SouthernLord's Blog

There is another way to guarantee bigger, fuller, more powerful arms, and here it is.

The number one reason why men start training with weights is to have bigger and more muscular arms. Sure, some guys also want thicker chests or trimmer midsections; nevertheless, big arms are also high on their wish list. Somehow an idea has evolved in the male psyche that big arms equals sexual prowess and overall strength. Whenever a man hits a pose to display how fit he is, he will always flex his biceps. The pose and the gesture are simply a part of our culture.

As a result the novice firmly believes that, in order to gain the big arms he so desperately wants, he must put most of his energy into exercises that hit the biceps and triceps directly. Often his entire weight- training program revolves around upper-arm exercises. Those for the back and legs are done with token weights almost as an afterthought. After all, the only bodypart that matters is the arms.

The problem with the above approach is that type of training for the arms doesn???t work. True, if the beginner puts in a great deal of work, he may in fact increase the shape of his arms. However, seldom does he add any noticeable size to them. Giving the arms priority while neglecting the other bodyparts will also result in a comical physique. Large arms on a proportioned physique are admirable, but they are not on a person with skinny legs and a flat, undeveloped back.

Another problem exists for those who only focus their training on their arms. These individuals do far too much specialized work on the arms, and in most cases, do so before a strong enough foundation has been built to handle all the substantial stress to muscles, tendons and ligaments. The result is sore elbows or shoulders or both from overtraining.

I used to visit a nice gym located just across the Mason-Dixon line in Pennsylvania whenever I was on vacation from school. One time I was on my Christmas break and I made the scenic drive north. I got to the gym early to beat the rush and found only two others working out ??? high school boys doing leg presses. By the time I finished warming up they were doing straight-bar biceps curls. With nothing else to do, in between my sets I watched these guys. They did a half-dozen curls with the straight bar, moved to the EZ-curl bar and did 6 sets, and then concluded with 10 sets of dumbbell curls. Next, they started in on their triceps: French presses, skullcrushers and pushdowns on the lat machine. I didn???t bother trying to count all the sets, but these guys did a lot of them.

I did my hour and one-half workout, and they were still hitting their triceps when I left. I must admit these individuals were determined to attain bigger arms; however, I also knew they were going about their goal the wrong way. I decided that if I ran into them again, I would break my rule about offering unsolicited advice and talk to them. I didn???t see them again until spring break. They were hammering away on EZ-bar curls when I stepped into the gym. Both wore tank tops, and I took a look at their arms to see if they had made any progress. One of them had his elbows wrapped. I concluded their arms were more shapely than before but I swear I didn???t see any increase in arm size

I went over and introduced myself. The one with the wrapped elbows was Jerry, and the other was Bert. Bert recognized my name from some articles he had read in MuscleMag and this fame was useful because it gave me some weight as an authority. At least they would listen to what I had to say. Understanding that no one of any age likes to have his program criticized, I tried to be diplomatic. ???Would you two like some advice on your program? Or are you happy with what you???re doing???? I asked. They glanced at one another, and then Jerry answered, ???We were just talking ???bout that. We???re kinda stale right now. We might switch to Scott [preacher] curls and maybe some pulley curls. Whaddaya think????

???I have a suggestion a bit more drastic in mind. I???m assuming your main goal for being here is to get bigger arms, right????

???Yeah,??? they said in unison.

???Is what you???re doing now working????

This question threw them for a moment. Then Bert replied, ???Somewhat, I guess.??? He flexed his biceps muscles. While his arms did have excellent definition, some female members in the gym had bigger arms than him.

???Where did you get your routine????

Jerry reached in his gym bag and pulled out several articles on arm development along with photos of the authors. I scanned the articles and photos, handed them back and said, ???You know, boys, these guys are very advanced bodybuilders, and the odds are they???re using steroids and most likely some other stuff. What they???re doing just doesn???t apply to you right now.???

Their mouths dropped open, and they wore stunned expressions. Bert said ???Are you saying these guys are wrong????

???Not at all. Their advice is very useful to those in the same category as they are. That category includes only very advanced and professional bodybuilders. What they recommend doesn???t fit your category. You???re beginners and need to take another approach if you want bigger arms. Now I understand that arms are the main focus of your workouts, but would you mind if your legs, back and shoulders got bigger too? Or if you put four or five inches on your chest????

Their eyes lit up as they imagined such a transformation. Jerry gushed, ???No, that would be great. We wanted to get our arms big first and then concentrate on some other bodypart ??? probably the chest.???

???Well, I???ve got some good news for you. You can get all your muscles, including your arms and chest, bigger at the same time.??? I paused as their grins grew wider. Then I dropped the bomb. ???But you???re going to drop the curls and those triceps exercises you???re doing now.???

???How are we gonna get our arms bigger if we don???t do curls???? blurted Bert.

???You???re going to get bigger arms by making your entire body bigger. Once you pack on some bodyweight and establish a solid base of strength, you can go back and use curls to shape your biceps, but doing hour after hour of both curls and triceps work isn???t getting the job done for you right now. What you need is more mass, to get bigger.???

I gave them a few moments to let this sink in and then added, ???What I???m talking about is a program built around concentrated hard work on the large muscles. The small groups such as the biceps and triceps will take a back seat for a while.???

???You talking ???bout doing heavy squats and deadlifting ??? stuff like that????

???I am.???

???But we???re not interested in a strength routine. We???re bodybuilders. We???re not powerlifters.???

???Well, being a powerlifter isn???t such a bad idea, but that???s not where you???re heading ??? unless you want to later on.??? Anticipating after our prior encounter that I may run into this pair again, I had packed some old Strength & Health magazines in my gym bag. First I showed Bert and Jerry some photos of Tommy Kono and Bill March when they won Mr. Universe titles in conjunction with the Olympic-lifting world championships. ???Great upper-arm development, don???t you think????

???Yeah, I think so,??? admitted Bert. Jerry nodded agreement.

???Neither of them did any bodybuilding at all. They were champion Olympic weightlifters. They got their amazing arm development from doing heavy overhead presses, jerks and pulls ??? no curls whatsoever.???

???That???s amazing,??? muttered Bert.

I opened another magazine and showed them a photo of Phil Grippaldi flexing his huge triceps. ???Here???s another national-champion Olympic lifter: Phil Grippaldi from New Jersey. His arms got so big from doing the Olympic lifts that he had to do exercises to tone them down. They were preventing him from racking his cleans.???

Jerry chuckled. ???I never heard of anybody wanting to make his arms smaller.???

???Well, he???s the only one I ever heard about.???

While they were most impressed, Bert voiced his objection. ???But I still don???t see how we???re gonna gain size on our arms by squatting.???

???How much weight have you gained since you started on this program????

They looked at one another. Then Jerry provided, ???Two to three kilograms.???

???Where do you think the additional muscle for your upper arms is going to come from? You can???t shift bodyweight from your glutes or your midsection to your arms.???

Jerry argued, ???We didn???t want to put on a lot of weight because we figured some of it would end up on our guts. And we didn???t want that.???

???I fully understand, but in order to gain size in any area of your body, you have to pack on more bodyweight. You can get stronger while staying at the same bodyweight and you can certainly shape your muscles. However, you cannot get bigger muscles. Granted, not all of the new bodyweight will be where you want it, but you have to give a little to get a lot. This strategy is how all the top bodybuilders go about adding new muscle. First, they bulk up, and I guarantee you all the added weight is not where they want it to be either. Once they get to their target bodyweight, they start to cut back and get rid of unwanted kilograms. They may gain 15 kilograms and lose all but five of them as they prepare for competition.???

???What???s the point of getting bigger if you???re just going to turn around and lose it???? contended Bert.

???Good question. In the process of getting heavier, the top bodybuilders also get considerably stronger. Their muscles, tendons and ligaments adapt to the new stress and are able to handle much heavier weights on all exercises as well as allowing the bodybuilders to sustain training at a more intense level for longer sessions. This staying power really gives these guys a big edge when the time comes to trim down, and they don???t lose all the weight they gained. They are now five kilograms heavier than they were in their last cycle.???

???I???m still not sure I understand how getting bigger will help us get bigger arms if we???re not working them hard.???

???You will be working them hard. Much harder than ever. Now for anyone to curl 225 kilograms is impossible, but both of you will be capable of shrugging that much and doing high pulls in excess of 130 kilograms in a few months. Much of the work done on those two exercises is done by the biceps and the prime movers of your upper arm ??? the brachioradialis and brachialis. If you increase your strength levels by 50 percent or more during a strength phase, when you come back and start in on more specific exercises for your arms, chest or any other bodypart, you???re going to be able to use more weight than before. How much are you using for your straight-bar curls????

???40 kilograms,??? said Bert. ???For 15 reps.???

???All right. Let???s say you work hard and increase your bodyweight and add weight to all the primary lifts by a considerable margin ??? maybe to where you???re doing twice as much in the high pull and shrug as when you started out, and to where you increase your squat by a 45 kilograms and your bench press by 20. When you come back to the straight-bar curls, you???ll be able to use a great deal more weight than before. How would your biceps respond to using 60 rather than 40????

Their faces beamed at such a prospect ??? curling an Olympic bar with two 20 kilograms plates.

???The same notion applies to your triceps. If you really work your flat benches, incline benches and weighted dips as you pack on bodyweight, I can assure you that your arms are going to grow because your triceps are going to grow.??? The two made eye contact with one another. Bert nodded, and Jerry said ???All right. I can???t see what we have to lose by trying out your program. Lay it out.???

???First, you both have to agree to stick with it for at least two months. Second, you have to do exactly what I tell you. No more, no less. No slipping in some of your own exercises on the sly. If you do, the results will not be nearly as positive. As I mentioned earlier, you will not be doing any curls or those triceps exercises I???ve seen you do. Both French presses and skullcrushers are really stressful to your elbows. Some advanced athletes can get away by doing them, but not beginners. Instead of curls you will do chins, which I consider a great biceps exercise, that also gives an added bonus of helping you build a broad back. The only specific exercise you will do for your triceps is the straight-arm pullover. It???s not at all stressful to the elbows and hits the long head of the triceps. Still interested????

???Sure,??? said Bert on their behalf. ???Lay it on us.???
???Since you may not know how to do some of the exercises, I will go through the program with you all this week ??? today [Monday], Wednesday and Friday. Then you???ll be on your own till the end of the semester.??? They nodded in agreement, and I said ???Go do a set of crunches, or situps, and 25 back hyperextensions. We???ll start out with squats.???

On that Monday we did
full squats, 5 x 5
clean-grip high pulls, 5 x 5
bench presses, 3 x 5, 3 x 3, plus a back-off set of eight reps
chins, 4 x max
incline dumbbell bench presses, 2 x 20.

As we trained I found out these guys had already been squatting, but only with 100 kilograms. They also did some pulls in the seated lat machine. I didn???t push the numbers up but I primarily taught them how to go low in the squat. I also gave them pointers in the high pulls and bench.

Bert remarked, ???I can see where heavy benching might help get the triceps bigger and how those high pulls can help the biceps, but how do squats fit in? I mean, they aren???t connected to the arms at all.???

???Well, in a way squats are connected. Squats are included in your program because they are the very best exercise to do if you want to add bodyweight. They stimulate growth in the entire body. The squat is the key exercise in this program.???

Even though Bert and Jerry had been doing some back and leg work previously, the squats and high pulls dug deep into those large muscle groups. When I arrived on Wednesday, I found two very sore pups waiting for me. However, the soreness was like a tonic to them. They couldn???t wait to get started. I had them spend additional time warming up and then we did
incline bench presses, 5 x 5, plus a back-off set of 8 reps
light squats, 5 x 4
good mornings, 4 x 8
straight-arm pullovers, 2 x 20
weighted dips, 4 x 8.

I told them, ???You have to up your caloric intake if this program is going to work. Muscle can???t be formed out of thin air. You have to eat a lot more. Your body has to have extra fuel because you???re working a great deal harder than you were before and you need some excess to pack on bodyweight. Eat lots of small meals throughout the day and night. Drink a protein milk shake right after you complete your workout and drink another at bedtime. Many bodybuilders used to carry hard-boiled eggs around with them and would eat those eggs periodically throughout the day ??? an excellent way to maintain a positive nitrogen balance. Be sure to stretch out tonight. Stretching will help you get rid of some of your soreness.???

By Friday the soreness in their tarps and legs was gone, but the good mornings had been hell on Bert???s and Jerry???s lower back. Bert confessed he had difficulty getting out of bed the next morning. I informed him, ???That pain you feel is why good mornings are often referred to as tomorrow mornings.???

We did
full squats, 3 x 5, 2 x 3, and a back-off set of 8
flat benches, 4 x 8
shrugs, 5 x 5
straight-arm pullovers, 2 x 20
chins, four sets of as many reps as we could do and then three sets of free-hand dips.

???How are you guys doing on your diet???? I asked.

Jerry replied, ???Well, we drank a shake at the dairy bar after we finished on Wednesday but we haven???t yet put together enough money to go to the health food store and buy some protein powder. That stuff ain???t cheap.???

???I???m very aware of the cost of commercial protein powder. Here???s what you can do. Go to the supermarket and buy some dried milk. A one kilogram carton will run you about eight dollars. A cup of the dried milk will provide 32 g of protein. Add in some ice cream, milk and maybe some yoghurt, and you???ll have 50 g of protein. That amount is all your body can assimilate at one time anyway.???

???Eight dollars we can manage,??? Jerry said as he wrote in his training book. I had insisted they keep accurate records of all the exercises they did, as well as sets and reps and weight used, and they complied readily.

While they recorded their numbers for the last few exercises, I said ???Every other week, substitute bent-over rows for clean-grip high pulls. Other than that, keep every aspect of the program the same. One final rule is you have to get a lot of rest. This routine is a demanding one. If you???re feeling droopy when you get out of bed in the morning, get more rest the next night. Eat like a starving Viking. Train hard and get plenty of rest.???

I had already taught them how the progressions on the various lifts should go and I helped them set some realistic goals for the next two months. I gave them my phone number and said they could call me if they ran into any problems. Jerry called twice, mostly to brag, but also to ask about proper weight selection for a few of the exercises.

Ten weeks passed by before I saw them again. They were at the squat rack. Jerry and another gym member were spotting Bert, and I was pleased to see Bert was handling 150 kilograms for his final set of five. My pupils??? physiques had altered rather remarkably in such a short period of time. They maintained erect postures, proudly displaying bulging tarps, pecs and quads with pride.

My students were glad to see me and couldn???t wait to show me all the improvement they had made. Bert had gained seven kilograms. He increased his squat by 40 kilograms and his bench by 30. Jerry was five kilograms heavier. He had added 35 kilograms to his squat and 15 to his bench.

???How about your arms???? I asked with a grin. Their arms were noticeably larger. ???An inch bigger,??? beamed Jerry, and Bert offered, ???Almost an inch.???

???That???s great. You boys did good. Now you can go back to your beloved curls if you want. You kept your end of the deal.???

Jerry looked at Bert. They laughed, and then Jerry said ???Nah, we???re gonna stick with this routine a bit longer. You don???t get big arms doing curls.???

