We live in the age of bodybuilding technology, but the basic questions have never changed: How do you force your body to grow, how do you become monstrously big? And the answer is the same today as it has always been: to get big, you have to get strong.
Peak contraction, rest-pause, forced reps, special machines, complex diets and all the other new, scientific techniques are no doubt leading to even more polished and refined physiques among the top champions. But the beginning and intermediate bodybuilder isn't as concerned with refinement as with growth, and focusing too much on complicated techniques can impede growth instead of help it.
The first step is to really believe that becoming massive is possible. You have to accept the idea that you, too, have the privilege of being huge. Forget about genetics and body types. Set your own personal goals and work as hard as you can toward achieving them. The mind always poops out before the body. Remember that. If you have doubts, if you don't really believe, then you will fail. You create your own limits.
The next step is to train very hard, concentrating on basic exercises. This involves heavy weight and the most fundamental movements. Barbells and dumbbells instead of cables and machines, for the most part, and power movements using all the muscles of the body. To repeat, to get big, you have to get strong. There is no such thing as big without strong; don't let anyone kid you.
No matter what exercises you use, you have to work with heavy weights and low reps to force the body to grow. For each exercise, start with a 15-rep warm-up set, then do five more sets, increasing the poundages each set, decreasing the reps (down to just six reps for the last two sets), and going to failure each set. Increase the weight as much as necessary so that you go to failure each set.
And, since you're not after refinement at this stage, there are some other variations that help break through your bodys resistance to growth. Try doing movements like partial squats and quarter or half squats, using fairly heavy weight. Just be sure you have a workout partner standing by to spot you.
I recommend power movements as well. Deadlifts, power cleans, snatches and the like. You look at the physique of a bodybuilder who used to be a competitive weightlifter Franco Columbu, for example, or Jusup Wilkosz and youll see the kind of depth and density that the pure bodybuilder almost never achieves.
Intensity is another concept that may confuse the younger bodybuilder intent on developing big muscles. Frequently I read that you should do your workout in less and less time, an hours worth of training in 40 minutes.
For the rank beginner, I recommend the opposite: taking an hour and a half to do what you would normally do in an hour. This way you recover completely between sets, so you can use your maximum strength in every single lift, instead of outrunning your endurance and getting too tired to lift heavy. But some young bodybuilders get carried away with the idea of weight. They use such poor technique that their bodies don't grow as they should, and they also increase their risk of injury. Weight is just a means to an end, and that end is putting as much stress as possible on the muscles.
The weight is just something a muscle contracts against. You need to lift heavy if you want the muscle to grow. But if you start doing barbell curls, for example, and you swing and sway and use your back muscles to help the lift, you arent making the biceps work hard enough. You just fool yourself if you think cheating like this will make your muscles grow.
Cheating has its place in training. I remember Franco always believed in cheating on some exercises. But he knew how. If you do cheat curls, for example, and youre using 135 pounds, your biceps are still working as hard as they can. But cheat with 30 pounds and you get nothing.
If you are really trying to grow, one thing you dont want to do is overtrain. Even when I was still a beginner, I preferred training six days a week, but was careful to train each individual bodypart no more than twice a week.
Three times a week for a bodypart is too much if you want maximum growth. Using the Split System or Double-Split System, you can train the whole body in three days, then turn around and do it again. When you train only twice a week, each muscle has plenty of time to recuperate.
I also advocate going slightly crazy from time to time. Careful, calculated, planned workouts are the best in the long run, but from time to time it pays to pull out all the stops and let your gut instincts take over.
In Education of a Bodybuilder, I describe how my friends and I would go out in the woods and just do set after set of squats until we dropped, and then have a barbecue over an open fire and feel like Germanic warriors before the days of Rome.
This kind of fantasy and overwhelming hard training wasn't an everyday thing, but it really helped to blow past limits and create a tremendous motivation. Little did I know then that I would bring that fantasy to life in the film Conan the Barbarian.
Even as controlled a bodybuilder as Chris Dickerson uses mental imagery to drive himself to unbelievable exertions in the gym. Fantasizing yourself as a mythical hero, like Hercules, is one way to push past limits. In Gold's Gym, David and Peter Paul, the Barbarian Twins, live their fantasies almost every minute, slapping each others face, stepping on each other, and being dedicated to lifting any amount of weight they see someone else is able to handle. To get big, sometimes you have to get a little crazy. But not so crazy that you get stupid and hurt yourself. It is only a fantasy. Hurt yourself and you set back your training by weeks or months, and thats no way to develop a great physique.
Diet is also important in getting big. Many young bodybuilders try to put on size just by eating a lot steaks, whole chickens, gallons of milk but the body can use only so much food at one time, and any more just turns to fat. Bodybuilders used to bulk up, mistaking fat for real size.
The fact is, when you get fat, your body builds muscle more slowly than when you stay lean. But you do need to eat to grow. I recommend eating several smaller meals instead of a few big ones. I would always eat a good breakfast and then follow it up with a protein drink after training.
By eating four meals a day and consuming a couple of protein drinks, you have the equivalent of six meals a day, and you always have the protein and carbohydrate in your system your body needs. Make no mistake: without aerobic training, this kind of diet won't produce at all.