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Old Man Young Muscle
Old Man Young Muscle
Old Man Young Muscle
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Old Man, Young Muscle
Contents
Introduction............................................................4
Chapter 3—Resistance-Curve
Fiber Activation................................19
Chapter 9—Pre-Exhaustion-Inspired
Mass Workout..................................68
Epilogue................................................................82
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Old Man, Young Muscle
Introduction
The first book I wrote was Iron Man’s Home Gym Handbook
in 1990, and it kicked off like this…
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Old Man, Young Muscle
By merging many of his “ideal” exercises with my own training
discoveries over the years, like slow-twitch exhaustion, I figured
out how to build muscle on my over-60 body with 35-minute
workouts three times a week. Newfound efficiency, to say the
least.
It’s been 1 1/2 years since I started training this way, and the
results have been outstanding, far better than I ever imagined
considering my limited equipment and
my age. People who see my physique
are shocked when they learn how
short and infrequent my workouts are.
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About the Author
The bodybuilding bug bit me at
the age of 14 way back in the
early 1970s (see photo on page
5). Exploring in my grandmother’s
attic, I unearthed a treasure that
would change my life: my uncle’s
weight set along with a few of his
Strength & Health magazines. I
was hooked.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
for legendary physique photographers John Balik and Michael
Neveux in Southern California. I started training at the Mecca of
Bodybuilding, Gold’s Gym in Venice, California, a dream for me.
(Another dream fulfilled: I interviewed Arnold in his office in Santa
Monica before he was California's governor.)
A few years later, we put together the Iron Man Training and
Research Center, the magazine’s well-equipped warehouse gym.
That became my training facility and also our muscle-building
“lab.” That’s where my education took a giant leap with my
training partner and “human guinea pig” Jonathan Lawson.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
CHAPTER 1
Mr. America Mass Moves
It was in the early 2000s when we
published Doug Brignole’s first article in
Iron Man, and it riled up a lot of people.
He took conventional wisdom to the
woodshed, saying that the overhead
press was horribly dangerous for the
shoulder joint and not even that great for
shoulder development.
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increase in restful sleep—because
my shoulders weren’t screaming with
pain and waking me up every hour.
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overhead presses. Barbell squats are on his hit list as well.
There is simply no reason to put a spine-crushing weight on
your shoulders and then squat if quad development is your
goal. The resistance is more directly affecting your glutes and
lower back than your quads—which only receive about 30
percent of the load according to biomechanics analysis.
And you’re not doing your vertebrae any favors. Sure you can
get some quad growth from barbell squats, but severe spine
compression with possible blown disks is a high price to pay
for inefficient muscle stimulation and keeping your chiropractor
driving a Tesla.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
dumbbells in almost every case. Why? You want to force the target
muscles to fire independently for focus and more growth-fiber
activation.
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I’ve touched on two of the factors that determine the “efficiency,
productivity and safety of resistance exercise,” according to Doug:
forcing the target muscle to work independently and creating an ideal
resistance curve—hardest at stretch and easiest at contraction. Let’s
dig into those and a few more along with more ideal exercises so that
you can start supercharging your muscle gains. (See all five factors in
the chart below; if you're not into exercise analysis, which is the subject
of the next few chapters, page 44 is where the workouts begin.)
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Old Man, Young Muscle
CHAPTER 2
One-Limb Work and
Range of Motion
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Research shows that when you
use two arms or two legs at a time,
the target muscles are not as strong
as training one limb at a time. That’s
bi-lateral deficit.
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CHAPTER 3
Resistance-Curve
Fiber Activation
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Old Man, Young Muscle
In other words, in the peak-contracted position, the fibers are
very bunched up, so much so that they can’t produce as much
tension as when the muscle is in a more lengthened state.
