A bunch of us went down to the gym one time to watch Reg Park work out. He was in town doing a show. We lined up along the wall with our eyeballs hanging on our cheeks and tried not to look too jealous when he started lifting.
Park walked in looking more like Hercules than Herc did. He was weighing around 235 and it all bulged. Every time he moved he looked like he was coming through his skin.
The kid standing beside me poked me with his elbow. “Check the arms,” he whispered.
I poked him back and whispered from the corner of my mouth like they do on T.V.
“Okay,” I said. “You keep the motor running.”
It went over his head. “Watch his arms,” he said. “Watch how he works them.”
Park warmed up his lower back with some prone-hyperextensions.
“He may not do too much arm stuff,” I said. “He was saying he just wanted to get his weight back up a few pounds.”
“On his arms,” the kid said. “On his arms. Watch!”
Park finished warming up and started on his legs. He loaded on weight till the bar bent slightly and did squats like his life depended on them. He had everybody pushing with him on the way up.
He finished squatting and did some front squats and a few calf raises.
“Now his arms,” the kid said. “Watch!”
Park did a few heavy bench presses. He bounced the big bar off his chest and jammed it up like a rocket.
“He spends a lot of time on his arms,” the kid said. “Forty-five minutes on the biceps and forty-five on the triceps.”
“Gee,” I said. “That’s an hour and a half. I shoulda brought a lunch.”
Park started his back work. He did power cleans and heavy bent forward rowing.
“He’s saving his arms for the last,” the kid whispered. “Watch!”
Park took the bar off the squat rack and did some presses behind the neck. You could see everybody’s lips moving when they added up the weight on the bar. It’s kind of discouraging. Park presses more weight than most guys squat with.
“Now,” the kid said. “Watch!”
Park picked up his towel and walked into the back.
I looked at my watch. “That took him an hour and four minutes. I think he’s finished.”
The kid curled up the corner of his lip. “Don’t be a nut. He hasn’t done any arm work yet.
Just wait.”
We waited.
The talking died down and I listened carefully. “That’s it,” I said. “He’s having a shower.”
“He hasn’t finished yet,” the kid protested. “He can’t be having a shower.”
“Well, if he ain’t,” I said, “He better lay off the coffee. That’s a helluva lot of water running back there.”
“Gee,” the kid said. “He didn’t do no arm work at all.”
“He did some,” I said.
“Not like he’s supposed to. All he did was leg and back stuff.”
“So what?”
“I thought he trained hard.”
“He does.”
“Legs and back? What the heck kinda training is that?”
“That,” I said, “is training for gaining. Advanced training.”
If you’ve been following this series, you’re just about ready for some advanced training yourself. Before we get into that, though, let’s review what we’ve already covered. Every item is important. Pick up some back issues if you’re just starting. You’ll slow down your progress if you miss anything.
We’ve covered the time factor. Keep your workouts short if you’re a beginner or trying to gain weight. Long, tedious workouts won’t help yet unless you’re a real easy gainer.
The guys who use long workouts are extremely advanced men. Even then they’re not intended for pure weight gains. Most of the long programs you read about are intended to define bodies that are already bulky. Don’t confuse building up with sharpening up. We’ll get into long programs eventually, but by then you’ll be big and you’ll be ready for them.
Training is a progressive thing. Any nut can sit down and list a pile of exercises. That doesn’t make it a program. Some of the programs you see advertised in other magazines and supposedly followed slavishly by hordes of grateful Samsons are right out of the authors’ dreams. That’s one of the troubles with claiming pupils who won’t even talk to you on the street.
There are essential rules for bodybuilding and you’ll get them in this magazine. Don’t be stampeded by a lot of commercial baloney.
I was talking to one of the big Mr. Winners one time. I had a program written down that I’d gotten out of a magazine. I asked him what he thought of it.
“Too long,” he said. “Way too long.” He looked at it again. “Is this your program?”
“Mine,” I said. “It’s supposed to be yours.”
He grinned. “Pal, if I spent that long working out I’d be in real trouble.”
“You mean you wouldn’t gain?”
“No, no,” he said. “I mean my old lady’d quit her job and I’d have to look for one.”
