Skip to main content

Posts

Size AND Strength: The Best Way to Train for Both

  Muscle Mass AND Serious Strength:  The Best Way to Train for Both!      There seems to be quite a bit of confusion out there—whether it’s on the internet or at the gym—about how to train for BOTH hypertrophy and serious strength gains.  The first problem seems to be that some folks just don’t know how to do either.  Guys go to the gym to “get big” but then spend most of their time attempting to max out on a lift.  Or, conversely, a guy wants to be massively strong but spends too much of his time training for a pump or doing a lot of repetitions.      If your goal is just hypertrophy, then don’t train like a strength athlete.  You should focus on pump-style training, “feeling a muscle” instead of working the movement, and ensuring that you can do more and more work for each individual bodypart.      If your goal is just strength, then you need to train for strength.  This means doing only a few core exercises—the ones you are training to get stronger on—and doing either a “Westside-st
Recent posts

Classic Bodybuilding: Casey Viator's Biceps Training

  Casey Viator’s Old-School “Killer” Biceps Program      Casey Viator is probably most well-known—almost infamous, truth be told—for his role in the so-called “Colorado Experiment” used by Arthur Jones to “prove” the validity of his brief, basic “H.I.T” Nautilus training over other training methodologies.  (Jones invented the Nautilus machine, by the way, so he had some money—and a reputation—at stake.)  Anyway, Viator gained over 60 pounds in only 28 days using (something like) just 12 workouts that lasted no longer than 30 minutes each.  This is not the place to get into the Colorado Experiment—I don’t think I’ve written about it before now, so maybe I’ll leave a future essay just to it—but let’s just say that a lot of the “facts” may not be the facts, after all.  Especially if Boyer Coe is to be believed.  In a few interviews with him in some of the ‘90s muscle rags, he said that Viator would actually sneak away from the Nautilus facility, where he would visit a local gym and do mor

The Strongest Shall ALWAYS Survive!

  Today marks the 9-year anniversary of Bill Starr's death, so I thought today would be fitting to post this article.  Word of warning: It's the longest article I've posted on this blog, and probably the longest article I've ever written - at over 4k words - but I decided to not break it up into several posts, but to just post it "as is".  I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it brings more awareness to just how damn great of a writer, strength athlete, and coach Starr was. The Perennial Training Wisdom of Bill Starr’s Classic Strength Program      I took my dog Kenji for a walk this morning.  I live in the “Deep South” of Alabama, and one of the best things about ‘Bama—at least in the central and northern portions of the state—is the beauty of the local trails and parks, perfect for keeping me, and my 110-pound Labrador Retriever, in decent shape.  But don’t worry, I’m not here to wax euphoric over a man and his best friend—as much as I could easily do that for th