Not that bands are bad. They can be a godsend when you’re
training without weights in a hotel room for example. The simple
truth is that bands are not ideal because they are inefficient at
training the target muscle’s resistance curve correctly.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
CHAPTER 4
Direct Action and
Solo Contraction
4) Direction of
resistance. As
Doug says in his
book, with many
examples, a muscle
works optimally pulling
directly toward its
origin. With the incline
Flat dumbbell flye, upper one-arm lateral raise,
arms pulling toward pecs' pictured on page 14, the resistance
origin on the sternum.
from the dumbbell is exactly opposite
the side head’s origin, which is near
the collarbone.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
dumbbell flye or dumbbell bench press. As previously discussed,
dumbbells are best for bench presses because they allow more
range of motion than having your hands locked on a barbell. You
want your upper arms to be as close to vertical as possible at the
top of each rep—not angled out as with a barbell bench press.
And consider this: With the barbell bench press, your arms are
angled away at the top, so your hands will be driving outward,
which involves more triceps, not inward for pecs. In other words, if
the bar was greased, your hands would slide out as you push the
bar up, not in toward the pecs’ origin as they should to contract
the pectoral muscles. Doug made that eye-opening observation in
a recent interview, which made me realize why I never got much
chest development from barbell bench presses and that eliminating
them from my workouts years ago was the right move.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
row—or any row, if you’re trying to work your back. The direction of
resistance is wrong for both lats and middle back, or traps. You’re
pulling the arms straight back, which is more a function of the
deltoid’s rear head. The back muscles do work, but inefficiently.
Pulling for the lats should be from up at an angle and to the side of
your torso. A pulldown gets you close, but the resistance is coming
from directly above, so you pull more down rather than into your
side. Ideally resistance should come from the side and only slightly
up.
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arm is straight, torso
leaning out at an
angle. Resistance is
least at the top and
most at the bottom,
arm-straight position
(photos at right).
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Keep in mind that what I’ve outlined in these last three
chapters are biomechanical factors to determine the optimal
exercise for best fiber activation in a target muscle. To review,
these are my top five efficiency, productivity and safety factors
from Doug’s 16:
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CHAPTER 5
Anabolic-Acceleration
Factors
Maxing out hypertrophy is more
than just finding the single best
exercise for fiber recruitment.
There are other harbingers or
accelerators of muscle growth
you should consider, like
triggering anabolic hormone
production.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
2) Metabolic stress. According to Schoenfeld, this is “an
exercise-induced accumulation of metabolites.” These include
lactic acid, or lactate, and inorganic phosphate. This buildup, or
pooling, of metabolites is best triggered by blocking blood flow
during sufficient tension time—an exercise that lasts longer than 20
seconds, for example. Short rests between sets and higher-rep sets
contribute to "the burn" as well.
Contracted.
Midrange.
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Stretch.
Notice how the triceps are trained along the muscles’ full
arc of possible movement—overhead, out in front of the body
and down next to the torso. Brignole would say all of that is
unnecessary—that you can get optimal triceps development with
one ideal exercise, like dumbbell decline extensions.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
Muscle damage mostly occurs on the negative stroke, or
lowering phase, of an exercise. So if you lower in a fairly slow and
controlled manner—two to three seconds—you can get some
hypertrophic “damage.” You also get a mild stretch at the bottom
of the stroke, which may contribute to that hypertrophy factor.
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arm and leg exercises and had a subject perform five sets of 10
reps. After the target muscle was analyzed via magnetic resonance
imaging, which allowed a look “inside” the muscle to see which
heads “light up” the most.
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CHAPTER 6
Positions of Flexion
Reloaded
There’s no
question that
you can achieve
Schoenfeld’s three
key hypertrophic
factors—mechanical
tension, metabolic
stress and muscle
damage—to
some degree with
Brignole’s ideal
Dumbbell decline extensions. exercises, such as
dumbbell decline
extensions for
triceps.
But adding
exercises that
trigger growth with
more concentration
along some of
those pathways can
contribute to faster
progress—even though the add-on exercise is less than
ideal from a biomechanics standpoint. Fleck and Kraemer’s
observation of variation in muscle-fiber recruitment order is
only one reason to train the missing positions.
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Contracted position. Here’s something to consider: Once
you do a couple of sets of the ideal exercise, have you not
altered the strength curve of the target muscle by overloading
the semi-stretch position with very little loading at contraction?
Why wouldn’t you want to train the weaker contracted position
that got only minimal resistance with the ideal move?