A brief moment to review the topic of this series. An isometric contraction occurs when the resistance to the muscle is so intense that the muscle cannot move the weight or object. Then the muscle stiffens and does not shorten. At that point, all of the energy in the muscle is used in tension and none in the form of movement. That’s how it develops the maximum amount of muscle tension.

With this system of strength training, you perform only a single maximum contraction in each exercise. Compared to a typical free-weight or machine workout, isos require very little energy. One of the main selling points for doing isos was that they weren’t fatiguing and could be done more frequently than conventional workouts. You didn’t have to rest a day between sessions, which enabled you to train six days a week if you wanted to.

The maximum contractions involve the tendons and ligaments much more than multiple reps on free weights, and they also force the nervous system to be more active. Stimulating the nervous system is of particular interest to any athlete engaging in a high-skill activity such as Olympic weightlifting and the field events in track. Enhancing the ability of your nervous system to respond more rapidly is a great asset in any sport.

Studies have concluded that moving a loaded barbell a short distance isotonically, before locking it in an isometric contraction is more productive than doing isometrics without movement. That’s not to say that pure isometrics don’t work because they’ve been proven to add strength. It’s just that isotonic-isometric exercise is better, and that’s my focus here.

There are a number of ways to incorporate isos into your current program. The best approach is usually to insert some isos into your regular routine so that there’s not much overall change right away. When I first used isometrics, I did them on my nonlifting days- Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday- and trained with free weights Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I was able to recover from the six-day regime for two reasons: The iso sessions were short and sweet- 15 minutes tops- and I always paid close attention to the heavy, light and medium concept on my lifting days. The short, condensed iso sessions didn’t tire me at all but instilled a pleasant stimulation that carried over to the following day and benefited me in the weight room.

Unless you have easy access to a power rack, however, that idea isn’t very feasible. At
York the weight room was always available, and I did a variation of that routine; I lifted four days and did a couple of isos two other days a week. I concentrated on my weaker areas in the power rack- almost always my squats. When I felt I was getting stale on them, I’d switch over and do pulls or presses for a few weeks. On occasion I’d work all three bodyparts. Generally that was in the off-season, when I didn’t have to worry about pushing my numbers up on the three competitive lifts. The change was healthy because when I cut back on the isos I had more juice for the press, snatch, and clean and jerk. Using the relatively lighter weights for a length of time also let me pay closer attention to my technique. That had long-range positive benefits.

Some situations may prompt you to give isos priority for a month or six weeks. Maybe you’re feeling burnt out with your present program, want some sort of drastic change or are simply pressed for time. Switching to an iso routine can revive your enthusiasm: Isos are new stuff and demand a type of concentration different from what you need in conventional workouts.

When Tommy Suggs was still a tax accountant, he’d drop his regular weight workouts and do an almost exclusive iso routine during tax season. He’d get up at 6 a.m., go into his garage, zip through a 15- or 20-minute session in the power rack, shower and go to his office. That permitted him to maintain his consistency of training and prepared him for the mental stress of the day. When he went back to his free-weight routine, he always felt stronger and found the rack work had helped him get rid of some nagging injuries.

I introduce my athletes to isos by having them do one position per workout. It’s the best way of becoming familiar with the technique. Once they learn it on a single position, they can more readily move to others. Contrary to what many believe, a great deal of technique is required to achieve the desired results. Isometrics is one of those exercise methods that are easy to learn but hard to master. You’ll soon discover that the more you practice, the greater the gains.

I recommend supplementing your regular routine with isos for yet another practical reason. Locking a weighted barbell into a set of pins and applying your absolute maximum effort for eight to 12 seconds isn’t fun. It’s not nearly as rewarding as pressing, pulling or squatting a heavy poundage. It’s pure work. So for most athletes, a little goes a long way.

If you do decide to start including one or two isos in your weekly program, add them sensibly. You must always be aware of balancing your isos with your other weight work. For example, it wouldn’t be wise to do isos for your legs on your heavy squat day. Too much of a good thing. But you could do one or two positions on your light and medium days. In the event that you want to do an iso position on your medium day, drop your back-off set.

Even though isos are much less demanding than full-range exercises, if you pile on too much extra work, you’ll become overtrained. It’s a delicate balance, but one that you can manage if you pay attention. Keep in mind the fundamental principle that Dr, Ziegler expounded over and over: Once you’ve attacked the attachments with maximum effort and held that contraction for a minimum of eight seconds, they cannot be made any stronger. Same rule applies if you have maxed out with low reps using free weights. So on a day you work some group extra hard , don’t add isos. Even if you???re feeling perky.

Similarly, never do more than three positions for any bodypart. I think that two are plenty for squats: bottom and middle. Seldom is the finish of the squat any problem, except when the middle is very weak. Instead of doing the finish for squats, I prefer heavy overloads inside the rack. Moving half a ton a few inches and supporting it for a long count is extremely ego boosting, and I guarantee the next time you back out of the squat rack with a heavy weight, it will feel lighter than ever. Yet there’s no reason you can’t do the finish of the squat if you so choose.

The original program suggested three press positions, three pulls, two squats and, one I really like, the “rise on toes,” an extremely effective way to strengthen the calves. Nine positions, done quickly with short rest periods between sets, and you’re finished. Articles on the subject list six or seven iso positions for just one body part. What they overlook is the principal that once you’ve exhausted the tendons and ligaments, they’re through for that session. Even though you’re hitting those attachments in a slightly different manner at the various positions, you’re still working the same tendons and ligaments. In other words, when it comes to doing isotonic-isometrics, more is not better. Less is.

What I like best about isos is that you can strengthen certain positions that are extremely difficult to work with conventional movements, such as the deep bottom of a back or front squat. It’s almost impossible to overload that position with free weights, especially if it’s relatively weak. You can squeeze under a bar in a power rack, however, and perform an iso. They’re brutal yet very productive.

Dan Dziadosz was a football player at John Hopkins who competed in Olympic lifting in the winter and spring. His pulling power had moved ahead of his leg strength, and he was having trouble recovering from his heavy cleans. That was having an adverse effect on his jerks. I had him squat twice a week , once heavy and once less heavy. On his less heavy session I’d have him drop a work set and do a low iso to finish off, but I’d have him get lower than he actually went during a front squat or clean. He’s be scrunched up in a ball and could squeeze the bar only up to the pins. What was important was that he maintained perfect position. If he hadn’t, the iso would not have been useful.

Since he was already warmed up all he did was one set of one rep where he held the bar against the pins for a 12 count (I admit that I sometimes count kinda slow). Within a month he improved his leg strength, his jerk also became solid. That was the only change he made in his leg routine.

The top of the pull is another place where isos can really help. The finish of the snatch is particularly hard to strengthen. How are you going to work it? While high pulls and shrugs are somewhat useful, the amount of weight you can use is limited if that’s a weak area. By setting the bar slightly higher than you normally pull and performing an iso there, you can vastly improve your top pull. As every Olympic lifter fully understands, pulling higher is the key to success in the snatch. Without sufficient height, all the quickness in the world isn’t going to matter.

If you decide to try high pulling positions with a snatch grip, be prepared for a humbling experience. As a general rule you have to use at least 100 pounds less on the top-end iso than you can snatch. When I was snatching 300, the most I could handle at this position was 205. And I started off using 185. My teammates at
York had the same disparity, and that’s why many lifters avoid the position. They just can’t stand being seen using such weenie weights. What they fail to understand is that if they swallow their egos and keep working that ultrahigh position, they’ll get stronger there and the new strength will carry over directly to the snatch.

An iso also works well for the top end of the clean and is much easier. Standing high on your toes and trying to keep the bar firmly against the pins with a wide grip for the required count is almost as exhausting as the low position in the front squat.

I???ve also had great success with powerlifters who are having problems with the start of the deadlift. I have them do an iso at a position several inches lower than the height of the bar when it sits on the floor. That position responds to isotonic-isometric quite rapidly and converts to the deadlift immediately- as in the very next workout.

The hardest part is maintaining perfect body positioning through the count. The lifter has to learn to keep his hips in precisely the same place for the duration, or it won’t help him. So he focuses his attention on locking his entire body in place and keeping it there through staunch determination until he hears “12.”

Unless you train alone, always have someone else do the counting (ideally, someone who likes you). Face it: If you count for yourself, you’ll always hurry, and on the demanding positions you might sound like an auctioneer. Staying with the hold for the required count is as much a matter of mental toughness as bodily strength.

Although this is common sense, I’ll say it anyway. Never do an iso before working a muscle group with any form of exercise. Be sure to warm up your target muscles thoroughly. If the isos are an extension of a session, such as a couple of pulling positions after you’ve power cleaned, then you’re fine. If you plan on using isos as your primary movement for your back on a certain day, however, make sure you prepare for the upcoming stress. A few reps with a light weight on power cleans or power snatches for pulls, light squats for the legs and dumbells for the shoulders will flush blood to those groups. A muscle that’s warmed up will respond to any exercise, including isos, more readily and be less apt to be injured.

Let’s take a look at the method I use to ensure that an athlete’s muscles and attachments are absolutely ready for the work set. Set the bar in the power rack at the position you plan for your iso. If you’re going to do a pull at midthigh, use straps for all pulling positions. Let’s say the last time you did this position, you handled 405. Today you plan on attempting 415. For your first set you use 225 and do three reps, tapping the bar against the top pins on each rep but not holding it against them at all. Your second set is 315, and you follow the same procedure on your initial set: three reps, tapping the higher pins each time. Now you’re ready for the money set, 415.

You pull the weight up against the top pins and once you’ve locked it tightly, the count begins. Remember, the bar must be eased up against the pins. If you jam it against them, you’ll end up knocking yourself out of position, and the bar will slide forward or backward or crash back to the lower pins. Steadily exert more pressure on the bar so that when you reach six or eight, you’re pulling just as hard as you can. So you do all that and achieve your goal. When you hear “12,” however, you don’t relax and let the bar drop to the lower pins. Instead, you slowly reduce the pressure on the bar and lower it in a controlled manner. Letting the bar crash to the lower pins can be traumatic to your shoulders and elbows.

In some cases, especially during the learning stage, I have my athletes follow this procedure on their work set: Pull the bar up to the top pins and tap them. Lower the bar, reset and proceed to lock the bar against the pins and hold for eight or 12 seconds. The first rep helps them get the feel of the weight and also enables them to make necessary adjustments in their mechanics. Beginners like that better than doing only a single rep on their work set. A few prefer doing two preliminary reps before locking the bar in place. Whatever helps them fix the weight snugly against the top pins and pull harder is okay with me.

If you’re planning to do more than one position for a bodypart, you need to use the three-rep idea only on the first position you use. For example, you want to do the start, middle and top for your clean pull. Once you do the three-rep tap, tap, hold at the starting position, you should be sufficiently warmed up and able to do single reps at the middle and top. If you feel more comfortable tapping the top pins once or twice before locking into the isometric contraction, though, by all means do so.

I’ve found that it’s helpful to change positions each time you do isos for a bodypart. The change doesn’t have to be big; moving the pins up or down one hole is enough. The new position, however, forces new muscles to get in the act, and that’s a good thing. Plus, the minor change adds some variety to the routine. Exception: If you know exactly where your weakest point is on some lift, you’ll want to work that position until it gets stronger.

I also like changing where you grip the bar on the pulling positions. Olympic lifters do that out of necessity since the snatch requires a much wider hand spacing than the clean. So try pulling with a very wide grip, then a bit closer and finally with a clean grip. Anything closer than that is of no value.

Which brings me back to a point I emphasized last time; the need to keep accurate records of every iso session, even if you did only one position. You need to write down where you set the top pins, how much weight you used, including warm ups and work sets, and the exact count that you held the isometric contraction. The sooner you do that, the better. Right after you complete the iso is best because you can double-check your pin placement. While you may be able to recall the count and how much weight you used later that night or the next day, the odds of remembering the pin placements for the isos are dead against you. In the event you do start changing pin placements or using different grips regularly, keeping an accurate account of what you did is even more essential.

Because all of the isos in Ziegler???s program put stress on the back- overhead presses, pulls and squats- he advocated doing something at the conclusion of the workout to decompress the spine. He suggested frog kicks, which are easy to do from the high bar on the Super Power Rack or any chinning bar. Strap onto the bar and lift your knees up to your chest or as close to your chest as you can manage. Inversion boots or inversion machines weren’t around yet, but I’m sure he’d have put his stamp of approval on both.

More next installment . . .

The Baby With the Bathwater

Five years passed before the well-kept secret slipped out that Bill March, Louis Riecke and others connected with the York Barbell Club were using anabolic steroids and that the drug, not isometric contraction, was the real reason they were all making such spectacular progress. Once on the iron grapevine, however, word spread rapidly. Soon Olympic weightlifters in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Jacksonville and
Winston-Salem found local sources for the Dianabol that would dramatically improve their totals.

They also discovered that any routine, done consistently and diligently, produced startling results, as long as they took the little pink pills regularly. That’s when the systems of rack training that Dr. John Ziegler had developed and Bob Hoffman had so successfully marketed became passé. The weightlifting community figured that Hoffman had deliberately concealed the drug use of athletes who’d trained with isometrics and isotonic-isometrics just so he could sell courses and racks. Which was true.

Sales for isometric courses and all types of power racks fell like a missed jerk. I recall going to a room in an old warehouse in
York to pick up back copies of Strength and Health to take to a coaches’ convention and seeing power racks stacked from floor to ceiling. They’re probably still there.

Rack training as designed by Dr. Ziegler might no longer have been considered beneficial, but it was a case of the baby going out with the bath water. That’s because the system, when executed correctly, is extremely effective- especially the isotonic-isometric movements, in which you shift a weighted bar a short distance before locking it into a 12-second isometric hold.

Before I moved to York from
Marion, Indiana, I improved my clean by 15 pounds and my snatch by 10 by using Ziegler’s system in the rack. You’ll remember that rack training seems to have more influence on one area of the body than others. In my case the position for the pull helped me more than the ones for the squat and presses.

Lifters who’d been taught by Ziegler or one of his students, such as Bill March, continued to use his system even after steroids became part of weightlifting and bodybuilding. Garcy, March, Bednarski, Brannum, Whitcomb, Moore, Mielec, Glenney, Suggs, Pickett, Bartholomew and I used it till the end of our competitive careers, as did top bodybuilders like Bill St. John, Val Vasilef, Bob Gadja and Sergio Oliva. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Ziegler’s disciples were among the first used by professional-football strength coaches in the country: Riecke for the Steelers, John Gorgott for the Saints, Tommy Suggs for the Oilers, and I worked with the Colts.

When I took the position of strength coach at the

University of
Hawaii, though, I really got the opportunity to test the Ziegler system on a large group of athletes who were not using any form of steroids. In the early 1970s you couldn’t get them on
Oahu anyway. That’s changed, but during my island tour I had plenty of pure, willing subjects.

For isotonic-isometrics to have any real effect, the athlete has to be past the beginning stage. The longer he’s been training hard, the better. My primary job was to work with the football team, and none of them had done serious strength training, so I didn’t put any of them in the rack until my second year there. I did find an ideal subject soon after I joined the coaching staff, however.