We’ve covered the importance of extreme concentration in your training. You’ve got to think about it. Keep your mind fixed firmly on whatever exercise you’re doing at the moment. You’re working at awfully reduced efficiency if you don’t.
A lot of guys got good results from concentration curls. You’ll get good results from every exercise if you concentrate the same way on them.
We’ve talked about auto-suggestion. You should be getting pretty good at it by now. Keep using it. Set goals for yourself. Use it to focus your subconscious on these goals. Use it as a stimulus for each workout.
You see a lot of self-improvement courses advertised in the back of pulp magazines. Most of the ads feature heavy black print and some nut with eyes like a bill collector jabbing his finger at you. The improvement offered covers a varied field, ranging all the way from how to make a million bucks peddling junk around the neighborhood to cutting up big with the opposite sex.
The courses all have two things in common. They’re all expensive and they all push autosuggestion in one form or another. You can get better results for the price of a Strength and Health and buy yourself a good protein supplement with the money you save.
We’ve touched very lightly on the value of the squat. Squats are still the big thing in a gaining program. Push them hard for overall bulk and power.
You don’t need to take my word about squats. Ask anyone in the muscle business. They’ll all tell you the same thing. More men developed more muscle on squats than all the other exercises put together.
You’re going to be doing a lot of squats in this series. Make up your mind right now that you’re going to like them and get good at them.
Finally, we’ve covered the need for a high protein, high calorie food supplement. You’ve got to boost your intake. You won’t gain weight on fresh air and apricots. Keep taking the supplement as outlined, or something very much like it. You can change some of the minor ingredients or the flavoring to suit yourself, but make sure you take the basic drink in sufficient quantities. Two quarts a day is about the minimum for really big gains.
A lot of beginners are staggered when they see how much food a big lifter stows away. Doug Hepburn used to pack food around with him like he was on a camping trip.
Doug was the first of the super-heavies. He revamped everybody’s concept of size and strength. A lot of people thought Doug was born that way. He wasn’t. He built up from an average looking kid into a World Champ. He trained on heavy exercises and enough food for a boy scout camp.
We’re going to gradually convert the workout into more advanced forms. The purpose will still be shapely bulk and power. These are the qualities you should be striving for at this stage. You’ll just hinder yourself if you start scratching around for definition or peaked biceps too soon.
We’ll be concentrating on the big muscle groups. That means very heavy leg and back work. And despite what commercial interests have claimed for him in the past, this is the type of training that built Reg Park. This is the type of training that builds bodies like Grimek and Pearl.
I had a lesson in the value of leg and back work over twenty years ago. Unfortunately, I was too dumb at the time to learn anything from it.
I was in the Navy, and a real bug on bodybuilding. I figured upper body work was the thing and that knotty biceps were the absolute end. I used to train my upper body all day and half the night. I weighed about 165 at 6 feet tall, and the only thing about me that wasn’t knotty was my eyebrows.
I got shifted to a small ship for a few months. The only thing to exercise with was a solid barbell too heavy for anything but squats and dead lifts. I figured I couldn’t train properly anymore but I could still show off a bit, so every other day I used to wander out on deck where the weight was and talk a couple of the crew into hoisting it on my back for me. Then I’d do as many squats as I could with it. If the men hung around long enough, I’d do a second set. After that I’d do dead lifts for a little while. All I tried to do was gradually increase the reps.
The only other exercise I did was a few dips between some pipes in the drying out room.
My body weight started to climb. So did my strength. I figured it was the Navy beans or the salt air or something.
A few months later I got shifted to a joint where they had a nice complete gym and I could do my old upper body routines again. That ended the squats and dead lifts. It ended the progress, too. And it stayed ended for a few years until I found out about leg and back work.
You don’t need to join the Navy to learn this. Keep pushing the high rep breathing squats, and next month we’ll start the first of the more advanced bulk and power programs.
Great article!
Sometimes the truth hurts, but it binds us to reality.
He had a wonderful way of writing didn’t he Rick? Undoubtedly one of the better ones!
Frustratingly, I’m on the left side of the normal distribution curve for muscle mass potential , the side that exercise science categorizes as a “low-to-non-responder to resistance training.” In my case, it being about 20 lbs of lean mass added rather than the 30-40 lbs of lean which the average-gened guy beginning when he’s finished puberty can add, naturally, with three to four consecutive years of consistent progressive training, adequate nutrition, and adequate recovery.