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Old Man, Young Muscle
in most cases. For example,
dumbbell decline extensions
provide a bit of stretch at
the bottom, but not the full
elongation you achieve with
overhead extensions when your
arm is up next to your head.
Good point…
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training induces unequal adaptation in muscle fascicles and
thickness in medial and lateral gatrocnemii" [Scand J Med Sci
Sports, Jan 30, 2017]
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midback development even
though the angle of pull is off and
the strength curve is wrong. While
not biomechanically correct, both
initiate stretch overload at the
start of the row with hands close.
You may have seen Mr. Olympia
doing bottom-range T-bar rows
with inhuman poundages.
His middle traps were getting
significant stretch overload to spur
growth.
Midrange position. So
Arnold built midback contracted- and stretch-position
muscle with close-grip
T-bar rows despite it being
exercises can have unique size-
biomechanically incorrect building effects, adding to your
for that target muscle. Why? overall mass—if you use them
Extreme overload in the ful
stretch position, as seen
above.
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team to move the resistance, useless?
For example, one study had subjects train arms after some
compound lower-body work. That pre-arm-work protocol
significantly increased muscle gains in the biceps when
contrasted with arm-only workouts—more muscle size in the
arms trained after leg work than arms-alone workouts. Here's
what researchers Gabriel Wilson, Ph.D., and Jacob Wilson,
Ph.D., had to say about it…
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alone [without the preliminary leg work].
Studies suggest that training large
bodyparts before smaller ones increases
the smaller bodyparts’ growth. In
addition, coupling lower- and upper-body
exercises increases muscle growth and
testosterone receptors within skeletal
muscles."
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with low-volume, high-intensity protocols using long rest
intervals.” (Sports Med. 2005:35(4):339-61)
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My conclusion from all of the above is that after
emphasizing the ideal exercise, hitting a set or two of
an exercise from one or both of the missing positions
can trigger more growth, be it from occlusion, a
different muscle-fiber recruitment order, anabolic
hormone release, lactic acid pooling, a volume
increase—or all of the above.
It’s interesting that Brignole’s ideal exercises don’t fit into any
one POF category. Most are isolation; however, his ideal move
for chest is dumbbell decline presses. That’s a midrange move
that uses multiple muscles, with the pecs as the prime mover,
triceps and front deltoids as secondary movers. Another is
step-back lunges for glutes, which activate the quads as well.
And the ideal move for quads, the sissy squat, is actually a
stretch-position exercise. The incline one-arm lateral raise is
also a stretch-position exercise.
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As you’ve seen, my efficiency-of-effort response is multi-
angular Positions of Flexion; however, I don't believe you have
to cover all of the positions for a muscle each time you train it.
There’s an updated list of the POF exercises for each muscle
on pages 42 and 43. Doug’s ideal exercise for each muscle is
included in bold type.
While you can train all three positions for each muscle at each
workout, it would lengthen your workouts. I usually like to lead
with the most biomechanically ideal exercise, then follow with
one of the missing positions. I believe in some variation for more
muscle creation, so I mix it up—and yes, sometimes training all
three positions is a good option (Chapter 8 will have workouts
that do just that—with an interesting twist).