I attended an Olympic meet in
Honolulu, mainly to see Tommy Kono, Pete George and Harold Sakata, since there was no lifter of any note. All the lifters were Asian except one, a transplanted Pennsylvanian named Steve Dussia. He won the 181 class with a 220 snatch and 270 clean and jerk. After the contest we talked about mutual acquaintances, and I learned that Marty Cypher, one of the best coaches in the country, had introduced him to the Olympic lifts. Steve asked if he could train occasionally at the UH weight room so I could help him with his form on the split snatch, which was the style I used when I competed. I agreed on the condition that he assist me in teaching the football players and other athletes lifts like the power clean, overhead press, jerk and front squat.

Thus Steve became my unofficial assistant, training exclusively at the university. He’d been lifting heavy for six years, and I quickly found out that he was one of the rare individuals who work and still recover easily. He was a natural for power rack training. Two-and -a-half months after he started training with me, he competed in another meet. Still a light heavyweight, he snatched 270 and clean and jerked 320. Everyone in the audience and all the officials were convinced I’d given him steroids (if I could have gotten my hands on any, I would have taken them myself). He was clean and had achieved the remarkable gains the old-fashioned way, through lots of hard work and sweat. Without doubt the isotonic-isometrics had helped a great deal. Steve continued to make progress for the three years I coached at UH.

When you start using isos, keep in mind that it’s like any other physical discipline: There’s a learning curve. The more you practice isos, the more proficient you’ll become and the more benefits you’ll derive. The first thing to understand is that you must be thoroughly warmed up before hitting your work set. If you apply yourself fully to that final isometric hold, which you have to do to get results, your muscles and attachments must be prepared for the stress.

Even though you may be sweating and puffing from a just-completed exercise, you still have to make certain that the groups you’re about to work with isos are ready. For example, you may decide that you want to get your squats out of the way before doing some isos for one or more pulling positions. Maybe your back got plenty of work during the squats, but it’s still prudent to do some movements for your back before proceeding to the rack. You don’t need to do much- a couple of sets of power cleans or high pulls. In fact, you don’t want to do much; you need to have plenty available for those work sets.
An alternative to free-weight movements outside the rack is to do a couple of warmup sets inside the rack at the positions you’re going to use first: three reps, tapping the top pins on each rep but not holding it for a count.

Whenever you watch someone with iso experience doing a routine, it looks so simple. It is, but you have to do a lot of things perfectly for isos to be productive. To begin with, your grip, foot spacing, hip, back and shoulder placement must be exactly the same when doing an iso and the free-weight, full-range movement. Your form and line have to be identical to the one used with the isos, or you’re wasting your time and energy.

I often stayed with Tommy and Karen Suggs when they lived at Oyster Creek on the
Gulf
Coast in
Texas. Over time I added several powerlifters to my list of trainees. One of them made impressive gains but he wasn’t winning any meets because he could never manage to lock out the deadlift he needed for the victory. The bar would explode to midthigh, then stall-really stall, as if hitting some invisible force field.

We trained at Billy Neel’s combination dive shop and gym in Clute (the hottest weight room this side of hell), but I asked him to come out to Tommy’s place so I could teach him isos in some privacy. There was a super power rack in Tommy’s garage gym. I wanted the lifter to do isos at only one position, the exact spot where the heavy deadlifts always stuck. I demonstrated the two warmup sets and the work set, stressing the fact that holding the bar up against the top pin was more important than how much weight he used. I suggested he do isos twice a week on the days he didn’t deadlift. He used good technique and agreed to add them to his routine.

He worked different shifts at Dow Chemical and went on nights right after I taught him isos, so I didn’t see him for weeks. When we met again, he said he hadn’t improved. That baffled me- until I watched him do his isos. He loaded the bar to 495 for his work set, and when he locked the bar against the top pins he leaned way back for the count of 12. I immediately understood why he hadn’t made any progress.

He was pulling the bar in a line that he couldn’t possibly use during the execution of a deadlift. I told him that if he leaned back the way he was doing, he’d fall over. It was also obvious that he’d been using a heavy weight to impress his training mates. That wasn’t the first time I’d observed someone letting his ego get in the way of correct technique on the rack. It’s a natural tendency to move away from the correct line during an iso hold because that particular position is relatively weak. But that’s why you’re doing an iso there- to make it stronger. So you must resist breaking form.

I had him lower the weight to 405, set him in the proper position with his frontal deltoids out in front of the bar and instructed him to maintain that form while doing the iso. He held the bar against the pins, but just barely. I advised him to use only 385 the next time he did an iso hold at that spot and concentrate on maintaining the proper mechanics for the 12-second count. Within a month he was holding 455 on his work set, and his newly gained strength had moved his deadlift up 25 pounds.

Trainees doing isos for the bench press frequently alter their technique drastically so they can hold the bar against the pins for the required time. They press the bar in an entirely different line and set their elbows in a new position. I saw one powerlifter doing an iso for the middle of the bench who’d fixed the bar against the pins directly over his eyes. I told him the isos weren???t going to make him a better bencher because he never brought the bar back that far. If you don’t use the line on an iso identical to what you use for the lift, the rack work will be totally ineffective.

Sometimes a lifter honestly believes he’s using correct form on his isos, even when he’s not. So it’s valuable to have someone with a good coaching eye to watch you while you’re learning to do isotonic-isometric contractions. A slight adjustment in mechanics can make all the difference. If you train alone, you can benefit from watching yourself in a mirror. When you see that your form is off, stop and make the necessary adjustments. If you’re unable to maintain proper technique with a certain weight, use less. Isos will improve a lift only if your form is perfect. Anything less than perfect is a waste of energy.

Which brings us to the factor of concentration. Since you’re doing only one iso at any position, you must focus on what you’re trying to accomplish and concentrate on the task at hand. You can waver on a rep during a free-weight exercise and still make the set successfully, but if your focus breaks down during an iso, you’ve failed. That takes some time to learn, and it’s one reason isos are more productive for those who’ve been practicing the system for a while. Experience is a great asset in that form of strength training.
Here are a few tips. Never jam the bar up against the pins in preparation for the isometric hold. Rather, ease the bar up and press it firmly against the pins, steadily increasing the pressure on the bar so that at the conclusion of the count you’re putting in as close to 100 percent effort as you possibly can. As you push the bar into the pins, don’t think about merely holding it there. Instead, imagine that you’re pushing the bar right through them. That will help you steadily push or pull harder, and when you do, you can feel more of your muscles contract. You might be surprised to learn that muscle groups you didn’t know were part of the exercise get involved in the contraction.

I’ve found that the top pull is the best position to use for teaching the technique; it’s a strong point for nearly all lifters and one on which they can rather easily maintain form. You’ve done you warmups and loaded a poundage that you know you can handle, though it may be enough to push you to the limit. Strap on, plant your feet firmly, and check your body mechanics, making sure that you are in front of the bar. Now drive your feet down into the floor as you lift the bar in a smooth fashion up against the top pins. Lock it in place, and start pulling. when the count reaches five, apply more pressure to the bar. Every muscle in your body should be fully contracted, from your calves to your tarps. That’s what your after: a maximum contraction.

Keep pulling. Try to bend the bar. Once you hit the 12 count, don’t let the bar crash downward. Instead, reduce the pressure, take a couple of deep breaths, and lower the bar in a controlled manner back down to the support pins. Now we come to breathing. The rule is simple- you hold your breath for the duration of an isometric contraction. If you breathe, you diminish your ability to apply maximum force to the bar. That’s because inhaling and exhaling causes your diaphragm to relax, which creates negative intrathoracic pressure.

Take a deep breath as you lock the bar up against the pins, and hold in the air until you’ve reached the desired count. Then exhale. That will make sure you maintain a positive pressure inside your rib cage. Holding your breath during an iso isn’t usually a problem, except with overhead lifts, such as presses, jerks and lockouts. Some lifters undergo what’s called the Valsalva maneuver- a forceful exhale effort wile keeping nose and throat closed- while applying maximum exertion overhead. Usually harmless in healthy people, it hinders the flow of venous blood to the heart and can cause you to black out.
If you start feeling dizzy on any of the positions, be smart enough to use a lesser count- either eight or 10 seconds instead of 12. Better safe than sorry; the original course recommends holding a contraction for six to 12 seconds. The reason I’ve always used 12 seconds for everything but overhead exercises is that it takes me at least six seconds to get to the point of pushing or pulling at maximum effort. I use the remainder of the time to gain the benefits of the exercise.

Don’t forget that the main reason you’re doing isos at certain positions on various exercises is that they’re your weaker points. So you’re not going to be able to handle big numbers initially. It’s a truism of strength training that it doesn’t matter where you start; all that matters is where you end up. Once you master the technique involved in isotonic-isometrics, gains will come steadily.

I’ll get more deeply into this subject in Part 5

Real Results With Isometrics or Was It All a Hoax?

In the early ’60s isometrics seized the country with the virulence of an influenza epidemic. Anyone seeking more strength spent a portion of his training time pushing and pulling against a stationary bar. On the heels of pure isometrics came muscle contraction with movement, which was called isometric-isotonic exercise. More properly, it should have been named isotonic-isometric exercise, since you moved the bar slightly before locking it into a isometric hold.

Having to move a weighted bar a short distance before locking it against the pins for a 12-second count proved to be much more effective than pure isometrics. That was the method that Dr. John Ziegler taught Louis Riecke from the very beginning, and Riecke’s amazing progress had the whole world talking. Using Ziegler’s program, Riecke had added 155 pounds to his Olympic-lifting total in six months, which was unheard of. Even more impressive was the fact that he was in his mid-30s.

Ziegler’s other test subject, Bill March, also continued to improve. He set a world record in the press with 354 at the ‘63 Philly Open as a 198-pounder. Riecke earned a world record for himself the following year as a 181-pounder with a 325 snatch, done split style at the YMCA Championships in Los Angeles. It was primarily due to the stunning success of these two athletes that the strength-training community became convinced that the new form of training was valid.

While Bob Hoffman’s claims about the merits of iso training were often taken with a grain of salt because he was prospering from the sale of courses and power racks, others came out in support of the new method. Prominent researchers with nothing to gain, such as Dr, C.H.McCloy of Iowa State University and Dr. Arthur Steinhaus of George Williams College in Chicago, provided data that backed up what Ziegler was recommending.

Each month Strength and Health featured articles about the success of athletes and coaches who wholeheartedly endorsed isometrics. The University of Alabama and Florida State University put their highly regarded stamps of approval on the training system. In 1961, the Seminoles had a perfect 10-0 season, which prompted even more collegiate teams to purchase power racks and start doing isometrics. Anyone who’s ever been associated with professional or collegiate athletes knows that if top teams begin doing something new, all the others must follow suit or fall behind, especially in the recruiting game.

S&H also published glowing accounts of the improvements made by many well-known athletes. Frank Budd, who set a world record of 9.2 second in the 100-yard dash, was using isometrics, as were discus thrower Jay Sylvester, high jumper John Thomas and the teen shot-put sensation from New York, Gary Gubner. With so may testimonials from renowned scientists, coaches and athletes, there was no question that if a person wanted to get stronger, he must start using the York Functional Isometric Contraction System.

Nevertheless, it was really Bill March who carried the torch for isometrics. His rapid rise in Olympic lifting, his good looks, his powerful physique and his availability made him the perfect model. Every month the magazine featured him in an article about isometrics, and he adorned more S&H covers that anyone except John Grimek; he was also on the cover of the York course. While Vern Weaver, Grimek and Steve Stanko, working in different types of power racks, appeared in the magazine as well. March was the official poster boy for isometrics.

For the most part those who wanted to include the new technique in their routines chose isotonic-isometrics over pure isometrics. Of course, in order to do the more advanced form of the system, you absolutely had to have a York power rack- or a facsimile- and they weren’t always available. That was the situation I found myself in when I moved to Marion, Indiana, to take the position of youth director at the YMCA. Our meager budget couldn’t handle a York rack, so I made one. It had to be the most absurd- and ugliest- power rack in the country but was most functional, and that’s all I cared about. And it did help me and my lifting mates make some gains.

There are several reasons why moving the weighted bar a short distance before locking it against the pins proved to be more productive than pure isometrics. Whenever you pushed or pulled against a fixed bar, it was very difficult to determine if you were, in fact, exerting yourself to the maximum. You might only be putting 60 percent of your effort into the rep. On the other hand, when you moved the weighted bar a short distance before holding it tightly against a set of pins, the guesswork was eliminated. Either the bar stayed flush against the pins, or it didn’t. So, if you weren’t able to hold 315 pounds against the pins for 12 seconds, you knew that you needed to use less weight. One of the cardinal rules that Ziegler set down was that time is more critical than the amount of weight being used.

Another plus in favor of moving a weight before doing a isometric contraction was that you could gauge your progress from workout to workout. If you started off using 185 for your press lockouts and within three weeks you were handling 225 for the required count, you knew for certain that you were getting stronger in that position. That was motivational. In contrast, there wasn’t any positive proof that you were making progress with pure isometrics, other than having one or more of your free-weight exercises move up.

Another motivational factor had to do with the psychology of numbers. Strength training is all about numbers. The lifter who can squat 500 is stronger than the one who only does 495. it’s much more satisfying to be able to lock 365 against the pins for 12 seconds than it is to push against a fixed bar for the same count. Going through a complete isotonic-isometric session was extremely taxing. Pure isometrics isn’t that demanding, and I preferred to exhaust my body, for I believed it benefited my cause much more.

Even though the York course didn’t require any warmups other than calisthenics, toe touches and some stretches, I always spent adequate time making sure the muscle groups I was about to put under dire stress were ready for the work ahead. When I was only able to do the pure isometrics, even after I did my calisthenics, I still felt as if my muscular system wasn’t thoroughly prepared. So before I got in the rack for one or more pulling isos, I would do a set or two of power cleans with a light weight. And I used the same idea prior to squatting or pressing.

In addition, in the first position for any series of exercises, such as pulls, I would do a couple of light warmup sets for three reps without holding my final rep against the top pins before hitting my target weight.Then, if I felt sufficiently warmed up, I would only do one set at the other positions. That, I believed, allowed me to handle more weight on my work set and lowered the risk of injury. If you do the iso correctly, you put a great deal of stress on the muscles and attachments, so it only makes sense to prepare them for the extreme exertion.

Now I come to the part of the drama that eventually altered forever not only strength training, competitive weightlifting and bodybuilding but also nearly every other competitive sport. In Part 1 of this series I noted that Ziegler got close with Russian officials and lifters at the ‘54 World Championships, in Vienna. That’s when he learned they were experimenting with a new form of training, isometrics, and also using male hormones, primarily testosterone.

Back at his home in Olney, Maryland, Ziegler researched the subject and did some testing of testosterone on his own. It was his opinion that the steroid produced by the body wasn’t very effective in building muscle and improving strength, so in conjunction with the CIBA Pharmaceutical Company, he developed a synthetic hormone called Dianabol. At the same time he was introducing March and Riecke to isometrics and isotonic-isometrics, he was also giving them Dianabol.

Ziegler and Hoffman kept the steroid use a secret, although for different reasons. Hoffman realized that Dianobol would give his York lifters a tremendous advantage over their opponents, and when the results started coming in, he did his best to secure the secret even more. He wanted the general public and the athletic community to continue to think that it was the rack work that was responsible for the spectacular progress the two test subjects were making. That would ensure the sale of more courses and racks. If people knew that March and Riecke were using drugs, Hoffman’s income would drop, and there was no way he could benefit because he couldn’t market Dianobol.

