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30 Of Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 1 - 5)
MUSCLE MEDIA
2000 EXPOSES 30 OF BODYBUILDING’S BIGGEST LIES THAT STAND
BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS!
By T.C. Luoma and Bill Phillips.
(Originally
printed in the October/November issue of Muscle Media
2000)
1. You can
get as big as a pro bodybuilder. without taking steroids;
it just takes longer.
Despite what many
of the magazines say, all professional bodybuilders use
either steroids or steroids in combination with other
growth-enhancing drugs. Without manipulating hormones, it
just isn’t possible to get that degree of muscularity, the
paper-thin skin, and the continuing ability to pack on
mass, despite sometimes having poor workout habits and
relative ignorance of the principles involved that many
pro bodybuilders have. Many supplement distributors, in
order to sell their products, would have you believe
otherwise.
Still, that’s no
reason to give up. By using state-of-the-art training
principles, consuming a nutrient-rich diet, and by getting
proper amounts of rest, almost every person can make
incredible changes in his or her physique. The competitive
bodybuilder circuit may not be in your future, but
building the kind of physique that gains you respect is
certainly achievable, as are self-respect and robust
health.
2. In
order to get really big, you have to eat a
super-high-calorie diet.
Well, that’s true;
you’ll get really big if you eat a super high-calorie
diet, but you’ll look like the Michelin Man’s fraternal
twin. However, if you want to get big, lean-tissue wise,
then super-high-calorie diets are probably not for you
unless you are one of those very few people with metabolic
rates so fast you can burn off these calories instead of
depositing them as fat. Unfortunately, studies show that,
in most people, about 65% of the new tissue gains brought
about by high-calorie diets consists of fat! Of the
remaining 35%, approximately 15% consists of increased
intracellular fluid volume, leaving a very modest
percentage attributable to increased lean muscle mass.
According to Dr
Scott Connelly (MM2K, Spring 1992, p. 21), only about 20%
to 25% of increased muscle growth stems from increased
protein synthesis. The rest of the muscle growth is
directly attributable to increased proliferation of the
satellite cells in the basal lamina of muscle tissue, and
dietary energy (calories) is not a key factor in the
differentiation of these cells into new myofibres (muscle
cells).
Of all factors
determining muscle growth, prevention of protein breakdown
(anti-catabolism) seems to be the most relevant, but
adding adipose [fat] tissue through constant overfeeding
can actually increase muscle pro- teolysis (breakdown).
Furthermore, additional adipose mass can radically alter
hormone balances which are responsible for controlling
protein breakdown in muscle. Insulin balance, for one,
which partially controls anti-catabolism in the body, is
impaired by consistent overfeeding. So much for the
eat-big-to-get-big philosophy!
Stay away from the
super-high calorie diets unless you’re a genetic freak, or
you’re woefully lean and don’t mind putting on fat [or
you’re using appropriate pharmaceutical supplements].
3. If you
eat a low-fat diet, it doesn’t matter how many calories
you take in, you won’t gain any fat.
The bottom line
is, if you exceed your energy requirements, you’ll
gradually get fatter and fatter. It’s true that eating a
diet rich in fat will pack on the pounds quicker for a
variety of reasons, the most significant being that a gram
of fat has nine calories as opposed to the four calories
per gram that carbohydrates and proteins carry. Fat is
also metabolized differently in the body. It takes a
lesser amount of calories to assimilate the energy in
ingested fat than it does to assimilate an equal (weight
wise) amount of carbohydrates. Consequently, more fat
calories get stored than carbohydrate calories. However,
the gross intake of carbohydrates, as facilitated by many
of the weight-gain powders, will make you fat very
quickly.
4. The
more you work out, the more you’ll grow.
No, no no. This is
one of the most damaging myths that ever reared its ugly
head. 95% of the pros will tell you that the biggest
bodybuilding mistake they ever made was to over-train–and
this happened even when they were taking steroids. Imagine
how easy it is for the natural athlete to overtrain! When
you train your muscles too often for them to heal, the
end-result is zero growth and perhaps even losses. Working
out every day, if you’re truly using the proper amount of
intensity, will lead to gross overtraining. A body part,
worked properly, ie. worked to complete, total muscular
failure that recruited as many muscle fibers as
physiologically possible, can take 5-10 days to heal.
To take it a step
further, even working a different body part in the next
few days might constitute overtraining. If you truly work
your quads to absolute fiber-tearing failure, doing
another power workout the next day that entails heavy
bench-presses or deadlifts is going to, in all
probability, inhibit gains. After a serious leg workout,
your whole system mobilizes to heal and recover from the
blow you’ve dealt it. How, then, can the body be expected
to heal from an equally brutal workout the next day? It
can’t, at least not without using some drugs to help deal
with the catabolic processes going on in your body [and
even they’re usually not enough .]
Learn to accept
rest as a valuable part of your workout. You should
probably spend as many days out of the gym as you do in
it.
5. The
longer you work out, the better.
It just isn’t
necessary to do 20-30 sets for a body part, or even 10
sets like many ‘experts’ would have you believe. In fact,
research has shown that it’s possible to completely
fatigue a muscle in one set, provided that that set taxes
a muscle completely, ie. incorporates as many muscle
fibers as possible and takes them to the point of ischemic
rigour where, rather than contract and relax, the muscle
fibers freeze up, sort of like a microscopic version of
rigor mortis. Any further contraction causes microscopic
tearing. Hypertrophy is just one adaption to this kind of
stress and it’s naturally the kind most bodybuilders are
interested in.
This kind of
intensity can usually be achieved by doing drop or
break-down sets where you rep out, lower the weight, and
continue doing reps until you either can’t do another rep
or you’ve run out of weight. It can also be achieved by
doing your maximum number of reps on a particular
exercise: by a combination of will, tenacity, and short
rest periods, you complete ten more reps. You achieve the
short rest periods by locking out the weight-bearing joint
in question without putting the weight down. In other
words, completely surpass your normal pain and energy
thresholds.
If you can truly
work your muscle to the point described, it will afford
you little, if any, benefit to do another set (Westcott,
1986). The exception would be the body parts that are so
big that they have distinct geographical areas, like the
back, which obviously has an upper, middle and lower part.
The chest might also fall into this category, as it has a
distinct upper and lower part, each with different
insertion points.
30 Of Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies
(Parts 6 - 10)
30 Of Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies
(Parts 11 - 15)
30 Of Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies
(Parts 16 - 20)
30 Of Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies
(Parts 21 - 25)
30 Of Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies
(Parts 26 - 30)
 
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