Of course, I was unaware of such facts and of my own lower maximum mass potential when I began training at age fifteen in 1971. Consequently, I approached the basic program of primarily compound exercises I began with zealously and expectantly.
Squats, straightegged deadlifts, overhead presses, and bent-over rows, all with barbell, were four of the exercises, along with six other compound or isolation movements, comprised the program. As weeks, months, years, then decades passed, I advanced, added and/or swapped exercises, adjusted volumes (both rep ranges and number of sets) and intensities and frequencies, and densities (time between sets).
However, heavy-as-possible-for-at-least-five-rep-set squats, straightlegged deadlifts, and overhead presses, along with pull-ups (pronated, “palms facing-away”) replacing bent-over-rows, always remained my core program. I’ve variously used dips, bench presses, incline presses, bent-over rows, front squats, hack squats, leg presses, shrugs, calf raises, crunches, lateral dumbbell raises, back extensions, leg curls, glute-ham raises, chin-ups, arm curls, tricep extensions, et cetera through my five decades of bodybuilding, but – – those four were always my core program.
This year, as I turn age 68, those four are still my core program. I’ve used them for over fifty-two years. My only significant change has been deliberately and permanently increasing my reps-per-set to a minimum of twenty for squats and SDLs since turning age 60, pull-ups to a minimum of ten per set.
Although regularly, consistently squatting and deadlifting (always weekly doing straightlegged but also doing regular deadlifting for periods of months throughout the decades) never got me the size and mass in my legs nor the overall bodyweight which they often give average-gened guys who stick with training for at least three years, I attribute the level of fitness and the muscle mass I did get and do have, to doing them. The demands they place on almost the entire body is effective for stimulating overall growth and for developing fitness, even for a low-responder like me.
Whenever someone asks me for a beginner program, I suggest squats, SDLs, either pull-ups or bent-over rows, overhead presses, and dips; three full-body workouts for six months then twice per week thereafter. It’s productive, practicable, a program the average, PED-free guy with normal life responsibilities and time-limitations is more likely to sustain long-term since it’s minimalistic so less apt to become overwhelming and dreaded.
McCallum knew this and so did they all during the pre-anabolic-steroid era. Basic compound exercise programs with squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, and rows or pull-ups, along with cleans, dips, and bench presses, at the core comprised their mass and strength tactics. Physique competitors often ramped up exercise variety (and volumes) before contests, but, most of the time, their workouts consisted of those basics.
‘Cuz, as iron history and physical culture since the 1890s demonstrates, it’s those basics which give the results.
Haha Joe we both share the same position on the bell curve. I distinctly remember training with an eventual pro bodybuilder and being shocked at their long rest periods, relaxed sets and light weights whereas I was killing myself on 20 rep squats for 1/15th of their gains. I too share a core set of exercises which my workouts revolve around. Similar to you its some form of squatting motion, a pressing motion overhead, a rowing motion and a push movement (like bench press/dips etc.).
As you note – these movements largely made up the ‘old school’ and, judging by your own experience – they last the test of time! out of interest, how do you stay injury free through all of this? I use club swinging to protect my shoulders but I’ve recently begun using a bench blaster to allow me do heavy presses injury free. Likewise very heavy squats now have me using knee straps. Sometimes I feel like the bionic man!
LOLOL…
I’ll break my reply across this and a consecutive comment.
Yep…tis why I eventually had to resign to simply smiling at the stereotypical “you’re not working hard enough/you have to want it bad enough!/you need to eat more, do more, sleep more, take this supplement, use this program” advice from many middle-of-the-curve-gened guys through my decades.
One of my six kids discovered she liked powerlifting then did physique competition (she has my genes for self-discipline and perseverance, but has my wife’s genetics for building strength and muscle). My daughter (age 30) and her husband know me and how hard I’ve worked for decades at bodybuilding, during any workout and also overall in nutrition and resting, and she’s observed, “Dad, if a guy with average genetics worked like you for as many years as you, he’d have twice your muscle mass doing half the amount of work you’ve put into it!”
