“Variety is the mother of enjoyment.”
–Benjamin Disraeli
The crux of Rachel’s eminently successful bodybuilding philosophy is variety – in training, in diet, in everyday life!
“By constantly changing my workouts, I am able to keep my muscles off balance. I shock them so they can’t adapt to a constant stress, and they are forced to grow larger and stronger.”
“There’s nothing new about the idea of injecting maximum variety into bodybuilding workouts,” Rachel McLish told me with a smile that would melt the heart of the most jaded journalist.
“The human body adapts very quickly to any external stimulus – high reps, low reps, heavy weights, light weights, high-fat foods, low-fat foods, varying sleep patterns, different types of aerobic workout. It even adapts to certain kinds of makeup, shampoo and hair conditioners.
“Muscles grow larger and stronger when they are stressed with a heavier weight than they are accustomed to handling, but they quickly adapt to this new weight. They also adapt to a particular workout. By constantly changing my workouts, however, I am able to keep my muscles off balance. I shock them so they can’t adapt to a consistent stress and they’re forced to grow larger and stronger. I never allow my muscles to adapt to a set typeof workload. Essentially, I follow a sort of nonroutine routine,’ and it works!”
Like most bodybuilders, Rachel has a set off-season goal – to improve her overall proportion, symmetry and muscle mass. “Then during my pre-cycle,” she says, “I put the finishing touches on my physique, sharpening and polishing all the new muscular development I’ve acquired during my off-season training. I’m talk-ing about the finest and most minute details of muscular definition that I can’t pay attention to in the off-season.
Off-Season vs Precontest Variants
“Prior to competition I’ll train six days per week, but in the off-season I’ll work out only four days a week, and I’ll postpone a scheduled training ses-sion for a day when I can’t give a workout 100% of my energy and concentration. Off-season I’ll train each muscle group – even calves and abdominals – twice per week, because I can recuperate best on such a four-day split routine. Without full recuperation, it’s difficult to add muscle mass to your physique.
“In my precontest phase I still work most of my muscle groups twice per week. The exception is abdominals, which I train up to six days a week. I rest a little between sets prior to a Competition, but I don’t really monitor my rest intervals that closely. Speed isn’t an intensity factor in my work-outs, because I prefer to obtain my exercise intensity from using heavy
Weights with strong mental concentration during each set.
“On days when I have things to do am feeling especially energetic I’ll zip through a workout. At other times, however, I prefer a more moderate pace that allows me to get optimally psyched up for each set. Then my workouts take a bit longer.”
Rachel’s training methods and workouts are fairly similar during both cycles, but she feels markedly stronger in the off-season due to
these three factors:
1) Her diet is more relaxed, so she has more energy than when following
a precontest diet.
2) She isn’t doing as much aerobic training, which also improves the amount of energy she has available for each workout.
3) She is not as concerned with injuring herself, so she’s able to all-out with heavy poundages virtually every workout.
“Prior to a competition, I tend to hold back in my training,” Rachel revealed. I don’t need joint or muscle injury when a contest is coming up, and I feel that this is when I’m most prone to injury. Most bodybuilders with whom I’ve talked to also feel that they’re most susceptible to injury when their energy reserves are low close to a show.”
Sets, Reps per Bodypart
I asked Miss Olympia about the total number of sets she does for each bodypart. She answered, “Except for my abdominals, I so basically the same number of sets for each muscle group prior to a competition as I do in the off-season. For large muscle groups (back, chest and thighs) I’ll do twelve sets, for triceps nine, and for bi-ceps and calves six. I hit abs with ten-twelve total sets each workout in the off-season and twelve-fifteen prior to a contest.
“Generally speaking, I do less total sets for a bodypart than most serious women bodybuilders, but I am sure that my intensity within each set is higher than average. I always try to make every set count.
