AGE 22
WEIGHT 225
HEIGHT 5'9
YEARS OF TRAINING: 6
METHODS I HAVE TRIED: (comments) rating out of ten
Bill Pearl Style (One Year) : (As beginner 10) 6- As a beginner his programs are excellent however the intensity is not high enough for continued growth
Arnold Style (One Year) : (If Cycled on/off every 2 weeks: 8) 5- Impossible not to over train
Darden Style (One Year) : (First three months 9) 8- The major drawback is a gain of fat do to high calorie intake
Mentzer Style (One Year) : (First five months 10+) 10- HIT/HD The best style for gaining size and strength for the majority of people I'VE TRAINED WITH due to the fact that many people don't have enough time to devote to their workouts. If u are HARDCORE go the multi-set way, with intensity of course.
Periodization (One Year) : (50 lbs Bench Program 10) 8-Periodization is ok for gains however it is excellent for achieving a specific strength goal, say adding 50 lbs to your bench
Louie Simmons (Six Months) His methods are deranged and weird, yet extremely successful, for both the juiced and clean lifters. If you have platued then you definitely should try his methods. The man is a genius.
The reason I created this page is to share the knowledge I've gained with others and gain further knowledge in the process. Anyone who has been on the web knows that the quality of information is much higher than one finds in any muscle mags and better than many trainers charge for. This is not to say all trainers are bad, I know a few excellent one's in my towns gym, however just as in every business there are qualified trainers and there are those you should avoid. Most of the time (provided you know how to properly do most exercises) you would be much better on your own. This page may be ugly as I don't have much time to learn HTML- although so far it's easy and I would rather write articles on lifting than spend my time trying to find the right look to the page, so if you only enjoy the pretty things in life stay away from this page. My 2 cents
My basic philosophy is that brief & intense exercise + adequate rest = Muscle Growth. I disagree with pure Hit'ers that only one set should be done to failure. In most of the cases I've seen people spend too much time worrying that they are overtraining. To overtrain to the point where no gains will be made one must be in extreme overtraining. This is easier to reach however if one is restricting their caloric intake. If a muscle is stressed even when underfed and overtrained it will grow. I was told this by a doctor who specialized in muscle physiology. This doesn't mean it will grow as fast as a nourished rested muscle but the muscle itself WILL grow. As to this comment I have received a couple of e-mails some in disbelief and some were amazed that maybe Mentzer isn't always 100% correct. Anyway I checked my source and this is true in pertaining to beginners. A beginning lifter can overtrain and under nourish them selves while still growing muscle. An advanced trainer is more likely to suffer a stagnation or even a loss of gains in this situation. The fact is that many lifters are undertraining they sit around worrying if one or two heavy workouts a week is too much- it isn't NEVER go below three days a week. YOU WILL UNDERTRAIN. If your workout can't progress on three workouts a week take a break try lighter weights and higher volume or even take two weeks off from lifting my gains always shoot up after my one week vacation in June. And let's not have WW III here HIT, don't, but come on there is more to lifting then Mentzer. And yes I know he was the only Mr. Universe with a perfect score - but if you look at his original workouts they were about one hour at a time four days a week. Now everyone thinks this is the right amount to be in the gym and Mentzer says two big lifts every few weeks, the guys has gone way to far.