Reminds me of a tale. When I was age 22, after I’d been consistently training for almost six consecutive years, a boyfriend of one of my sisters asked if he could train his legs with me in my home gym. He hoped to increase his strength for jumping for playing basketball. Phil was 19, had only ever done the typical moments of curling or benchpressing a barbell so never seriously trained.
At that point, I’d reduced my programs to my own version of high-intensity; coincidentally, I’d been recovering from a hip issue so had temporarily suspended back squatting and was doing one work set of leg presses (on one of those vertical leg press units which York sold) immediately followed by one set of crossed-arms front squats. I had reached my genetic mass and strength limits by that year; twice per week, I was then leg pressing 670 lbs for 7 reps, front squatting 240 lbs for 7 reps, at 10-12% bodyfat bodyweight of 176 lbs at 5’8″. Which hadn’t translated into even average-sized quads for me and my 7.875″ ankles, but did demonstrate my determination and perseverance since I had been so weak when I began bodybuilding at age 15 that I could barely handle 40 (FORTY) pounds for a set of 8 barbell squats, and a year later when buying that leg press, began with 120 lbs on it.
So, Phil begins training with me twice per week. In two months, he progressed on the leg press from 250 lbs to nearly 600 lbs; and, on the front squat from 100 lbs to 200lbs. Meaning, that in two months, he achieved what had taken me six years, lol
Yep, he was on the RIGHT-hand side of the curve, lol. Proportionately thick ankles and wrists, solid V-shaped skeleton, long muscle bellies everywhere, naturally good calves, standing under 5’6″. Another of those bastards probably gifted with the RR variant of ACTN3, lots of Type-IIs, and plentiful androgen receptors, lol Uninterested in bodybuilding and having accomplished building leg strength, he quit training soon afterward. I’ve always suspected he could have become another Danny Padilla if he’d had the interest.
Just, a personally-experienced example evidencing the truth that, ultimately and exasperatingly, it’s genetics, genetics, genetics.
…part two…
I’ve experienced myself, and have noticed other over-age-50 lifelong ironheads express too, that it’s exactly what you’re doing, adapting to our inevitable physical deteriorations by whatever measures necessary. I suspect that most of us lifelongers each becomes more and more bionic in order to continue training as the sand slips from our hourglasses.
My job as a self-employed roofer/builder accelerated and compounded my wear-and-tear; due to injuries incurred on my jobs, both rotator cuffs and a low-back facet joint were irrevocably damaged about fifteen years ago, eventually forcing me not only to retire from the job but also forcing me to permanently quit straight bar pressing, overhead, inclined, or flat; and forcing me to reduce my max poundages for parallel-or-lower squatting.
For you, the knee wraps, the bench blaster, the rotator cuff exercise.
For me, increasing rep ranges per set, omitting a particular exercise in a workout on a day the bodypart feels vulnerable, using lighter poundages in a workout than planned, using less volume than planned, adding extra recovery days, replacing full range with partial range on some movements, using a lifting belt when my lower back issue aggravates (I quit using a belt for normal workouts, even for squats and overhead presses, decades ago), using knee supports when my “theater knees” flare.
There’ve been weeks when my schedule micronized to three workouts comprised of a light set of squats, a light set of overhead dumbbell presses, a bodyweight set of pull-ups, a bodyweight set of dips, and a bodyweight set of back extensions.
Instead of the grinding-it-out-to-complete-the-goals-scheduled-for-this-workout I did for my first forty training years, I adapt each workout to what I recognize I can do that day; I still schedule and set goals, but am now willing to gear down and let those goals go if I realize forcing through will simply result in me injured and sidelined (and, as you likely are learning, injuries take longer to heal as we age).
It does become a matter of “work-arounds” and “can’t do this so do that”. I still push myself, but am now acutely aware that I’m NOT the man I was at 21, or 40, or even at age 55. The pushing has to be done cautiously now.
Some bodybuilders of the past spoke about “instinctive training” (which, if even true, I suspect had more to do with their elite genetics’ ability to respond and grow on almost any damned program more than some subconscious, metaphysical-like awareness). For me, “instinctive training” equals “what I automatically know to do during a given workout based on decades of experience with and observation of my physical capabilities and responses”.