“My thighs and calves come up very easily, but I still do plenty of high-intensity sets for them to achieve hard-ness and detail. Many women with big thighs mistakenly stop exercising them. They’d be better off training them hard, because you must keep overloading them to give the thighs shape and quality. I just work my legs with higher-than-normal reps – 12-15 in the off-season and 15-20 prior to a contest – to kept them from becoming too massive.
“My forearms also respond quickly, particularly because I play a lot of racquetball. Rather than increasing the reps on my forearm exercises, how-ever, I do fewer total sets, normally no more than three or for each workout. So, you can see that you have alternative ways to treat strong muscle groups – perform higher reps, or do less total sets.”
Rachel normally keeps her reps – except for thighs and abdominals – in the 6-8 range in the off-season and up to 10-12 prior to competing. And, during the workouts we’ve taken together, I’ve observed that virtually every repetition is of very high quality. At times she’ll do forced reps, while at others she does a lot of burns to push her muscles past the point of failure. These burns are partial reps with a range of motion only six to eight inches, usually in peak contraction.
“Peak contraction reps and burns are particularly effective for building muscle mass and quality,” the current World Professional Champion added. “But in harmony with my philosophy of injecting a maximum degree of variety into my training, this also changes from workout to workout. Going past the point of normal muscular failure with forced reps or burns is fine, but I certainly don’t push all my sets that far. Remember, keep your muscles off-balance, and they’ll keep growing.
“I also like to do supersets, especially when there is a time factor and I have to get a workout over as quickly as I can without sacrificing intensity. I particularly like to perform pre-exhaustion supersets. Typical pre-exhaustion exercise groupings include side-laterals with overhead presses, cable crossovers with decline presses and leg extensions with squats or leg presses.”
The Most from Technique
I’ve noticed that Rachel injects variety into her workouts not only through choice of exercises, but also through uniquely different methods of doing each exercise. When I asked her to explain why she performed each exer-cise differently, her answer was typi-cally insightful and clear.
“The reason can be boil down to three words – muscle contraction specificity. You must do a movement a particular way if you want to achieve a predetermined appearance of the muscle it affects.
“If you place your feet wide apart as you do squats, for example, it stresses the inner thigh muscles, particularly higher up, while a narrow stance hits the central section and outer sweep of the quads. Doing squats with your toes angled outward places stronger stress on the vastus medialis muscle on the inside of your thigh just above the knees. Done with your toes pointed slightly inward, squats stress the lower and outer sections of your thighs.
“Such performance variations exist for virtually every exercise, and do every possible variation in my work-outs, particularly prior to a competition. Then, I want to hit a muscle group from every possible angle to promote complete development. At other times, I proceed in accordance with my muscle contraction specificity principle – I most frequently use the performance variation of an exercise that stresses the part of a muscle that most needs additional development.”
I asked Rachel how she earned all these exercise performance variations.
“I’ve learned over more than six years of steady training and experimentation exactly which method hits every part of my physique, just as every aspiring woman bodybuilder must. I used to spend up to 15 hours a day working in the Sport Palace of Harlingen, Texas and I didn’t want to become bored. So I filled my unoccupied time by experimenting with every possible exercise on each available piece of equipment.
“Very few women realize that I have so many years of training and learning behind me. All the years you put into your training can yield much more when you consciously use your brain to get the most out of each exercise. Think about how you can do a movement differently to achieve a different muscle contraction specificity in the area it works, and in the long run you’ll be light years ahead of the body builders who don’t.”
I asked Rachel if she practiced ISO-Tension contraction during her pre-contest preparation phase.
“Yes, and it’s resulted in a marked improvement in my muscle quality,” she answered. “I do a high number of hard repetition muscle flexes each day, both between sets in a workout and at odd times of the day – driving my car, grocery shopping, at dinner and whenever else I think of it. I believe that any woman can harden up and gain better control of her muscles if she uses ISO-Tension consistently when peaking for a competition.”
Aerobics in Training
My last question on training was how much aerobic exercise Rachel included in her daily training schedule. She answered, “Aerobic workouts are an essential facet of my training philosophy, although it took me a while to realize their importance. Prior to my first competition, I had been teaching aerobic dance classes, and I was very tight-looking as a result. After I really got into bodybuilding, however, I did less and less aerobic training.
