess is that you wouldn't be satisfied if all your training did was make you able to balance on a seesaw at the local park.
I know training is your forte, but I'm sure you know quite a bit about supplements, too. I'm a 46-year-old man who got out of shape for a long time, but now I'm back in the gym five or six days a week. I'm interested in a product that will increase my muscle and strength gains. I have read about a lot of products such as M1T, 1-AD, 4-AD, S1+, Testosterol Xp etc., but I'm confused, as they all state that they are the best product or ingredient. Are prohormones the way to go? If at all possible, could you lead me in the right direction or recommend a few products that would fit my needs as to muscle and strength gains. I am currently taking protein powder, Creatine and a multivitamin.
Steroids and prohormones are a subject I do happen to know quite a bit about from being in the bodybuilding industry so many years, but it's not something I like to talk about or give advice on, simply because I feel only a medical professional is actually qualified to do that. But I will say this about the prohormones that you can buy legally at this time. Because they are not a prescription drug or a controlled substance, people seem to be under the mistaken impression that they are totally safe to use. Perhaps at the recommended dosage stated on the label they are fairly safe, but many bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts will take two or three times that amount in hopes of seeing better results. Any chemist will tell you that many of these prohormones and pro-steroids you can buy right now at any GNC are structurally almost identical to many actual steroids. In fact, you could accurately describe some of them as weaker versions of powerful steroids like testosterone, Dianabol and trenbolone.
Taking several times the dose of a weaker steroid is going to deliver many of the same effects as using real drugs, both the good and the bad. I have seen people with water bloat, acne, gyno and hair loss, who have never used a single illegal drug. They experience these typical side effects associated with anabolic steroids from abusing prohormones and pro-steroids. I am not against the use of these products in a responsible manner, but just as with steroids, many users have the "more is better" attitude. If the bottle says to take two capsules twice a day, there will always be some fool who will take four capsules four times a day. Just as what happened with ephedrine when enough people abused the product and got hurt or worse, the FDA is probably going to come down on prohormones within the next year and ban them from sale or import in the USA.
Seeing as you are 46 years of age, there is a possibility your body is no longer producing enough testosterone for you to see the type of results you desire from your training and diet. Have your physician run a blood test to find out if your testosterone levels are normal or below normal. If they are low enough, he can legally prescribe you testosterone in the form of a patch, a gel, or weekly injections to bring you up to the normal range. The point I am trying to make is that none of these products, legal or otherwise, should be taken lightly or abused. They can all have negative effects on your body if you aren't careful.
What do you think of pre-exhausting? I was reading an article that said it's not very good for building mass because the amount of weight you use in the compound movements is less. I find, however, that my quads, for instance, only get sore if I do leg extensions before my squats or leg presses. And my side delts only get sore if I do lateral raises before overhead presses. Would I be better off doing the compound movements first and going heavier, even though I don't feel the muscle working as much and rarely get sore?
I actually think very highly of pre-exhausting and I don't necessarily think it always has to reduce the amount of weight you use in the compound movements. I consider starting off with an isolation movement a great way to warm up the area. With legs, for example, I have almost all my clients start off with leg extensions before we do squats or leg presses, and we have had good success with that. The knee joints get lubricated and you get plenty of blood flowing in the quads and around all your tendons and ligaments. Same thing with shoulders; I like to start my guys and girls out with a few good sets of laterals before moving on to an overhead press.
As for leg extensions hampering your squats and hurting your leg growth, I can name two of my clients right off the top of my head that defy that argument. Both Gunter Schlierkamp and Chris Cormier do several intense sets of leg extensions before going to the Smith machine and squatting six or seven plates for reps. Chris actually has pretty amazing muscular endurance with very little drop-off in strength as the workout goes on. He can do heavy leg extensions, heavy leg presses and heavy squats all in a row. I think most bodybuilders are capable of developing that ability, but you can't start out like that. It takes years. Chris is also one of the rare few who keep the weights super heavy almost right up to his shows. I remember that just three or four weeks out from the last Arnold Classic he was still squatting seven plates a side on the Smith machine.
Not only do I have my clients do their isolation movements before the compound exercise, but there are also times when we will do a true pre-exhaust superset, going right from one to the next. That really tears the muscle down and brings out the density and detail. It's particularly useful for the contest phase when an athlete is dieted down and more susceptible to injury. Not everyone is like Chris Cormier and can maintain their strength all the way up to a contest. Pre-exhaust gets a high rating from me, overall.
Have you heard about a method of training by a guy named DoggCrapp? It's a big hit with a lot of guys on the bodybuilding message boards. He has you training Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the whole body each time with just one heavy work set per body part that you take beyond failure with forced reps, rest-pause and static holds. Some guys swear by it and have given up the usual bodybuilding style of training. What are your thoughts on this training system?
I won't comment on the guy's name, though it seems pretty silly to call yourself something like that! I can't say I'm familiar with Mr. DoggCrapp's particular training methods, but it sounds to me like a spinoff of the late Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty system. Several times in the past, I've been asked to give my thoughts on Heavy Duty, and as much as I respected Mike, I never really liked his training style. My main issue is that it requires you to use the heaviest weights all the time without what I feel is sufficient warm-up.