Ziegler had a different reason for wanting to keep Dianobol under wraps. His primary motive for helping to create the anabolic steroid was purely humanitarian. He never received any monies for the sale of the drug, nor did he benefit from the windfall at York when the company’s yearly gross shot up because of all the orders for racks and courses. Ziegler wanted to create a drug that would help bedridden patients and those recovering from surgery or prolonged illness to rebuild their muscles faster and be restored to better health more rapidly. He thought that by testing the drug on robust specimens such as Olympic lifters, he could get feedback more quickly. He could also avoid medical regulations involving drug testing. He was a rogue and proud of it. It so happens that the rogues in history are the ones that often break barriers, and Ziegler was certainly doing that when he helped bring Dianobol to the athletic scene.

Once it became clear that the steroid was the main reason for March’s and Riecke’s spectacular gains, Ziegler was even more adamant that the drug remain a secret. He feared the consequences if word leaked out, believing that athletes, with their competitive nature, would abuse the drug- which, of course, is exactly what happened. He told me that he wished he had never conceived the idea of creating Dianobol, and he was certain that the end results were going to be more damaging than beneficial.

The use of steroids by March and Riecke remained a secret for a surprisingly long time when you consider how athletes gossip. I did hear a few rumors about York lifters using male hormones, but there was never anything in print to confirm it. For good reason, as Hoffman was controlling the press.

In the mid-’60s things began to change. Out of nowhere average lifters began making gains similar to those achieved by March and Riecke. Tony Garcy, Bob Bartholomew, Gerald Moyer, Russ Knipp, Dr. John Gourgott and Bob Bednarski were suddenly vying for berths on international teams. Soon after Tommy Suggs moved to York from Texas, he became a full-blown heavyweight, won the Junior Nationals and the Collegiates and qualified for the Olympic Trials. His sudden success made a big impression on me, since we had competed on equal terms in Texas.

Those who had a connection to York has learned about the magic pink pills. Dianobol started out as a pink pill, and then the color was changed to blue. Don’t ask me why. The point is, those outside the circle remained ignorant of the athletes’ steroid use. Even after I moved to York to become Tommy’s assistant at Strength and Health, I still didn’t find out about Dianobol until I’d been there for six months. Once word started to spread, it swept across the country like wildfire. The cat was out of the box, and as Ziegler predicted, it was Pandora’s box that had been opened.

I want to clear up a common misconception here: York lifters, other than March, did not get Dianobol from Ziegler. He adamantly refused any requests for the drug and encouraged Hoffman not to assist them in getting it from other sources. His advice fell on deaf ears. Hoffman liked the advantage steroids gave his lifters and made arrangements with a physician in York who provided it free of charge. Dianobol became part of the recruitment package. Represent the York Barbell Club, and received protein, vitamins, sweats, T-shirts, travel expenses to meets and anabolic steroids. Not unexpectedly, with a residency rule requiring lifters to live in the area where their team was based set aside, the York team grew quickly. When it came to Weightlifting, Bob Hoffman was the AAU.

Lifters from California to Texas to New York and everywhere in between discovered that when they started taking Dianobol, it didn’t matter how they trained. They still made fast gains. The opinion among lifters was that the great progress that March and Riecke made was a direct result of the anabolics and that the isometrics was a smoke screen- a well-designed hoax to sell courses and racks. Isometrics and isotonic-isometrics fell out of favour as fast as they had shot to the forefront.

The truth of the matter, though, is that Ziegler’s rack programs did contribute to the gains made by the test subjects. And all the other lifters- such as Gaecy, Bartholomew and Bednarski- also used the program he set down. What got lost because of Hoffman’s subterfuge was the hard-and-true fact that rack training is one of the very best ways to increase strength, particularly the isotonic-isometric system.

I have used it on advanced athletes at the three colleges where I served as strength coach. Every one of them responded favourably, and none were taking steroids. The gains they made were a direct result of the training system, not an ergogenic aid.

The primary reason that isometric training is not part of strength programs today is that coaches don’t understand the basic concepts well enough to be able to teach it to their players. And unless they were taught the system by Ziegler, they are totally unaware of the subtleties involved- or, more correctly, unless they were taught by the Doctor or by someone who learned from the doctor. coaches stay with what they know. It’s safer than venturing into uncharted territory, especially when their jobs depend on the progress made by their athletes.

Even so, when I teach isometric training to coaches and athletes at clinics, they learn the technique readily because its so simple. That’s another reason rack training isn’t in common use: Complicated is considered better than simple. Chains, rubber bands, elaborate machines and contraptions have to produce more strength than just lifting a weighted bar a few inches and then holding it against a set of pins for 12 seconds. That’s the current thinking, but it’s wrong. There’s no better way to gain strength than by doing isotonic-isometrics.

Obviously, you must have a power rack in order to do this system. On the ideal rack, the holes for the pins are set close together, and the uprights should be wide enough apart to enable you to preform a wide range of exercises. If your routine includes overhead lifts, such as military presses or jerks, you want the rack to be higher than the finish position of the movements.

If the power rack that’s available to you doesn’t meet all those standards, you can still do some isos. Whenever I encountered a rack that didn’t have the holes close together, I resorted to standing on two-by-fours to get the exact position I was seeking. Since I wouldn’t be moving my feet during the iso, it didn’t pose a problem.

The question arises: What positions in the rack are best to do? The answer is, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. A bodybuilder would select different exercises from a shot-putter, and an Olympic lifter would do a different routine from what a powerlifter uses. In other words, your iso workout should be sport specific. For example, powerlifters have little use for overhead power, so there’s no reason for them to include any pressing positions in the rack. Instead they’ll benefit by selecting various benching placements.

There are many ways to incorporate isos into your routine. One is to use them in place of your regular exercise for a certain bodypart. I’ve had athletes come to me saying that they only had 30 minutes in which to train, for whatever reason. I gave them a rack routine in which they did three pressing positions, three for pulls and three for squats. While they warmed up, I got the rack ready, and I helped them change the positions after each set. They were able to zip through the workout with time to spare.

I’ve also used isos to make a change in a routine. When I notice that peoples pulls lack snap and they’re obviously overtrained on that lift, I have them stop and replace whatever pulling exercises they were doing with two or three pulling positions in the rack. That serves two purposes: It helps relive their fatigued condition and because its not as demanding as the full-range movement, and it hits their attachments more directly and benefits them strengthwise. Another plus is that it allows them to leave the gym with a positive frame of mind rather than a negative one.

There’s no better way to improve a weak area than by using isos, I introduce them to athletes for that express purpose, and it always works. Typically, a lifter will have difficulty coming out of the bottom of a squat or pressing the bar through the middle on the bench press or finishing the top of a power clean or power snatch. Once the weak spot is identified, that’s where you want to set the top pins in the power rack.

Take the sticking point in the bench, for example. Do a set or two of light benches for 10 to 12 reps, and than place the bar on pins that are a few inches below the higher ones. Say you can bench 255 for five reps: That’s going to be your work weight for your final set in the rack. Use 185 on your first set. Press it up against the top pins for three reps, but don’t hold it against them. Just tap them and lower the bar. You do set two in the same fashion with 225. On the third work set, with 255, press the weight up and tap the higher pins twice. Then lock the bar against them on the final rep and hold it snugly in place for 12 seconds.

Should you be unable to fix the bar against the pins for the full 12 seconds, don’t do another set. Just make sure you use less weight the next time you work that position. Always remember that time is more important than the amount of weight on the bar. Conversely, if you were able to hold the bar tightly against the pins for the required count, use more weight the next time around.

This discussion will get you started on isotonic-isometrics. Next month I’ll get into things like the mind-set you need for doing this form of strength training, the technique and the many ways you can incorporate it into your current program.

Last month I mentioned the two most important people in the isometric-contraction craze that swept through the strength training community in the early ’60s: Dr. John Ziegler, a highly respected physician in Olney, Maryland, and Bob Hoffman, owner of the York Barbell Company and self-proclaimed Father of American Weightlifting, World’s Healthiest Man, as well as the Greatest Chinese Food Eater Outside China and the World’s Greatest Polka Dancer. He took other titles, but you get the idea. He had a huge ego.

Ziegler and Hoffman had formed a partnership of sorts to test Doc Ziegler’s theory concerning a new form of strength training. Ziegler was the mastermind behind isometric contractions. Hoffman had the resources to support the research and a magazine, Strength and Health, to publicize the results should they prove favorable. If isometrics could really help improve strength in healthy athletes such as Olympic weightlifters, Ziegler intended to use his findings to help rehabilitate those recovering from serious illness or surgery. His motive was purely humanitarian.

Hoffman, on the other hand, saw a golden opportunity. If isometrics really did work, his York lifters would have a tremendous advantage over their opponents, and that would increase sales of his weights and nutritional supplements. Since racks were needed to do isometrics, he would capitalize on these as well.

Now Ziegler needed someone to test his theories on, preferably a young weightlifter who was willing to follow Doc’s advice to the letter. Grimek suggested Bill March, a 23-year-old 181-pound Olympic lifter who lived in Dover, not far from Hoffman’s residence. Bill weighed 176 and had just won the ‘60 Middle Atlantic with a three-lift total of 745.

Hoffman liked the idea of having a local product, and Bill was called in for an interview. Like any young athlete, Bill saw this as a chance to move up the ladder in a hurry. All he had to do was train, a luxury afforded no other Olympic weightlifter in the country at that time. The only spanner in the works was that Ziegler had to supervise all the workouts personally at his home gym in Olney, 90 miles from York.

Ziegler, who had a large house, suggested that Bill stay with him and his family, but Bill wasn’t keen on that idea. Even though he was anxious to take part in the experiment, he was newly married, and spending five days a week away from home didn’t appeal to him. Besides, the 180-mile round trip through back roads five days a week plus the training looked to be extremely taxing. Bill admitted that he wasn’t sure he could handle such a schedule for very long.

That’s where Dick Smith entered the picture, playing a major role in this piece of weightlifting history. Smitty had hung around the York Barbell Gym as a youngster, and when his close friend Vern Weaver became a part of the York team, Smitty tagged along. He never trained for competition, but lifting with Weaver, Grimek, Jules Bacon and Stanko was reward enough. He thoroughly enjoyed being around Olympic weightlifters and bodybuilders- so much so that he quit his job in a machine shop to go to work at York. He became a jack-of-all-trades and the trainer of the lifting team.

Bill March was one of Smitty’s favorites, so he stepped up and offered to drive Bill to and from Olney five days a week and to act as Ziegler’s assistant. Since Smitty was already on York’s payroll, the experiment began.

So two more key players were firmly in place. I want to emphasize how absolutely indispensable Smitty was to the success of the venture. I don’t believe isometrics would have ever come to fruition, at least not at that time, without Smitty. I don’t think Bill would have made that arduous drive for very long either, and if he’d stopped coming to Ziegler’s place, Doc’s interests would have changed. He was interested in many other concepts, such as a machine that could contract muscles involuntarily, using certain amino acids such as L-lysine to promote better health and an anabolic aid for increasing strength.

Smitty’s role in isometrics development has never been fully appreciated, nor has his contribution to Olympic weightlifting. If Hoffman was indeed the Father of American Weightlifting, Smitty was the kindly uncle who did all that was necessary to help any lifter succeed. Without his efforts, isometrics would probably have been put on the back burner, as would the other innovations that came out of Ziegler’s experiment.

The key elements were in place: Hoffman’s financial support, Ziegler’s genius, March’s dedication and Smitty’s willingness. Isometric training as designed by Doc Ziegler began. He’d devised his system by applying some originality to research previously conducted in Germany and Russia.

Progress came quickly to Bill March. When the 1960 Olympic team came to York for final training before going to Rome, Bill pitted himself against Jim George and John Pulskamp and often outlifted them. His rapid gains were the talk of everyone associated with the team. A clinic was held in conjunction with the Olympic team’s stay in York, and one of the lifters invited to take part was Louis Riecke of New Orleans. That put in place the final piece of the isometrics puzzle.

While in York, Riecke purchased some new cloths that gave him a rash around his waistline. He went to see Doc, the Olympic team’s physician, at the Yorktowne Hotel and took the opportunity to question Doc in depth regarding the Buzz at the York gym about Bill March’s special training. Riecke wanted to know how March could have made such amazing progress in such a short period of time.

Doc was very guarded; only he, March and Smitty knew what was going on in Olney. Hoffman, of course, was in the loop but couldn’t really grasp the nuances in the training system. Doc had never planned to use more than one test subject, and even if he had, Riecke didn’t fit his profile. At 34, Reicke had been competing for more than 20 years. A psychology professor of mine at SMU had lifted against Riecke in 1941, so he was well past his prime- not what Ziegler needed at all.

Still, something in Riecke attracted Ziegler. Louie had a pleasing personality and was extremely intelligent. He also had some medical training, another plus in Doc’s view. Louie expressed a fierce desire to try the new system of strength training, and Doc agreed to think about it. He was too busy right now but said he’d let Riecke know after the Olympics.

In November, Doc asked Riecke to serve as the second test subject in the experiment. What he didn’t tell the veteran lifter was that he planned to use a slightly different version of isometric training on him.

Riecke came to Olney under a cloak of secrecy; Ziegler did not inform Hoffman or anyone else in the York organization. Enjoying the clandestine arrangement, Doc made Riecke swear that he wouldn’t tell another soul what he was learning.

We now know that Ziegler was having Riecke use a more advanced form of isometrics, in which the lifter moves the bar a short distance, then locks it into a isometric hold for the desired count. He’d used only pure isometrics on Bill March in order to get a comparison between the two lifters’ results. Once he saw that the system he was to call iso-tonic-isometric was better than pure isometrics, he put Bill on Riecke’s routine too.

Every issue of Strength and Health carried glowing reports of March’s astounding gains. At time when adding 30 pounds to your total in a year was considered admirable, he’d put 150 pounds on his in 11 months. He’d moved up the 198 class, which was unheard of, and it was all attributed to isometrics.

I was skeptical. I figured March was genetically gifted and had a vast array of nutritional supplements at his disposal. Plus, all he had to do was train. Others in his circumstances would be able to do what he was doing. He had the best coach too, in Bob Hoffman. (Boy, was I off base.)

There was also a perception that what went on at York didn’t apply to lifters in the rest of the country. The York Barbell was to weightlifting what Yankee Stadium was to baseball and didn’t relate to what we were doing at the Dallas YMCA. So I continued to train as always.

What altered my thinking and started me pushing and pulling against a stationary bar wasn’t March’s splendid success but rather Riecke’s sudden improvement. Because there were so few meets in the southwest, Louie would come to Texas to compete. In the fall of ‘60, I lifted against him in Dallas. He did a 255 press, 265 snatch, and 315 clean and jerk. I was 20 pounds behind him in the press, 30 in the snatch but cleaned 325. That gave me hope of challenging him in a year or two. It’s always useful to have a goal, someone to catch.