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Positions-of-Flexion Exercise Matrix
Legs, Abs
Quads
Midrange: Leg presses, hack squats, dumbbell squats,
lunges
Stretch: Sissy squats*
Contracted: Leg extensions
Glutes
Midrange: Step-back lunges*, squats, leg presses
Stretch: Semi-stiff-legged deadlifts,
machine hip extensions*
Contracted: Hip thrusts, machine hip extension*
Hamstrings
Midrange/Stretch: Semi-stiff-legged deadlifts
Contracted: Seated leg curls*, lying leg curls
Spinal erectors
Midrange: Semi-stiff-legged deadlifts
Stretch/Contracted: Erector curls (butt against wall)*
Calves
Midrange: Running, biking
Stretch: Leg press calf raises*, donkey calf raises
Contracted: Standing calf raises
Abs
Midrange: Lying hip roll-ups
Stretch: Incline crunches* (head at top of bench)
Contracted: Flat crunches
*Ideal Exercise
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Positions-of-Flexion Exercise Matrix
Chest, Back, Delts, Arms
Chest
Midrange: Decline dumbbell presses*, cable chest presses*
Stretch: Flyes
Contracted: Machine flyes, cable crossovers
Midback
Midrange: Pulldowns, chin-ups
Stretch: One-arm dumbbell rows, close-grip rows
Contracted: Scapulae retractions*
Upper traps
Midrange: Dumbbell upright rows
Stretch/Contracted: Dumbbell shrugs*
Lats
Midrange: Pulldowns, chin-ups
Stretch: Two-dumbbell pullovers
Contracted: Cable one-arm lat pulls*
Delts
Midrange/Contracted: Dumbbell upright rows
Stretch: One-arm incline laterals*,
one-arm cable laterals* (pulley at hip height)
Contracted: Lateral raises
Biceps
Midrange: Alternate dumbbell curls*, undergrip pulldowns
Stretch: Incline curls
Contracted: Concentration curls
Triceps
Midrange: Dumbbell decline extensions*,
close-grip bench presses
Stretch: Dumbbell overhead extensions
Contracted: Pushdowns away from pulley, kickbacks
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*Ideal Exercise
CHAPTER 7
The Ultimate Bare-Bones
Home-Gym Mass Workout
Hydrogen ions that fill your muscles during long tension times
lower the muscles' pH due to lactic acid. "That seems to make
them bigger by stimulating the production of proteins and
hormones that act as growth factors for muscle tissue."
Okay, here’s the STX method I’ve been using for a few years
now, based on the Brazilian study:
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Now there are multiple studies showing that rests between
sets of about two minutes are best for hypertrophy. But this is
not “multiple sets” but rather “phases.” The short rests make
this one long “extended” set—eliciting a progression
of fiber types to fire, moving from slow-twitch to
fast-twitch. You are striving for maximum fast-twitch
activation on the last phase.
And that last phase feels heavy although the poundage is only
moderate, which makes it much safer for the joints. It’s the short
rests that make it “heavy” for the target muscle. Remember,
the muscle doesn’t know poundage; it only knows
effort against resistance.
Quads
Sissy squats: 20 reps; rest 20 seconds, 10 reps;
rest 10 seconds, 7 reps
Rest 20 seconds
Dumbbell squats: 15 speed reps
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changes in serial hypertrophy. Increases in fascicle length have
been reported in athletes who replace heavy resistance training
with high-speed training. These findings suggest that
performing concentric actions with maximal velocity
may promote the addition of sarcomeres in series even
in those with considerable training experience.”
In other words, you can get yet another “layer” of growth with
faster reps. As late Olympic coach Charles Poliquin said, one of
the least used hypertrophic stimulators is changing rep tempo.
Workout 1
Chest. I start with dumbbell decline
presses, an ideal exercise for chest. I
will follow with ether flat-bench dumbbell
flyes (pics on page 22) for stretch or
close-grip bench
pushups with feet
on the floor, the
best contracted-
Ideal chest: dumbbell position pec move
decline presses
I have in my home
gym: I place the
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bench long-ways,
Contracted
hands gripping chest: close-
it on the sides grip bench
so that I have a pushups
narrow grip and
am forced to
squeeze my pecs
throughout the
set. These also
train the deltoids’
front heads.
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is important
so that my
hands end
up outside
my torso
for a lat
and trap
squeeze.
While the Stretch midback,
angle of pull contracted lats: supported
undergrip rows
isn’t quite
as it should
be for the mid-back or lats, it still gets about a 7 out of 10 on
the ideal-exercise scale because as I pull the dumbbells up and
slightly outside my torso, I drive my upper arms and elbows in
toward my spine where the mid-back and lat muscles insert,
squeezing my scapulae together. It’s also not ideal because
resistance does not decrease as I pull the ‘bells up as it should. I
classify it as a stretch move for midback and contracted for lats.
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when my arm is straight, and as I pull myself up from an angle, I twist
my torso slightly toward the bar until I’m next to it and almost vertical.