“When I began meeting all the champs I’d read so much about in MUSCLE AND FITNESS, I learned many new training techniques from them. This led to a series of experiments, during which I neglected my aerobics, which in turn made it more difficult to get cut up for a competition. This past year, however, I’ve gone back to doing more aerobic classes.
“During a defining phase, I increase my aerobic activity, doing at least a solid two hours of aerobics, and often up to three hours. I tend to stick to playing racquetball, taking aerobic classes, cycling and running, and of course I rotate these aerobic activities from day to day. For best results I also need variety in my aerobic sessions.”
The closer a competition, the more crucial diet becomes, but Rachel is no fanatic. “I do enough aerobic training that I never need to go under 1500 calories per day, even prior to competing. It took me a long time to understand that I have to eat to have both mass and quality onstage. And this realization has been a key factor in my improvement recently.
Peaking Through Sacrifice
“Last year I fasted a lot when preparing for competition. I lost all my bodyfat this way, but I also had to sacrifice a great deal of lean body mass because I wasn’t eating enough to support a proper degree of muscle mass. I got ripped up through fasting, but I didn’t have the fullness and shapeliness of muscle mass that I need to appear at my best.”
Rachel even drinks wine during a contest preparation phase: “It’s good for relaxation, and I really enjoy quality white wines and champagne. You really don’t have to sacrifice that much in getting ready for a contest if you go about it intelligently.
“A number of bodybuilders monitor their water balances, but I like to play with mine in the days leading up to a competition. When you are on a low-salt diet all the time, your body will adapt to it and respond in an exaggerated manner by retaining a great deal of water any time you take a little salt. Having learned this, I ate a ton of salt a week before the last Olympia. I would drink a margarita and eat potato chips and pizza, and I was bloated.
“Because I was bloated with water, no one who saw me a week before the Olympia
Could believe I was entering. Then for a couple of days before the show I monitored my salt intake very closely, and my body released all of the water it had been holding. By tricking my body this way, I ended up looking very tight and muscular.”
Rachel is a closet chocoholic, but never abuses her body by eating junk food without a purpose. “I have occasional cravings,” she confessed, “and they are usually a good indication that my body requires the nutrients I crave. Yesterday I ate three scoops of chocolate ice cream, and when I reviewed my dietary notes, I saw that I consumed very little fat over the previous four days. My body was craving the fats in ice cream”
In answer to my question about supplement usage, Rachel replied, “I’m a firm believer in over-supplementation, but only in the water-soluble vitamins and minerals. I don’t supplement my diet with extra A, D, E or K, the oil-soluble vitamins, but I take in plenty of B vitamins, C and chelated minerals.”
Mental Intensity
Turning to the mental aspect of bodybuilding, Rachel told me that she has a very clear vision of how she wants her physique to ultimately appear: “Because I can visualize a part of my physique much more easily than the whole, I like to think of only one or two bodyparts. Usually, I visualize primarily those muscle groups that I feel are weak in the manner I’d like them to soon appear. When I spot a lagging bodypart, I become almost obsessed with bringing it up.
“Or I occasionally pick on something that isn’t up to par – such as my posing now – and I give it intense attention. It’s only prior to a competition that I can maintain everything at a high pitch, but then I can go at this accelerated pace only for a few weeks before faltering.”
Rachel also has a very rational approach to goal setting: “If you think of something too mind-boggling – such as winning a major international competition – you probably won’t achieve it. I’ve found it best to break my long-term goals into smaller, short-range goals.
“I used to become discouraged occasionally because I was gaining muscle mass so slowly, as the case with most women bodybuilders. Now I prefer to train for quality development rather than for pure mass because the mass will ultimately come if I follow this approach.”
This concept is similar to something Frank Zane recently told me: “Regardless of how negative something like losing a competition seems at the time, you can turn it into positive energy. A loss just gives me greater incentive to keep training hard.”