The next time I competed against him was in Houston in March of ‘61. My dream of moving closer to him vanished in a flash when he did 295, 285 and 360. Like every other lifter present, I was stunned. Increases like that were simply not possible, but I’d witnessed his lifts with my own eyes. No one had ever heard of someone so far past his lifting prime make such gains so fast. He revealed that Doc Ziegler had taught him the new form of strength training.

Back in Dallas, I began incorporating isometrics into my routine, though not exclusively. I enjoyed working out with weights and the tired feeling I got after a hard session. I did isometrics on my non-lifting days under the stadium at SMU, training after the football team completed their workouts, at night. The dark wasn’t pitch black; filtered light came from outside the stadium. But that shows you how simple the routine was. I’d move the bar up and down the upright using my fingers more than my eyes, then do sets for my pulls, presses and squats.

I also tried to learn all I could about isometrics to make sure I was doing everything by the book. I bought a course from York and studied it with more enthusiasm than any of my textbooks. Sid Henry, who’d been to York and gone through a session with Bill March directing him, added to my knowledge on the subject.

Doc Ziegler named his system functional isometric contraction, a method of developing strength through static contraction. On an isometric movement the muscles don’t shorten as they do in a regular exercise done with a barbell or dumbell. All muscle energy is used in tension and none in movement, which helps develop the maximum amount of strength.

The basic program suggested three positions for the overhead press, back squat, pulls and toe raises. You could substitute front squats for back squats and snatch-grip pulls for clean pulls. Of course, with a bit of imagination any exercise could become an isometric movement: good mornings, bent-over rows, curls and so on. You needed straps for the pulling exercises.

You did only one rep at each of the positions, Once you locked the bar into position, you went for 100 percent for nine to 12 seconds. You were encouraged to move fast and take only short rests between the positions. I usually completed my workout in 15 minutes, and that included a calisthenics warmup. One reason I moved quickly was that I was trespassing: The racks were off-limits to everyone but SMU’s varsity sports teams.

Both March and Riecke continued to make impressive gains, and Hoffman was making a mint on rack and isometric course sales. Indeed, the early ads for racks and courses sold what was called the Hoffman-Ziegler Isometric System. That quickly changed to the Hoffman Isometric System. Not that Doc cared- he wasn’t doing it for the publicity. Hoffman, on the other hand, angled for attention and wanted the public to believe the concept came from his inventive mind.

That was Hoffman’s modus operandi. He made readers of Strength and Health believe that he’d conceived the idea of protein powder, whereas Rheo Blair had come up with that product and sold it to him. When Tommy Kono devised knee bands made out of the same type of rubber used in scuba suits, they were marketed as TK Kneebands. Not for long. Within months, the ads were for BH Kneebands. The guy was truly a piece of work.

Does isometrics work? That question was on every lifter’s mind once word leaked out that the two test subjects were also taking an anabolic steroid called Dianabol. Had the new form of training been a grand hoax? Many believed so. To answer the question, however: Yes, isometrics does work. I made noticeable gains, as did my teammates at the Dallas Y. Isometrics worked some bodyparts better than others, and that varied from individual to individual. It boosted my pulling power for snatches and cleans and helped my press but did nothing for my squats.

Pure isometrics come with a few drawbacks. The biggest is that it???s difficult to tell if you’re actually exerting max effort. You may feel that your pushing or pulling at 100 percent, but in most cases you aren’t. An observer sees no difference between someone applying 50 percent and another applying 80 percent. Going full throttle on any movement takes a bit of learning and practice.

As Ziegler also pointed out, no one can exert 100 percent effort. That only happens under situations of dire stress, such as lifting a car off a person trapped under it.

Another problem for me was that isometrics was boring. Sure, it was quick (many like exercise to be quick), but you get no aesthetic pleasure from one rep at nine or ten stations. Lifting weights was an athletic endeavor that I greatly enjoyed. Isometrics was work and not the least bit of fun- nothing that could compare to a successful full snatch, clean, jerk or even a full squat. Nor does isometrics enhance to cardiovascular and respiratory systems, which are important not only to strength athletes but also to anyone wanting a higher quality of life.

Another aspect of isometrics that I didn’t like was that you couldn’t translate what you were doing to actual numbers. As with working out on machines, there was no real way to tell if you were making any improvement. You couldn’t pull or push against the bar for any longer than the recommended 12 seconds; more ain’t better in isometrics. On the other hand, if one of your primary lifts improved right after you did some isometrics, you could attribute the gains to the static contractions. Despite the weak points of isometrics, I believe it can be a useful supplement to any strength program. It’s a good way to strengthen a weak area in a lift, such as the sticking point in a bench press. Set the pins in a power rack at exact spot where your bench press stalls when the weights approach your max, fix an empty bar up against the pins, and do an isometric hold for 12 seconds. Do it three times a week on the days you don’t do any benches or don’t go heavy on them, and you’ll see positive results. If the top pull on your snatches needs work, isometrics is a way to hit the groups responsible rather easily and effectively.

Isometrics is good for a change. If you’re feeling stale, take two or three weeks and do only isometrics. When you return to your normal routine, you’ll be refreshed and have more enthusiasm for your exercises- and you may be even stronger.

You may not have a power rack in your gym, but if you have a Smith machine, you can still do isometrics. At the Dallas Y, we simply turned the hooks upside down and did a complete workout of presses, pulls and squats. Training partners stood on the machine to keep it from lifting off the floor.

Remember the portable isometric contraption from last month? The one York sold as the Strength Builder was made with wooden bars, one to stand on and one to hold, with a length of chain that let you do a variety of exercises on it. Peary Rader sold an even better model, made of metal with two lengths of chain. They’re no longer around, but with a little imagination you can make one. It doesn’t take much because I made one while I was a counselor at a boys’ camp in Branson, Missouri, one summer. A number of us used it while on a float trip down the Buffalo River. It would be great to carry along on a trip. You could do isometrics for 15 or 20 minutes, then another 20 minutes on flexibility and then go for a walk or run. It’s better than doing nothing, and it would help maintain your strength.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Olney . . . Once word about Dianabol spread, isometrics dropped out of favor and by the end of the ’60s had disappeared from the scene altogether. Pure isometrics was put in the same boat as isometric contractions with weights, and both got dumped because weightlifters and other strength athletes felt they’d been conned. It was the steroids, people said, and not the newer form of training that had turned March and Riecke into world-record holders and Olympians.

The fact is, though, that doing isotonic isometrics or isometrics with weights is one of the very best ways of increasing strength. In the next installment I’ll detail how to include them in your program.

Readers have been asking me to write about power rack training as taught by Dr. John Ziegler. I’d been pondering the subject for some time but couldn’t figure out how to cram all the pertinent information into one article. Then I decided I didn’t have to: I should cover the deceptively simple training method over a period of several months, dealing with critical points and bringing in side issues related to the over all rack-training story.

One reason I wanted to do a series on the power rack is that we can???t afford to lose this valuable form of strength training. Still, only a handful of people fully understand the system laid down by Doc Ziegler and know how to incorporate it into their overall program. They were the ones who worked directly with Ziegler and are the only ones I can consider to be authorities: Bill St. John, Bill March, Dick Smith, Louis Reicke, Tommy Suggs, Joe Puleo, Tony Garcy and yours truly. Bob Bednarski, Homer Brannum, Vern Weaver, Dr. John Gourgott, Grimek and Stanko have moved on to that big weight room in the sky. If I’ve overlooked someone, I apologize.

I didn’t put Bob Hoffman on the list, though, for good reason. He never grasped Ziegler???s concept and couldn’t actually put an athlete through a power rack workout. What he did grasp , however, was the economic potential of Ziegler???s brainchild, and he made the most of it.

My point? Well, there just aren’t that many of us left who had the opportunity to learn from the man who invented it how effective power rack training was for gaining strength. As I’m the only one of the lot currently on a strength-training beat, I feel obligated to pass along the beneficial information that seems to have fallen in my lap. Which is fine with me.

Before I go into the specifics of training that you can do in a power rack, though, I want to give you a picture of how the concept revolutionized what went on in the weight room in the early 60s. It was then that power rack training became a essential part of the routines that gave competitive weightlifters, bodybuilders and others who lifted an edge in their chosen sports. I also want to talk about what jerked rack training from the forefront and pushed it into disfavor- so much so that by the end of the decade only a few athletes still used Ziegler’s program.

We have to put the principal players on the boards because without them there would be no story. It was a period of the most dramatic change in American weightlifting history, and it all happened because of Doc Ziegler???s creative genius. I plan to give credit where it???s due, fix blame accordingly and clear up some misconceptions about what actually went on at the York barbell club. I’ve always felt that what happened during those few short years was a fascinating tale and I hope you’ll agree.

Power racks as we know them today didn’t exist until the 60s. Some of the old-time strongmen like Paul Anderson and Bob Peoples trained on racks, but they were homemade rigs used primarily for supporting heavy weights. Sid Henry, an engineer by profession, designed one for the Dallas Y weight room that was the most ingenious I ever used. We lifted in a tiny space next to a squash court, and when Sid determined that the staircase squat rack was taking up too much room, he built one that served a similar purpose but could also be used for exercises besides squatting.

Sid’s rack consisted of two four-by-fours set on a 45 degree slant against the wall. He drilled holes every four inches and offset them so that they wouldn’t split the wood. Into the holes he inserted metal pegs that he could move up and down the sturdy supports. It was extremely functional. You could do a variety of exercises- flat bench presses, inclines, overhead presses, jerks, squats and shrugs. For front or back squats, Hoffman’s York barbell Company was the dominant manufacturer of weight-training equipment in the world, and it began selling thousands of well-built power racks. According to him the rack was necessary for anyone doing the new, advanced form of strength training.

That was lie number one, at least on that particular subject. Having a York rack wasn’t necessary at all, and lots of people figured that out rather quickly. It was pretty easy to build one using two-by-fours and drilling holes in the wood where you wanted them. You didn’t need an Olympic bar or any weights in order to do the system, just a straight metal bar or length of pipe. For example, I built one in the Marion YMCA weight room all by myself. It might have been the ugliest power rack in the country, but it got the job done. Trust me: if I could build one, so could anyone else with half the effort.

Fueled by Hoffman???s success stories in Strength and Health, York’s house organ, the isometric craze swept across the country like wild fire. The only thing I can compare it with is the running and jogging phenomenon that occurred in the late 70s. Colleges, high schools, YMCAs and other institutions involved in sports loved the idea. Isometrics were easy to learn, simple to do and best of all extremely safe. No free weights cluttered the area, spotters weren’t needed, and the entire workout could be completed in as little as 10 minutes- even less if you were in a hurry. An administrator???s dream.

I was a student at Southern Methodist University when isometric training took off. The athletic department there had resisted every attempt Sid Henry, an alumnus, and I made to install a weight room for the football team, but they eagerly joined the isometric movement. Ten racks were built out of two-by-fours under the stadium. The entire football squad would zip through a workout after regular practice sessions. At night, when I didn’t lift at the Dallas Y, I’d climb the security fence and do an isometric circuit in the dark.

The York Barbell Company had a monopoly on commercial power racks for many years, and Hoffman was smart enough to take full advantage of the situation. He offered a wide selection, the big seller being the Super Power Rack. I think every YMCA in the country bought at least one. Made of tube steel, they were stout puppies; you can still find them in home gyms and older lifting facilities. The supports were eight feet high with 550 holes in them. Attachments held the device to the wall, and flanges and four pins secured it to the floor. It cost $99.95- a mere pittance today, but it was the Kennedy era, and a hundred bucks was a great deal of money (roughly the weekly wage for most Americans).

A 310-pound Olympic set cost $129.50, which made the Super Power Rack a major investment. Realizing that, Hoffman offered two cheaper wooden versions. The two-by-four model could be had for $39.95, and the one made from four-by-fours was $49.95. Hoffman discontinued the wooden racks early on, however, when he figured out that customers were using them to make copies. He replaced them with a smaller metal model that he called the Portable Power Rack. It would have been difficult to duplicate unless you had access to a metal shop.

The Portable Power Rack sold for half the price of the Super Power Rack and was made with lighter metal. Much shorter than the big guy, and with its own platform, it was ideal for anyone who trained where there was a low ceiling, such as a basement or a apartment. York also marketed a truly portable apparatus, the Strength Builder. That consisted of two 18-inch metal bars and a length of chain that you could attach to the bars at different intervals so you could do a wide range of isometric movements, it was only $5.95.

Hoffman teased Strength and Health readers with bits of data on how to do the new isometric system, but he never revealed the details of the entire program. The 34-page manual on the subject was available for 5 dollars.

The thing was, once you figured out how to do an isometric exercise, you really didn’t need any equipment to do some body parts. All you needed was a immovable object against which you could pull or push for the designated length of time, and you were in business. A low doorway served as the top press position and a car bumper as an isometric pull.

In 1961 an American Olympic weightlifting team toured Europe and Russia, lifting in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, Paris and London. Sid Henry was the heavyweight, and he told me that some of the lifters tried doing isometric pulls on the ancient plumbing pipes in the Russian hotel, ripping them completely out of the wall. That ended the team’s isometric training for the duration of the trip.

The emergence of isometric training put Hoffman, the self-proclaimed father of American weightlifting, in hog heaven. He’d hit the motherlode, and the vein seemed to grow wider and deeper each month.

You may be wondering how a former oil-burner salesman with no formal education or background in kinesiology or applied anatomy could possibly come up with such an original training system. The answer is simple: He didn’t. Hoffman was capitalizing on what Ziegler had found in his research.

Unlike Hoffman, Ziegler was a man of science. A surgeon and general practitioner in Olney, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., he specialized in physical rehabilitation. His interests in that field of medicine came from being severely wounded in World War II while serving with the marines in the Pacific. He carried metal plates in his head and leg for the rest of his life. Weight training had helped him rebuild his body, and he retained a fondness for that activity and for athletes who lifted weights. He believed that Olympic lifters were the strongest men in the world, so it was only natural for him to be interested in what was going on at the York Barbell Club, just 90 miles from Olney.

Hoffman and Ziegler hit it off right away. They were both big men, over 6′4″ and weighing close to 300 pounds. Ziegler had the more assertive personality, which would eventually lead to conflict. Hoffman had to be the center of attention at all functions, and Ziegler often overshadowed him- no small feat and one that Hoffman didn’t appreciate. In the beginning, though, that wasn’t a problem. Ziegler liked the idea of being associated with the York weightlifters and bodybuilders, and Hoffman liked the idea of having a M.D. as part of the York organization. Hoffman wrote articles using the name Dr. D.A. Downing, figuring the medical title would add credibility to his messages. Dr. Downing was his dentist.

In 1954, Ziegler traveled as team physician with the U.S. Olympic team to the World Championships in Vienna. What he learned there set in motion events that ultimately changed strength training, bodybuilding and competitive sports forever. The event was a pivotal moment for him because the American coaches and lifters didn’t like the Russians and avoided fraternizing with them. Ziegler, on the other hand, was very gregarious and loved to party and happily joined the Russians for their nightly revelries. The Russians took to him right away, impressed by his size, friendly demeanor and intellect. Mostly thought, they admired his ability to drink as much vodka as they could. His capacity for mass quantities of alcohol was amazing.