There's less resistance at the top, with the most at the bottom when
arms are straight. It’s as close as I can get to Doug’s one-arm cable lat
pulls.
The problem with back pulls and one-arm lat pulls is that it's difficult
to add resistance. Adding reps and/or slowing down the negative
part of the repetition is
Stretch lats:
pullovers the only way. Of course,
a functional cable
machine would solve
the problem—something
that’s on my wish list.
Shoulders.
My front and
rear heads work
hard during the
chest and back
exercises above.
That means I
need to focus on
the middle head.
The best exercise Ideal side delts: low-incline
for my set-up one-arm laterals
is low-incline
one-arm lateral raises. In POF that is a
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stretch move. I follow that with either one-
arm standing laterals or one-arm upright
rows, both contracted-position exercises;
however, the uprights are multi-joint, or
compound, so I sometimes classify it as
midrange. I work all exercises for one side
first, rest, then repeat
for the other side. I
don’t do overhead
Midrange side delts: presses. I believe
one-arm upright rows
Doug is right on when
he says those are
dangerous and cause Contracted
joint impingement. side delts:
My shoulders agree. one-arm
laterals
Upright rows can also
be dangerous. If you
do them, be sure NOT to raise your elbow
higher than your shoulder joint to prevent
impingement. I do dumbbell shrugs to
finish. This move is for upper traps. I don’t
include it with back because it would make
my shoulder work more difficult due to
Stretch/Contracted
upper traps: shrugs upper-trapezius fatigue.
Biceps. Seated
dumbbell curls or
concentration curls
kick things off. If I do
dumbbell curls, I follow
with concentration curls
(contracted). Or I may
do 45-degree incline
curls (pic on page 70), a
stretch-position move,
Ideal biceps: seated
or incline hammer curls, Contracted biceps:
dumbbell curls concentration curls
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Old Man, Young Muscle
thumbs up, a biceps exercise that emphasizes the brachialis
muscles that snake under the biceps.
Forearms (optional).
Dumbbell wrist curls
for the flexors get the
Stretch triceps: incline nod most of the time. The
extensions brachioradialis muscles on
the tops of my forearms
get enough work with
hammer curls.
Abs (optional). I
sometimes add incline Contracted triceps:
crunches, head at the top supported kickbacks
of the incline (pics on page
58). That may sound counterintuitive; however,
it’s the way to get decreasing resistance as I
pull into the contracted position. Remember,
that’s the proper resistance curve. Flat
Contracted/stretch crunches would be a contracted-position move.
forearm flexors: wrist
curls
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Workout 2
Quads. Ideal quads:
I make sissy squats
sissy
squats
my
primary
front-thigh
move. I
will follow
those with
a speed
set of
dumbbell
squats—to achieve some
functional muscle synergy
My 62-year-old legs. Not and more overall lactic acid
bad for a few sets of leg accumulation. I don’t have a
work once a week and leg extension machine, so I
running twice.
can’t do a true contracted-
position quad exercise; my
next best choice is wall squats,
using a foam roller behind my
back, feet forward and squeezing
my quads at the top of each rep.
I rarely
Contracted
do those, quads: wall
however, squats
as my
quads get
additional
work via
synergy on
Midrange quads: the next
dumbbell squats exercise…
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Ideal glutes: step-
back lunges
Glutes/Hamstrings.
I begin with step-back
lunges, working one leg
at a time for all sets, then
going to one-leg hip thrusts,
one foot on the floor and my
elbows on a bench. I lower
my butt to the floor, then
Contracted glutes:
one-leg hip thrusts
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Stretch hamstrings: hamstrings, similar to a seated
semi-stiff-legged
leg curl. Not great and somewhat
deadlifts
awkward, but it’s all I’ve got—I can
at least squeeze the hamstrings in
the contracted position. I finish with
a set of flat-back semi-stiff-legged
deadlifts for hamstring and glute
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Spinal Ideal spinal
erectors. erectors:
You may incline
erector
call this curls
muscle your
lower back
because it’s
only visible
on the lower
region.