A key for me has been changing my mindset, which, as we lifelong obsessive-compulsive iron addicts know, ain’t an easy thing. I’ve had to shift from that “pursue my full genetic potential” mindset.
That initial years’ “die-or-die to achieve my maximum mass” and the subsequent decades’ “do-or-die to maintain my maximum mass” had to yield to today’s “accept my reduced capacity and that doing something is better than nothing”. I can’t be 176 lbs at 10-12% bodyfat with 15.625″ arms on 6.5″ wrists ever again. But I can have a quarter-glassful and be 159 lbs at 10-12% BF with 14.5″ arms now – – which is more than I’d have if I quit doing at least something.
Hey Joe,
Your resilience and adaptive approach to bodybuilding as you navigate the challenges of age and injuries are genuinely commendable. It’s inspiring to see how you’ve maintained your passion for the iron game despite the physical setbacks you’ve encountered. Your journey is a powerful testament to the fact that while genetics play a significant role in our physical capabilities and the outcomes of our training, our work ethic and willingness to adapt are equally, if not more, crucial. I suppose the hardest thing to convey to new trainees is that this is a lifelong pursuit, and also that narrow ideas of what success looks like will set them up for failure.
The reality that genetics can set certain limits is a profound realization, yet, as you’ve beautifully illustrated, it’s not a reason to succumb to defeat. Instead, it’s an opportunity to redefine success and find new ways to pursue our passion for fitness and strength. Your strategy of adjusting workouts, embracing “work-arounds,” and focusing on what you can do, rather than what you can’t, exemplifies an insightful approach to training… and one that I’m trying to mimic through the use of straps, belts and blasters when necessary!
Your mention of “instinctive training” resonates deeply. I think that is the trick rather than some esoteric idea of training without a plan in mind. The best sessions for me are always those that are like jazz… moving and responding based on what happened before. There’s some very special about being wise enough to know if/when to push harder or to find substitutes.
The shift in mindset from pursuing maximal mass to accepting and working within your current capabilities is a powerful lesson and something the industry continues to avoid as it caters towards the teens and 20 year old trainees. As well as the PED athletes. Elsewhere here you mentioned the beauty of physical culture as a term… I can’t help but wonder how the industry would look if it was more about lifelong physical culture and less about aesthetics. There’s a great cartoon I saw on the Ironhistory forum of an aging bodybuilder with saggy skin and a pouchy stomach polishing his old Olympia medals. There’s more to this lark than a strict body ideal… there’s fun to be had training at every age!
“….The best sessions for me are always those that are like jazz… moving and responding based on what happened before….”
I’m also a lifelong guitarist, with blues and jazz proclivities, so, your analogy is perfect!
And, agreed. While “perfect physique” goals are fine, and, especially for beginners, can serve to sustain motivation, in the long term of a lifetime, I think it’s not only realistic but far more beneficial to, as you precisely stated, redefine one’s goal as we age.
While one’s “glory days” were significant while they were happening, and certainly fun to reminisce, I see it as more important for myself to focus on what and where I am in the “now”. Aside from forming part of the experience from which I draw on today to continue training, my being able to squat, overhead press, deadlift, and dip those heavier poundages thirty, twenty, ten years ago does nothing directly for me today; rather, what I can handle in those exercises now is what, today, directly affects my fitness and health, both physical and psychological, therefore my quality of life.
Likewise, I muse at times regarding the effect it might have had on society if what McFadden, Calvert, Hoffman, Weider, and Schwarzenegger ostensibly promoted (despite their commercial motives and the willful ignorance or outright hypocrisy of the latter three concerning PEDs), bodybuilding as primarily Physical Culture for health and fitness, is what the industry had become, rather than “the most aesthetic near-corpse on the posing platform” into which it’s degenerated.
And, agreed…sure, plenty o’ days, we think for a moment, “Damned, I wish I didn’t have a workout today” and/or, “I really want to eat this ENTIRE pie my wife baked, not merely this thin slice!” But, overall, the process itself, the training and the nutritional control, is part of the fun for me. And, yeah – – that fun can last a lifetime; adjusted and downscaled age-and-debilitations-appropriately, but nevertheless, FUN!
(I apologize for misspelling “Heffernan” in another of my Comments recently. No excuses, since your name is clearly bannered.)