During the drinking bouts in the wee hours of the morning the Russians’ tongues began to loosen. Ziegler learned that they were experimenting with strength-enhancing drugs and a form of exercise that made athletes exert pressure against a barbell in a fixed position.

Back home, Ziegler’s research convinced him that the Russians were on to something potentially beneficial to the York lifters. He encouraged Hoffman to sponsor some testing, but Bob ignored him for several years. That type of training reeked of the dynamic-tension system that had brought Charles Atlas fame and fortune, and Hoffman had skewered Atlas and dynamic tension often in Strength and Health. He believed that Ziegler’s concept, which the doctor called isometrics, was too much like what Atlas had been selling for years.

What finally changed Hoffman’s mind was a study out of Iowa State University that Dr. C.H. McCloy submitted to the magazine for publication. McCloy showed that non-apparatus exercises led to marked strength of the muscles. Hoffman, first and foremost a business man, understood that if he didn’t grab the new form of training and run with it, someone else would. Someone like Joe Weider or Dan Lurie.

Hoffman ran McCloy’s article in 1959 and agreed to sponsor the testing of Ziegler’s ideas. Now test subjects were needed. That’s where the other three members of the cast step onstage.

In my last article I addressed the subject of maintaining balance among your various muscles ??? a necessity for anyone who???s sincere about getting stronger. It???s important for another reason as well: preventing injuries.

If one area gets too far ahead of the others, weak spots are bound to reveal themselves. They always do, regardless of a person???s strength level. Even very advanced lifters like the top Olympic weightlifters and nationally ranked powerlifters have to pay close attention to balance.

The catch is, it???s not just the large groups that cause difficulties. Often it???s the smaller muscles that put you on the shelf. Pulling a biceps or a calf can be just as devastating to progress as tearing a quad.

The solution is to spend some time examining and reexamining your program to make certain you???re giving all the muscles and attachments proper attention ??? something that???s easier said that done. I like to have someone look over my program periodically. He doesn???t have to be an expert, but a second set of eyes may be able to spot a flaw I???ve missed simply because I do the routine over and over, and it???s become a habit.

Even when people make the effort to work all their major groups with equal intensity, one always moves ahead of the others. In most cases leg strength comes the fastest ??? partly because any good strength program gives priority to squats and the muscles involved have a tendency to respond quickly.

Then there???s the fact of individual difference. Two people who are the same age, weight and body type and have the same athletic ability and motivation will invariably progress quite differently. A prime reason is the levelers that each person gets as part of his or her genetic package.

After a few months of diligent strength training, the variances in strength in the major muscle groups become clearly defined. That???s the time to start making some adjustments in your program so the weaker groups don???t get too far behind. If, for example, you???ve added 150 pounds to your squat but only 40 to your power clean, you obviously have to make some changes to improve your back strength. The same idea holds true for upper-body strength, but keep in mind that the muscles of the shoulders and chest are the slowest to mature, so gains come more slowly. That???s true especially for teenagers. Older athletes who are just getting started in strength training generally do well with upper-body exercises simply because their bodies have matured to a greater extent than teenagers??? bodies.

How do you adjust your routine? By shifting your emphasis to the weaker group. The best method is to give it priority. Put it first in your workouts and throw in some extra auxiliary work. It???s a known fact that people always have more juice for the first exercise of the day. That???s another reason squats improve the fastest in a beginning routine. You do them first.

So, if your power cleans are lagging, you move power cleans to the front of your workout and start doing extra work on your pulls. You do a few extra sets of power cleans plus some hang cleans, high pulls and deadlifts ??? but not too many extra sets. That would be an invitation to become overtrained. You have to add the extra work gradually and sensibly. In truth, it isn???t usually a problem for back and leg work, but it certainly is when people are looking to improve their upper-body strength, which for most people translates to improving their bench press.

All too often in their quest for a bigger bench people do far too much. The shoulder girdle is, in fact, rather delicate, and you have to establish a firm base before piling up the workload, something you can only do over time. There???s no way to hurry the process, although nearly everyone tries ??? and fails. I???ve watched trainees go from doing six total sets of benches to twice that number, then do a half-dozen auxiliary exercises. Seldom do their benches move up, but they almost always end up with a nagging injury that forces them to stop benching altogether.

So the first step is to put the weak lifts up front and sensibly add more work. The next step is more complicated, as it involves determining an exercise???s weak portion. Say, for example, the hardest part of the bench press for you is locking the bar out at the finish. That means the weakest group is your triceps. You proceed logically and start doing some specialized exercises to strengthen your triceps, but in order for that approach to be effective, you have to consider that there are three parts to the triceps and that you have to work each somewhat differently. The long head may be the most important of the three, but few people know how to hit it directly. My favorite exercise for that has always been straight-arm pullovers because they???re also less stressful to the elbows. When you do them correctly and with decent weights, they bring quick results. Other lifters find weighted dips or partial presses performed inside a power rack to be effective.

Finding a suitable exercise to strengthen a weak area often depends on having a basic knowledge of anatomy and kinesiology. I???m not talking about premed stuff but, rather, a fundamental understanding of what muscles you use for certain exercises. That information, which you can get from an anatomy book, is extremely helpful in adapting a program.

Say you???re having trouble with our pulling exercises: power cleans, high pulls and deadlifts. Your training mate tells you that you???re lifting your hips up much too fast. That causes you to break proper positioning and negatively influences the finish ??? a form mistake that indicates a weakness in your hips and lumbars. You can remedy it by doing deadlifts from a lower-than-normal position. I have my athletes do them with 25-pound plates on the bar. Isometrics performed from a very low position in the rack are also helpful, as are back hypers, reverse back hypers, stiff-legged deadlifts and good mornings.

In some cases a weak spot reveals itself not in an obvious form breakdown or an injury but a nagging irritation, a sore spot that lingers for days. Many beginners have a weakness in their middle backs, partly because that area doesn???t get much direct work early on. Power cleans work the middle some, but because the movement is swift, the muscles don???t get enough work. When athletes come to me complaining of middle-back pain, I have them start doing bentover rows and snatch-grip high pulls. You can strengthen a weakness in the upper back with dynamic shrugs and high pulls.

People often become very discouraged when they start doing an exercise to strengthen a weak area. Having to use weenie weights in front of your buddies is hard on the ego. Many let their buddies get their goat and stop doing the needed work, which is a major mistake because the weak spot only gets weaker. So take the abuse. It won???t last very long if you work your weak spot diligently. With patience and persistence you can turn a weak area into a strong point ??? and convert the static into admiration.

Most people who pay attention to training principles understand the importance of maintaining balanced strength from top to bottom. Even so, many overlook the front-to-back balance. On some parts of the body the front-to-back balance is well-established; for example, the ratio between the quads and the leg biceps, or hamstrings. All competent athletic trainers know that the leg biceps should never be less than 50% of the quads, strength-wise. So, if you???re using 160 pounds on your leg extensions, you should be using at least 80 pounds on your leg curls.

Other front-to-back ratios are frequently ignored, however, like the connection between the traps and the muscles of the shoulder girdle, the deltoids and pecs. One of the most common problems with lifters who specialize on the bench press is that they fail to do enough heavy work for their traps. I???ve watched ambitious benchers work the flat bench for an hour, go to the incline for another half hour, proceed to dumbell presses and then finish off with 3 sets of 20 shrugs with light dumbells. That always ??? not sometimes, but always ??? results in unbalanced strength and reveals itself with a pain at the crown of the shoulders, usually in the rear portion of the delts. The easy remedy is to attack the traps. Dynamic high pulls and shrugs work perfectly. By DYNAMIC I mean pulling the bar as high as possible in an explosive manner, not the kind of shrugs or high pulls where you merely elevate your shoulders.

Another area in which lifters frequently miss developing balance is the midsection. As a rule, most serious strength athletes do sufficient lumbar work, which is good because, in my opinion, the lumbars can never be too strong. Many don???t do any sort of ab work, however. Some avoid it because, if you do it right, ab work is never fun. Others ??? a great many, actually ??? don???t include ab work in their routines because they have flat abdomens and aren???t carrying any excess weight. They just think they don???t need to do situps, crunches or leg lifts.

The problem is, the abs need to be strong if you???re going to squat heavy weights and pull big weights off the floor. The lower abs, especially, come under a great deal of stress in strength training. Beginners find that out quickly. After squatting heavy, many tell me with wide eyes that they think they might be getting a hernia. It feels as if their abs are tearing. It???s true that a hernia can result, but it seldom happens if lifters are smart enough to include ab work in their programs from the beginning.

The good news is that abs respond rapidly. The problem generally disappears in a week. It???s also good to keep the balance concept in mind when designing your ab routine; that is, always do something for your upper abs as well as your lower abs.

That goes for the sides ??? the obliques ??? which brings me to yet another important type of balance that more often than not is skipped over: lateral balance. Lateral strength is invaluable for athletes who are required to twist their trunk aggressively. That includes a lacrosse player shooting the ball, a football player blocking and tackling and a tennis player delivering a strike. You have to exercise your serratus and intercostals.

Ethan Reeve, the very capable strength coach at Ohio University, includes a wonderful movement for improving lateral strength. You hold a 45-pound Olympic bar on end, then swing it down to one side, back to the starting position, then over to the other side. Once you get the form down, you add plates to the top of the bar. It???s very tough to do with any amount of weight ??? and extremely effective.

Lateral strength is critical in the legs, especially the insides of the legs, the adductors. The outsides, the abductors, generally get plenty of work from full squats, but quite often the adductors are behind at the beginning and have trouble catching up. In fact, most beginners start out with very weak adductors, partly because few exercises hit them directly.

If your knees turn in when you???re coming out of a heavy squat, or when you???re pulling a weight off the floor, you have weak adductors. You need to bring them up to par because they???re absolutely essential to knee stability. The adductor machine works like magic. Within a couple of weeks of doing 2 sets of 20 on the machine, you can correct the weakness. In the event that there???s no machine available, which is my situation right now, try very wide stance squats for high reps. I have my athletes with weak adductors do wide-stance squats for 20 reps as their back-off set. If they???re terribly weak, I have them do all their squats with a wider stance. Invariably, their adductors get extremely sore after the first time they do them. That???s good because it tells me they???re working.

The final point on balance is to think about your smaller groups every so often. It???s easy to skip calf work because, like ab work, it???s never much fun if you do it right. Nevertheless, every athlete knows that strong calves are important, and if you???ve ever had the misfortune to pull one, you know how difficult the rebuilding process can be. Another smaller bodypart to watch is the biceps. Most trainees get sufficient work for their biceps with heavy pulling. Even so, it???s still wise to include some specific exercises for the biceps in your program. Chins are best, and, of course, there???s plenty of variety in curling.

Keeping the development of the various muscle groups in balance is a never-ending challenge for those who strive to get stronger. Most start out on the correct course, doing a few basic exercises and making certain they???re building a solid base. They emphasize a routine built around the major muscle groups, pay close attention to their nutrition and are conscientious about getting enough rest. They???re rewarded with steady gains.

During the intermediate stage of training gains don???t come as easily, and that???s when trainees start losing the battle of balance. They begin deviating from the original plan, hoping to overcome the sticking points with some methods of their own. In some cased they change course because they???re discouraged about some exercise that just won???t improve, at least not enough to suit them.

On the other hand, some of the exercises in the program are progressing nicely, which prompts them to put more time and energy into improving those movements even more. Unfortunately, that causes them to neglect the exercises that aren???t going so well. Since they???re making alterations, they decide to eliminate a couple of exercises they really don???t like to do at all. Good mornings and stiff-legged deadlifts tend to head up that list. They figure back hypers work just as well, right? And since they never got the form down on shrugs, they switch to dumbell or upright rows.

You can see where this is going. Another version of the same theme is when beginners, particularly young beginners, are influenced by some article in a magazine or by other members of their gym. No need to go so low in those squats, they???re told. Good mornings serve no purpose other than maybe to hurt your back. What good are power cleans? You???re not planning on entering a weightlifting meet, are you? Why not spend more time of your chest and arms?

And that???s exactly what so many do ??? concentrate on exercises for their arms and chest. The lure of a big bench press is another factor that causes trainees to slip away from a balanced routine. The lift they want to improve the most, the bench, is the one on which they gain the slowest. That bothers them because it???s the only lift their friends ever ask about. They???re read that the muscles of the upper body always develop more slowly than the others in people their age, but it does little to satisfy them. They stop doing all the basic exercises for their back and legs so they can put all their effort into benching and exercises to help their bench.

For a time they think they???ve made a smart decision. The bench press does start to climb upward. They don???t mind the fact that their back and leg strength have diminished completely or that their physiques have become decidedly top heavy. Only when the aches and pains in their shoulders and elbows become too severe to even consider going to the gym do they stop and reexamine their programs.

Those who neglect or avoid the balance factor in strength training always run into problems eventually. For some the trouble is simply snickering about their ridiculous physiques, but for most it ends in injury. It???s certainly not an original idea, but a chain is really no stronger than its weakest link.

I???m not addressing these remarks to those who don???t really care about complete, balanced development. If people only want arms and chest, that???s certainly their choice. This discussion is for those who want to improve their overall strength in order to perform better athletically. That includes collegiate football players and also weekend tennis enthusiasts because all sports require a balanced strength. No sport involves only one or two bodyparts. The entire body must be made stronger.

A question I???m frequently asked when I discuss this idea is, ???If my squat is climbing steadily butt my bench and pulls are stuck, should I cut back on leg work and spend that energy on the other lifts???? Figuring out how to pull up a weaker lift is hard for trainees who set up their own routines as well as for coaches who are responsible for guiding the programs of many athletes. The answer is a little involved but not all that complicated. The first thing to understand is that it???s advisable to stay on the basic program for no less than six weeks, regardless of how fast one lift may be progressing in regards to the others. After that, changes can and should be made.

The best method of altering a program to help improve a weaker area is to change the sequence of the exercises. That???s much more effective than eliminating basic movements or cutting back on the workload too much. I start everyone on a routine that emphasizes full squats ??? for a couple of reasons. The core of strength is in the center of the hips, and there???s no other exercise that can strengthen the region better than full squats. The full squat is also the most demanding of all exercises, including the deadlift. If beginners can discipline themselves to always do their squats first, they???ll always include the lift in their programs. If people squat, they???ll stay strong, even into their 40s and 50s.

The squat is the priority exercise for all strength athletes, and I want them to make marked gains from the beginning. I spend much more time coaching technique on this exercise than I do on power cleans and benches. Because they do it first in their routines, the athletes have more energy for it, and their form is better than when they do the other basic exercises. As a result, their squats move up much faster than the other primary lifts.

After six weeks, just before spring break, we test them. The break serves the program well because the athletes are all on the brink of overtraining. That???s where I want them to be.

When they return, I shift the emphasis to the power clean. Power cleans, along with related back work, are essential to any athlete participating in contact sports such as football and lacrosse. Elevating a heavy weight in an explosive manner carries over perfectly to blocking, tackling and checking. A strong back also helps prevent serious injuries so I want to bring the lift in balance with the squat.