That’s
a misnomer because these muscles
actually run from your rear-end all the
way up under your lats and traps to the
base of your neck. The exercise I use is an incline erector
curl. With an incline bench set at 45 degrees, I straddle it and
stand on a riser placed under the bench, positioning myself
facedown on the bench with my chest hanging off the end. I
lower my torso until it’s bent forward somewhat, then I curl it
back up to where my back is flat, torso almost perpendicular
to the floor. Resistance is maximum at the bottom of the stroke
due to gravity and minimal at the top. It’s like a high-incline
Contracted spinal
hyperextension. Often
erectors: wall I will add a set without
erector curls the bench. For these
I bend over with my
butt against a wall,
torso parallel with
the floor. I simply do
the erector curl—no
weight; however, this
version provides more
resistance at the top
contracted position.
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Abs. I
begin with
incline
crunches,
standing,
head and
upper back
above the
top of the
incline
bench. I
allow my
shoulders Ideal abs: incline crunches
to go back
a bit past the top of the
incline, then curl forward.
That provides decreasing
resistance as I get to the
contracted position. After
that, I will finish with flat-
bench hip rollups—like a
reverse ab crunch, but pulling
my knees into my chest as I
Midrange abs: flat-bench hip rollups roll my hips up off the bench.
I usually do these with a
faster rep speed. That’s a midrange
move because the hip flexors are
involved in the abs' hip-roll function—
pulling the legs and hips toward my
chest.
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sprints separated by one minute of walking. I usually do three
of those intervals, unless my legs have been mocking me in the
mirror the days prior, in which case I may do four or five. I only
work sprints into my Monday run, which I consider a secondary
"resistance" leg workout. Here is the schedule I follow:
Wednesday: Off
Sunday: Off
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Home-Gym Workout 1: Base STX
Regular Speed
Decline bench presses 21, 9
Close-grip bench pushups 10 / 7
Chin-bar back pulls 21, 10
Incline undergrip rows 12 / 9
One-arm chin-bar lat pulls 10
Incline one-arm laterals 18, 9
Standing one-arm laterals 12 / 9
Shrugs 22
Concentration curls 18, 9 / 7
Decline extensions 18, 9 / 6
Incline hammer curls 15 / 11
Two-dumbbell pullovers 14 / 9
Incline crunches 21 12
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Home-Gym Workout 2: Base STX
Regular Speed
Sissy squats 21, 11 / 9
Dumbbell squats 15
Step-back lunges 14, 9
One-leg hip thrusts 10
Hamstring floor rolls 18, 11
Semi-stiff-legged deadlifts 17
One-leg calf raises 20, 12
One-leg donkey calf raises 16 / 11
Incline erector curl 20, 12
Wall erector curls 12 / 8
Incline crunches 21, 14
Bench hip rollups 11 / 8
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Snapshot of my training log: These two Base-STX workouts
are the ones I use the most. This particular leg day took me
about 34 minutes and upper body about 39 minutes. The
"All," "Wht," "Grn," etc. out to the right of each exercise
indicates the color/poundage on my PowerBlock dumbbells.
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CHAPTER 8
Volumize to Pack On
Muscle Size?
You may be asking
yourself if the 35-minute
workouts outlined in the
last chapter are enough
work. Or would you—and
I—grow bigger with more
sets and more time in the
gym?
Doug Brignole, on the other hand, trains only the ideal exercises
for 10 to 15 sets each. He uses a five-way split, dividing his body
over five days, and his workouts last 1 1/2 to two hours five days
a week. Like me, he is also 62.
So at the moment, I work out for a total of less than two hours
a week; Doug’s weekly total is around 7 hours. I go to muscular
failure on almost all of my sets, he does not, saying that holding
back allows him to do more sets, or volume.
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good for my age with
enough muscle to satisfy
me. I’m not sure most
older folks have the
recovery capacity or
motivation to tolerate
too much more than
what I do—and the
majority, I believe,
don’t need it if they’re
motivated and train
correctly.
Efficiency of effort is
key, and there is very
little wasted effort when
you emphasize the ideal
exercises. Therefore, you
should be able to get
better results with less
work—fewer sets.
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emphasize are more biomechanically precise, then you’re
training smarter and the work required to stimulate maximum
hypertrophy in an array of muscle fibers should be less.