Let's use the bench press, for example. If you were training chest the way most bodybuilders do, you would do a couple of good warm-up sets with 10-20 reps each, then gradually pyramid up in weight over three or four work sets of eight to 12 before using your top weight. Plus, you would be doing other exercises like the pec deck, incline presses, flyes and maybe dips. But with Heavy Duty, you only have one work set, just one chance, to hit your chest. And I believe Mike advocated performing very low reps, like four to six, for pressing movements. So maybe you get one warm-up set and then jump right into a weight with which you can only get four or five reps. To me, that's an injury waiting to happen.
Look at what happened with Dorian. Dorian actually did more warming up and slightly more sets and exercises than what Mentzer's Heavy Duty instructed, but he still got all kinds of horrible injuries that cut his Olympia reign short by a few years. You can't go heavy all the time without getting hurt, because our connective tissues just can't take that kind of abuse forever. Something's gotta give sooner or later, because human beings are not machines. On the other hand, if you go light all the time, you can't grow, either.
Personally, I'm a proponent of volume training. Hit each muscle with a few different exercises, each from different angles, for plenty of sets and reps. I have seen this type of training work very well, not only for my clients, but for hundreds, or I should probably say thousands, more I have watched at Gold's over the years. A lot of bodybuilders at Gold's tried these one-set routines and quit because the results were disappointing. They started losing shows instead of winning. Finally, I will say this about the program you described, if, in fact, you described it correctly. Training the whole body three times a week works fine for beginners, but once you have been lifting for over a year, you generate a lot more intensity in the gym. That's when you really need to start splitting the body up into different parts and training on a split routine. I can't see an advanced trainer getting any kind of results from hitting the whole body three times a week. It's just too much area to cover at once. That's my take on it.
I have a pretty high-stress job working in customer service and deal with angry people on the phone all day long. I was in really good shape, but since I started this job almost a year ago, my physique has gotten much worse. I still train hard in the gym, but it's hard to forget about work and I even have trouble sleeping. It's clear I need to find a new job and I am working on it, but in the meantime, do you have any suggestions on how I can reduce some of the stress and start looking like my old self again?
You hit the nail on the head when you said you know you need to find a new job. High stress jobs are unhealthy, as stress has been proven to be linked to heart disease, hypertension and ulcers, and it even makes you more likely to get deadly diseases like cancer. It's worse for anyone trying to be a bodybuilder. If you can't relax, you are continually tense and uptight, and you can't sleep. Sleep is absolutely essential if you are to recover and grow from your workouts. There are plenty of bodybuilders who resort to either over-the- counter or prescription sleeping pills, and even in some cases, recreational drugs or alcohol, to help them get to sleep at night. This is a very bad idea, as all these things, aside from being habit-forming, will negatively impact the quality of your sleep.
There are some supplements available to help you relax, such as kava kava and various herbal teas. Many people also find things like meditation and yoga to be very helpful. But the bottom line is that you have to find a different job. I know firsthand what I'm talking about. For years I worked as an engineer and was a team member on several high-budget government projects. You want to talk about stress? Something goes wrong with a $20-million airplane and all of a sudden they're looking at you to blame! The money was great, but at some point I had to ask myself if it was really worth it for my peace and sanity. I left and never looked back and my life since then has been a lot less stressful.
Now, I'm paid to do what I love, to help people get in shape and feel great. I really suggest you try to find a job related to something you truly enjoy, and then it won't even feel like a job. There's an old saying that goes, "find a job doing what you love and you'll never have to work another day in your life."
You have worked with a lot of bodybuilders when they were hungry amateurs trying to turn professional, and a lot of the same guys once they turned pro and were competing for big bucks in the Arnold Classic and Olympia shows. I'm curious: Did most of these guys train harder before they turned pro, after, or did you not see much of a difference?
There is no blanket answer to that, as it all depends on the individual you are talking about. Some of the guys stayed hungry well into their pro careers. A couple got lazy, but picked up their intensity again when they saw their placings fall. A couple of guys had serious personal problems that made it impossible for them to concentrate in the gym.
Turning pro changes a man, there's just no way it can't. It's even more apparent when the man starts making a lot more money than he ever has before, through contest winnings and endorsement contracts. That can make a man complacent and he stops busting his tail in the gym. But all my clients know I don't take that crap for a minute. My attitude, and everyone at Gold's knows this, is that if you want to train hard and improve, come see me. If not, please don't waste my time and yours. There are no exceptions to this. I am in a position where I don't have the time to train every single person who wants to work with me, so I only want to work with clients who are very serious and dedicated to achieving their goals.
My clients tend to train noticeably harder when they are with me than when they aren't, because they don't want to disappoint me by not giving their all. I go to all of my bodybuilder clients' shows and support them 100 percent, so I ask that they give me 100 percent in the gym. It's as simple as that, and it doesn't matter if they are getting ready for the Orange County or the Mr. Olympia. If you are my client, you will train as hard as you can under my watch.
|
|
Performance Nutrition 