I do that by moving the power clean or hang clean to the front of the workout. I also lower the reps from 5???s to 3???s and 2???s. That enables them to use more weight right away. I have them move through their pulling routines at a faster pace than they used in the first six weeks. I???ve found that back work should be done more rapidly than leg or upper-body work, with short rest periods between sets. I start honing technique on the pulling platforms the same way I worked with the squats at the beginning. In nearly every case the problem on the power clean is at the finish. That???s the reason I add hang cleans to the program. I always have them do a few full-range movements before doing hangs, however. Most pick up the motion of the hang clean more readily than the full movement, and I don???t want hang cleans to become the primary exercise. The full movement works more muscles; therefore, it???s better.

So what happens with the squat? Do I have them do less work and lower the weights? I do call for less work on the squat, but I don???t lower the poundages because I believe it sets a negative mental standard. The procedure takes care of that. Since they expend lots of energy on the pulling platform, there???s less available for the squat. (Keep in mind that I am referring to beginners. Advanced strength athletes, who have established a wide base, can often set personal records on all three lifts in the same session.)

Since doing heavy pulls tires the lower back and squatting heavy weights is totally dependant on the lumbars, I make one other change in the routine at this time. I have everyone who can rack the bar on his shoulders correctly do front squats twice a week. They???re certainly not easier than back squats, but as the athletes use less weight on them, the total amount of work being done for the legs is somewhat less. Nevertheless, the amount of effort being put into the lift is the same ??? or more ??? and that???s a major consideration. In the long run front squats help to elevate the back squat because they strengthen the muscles of the legs and hips somewhat differently, which is mostly due to the fact that the lifters have to go extremely low on the front squat.

They continue to maintain their back squat by working it hard on Friday, doing a max triple followed by a demanding back-off set. I don???t mind if their squat doesn???t improve during this period, but I don???t want it to lose ground.

My goal is to hold the squat at its highest point and move the weaker lift up. When the pulls get to a high level, I try to hold that and shift emphasis again to improve the weakest area, in this case the upper body.

This is the method nearly all Olympic weightlifters used when the overhead press was still performed in competition. We knew that balance was the key to winning. A
huge press and a weak snatch or clean and jerk seldom won a major contest. The three lifts needed to be in some sort of balance. Some, naturally, excelled at one of the lifts, but they seldom overtrained on that lift. They spent their training time trying to improve their technique and strength on the weaker lifts.

After we give priority to the back for six weeks, there???s another break for finals, and then most of the athletes go home for the summer. After that it???s time to give the upper body more attention. That situation takes care of itself in most instances because once the athletes get out of my sight, they???re going to do a great deal more upper-body work. That???s fine, just so they try to maintain their highest levels of strength in the back and legs.

I give less attention to the upper body in a strength routine because those muscles are the least important to athletes. I???m not talking ego here but performance. With regards to upper-body strength what I am interested in, again, is balance. If the various groups that form the upper body ??? arms, shoulders, chest and upper back ??? have proportionate strength, then the risk of injury is greatly reduced.

That???s also the reason I have athletes do a variety of exercises for their upper bodies and not just the bench press. The incline is a very useful exercise for athletes, in my mind much more so than the flat bench. Overhead presses, push presses and push jerks have great value but are often neglected. Dips are extremely beneficial because the deltoids are involved in all physical activities. Many of the strongest men and best bodybuilders in the country used weighted dips as their primary upper-body exercise, and they built amazing shoulder strength as well as head-turning physiques.

After athletes have spent time giving each of the major groups priority ??? and, I hope, moving all of them upward in a balanced manner ??? they???re ready to approach the problem in a different way. Once the lifters have graduated to the intermediate or advanced stage, they have to use the concept of balance in terms of all the muscles that make up the major groups. They need to learn how to identify weaker parts of groups, down to the smallest muscles, and then do something about them. That???s a rather involved process, which I???ll take up in my next article.

At some point in your strength program, you have to become more aggressive and lean on the top-end numbers. If you continue to train with comfortable poundages for too long, you???ll get lazy and your progress will come to a halt. The body seeks equilibrium, complacency. Given a choice, it would much rather lie on a couch and have cold liquids and foods stuffed into it than sweat and strain in a hot gym.

To add to the problem of inherent indolence is the fact that there is, sadly, a trend in training philosophies that actually promotes making things easier. For example, some recommend using machines rather than free weights, since machines put less stress on the body. Other trendy but easier techniques include abbreviated workouts, split routines that barely raise a sweat, doing partial squats instead of full squats, and putting absolutely nothing heavy on the bar. How about performing seated presses over standing ones or clean and presses? Are the latter movements better? No, but they???re easier. The same goes for using Smith machines instead of free weights, or hang cleans instead of full cleans. When I ask people why they do hang cleans instead of the full-range movement, they usually reply that it???s safer. Horse fritters. People do hang cleans because they???re easier to do ??? and also easier to teach ??? than full cleans.

I have a beef with today???s mania for the trap bar. Proponents say it makes the movements easier than when they use an Olympic bar. That???s its main selling point ??? but to me it???s not a plus, but a negative. Anytime you make a lift easier to perform, other than when you???re perfecting your technique on it, you???re going to get less out of it. Many, many sets of huge, powerful traps were built before this device came along. What???s more, I can still make any trainee???s traps so sore that he can???t sit down without pain, and all I need is an Olympic bar and lots of weight.

Another pet peeve of mine is the various apparatuses that are manufactured solely to ease workout pain. My favorite is the plastic cushion for your shoulders so the bar won???t hurt your back when you squat. Another one is gloves. Since when are calluses a major problem ??? unless you happen to be a surgeon? Wraps and other supportive equipment are in this category too ??? anything to keep you from feeling any hurtful sensations when training.

Nevertheless, my biggest gripe is the all-you insanity that permeates the training halls of this country today. Whenever I hear the cry, ???All you!??? I can be 100 percent certain most of the lift is being done by the spotter, not the lifter. I believe I know how this nonsense made its way into strength training. It???s supposed to be a form of forced reps. Now, forced reps do have a place in strength training, but only for advanced lifters, in which case you must do them with heavy weights and use two spotters, who must time their movements precisely.

That???s not what???s going on, however. What they???re doing with the all-you goofiness is not really forced reps at all but rather trainees being assisted through the most difficult part of the lift. I compare it to helping runners go the final few yards in a race by carrying them across the finish line. After all, they were very tired. Perhaps even more ludicrous than the practice of making the lift easier for their partners is the interaction between lifters and spotters following an all-you attempt. The lifter will turn and ask, ???How much weight did you take off the bar???? The invariable answer is, ???Only about a pound,??? with the added note, ???I barely touched it.??? Why not a gram?

Am I the only person who thinks this practice is totally stupid and counterproductive? To add to the absurdity, people who have been all-youed always count the assisted reps, having been convinced by their partners that they could have done them even if the partners hadn???t touched the bar.

I finally came to the conclusion that the logic behind the all-you practice is, You scratch my back and I???ll scratch yours. In other words, if I help you through the most difficult portion of a lift, then I can count on you to help me. While it???s nice to have a reliable spotter in case you do fail, he or she isn???t helping you get stronger by nudging the bar through the sticking point. In fact, he???s hurting your progress. How am I going to learn to grind through the tough part of the lift if someone always helps me? It???s called the sticking point for a good reason: it???s the weakest part of the lift. Instead of helping me lift the bar, better to push down on it ??? which is what I generally do when I spot people who are accustomed to being all-youed. Of course, they only ask me to spot them one time, and that???s fine with me.

All-youing is most common on the bench press and incline, but it also occurs during curling, overhead pressing, and squats. The behind-the-lifter, hands-under-the-armpits form of spotting for squats also drives me up a wall. I???ve see people do that sort of thing even if the lifter is inside a power rack or in a staircase rack.

Don???t get me wrong. I understand the importance of spotting, especially for lifts such as the bench press and incline, where the bar is over your face. But I believe having a spotter hug you and help you through the difficult part of the squat limits your progress. If I have people squatting inside a power rack or staircase rack, where they???re protected, I discourage them from using any spotters. A great many of my athletes prefer to squat without spotters. If they miss they???re covered, and they believe it forces them to put out more when they know they???re not going to be helped.

The only time I ever use the behind-the-lifter spot is when there???s no one else in the gym and no power or staircase rack. I???ve also noticed that people who use that type of spot never go very low. It???s a good thing ??? if they did get stuck in the deep position, they???d be out of luck, for one person can???t do much to save them. They???d have to dump the bar. So either squat inside a rack, or use two spotters. You can have someone hug you later.

Weight training isn???t a team sport, and those who try to make it one only limit themselves. In the final analysis, you are alone with the bar. The only gains you make come from your efforts, not from those you train with. I believe that many people employ the all-you assistance on almost every single exercise so they???ll never fail. In reality, they don???t succeed, since the spotter does most of the work. In their minds, at least, they don???t miss.

I encourage pushing to failure. I believe in the concept of getting your misses up. How else can you really know exactly what your limits are on any lift? Failing is part of the overall process. Lifting without failing is like skating without falling. There???s nothing wrong with failing. In fact, it???s necessary. In most cases, the failure serves to motivate you. You become irritated at missing a certain poundage, and work harder and harder so you won???t miss it again. When my athletes miss a max attempt, they dwell on it for weeks until I let them take a crack at it again. In the meantime, they???re strengthening the weak area that revealed itself with the failure. Seldom do they ever miss the second time around, and in the process they move to a higher strength level. It also builds a more aggressive attitude, which I want to promote in my athletes.

Fear of failure is also one of the reasons that so many programs don???t include singles. Some experts suggest that singles are risky, but I don???t find that to be the case if lifters have been taught proper form. Certainly, the Olympic lifts are riskier than any weight-training exercise, and Olympic lifters thrive on singles. Instead of singles, coaches encourage high reps. They use them to test the relative strength of their athletes as well. That practice actually came out of professional football and has filtered down to colleges and high school. Take a given weight and do as many reps as possible. Proponents of high-rep testing say it???s safer than trying a max single, but I find that the exact opposite is true. Typically, the lift of choice is the bench press. Once lifters tire, they revert to sloppy form in order to run the reps higher. They rebound the bar off their chest, bridge, and/or twist ??? anything to gain one more rep. That???s much more stressful to the shoulder girdle than trying a max single.

Another common practice that protects lifters from facing the horrors of failure is the conversion chart, which enables them to convert reps done on a certain lift to a max single. I???ve always hated that idea, for everyone who has ever lifted anything heavy understands there???s a world of difference between being able to handle 300 for 10 reps and 400 for one. It???s a world of difference physically and, more important, mentally. It takes a certain amount of courage to deal with 400, and it fosters weakness to convert a light poundage to a heavy one.

When I first arrived at Johns Hopkins, the football coach, who left soon afterward, showed me the results of his off-season strength program from the year before. I was impressed because there were a half-dozen players squatting more than 500. My job was going to be easier than I expected, I thought. When I did get the football team in the weight room, however, I discovered that only one player could even manage 315, and he wasn???t going low enough. Then I found out the former coach had used the conversion chart. Why? It???s easier, for one thing. But the primary reason that so many use it, I believe, is that it boosts the numbers, even if they are artificial. High school coaches promote the conversion method so they can elevate the status of their players to the collegiate recruiters. It makes the coach look good to have 20 athletes benching more than 300 and squatting more than 400, even if they never handled that much weight, not even in their dreams.

Singles should be part of every strength program. When I suggest that idea to older people or to people who are not trying to gain strength for a sport, they often come back with, ???But I don???t care how much I can single. I don???t plan on entering a weight-lifting meet. I only want to improve my strength in order to look and feel better.??? I fully understand, for I???m in the same boat. But if you???re serious about getting stronger, for whatever reason, then you need to include singles in your routine. You may not want to do them often, but the singles will help you break through the numbers barrier, and numbers are what strength training is all about.

If, for example, the most you ever handle on the bench press is 275 for 5 and you decide to try 290 or 300, the odds are you???ll fail. The reason for that is partly psychological, but there???s also a physiological aspect. Lifting a maximum single opens up totally new synapses in the nervous system and forces the tendons and ligaments to work harder. The true sources of strength are the tendons and ligaments, so you must stress them positively in order to make them stronger.

Another advantage of doing singles every so often is that they help hone technique. Doing tens and even fives or triples allows a certain margin of error in from, but that???s not the case for a max single. The line has to be very precise. Miss the groove even slightly, and you???ll miss the lift.

By the same token, max singles help you locate your weak point. With a lighter poundage used for any number of reps. you can slide through your weak point ??? but not with a max single. Quite a few of my athletes power their squats out of a deep bottom position. So powerful are their starts that they seldom have to worry about grinding through the middle range. Their hips and glutes elevate the bar so forcefully that they only have to be concerned with the start and finish ??? that is, until the bar is loaded to a new max and the weakness shows itself. That???s a good thing, however, because they can isolate that weak area inside the power rack and make it stronger. If they never attempted a max single, they might never discover the weakness.

Singles influence that numbers barrier in another way, also. Some numbers, such as 300 and 400 are formidable. Many shy away from singles because they are fearful of dealing with big numbers. If you include singles in your routine on a regular basis, though, you can slip right up to and over those numbers. Move your max to 285, then go back and work that lift until you can do the same 285 for 3 reps. Then single out again. This time you manage 295. Do the same thing again ??? work, work, work, and get a triple with 295. The next time you go for a max, you???ll vault right over the 300 barrier.

Whenever I bring up the subject of singles, I???m invariably asked, ???But are they safe???? Yes, if you satisfy two conditions. You have to learn good form on the lift and establish a solid foundation. Those conditions apply to any lower reps, even triples. Nothing is really more important to people interested in gaining strength than perfecting technique on all the exercises. And I mean all of them, even small-muscle movements like pullovers and dips. If you???ve been working out consistently for six weeks or more, your base will be sound enough for you to do some singles.

Singles serve the strength athlete in much the same manner as sprints serve the runner. They trigger different responses n the body and help make it stronger. You may only want to single once a month, and that???s fine. Many people like to spend adequate time firming up their base and increasing the workload on a lift before trying to max out for a personal record. That???s a good idea. Singles are fun, since they allow you to set personal records, so people will quite often do them too frequently. Every four weeks is enough to get the desired effect.

Besides adding singles to your program, continue to incorporate newer, more demanding exercises as well. Once you???ve mastered the power clean, try doing full cleans. Do cleans and presses instead of seated presses or presses from the rack. Try front squats. They???re tough, but they work the legs and hips quite differently from the way back squats work it. Keep challenging your body, and it will grow. Baby it and you???ll remain a mullet.

In my last article I focused on athletes who participate in events that are long in duration and that don???t have rest periods. This time I???ll finish up with that group and proceed to those whose events are generally much shorter and give participants many breaks and time to recover.

I recommend that endurance athletes use the 5×5 formula for the core exercises and higher reps, 20s for 2 sets, for the auxiliary movements. The strength work should take priority over practicing the skills needed in a chosen sport as well as any other physical activity, such as running.

The time to begin the strength program is during an off-season or when there???s not an upcoming competition. Two months is best, but six weeks will also get results. After six to eight weeks of learning correct form on various lifts and moving the numbers as high as possible, athletes are ready to make some changes in their routine so that they can go back to practicing their sports skills at a greater frequency.