You can add a set or two to the others down the line if you
want, but always emphasize the ideal move for each target
muscle. Doug’s biomechanics analysis is spot-on, so that will
give you the best results from extra volume.
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CHAPTER 9
Pre-Exhaustion-Inspired
Mass Workout
Mike Mentzer was a pro bodybuilder back in the late 1970s
whose common-sense, science-based views had bodybuilders
everywhere rethinking and retooling their workouts. Mentzer
did very few sets
for each target
muscle, trained
all work sets to
failure, and his
workout style
attacked multiple
muscle-fiber
types in short
periods of time.
At his last
contest, the '80
Mr. Olympia, he
achieve his best
condition. Former
IFBB judge and
Pennsylvania
gym owner Roger
Schwab put him
through many
of his workouts
during his prep.
Mike Mentzer was a proponent of short, So how did he
intense workouts and pre-exhaustion train to reach his
training. (Photo John Balik) best?
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Roger said Mike used a full-body
routine three days a week with a
modified pre-exhaustion method.
That’s doing a single-joint isolation
exercise for a target muscle and
following it up with a multi-joint, or
compound, move.
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Another reason I don't use Incline
full-body workouts: I don’t want dumbbell
to start dreading my training, curls for
which has happened to me in biceps
the past with full-body routines. stretch.
Regular Speed
S: Flat flyes 21
M: Decline bench presses 10, 7
C: Close-grip bench pushups 10
S: Two-dumbbell pullovers 19
M: One-arm lat pulls 9
S&C: Incline undergrip rows 11 / 8
M: Chin-bar back pulls 12
S: Incline one-arm laterals 17, 8
M: One-arm upright rows 11
C: One-arm laterals 11
S&C: Shrugs 21
S: Incline hammer curls 17
S: Incline curls 10
C: Concentration curls 9/6
S: 2-DB overhead extensions 17
M: Decline extensions 10, 7
C: Bench dips or kickbacks 11
S&C: Wrist curls 21 9
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Home-Gym Workout 2: Stretch-First Pre-Ex POF
Regular Speed
S: Sissy squats 20, 11
C: Wall roller squats 12
M: Dumbbell squats 15
S: Semi-stiff-legged deadlifts 16, 10
C: Floor rolls 14
M: Step-back lunges 14
C: One-leg hip thrusts 9
S: One-leg donkey calf raises 18, 11
C: One-leg calf raises 12
C: One-leg forward calf raises 15
S: Incline erector curls 20, 12
C: Wall erector curls 10 / 9
S: Incline crunches 20, 12
C: Flat crunches 12
M: Bench hip rolls 14
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CHAPTER 10
Details for Fast Mass
As I’ve mentioned,
my sparse home gym
is in a spare bedroom
and consists of an
adjustable bench,
PowerBlock 50-pound
selectorized dumbbells
and a chinning bar
that can be “wedged”
at any height in a
doorway—but I never
use it for chins, only
for balance on sissy
squats, step-back
lunges and calf raises,
as well as for one-arm
side lat pulls and two-
arm mid-back pulls.
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want to elevate your heels Foam roller
on a riser for that exercise.
PowerBlock
dumbbells Riser
I also have a foam roller,
which I use for wall squats,
placing it between my
back and the wall so that
I can squat with my feet
somewhat forward for more
quad activation. I also use it Fan
on the floor when I do floor
rolls for hamstrings, heels Adjustable
on a bench, roller between bench
my back and the floor.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
on, going to 10 twice, then hit another set. You could do that for
every exercise, although it may get monotonous. I always count
for my 10-second rest/pauses—watch not necessary for those.
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Bedtime:
Rest: I try to stick to a
Tongkat
routine for bedtime and
Ali libido
awakening. For me it’s
herb
bedtime at 11:30, up at
kicking
7:30. Saturday nights are
in, wife
flexible. Margaritas and
is hiding
Mexican food can be a
again.
disruptive force to say
the least. And speaking
of alcohol, I tend to have
two glasses of red wine
most nights during the
week—you can see “no
drinking” logged on the
calendar on days I don’t
partake. Keep in mind
that alcohol can have
a negative effect on
sleep and testosterone,
so if you have trouble
sleeping or you’re low in that anabolic hormone, you may
want to abstain. I monitor my testosterone with yearly blood
work, and I try to stay in touch with how I’m recovering from
my workouts. If I feel drained, I will skip a workout or miss a
run. That helps me recharge, heal joints and
replenish hormones and mental faculties.
