"Power to the People" by Pavel Tsatsouline

• Your muscles are already capable of lifting a car. They just don't know it yet.
• The tenser your muscles are, the more strength you display.
• High tension training has five key conditions:
• slow exercise movement
• maximizing muscular tension, or 'flexing', regardless of the weight used
• employing heavy, 85-95% of one's maximum, weights at least some of the time
• minimizing fatigue
• taking advantage of various neurological phenomena
• Learn how to tense your muscles harder--and you will get stronger and harder without adding bulk.
• It is generally agreed that intensity is the single most important factor in strength training.
• Muscle failure is more than unnecessary--it is counterproductive!
• Here is how you can minimize various types of fatigue and get the most out of your strength training:
• limit the repetitions to five and fewer
• increase the rest intervals between sets to a duration of three to five minutes
• limit the number of sets to two
• pause and relax between reps
• do not practice a lift more than five times a week
• If you freak at the thought of putting some weight on your joints, expect your joints to remain weak.
• Your joints were meant to lock and support load.
• Heavy low rep training is the safest way to lift.
• Lifting heavy weights allows you to develop awesome strength without training to failure.
• The 'burn' you feel from high reps is from lactic acid buildup and does absolutely nothing for toning up your muscles.
• Muscle tone is residual tension in a relaxed muscle.
• Increased muscle tone is not a physical transformation of your muscle. It is the result of the nervous system being more alert.
• You'd better get on a first name basis with heavy deads if you are after a hard butt!
• Train heavy, but keep the volume, or the total number of reps per workout, low.
• It is best to learn to use free weights when you have the least strength to hurt yourself.
• A machine restricts you to one plane of movement. Your stabilizing muscles get no workout because the machine is doing their job.
• Deadlifts, presses, and other full body exercises have inter-muscular coordination very similar to that of the sports you play or the things you do in everyday life. That is why it is said that these exercises develop 'functional strength'.
• Employing exercises which enable us to handle the most amount of weight and then pushing the envelope of resistance in these exercises instead of pushing the reps up will give us the biggest return on our time investment into strength training.
• Build up to respectable poundage on your basic lifts--and the lazy muscles will be forced to do their part!
• The premise behind the Russian commando muscles building workout was elegantly simple, as all solid science is. Tension increases the uptake of amino acids, protein building blocks, by the muscles. Therefore the higher is the tension (weight) and the longer time the muscle spends under it (reps)-the better are your chances of making it big.
• The logical way to meet the above requirements is to:
• reduce the reps to 4-6 per set to allow for heavy weights
• perform many, 10-20 on average, sets
• terminate all the sets a couple of reps before failure to avoid premature fatigue which would force the reduction in weights and/or sets
• The basic Power to the People! program which develops strength without bulk calls for one heavy set of five reps and one set with 90% of that weight.
• A little comrade who wants to become the Big Brother should not stop there. Reduce the weight to 80% of the first 'money' set, and keep doing sets of five reps with short, 30-90 sec, rest periods. When you have had enough, that is you cannot lift 80%x5 in good form, call it a day.
• Heavy but never to failure, frequent, and high volume training delivers!
• Myofibrillar hypertrophy, or 'real' muscle growth, is an enlargement of the muscle fiber as it gains more myofibrils, things which contract and generate tension. The muscles gets stronger and harder. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is accomplished by training with heavy weights.
• Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, on the other hand, is a worthless increase in the volume of the muscle cell fluid as a result of high rep training. The fluid, sarcoplasm, accounts for 25-30% of the muscle's size.
• Never interpret soreness or stiffness as signs of progress.
• Experience has shown that an athletic man can be brought to the very top notch condition in [six weeks].
• Cycling is about a gradual buildup of intensity to a personal best, and then starting all over with easy workouts.
• Cycling is the ultimate formula of strength which succeeds where other methods, often a lot more complicated, fail.
• Accept the necessity to take a step back in order to take two steps forward.
• Cycles vary in length but generally should consist of no fewer than eight workouts.
• Do not attempt a rep unless you are 100% certain you are going to make it in good form!
• If you have skipped more than a week of lifting, or simply are having a really bad day, back up two or three workouts and resume your cycle.
• The hand strengthening effect of your deadlifts, plus concentration on squeezing the life out of your barbell every time you lift it will pay off handsomely with new strength in all your lifts!
• Consistent use of a belt, especially not backed up with proper ab training, creates a weak link in the midsection.
• Your best bet is to get tight before you unrack the weight and keep that tension for the duration of the rep.
• Tense up maximally before getting under the weight. Attempt to maintain, and even increase, this tension as you are lowering the barbell. The more tension you have stored on the way down, the easier you are going to get up.
• Mirrors, gloves, belts, and fancy sneakers are expensive and dangerous distractions from effective training.
• When you are loading the bar, make sure to keep your back straight and avoid twisting.
• Deadlift is one of the few exercises which enables you to safely drop the weight after you have lifted it.
• Deadlift highlights:
• Stay on your heels
• Keep your back arches
• Never look down
• Push the floor away
• Stay 'tight' and hold you air when lifting
• Squeezing the barbell will amplify the contraction of all the involved muscles.