What endurance athletes are after is to maintain a high percentage of the strength they???ve gained while utilizing some of their newfound prowess for improving stamina and the skills needed in their sport. The strength they???ve gained in their arms, shoulders, back, hips and legs will enable them to run, row, bike or skate longer and with more vigor. An athlete who gained 30, 40 or even 50 percent overall strength is going to perform better right away in all facets of any sports activity.

There are two ways of shifting the weight training to strike that balance. Which way you choose is an individual matter. Most prefer to switch from lower to higher reps, some gradually, staying with a certain set-and-rep formula for a couple of weeks before moving to the next stage. Others prefer to move from 5???s to much higher reps in a matter of two weeks. The first step is to change from 5×5 to 4 sets of 8. The next move is to 4 sets of 12, then 3 sets of 15, and, finally, 3 sets of 20. That???s for the core exercises and works nicely for most of them. Any high-skill movement, however, has to be done a bit differently. Performing more than 10 reps on an exercise that requires a great deal of technique such as the power clean, isn???t a good idea because as you tire, your form begins to break down. An exercise is productive only when you use proper technique throughout a set. So stay with 8???s or 10???s for high-skill movements ??? even fewer than that if your form starts to get sloppy. Just add more sets to get the needed work in. You can also do this: Power clean a weight for 8 to 10 reps, then deadlift it for another 10 to 15 reps.

When you move to the higher reps, work quickly. A circuit can be very effective. Set up stations for your primary exercises, and move from one exercise to the next with a minimum of rest, only long enough to change the plates. You can, however, slow down for your final spin through the circuit because the final sets are the meat of the program. You want to be rested so you can handle as much weight as possible and crank out the desired number of reps in perfect form. If you???re not spent when you finish, you either need to move through the routine at a faster pace or use more weight on the final sets.

As you begin spending more time with your sport, you can drop a weight-training day. Also, if you feel you???re not recovering sufficiently from the weight work, eliminate some or all of the auxiliary movements. Most athletes are satisfied with moving gradually up to 3 sets of 20, although I???ve trained a number of endurance athletes who opted to run the reps even higher. I trained a mountain biker in Monterey, California, one fall. He had progressed up to the 3 sets of 20 and said he wanted to find out if pushing the reps a lot higher would benefit him. He was extremely fit, one of the top mountain bikers in the country, so I knew he could handle a great deal more than a beginner or intermediate. Eventually, he ended up doing 2 sets of 100 reps on a variety of exercises for his three major muscle groups, and, in his opinion, they served him well. He could tell for certain that the weight work helped him because his sport was based on time, and he was cutting valuable seconds off his training climbs.

The other way to alter the weight program when you go back to spending a great amount of time on your sport is to stay with the 5×5 and do only 2 workouts a week. You do one session heavy on a day when your other training is light. The second session is light and can be done on any day during the week ??? preferably when the training load for your sport isn???t severe.

If you decide to do the higher-rep routine, you should go back and perform a lower-rep workout every couple of weeks, even during the competitive season. You can do that for all the major groups, to reactivate the attachments to some degree, or perhaps just for one bodypart that???s lagging behind and is adversely affecting performance.

When the next off-season break comes around, repeat the process and move the top-end numbers higher than you did the first time. You???ll find that the gains come much faster because you now know how to do the various exercises and understand how your body responds to certain movements and workload. Over the course of a few years you???ll be able to greatly improve your overall strength, and that will have a direct, positive influence on your endurance and, ergo, your performance in your chosen sport.

Endurance athletes who start on a pure strength program for the first time need to pay close attention to several other aspects of conditioning, such as warming up thoroughly before doing any lifting or stretching during and after each workout. The hamstrings need special attention because the stress placed on them with squats and any heavy pulling movement is different from staying in constant motion. Hamstrings have a tendency to tighten up after heavy sets, and it???s smart to stretch them right away and after the session and again later on that night. Same with calves. While an athlete may be accustomed to doing a 20-mile training run or bike ride, hammering the calves for 3 sets of 30 with the last dozen reps slipping into the painful zone is a different ballgame. Calves need to be stretched after every set, and stretching more later on is always a good idea.

Be sure to stretch out your shoulders once you start lifting demanding numbers, especially after flat- or incline-bench presses. The shoulder girdle may tighten up, so deep in mind that the strength you gain can be converted to your sport only if you maintain a full range of motion. Use a towel, stretch between sets and again after the workout.

When you embark on a strength routine, try to get a bit more rest and increase your intake of protein, either in food or in supplement form. The additional rest will ensure that you???re fresh and ready for the next session. I know that most serious endurance athletes push their bodies to the edge of exhaustion regularly, and without the extra rest they???re going to be trying to lift with fatigued muscles, tendons and ligaments. That spells trouble. You need the protein because when you lift weights with purpose, you use up a lot of amino acids that must be replaced as quickly as possible or you won???t be fully recovered when the next session comes around.

I???ve offered advice that to a few endurance athletes, but they ignored me because they believed that if they could recover from participating in their sport for two hours without pause, the weight workout would be a walk in the park. False reasoning. The two disciplines are at opposite ends of the spectrum, and therefore the demands they place on the body are quite different. The weight work is much more stressful to the attachments, and tendons and ligaments need lots of rest and nourishment to recover sufficiently to work at full capacity again. I should add that those who didn???t bother upping their protein intake or obtaining more rest made no significant gains in the weight room.

I???ll now turn my attention to athletes who engage in sports that require short bursts of energy followed by brief periods of rest ??? or at least periods of lesser effort: Football, baseball, lacrosse, soccer, basketball, tennis, volleyball, fencing, wrestling, boxing, the martial arts, hockey and the field events in track all fall into this category.

Endurance is valuable in every one of those sports. The key to success for an individual athlete is to be able to reach into the tank at the end of a competition. In team sports those who are conditioned to have an abundance of energy left in the final minutes of the fourth quarter, the ninth inning or final period of a hockey game will emerge the winner in almost every case.

Endurance is a genuine plus for competitive Olympic lifters, powerlifters and bodybuilders. Few think in those terms in the beginning, but as they become more advanced, it becomes clear that if they???re going to improve their numbers, they must be able to train longer than before ??? and more often as well. How is it that foreign Olympic lifters can train three times a day, six days a week? No secret. Other than that one. They???ve also built such a solid foundation over the years that they can recover from triple sessions and still be ready for the next day???s workouts.

The first top-notch bodybuilders I trained with were Sergio Oliva and Bob Gajda in Chicago when I moved there to attend graduate school. I was absolutely amazed at the amount of work they did in a session. My workload was maybe half of what they accomplished, and to add insult to injury, they moved through the exercises at a pace much faster than what I was accustomed to. That???s when I decided to stick with Olympic lifting. When Bill St. John and Val Vasileff came to York to train with the lifters, they would put us to shame with the intensity and volume of work they handled. Not one member of the York Barbell team, not even Bill March or Bednarski could stay with those guys.

Endurance can be enhanced in a number of ways, but it basically comes down to being able to handle a greater amount of work and being able to recover from the exertion. If you aren???t able to recover, then you won???t progress. In fact, you???ll start slipping backward. That means increasing workload has to be done slowly. So runners, bikers, rowers and swimmers deliberately add to their distances. Should they push out too far too fast, the consequences will be detrimental to their cause. The foundation has to be laid properly and over an extended period of time before it can be expanded to any significant degree.

The same rule holds true for strength training. The endurance factor can improve in the weight room, but it has to be done systematically and not be hit or miss. That???s why anyone who knows even the basic rudiments of strength training will tell you to start out training only three days a week. It would be foolhardy to attempt to work out four or five times in the beginning because the off days are vital for recovery; again, without recovery there are either no real gains or gains too slight to notice. In the same vein of thought, the exercises in a beginning routine should be limited to just three primary and two auxiliary, and the workouts should be done in an hour or an hour and 15 minutes.

If you train consistently and use good technique, your body will begin to adapt to the amount of work you do in a given week. That???s when it???s time to increase the load. The way I determine with my athletes is by watching them, checking mostly for form errors but also to see how they deal with the final exercises in their program for the day. When they???re making improvements on the final lifts, I know they???re ready for a forward push.

By using the heavy, light and medium concept, athletes can achieve that kind of success. Having the capacity to perform well at the end of a grueling session is what every athlete seeks. It???s functional endurance and can be used in any sport. We???ve all watched and marveled at the running backs who got progressively stronger and seemingly faster throughout the game. That was no accident, nor was it based on genetics. The players developed stamina through hard work over a length of time.

Expanding the workload had to be done with care. Obviously, the easiest way to do that is extend the time spent in the weight room. Training a little longer is okay for most, but when it goes past two hours, it becomes a negative. There just isn???t enough energy to sustain you so that the exercises at the end of the program are productive. In most instances all the extra-long sessions do is push you into overtraining. An athlete who???s paying attention will know when it???s happening and make some changes.

Adding another workout during the week is a better idea than extending the three sessions. Tuesday works well. As it follows the heavy day, it must be a light-light day, especially at the beginning. Over time you may feel that you can do more, but at first stay on the conservative side. The exercises you select for the light-light day should not be as demanding as those done at the other workouts. Not easy, necessarily, but not nearly as stressful ??? overhead presses with a bar or dumbells. You attack the lift with the same intensity as you do with flat- and incline-bench presses, but the workload is considerably lower. The same idea goes for the back. While power snatches require a great deal of concentration, they???re not as demanding as power cleans, deadlifts or shrugs.

Athletes who have been including a fourth day in their routine for five or six months will be able to increase the workload on Tuesday and still handle the numbers on Wednesday and Friday. They mustn???t try to add too much work, however, and that often happens, as they slip in several more auxiliary movements, typically for the showy muscles. The best way to prevent yourself from doing too much on the light-light day is to set a time limit and stay within it ??? 45 minutes at the beginning and never more than an hour. So if you want to squeeze in some curls or triceps pushdowns, you have to move at a faster pace.

A simple way to add to your load on any day is to do some overloading right behind a primary exercise: three or four sets of high pulls behind power cleans or power snatches. Push presses after regular presses. Heavy supports in the power rack after squats.

Learn to move through your exercises quickly on both Tuesday and Wednesday. The light-light day needs to be concluded in an hour ad the following light day in an hour and 15 minutes, tops. The success of the program really revolves around those two days. If you overtrain on either of them, the remainder of the week is going to be a wash, and that, in turn, will have a negative effect on the upcoming heavy day on Monday.

The next step in the progression will take three or four years. Yes, I know that sounds like a long time, but, in truth, it isn???t, especially if you view strength training as a lifelong endeavor. Yet it takes that amount of time to create the solid strength foundation that enables you to recover from greater and greater volumes of work. I???ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: Buy a notebook and keep accurate records of your workouts, listing everything that might have a bearing on your performance, plus the weight used on every set and how many reps you did. From that you can calculate your workload, and that figure will help you determine your next move. It may be a bit less for a few weeks if you believe you???re slightly overtrained. It will enable you to know, for certain, how much you can add to your volume. The rule of thumb I use is 10% a month. While that may not seem like much, over the course of a year, it???s quite a lot.

When you find that you want to do more work in a given week but understand that when you exceed the time limits on any of the days you become fatigued, consider multiple sessions. Start by having one day with two sessions. You will probably be able to add yet another two workout sessions later on, but start with just one.

There???s nothing new about the concept. It???s been used in a great many sports for a long time. The top gymnasts put in eight-hour workouts daily, six days a week. Swimmers of the Michael Phelps calibre do three tough sessions a day. I???ve already noted that foreign Olympic lifters regularly do three sessions a day, six days a week.

The notion had just begun in Russia when Barski picked up on it and wanted to give it a try at York. His problem was he hated to train alone, so he recruited Tommy Suggs and me to join him in the experiment. Knowing that we were flirting with overtraining, we moved cautiously, doing just one exercise at noon, then our regular program at four. W
e were overly weary for the first two weeks; then our bodies adapted, and we were okay. We had a few things in our favor that not many other lifters in the country had at that time. The gym was in the building, which meant we didn???t have to travel. After we finished our noon session and showered, we went directly into the dairy bar and drank a protein milk shake and took our vitamins. About an hour later we ate our lunches, and when four o???clock came, we were sufficiently recovered and renourished.

The extra work helped, and within the next month we added a second two-a-day. While we were running up our training volume, we decided it would be smart to improve our cardiovascular-respiratory base as well. Stamina was an important factor in our sport, although few think about that attribute in relation to moving heavy weights. At a contest a lifter might have to follow himself on the platform with a short rest. In the bigger contests where there were lots of entries, the meets would often drag on into the next day. At one Philly Open, I did my first warmup in the press at 4:30 p.m. and my final attempt on the clean and jerk at 2:30 a.m.

Barski didn???t join Tommy and me for our twice-a-week aerobics at the York Y. He never played any sports other than weightlifting and felt the work he was doing in the gym was plenty. He was probably right, as he did carry a huge workload. Tommy and I, however, believed that boosting our aerobic capacity would help in our training and at the meets. We chose activities that were fun. Racquetball was our favorite. We also played volleyball at the Y and practiced with the York College soccer team occasionally.

The first time Tommy and I played racquetball, we lasted 20 minutes and were blowing like asthmatics. Within a month we were able to go full-tilt for an hour. What we discovered ??? and it???s been reinforced for me over the years ??? was that if an athlete has a solid strength base, aerobic fitness comes quite readily. I once trained a female who decided she wanted to start running. She began jogging and within nine months had completed a marathon.

That???s good news. It means that if you???re already strong, you???ll be able to extend the time you spend doing whatever type of cardio you enjoy very quickly. The combination of gaining strength and improving aerobic capacity is a terrific one-two punch and makes for a better athlete in any sport. Keep in mind what I???ve been preaching: It???s much smarter to establish your strength base before embarking on any type of aerobic program, and for team sports that usually means running. I???ve had football players wait until two weeks before summer camp before they ran, and all were able to make it through the two-a-day sessions as well as or better than their teammates.

For those who are primarily interested in maintaining a high level of fitness and aren???t concerned with moving heavy weights or playing any sport, there???s an easy way to enhance endurance. Pick up the pace. Move through your weight workouts more quickly and walk or swim or bike a bit faster. You might also consider doing your aerobic activity more often, such as walking twice a day instead of just once. All the little things you do will begin to add up in a short period of time.

Endurance is a very valuable commodity. Older people covet it, since it enables them to pursue some of their favorite hobbies, like taking a long hike through a state park. Team sports need it to give them an advantage in a tough contest. I recently watched game five of the Stanley Cup, and it was a test of fortitude the likes of which I hadn???t seen for some time. Pittsburgh tied the game with 34 seconds left in regulation. The game went to three overtimes, which means the players were, in effect, playing a double header. The athletes were clearly exhausted near the end. Hell, I was exhausted just watching. The better conditioned team was going to win. Forget mental toughness. When strength and lungs give out, you???re not going to perform at a high level. The Penguins prevailed over the Red Wings, avoiding elimination. Now I???m curious to find out which team is able to recover form that epic match and be ready for game six.

I???m also impressed by the endurance of some individual athletes, such as those participants in the French Open tennis championships. The women often play for three straight hours, and the men are frequently on the court for more than four.

There???s no downside to having an abundance of endurance. It???s always an asset. Endurance is certainly a huge advantage for anyone wanting to sustain a higher quality of life.