“I can agree with that,” Rachel smiled. “Losing the ‘81 Olympia was one of the best things that could have happened to me because reliving the experience has given me so much drive, enthusiasm and training energy that it’s pushed me to new heights of development. Also, an occasional loss keeps a bodybuilder from getting too cocky.
“Red Dante, my memory dynamics teacher, called this process ‘turning the dial.’ You turn a negative experience into something positive. I’m a firm believer that everything happens to you for a purpose.”
Rachel McLish’s final mental technique involves psyching herself up before each workout: “On the way to the gym I think about a variety of things that give me greater drive.
“Often good rock music will do it. At other times I get psyched up by listening to classical music or my inspirational religious cassette tapes or by thinking about my competitors and how good they are. And, I sometimes think about my parents, all they’ve done for me over the years, and how it’s now my turn to give them something back.
“All these methods work in rotation, and the variety is again important. The mind can also quickly adapt to a certain psyching stimulus and become inured to it, so you should never stick to any one psyching method.”
Assuming a Successful Pose
As hinted earlier, Rachel feels that she needs much more work on her posing. “Believe me, I haven’t begun to tap my potential. I used to dance in public, practicing for hours every day and loving every minute of it, and I’m sure I can do the same with my posing.
“For most of the year I ignore my entire routine, working instead on short series of poses. I get comfortable with moving from pose to pose – regardless of sequence – so I can look fluid onstage even if I deviate from my set routine. This way I can improvise a routine if something happens onstage to interrupt my normal program.
“One of the most exciting aspects of posing is that, as my body becomes more completely developed, I can do many poses that I couldn’t pull off previously. For example, it’s only in the past few months that I’ve been able to do a good three-quarters back shot.
“I’m careful to watch all the contestants at each show when I guest pose to pick up ideas. I was in Trinidad recently, and they posed spectacularly there, incorporating theatrics and facial expressions into their routines. Some of the things I learned there will be included in my future routines.”
As our interview drew to a close, I noticed that Rachel had thick calluses on each hand.
“I’m proud of them,” she laughed. “Many people seem to have the idea that I don’t train hard. Calluses are an integral part of bodybuilding, and they verify the fact that I train extremely hard and use very heavy weights in my workouts.”
With her unique combination of femininity and muscular development, Rachel McLish has shown how a woman bodybuilder should look. We couldn’t have chosen a better person to bear the standard of the new women’s sport.
TRAINING TIPS FROM MISS OLYMPIA
• If you feel like missing a workout, you should at least get in your car and drive to the
gym. Do five light sets and walk out; you’ll be farther ahead than if you had remained at home. Do high reps, and play on new machines as if they were toys. Sometimes this results in a great workout. If it doesn’t, go home, relax, drink a glass of wine and take up the next day where you left off.
• Be observant and open to new knowledge. I personally gain something from everyone
meet. Even if a person is a bum, he can teach me something.
• Keep a detailed training and nutrition diary. It’s the best way of making sense of the
confusing array of information and techniques that confront any bodybuilder. I write down everything – every set I do, every morsel I consume, how I look to myself, how I feel, and every other bit of info I feel might have an effect on my bodybuilding.
• I could care less what I weigh. What counts is the quality of muscular development. I’ve
weighed 118 and looked fat, and I’ve weighed 124 and been in great shape. The judges don’t weigh you, so your weight is irrelevant. To be a winner you have to keep the muscle mass up and the fat down.
• Don’t be afraid to sweat. I like the feeling of sweating during an all-out workout. Sweating is very good for you – it cleanses your body of toxins from the inside out. There’s nothing unfeminine about sweat during a bodybuilding workout.
–Rachel McLish
Richard Ravalli is Associate Professor of History at William Jessup University. He thanks the students in his History of Fitness and Physical Culture course for assisting with this transcription.
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Love how she keeps it intense but balanced and smart training without overdoing it!
Absolutely love how she pushes hard but still keeps the training controlled, focused, and super effective!
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