Always keep in mind that workout recovery
is as important as your training, and it’s
especially critical for older trainees.
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magnesium and vitamin D when I
don’t get sun. Specialty supplements
include the herb Tongkat Ali in pill
form, which has been shown to
increase energy and libido. I know it
works because my wife hides from
me a lot. Researchers suggests it’s
possibly from better testosterone
production, but that’s debatable. I
also use the ever-popular creatine
monohydrate capsules. I take 5
grams of creatine after every workout
and run. I skip it on non-activity days,
like Sunday when I go supplement-
free.
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Also, after each weight
workout I have a scoop
of vanilla casein-whey
protein powder, BioTrust
LowCarb, stirred in water,
along with a piece of dark
chocolate. Whey is a fast-
absorbing protein that has
been shown to increase
insulin. Insulin is a storage
hormone, so that can
help drive creatine and
sugar from the chocolate
into the muscle cells—at
least, that’s the theory. I
also use a scoop or two
of Garden of Life Sport
Organic Plant-based
vanilla protein in my
Anabolic Mud smoothie,
which I have every
afternoon seven days a
week. Here is the recipe:
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Future Equipment: As
you’ve seen from my bare-
bones home-gym workouts,
getting to the ideal exercise
as laid out by Brignole, as
well as adding poundage
when necessary, can be
difficult and in some cases
impossible. You can join a
commercial gym if you want
to up your
muscle-building
efficiency, or
you can spring
for one of two
cable machines
for your home
gym. The one I
have room for
There's barely
room in my small
spare-bedroom
home-gym for
the F9 Fold-
Away Functional
Trainer (above). I
plan to purchase
it soon. If I had
more space,
I'd opt for the
Genesis Dual
Cable Cross
G634 (right).
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and am considering is the F9 Fold-Away Functional Trainer,
available from Torque Fitness. If I had room for it, I would
instead purchase a Genesis Dual Cable Cross G624 that
Doug recommends. Unfortunately, the arms extend out too far
for my small spare bedroom.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
Epilogue
Throughout
this book, I
chronicled
some of the
highlights
of my near-
half-century
involvement
in the world of
bodybuilding
and fitness
training. I’ve
seen a lot of
trends come and go. Some pushed the
body of training knowledge forward,
some had little impact and others only
frustrated or injured trainees.
Even so, I’m realistic about my goals. I’ve never had superb
genetics and so looking healthy, muscular and fit is enough for
me—there are no bodybuilding competitions in my future. If that
sounds like you, the workouts in the training chapters should work
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well as listed or with minor changes. If you want more than that,
you can adapt what I’ve presented to take your physique to the
next level safely and efficiently, albeit with longer workouts in
most cases and perhaps in a commercial gym.
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Old Man, Young Muscle
1) Bi-lateral deficit: strive for one-limb movements; if
that’s not possible due to balance or other issues, fire the target
muscles simultaneously but independently by using dumbbells
or cables.
I found that those five factors can take you a long way in
identifying good or even ideal exercises while moving others
down the list. Those at the top of my ideal list that I’m able to do
in my home gym include:
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Old Man, Young Muscle
Those that Doug discusses in his book and that I cannot do
until I have a cable unit include:
And whether it’s POF or the Base workouts, all of them are
built around the Slow-Twitch-Exhaustion method, using a high-
rep set to pre-fatigue and even build the slow-twitch fibers.
Research suggests that a preliminary high-rep set forces more
fast-twitch fibers to fire on sets that quickly follow. Twenty-
second rests between sets work best for me, but you may want
to try slightly longer rests if your cardiovascular system isn’t in
tip-top shape.
Or at Amazon.com HERE
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Old Man, Young Muscle