"Bigger Leaner Stronger" by Michael Matthews

• When people are willing to spend big amounts of money on certain types of products or to solve specific problems, there will never be a scarcity of new, “cutting edge” things for them to empty their wallets on, and there will always be scores of brilliant marketers inventing new schemes to keep people spending.
• Simply put, every time you buy one of the big bodybuilding magazines, you’re paying to be lied to.
• The mainstream bodybuilding magazines are owned by supplement companies and are used simply as mouthpieces for their products.
• Most personal trainers are a waste of time and money.
• The fact is that 70-80% of how you look is a reflection of how you eat.
• Eat wrong and you will stay fat no matter how much cardio you do; eat wrong and you will stay skinny and weak no matter how much you struggle with weights.
• By overloading your entire system, you cause everything to grow.
• Eating for maximum muscle gain or fat loss means little more than meeting precise nutritional requirements on a precise schedule (and there’s nothing hard about doing it -- it just requires exactness).
• 6 biggest myths of building muscle
• more sets = more growth
• you have to “feel the burn” to grow
• wasting time with the wrong exercise
• lifting like an idiot
• lifting like a wussy
• eating to stay small or get fat
• Scientific studies have shown that weight training sessions between 45 to 60 minutes allow for proper muscle stimulation while minimizing cortisol production; cardio sessions under 30 to 45 minutes are best.
• When your muscles are burning, what you’re actually feeling is a buildup of lactic acid in the muscle, which builds as you contract your muscles again and again.
• There’s something oddly effective about the body having to freely manipulate weight, unaided, against the pull of gravity.
• The most effective muscle-building exercises are known as compound exercises. They’re called compound exercises because they involve multiple muscle groups. Examples of compound exercises are the squat, deadlift, and bench press.
• The most effective way to build a big, strong body is with systemic overload, not localized training.
• You’re in the gym to get bigger and stronger, and that requires three simple things: lift progressively heavier weights, eat correctly, and give your body sufficient rest.
• Building a great body is a pain in the butt. It takes considerable time, effort, discipline, and dedication.
• We humans instinctively avoid pain and discomfort and seek pleasure and ease in life. But, if we let that inclination color our workouts, we’re doomed.
• Working out correctly is a bit counter-intuitive. It’s intense and uncomfortable.
• If you don’t eat enough calories and get enough protein, carbs, and fats throughout the day, you simply don’t grow. It doesn’t matter how hard you lift; if you don’t eat enough, you won’t gain any muscle to speak of.
• The laws of muscle growth
• muscles grow only if they’re forced to
• muscles grow from overload, not fatigue or “pump”
• muscles grow outside the gym
• muscles grow only if they’re properly fed
• By lifting weights, you are actually causing tiny tears (known as “micro-tears”) in the muscle fibers, which the body then repairs, adapting the muscles to better handle the stimulus that caused the damage. This is the process by which muscles grow (scientifically termed hypertrophy).
• For optimal muscle growth, you must lift in such a way that causes optimal micro-tearing and then you must feed your body what it needs to grow and give it the proper amount of rest.
• Muscle pump is also not a good indicator of future muscle growth.
• Muscles must be given a clear reason to grow, and overload is the best reason. That means heavy weights, and short, intense sets of relatively low reps.
• You can make incredible muscle gains by doing the same proven, mass-building exercises every week, steadily increasing weight and reps (overload).
• Most training programs have you training way too often.
• Muscles grow during the recovery period -- the period of time between workouts of the same muscle groups.
• The amount of sleep that you get also plays a crucial role in gaining muscle.
• Good general advice is to aim for eight hours of sleep per night for maximum muscle gains.
• Nutrition is nearly everything. Simply put, your diet determines about 70-80% of how you look (muscular or scrawny, ripped or flabby).
• Packing on slabs of rock-solid lean mass is, in essence, just a matter of following these four laws religiously: lift hard, lift heavy, get sufficient rest, and feed your body correctly.
• 5 biggest myths & mistakes of getting ripped
• counting calories is unnecessary
• do cardio = lose weight
• chasing the fads
• doing low weight and high reps gets you toned
• spot reduction
• In order to lose weight, you have to regulate food intake.
• In order to lose fat, you must keep your body burning more energy than you’re feeding it, and the energy potential of food is measured in calories. Eat too many calories -- give your body more potential energy than it needs -- and it has no incentive to burn fat.
• Your body burns a certain number of calories regardless of any physical activity, and this is called your basal metabolic rate. Your total caloric expenditure for a day would be your BMR plus the energy expended during any physical activities.
• When your metabolism is said to “speed up” or “slow down,” what is actually meant is that your basal metabolic rate goes up or goes down.
• Being shredded is a matter of having low body fat. Nothing else. Building muscle mass is a matter of overloading the muscles and letting them repair.
• You can’t reduce fat in any particular area of your body by targeting it with exercises.
• Laws of fat loss
• eat less than you expend = lose weight
• eat small, frequent meals
• use cardio to help burn fat
• No matter what anyone tells you, getting ripped boils down to nothing more than manipulating a simple mathematical formula: energy consumed versus energy expended.
• Most guys find cardio necessary in order to get into the “super lean” category (10% body fat under) because you can only cut your calories so much before you start to lose strength and muscle mass.
• Building a killer physique is not a matter of jumping on the bandwagon of some new fad workout program for a few months -- it’s a matter of adopting a disciplined, orderly approach to how you handle your body, which is quite a lifestyle change for most.
• People’s biggest mental barriers in this world are lack of motivation and lack of discipline.
• Before you lift a weight or cut a calorie, you must have specific, tangible goals set in your mind as to why you’re doing it.
• The first step of establishing your goals is to determine what your ideal body would look like. Not just in your head, but in reality. You need to find pictures of exactly what you want to look like and save them for future reference.
• Work out a health goal that you find motivating.
• All right, now that you’ve worked out what you want to look like and what level of health you want, the next question is why. What are the reasons for achieving those goals?
• A good partner can make a big difference as time goes on.
• The code of a good training partner
• I will show up on time for every workout, and if I can’t avoid missing one, I'll let my partner know as soon as I know.
• I will come to the gym to train -- not to chat. When we’re in the gym, we focus on our workouts, we’re always ready to spot each other, and we get our work done efficiently.
• I will train hard to set a good example for my partner.
• I will push my partner to do more than he thinks he can. It’s my job to motivate him to do more weight and more reps than he believes possible.
• I will be supportive of my partner and will compliment him on his gains.
• I won’t let my partner get out of a workout easily. I will reject any excuses that are short of an actual emergency or commitment that can’t be rescheduled, and I will insist that he comes and trains. In the case where there’s a valid excuse, I’ll offer to train at a different time so we can get our workout in.
• If you can’t measure it, you don’t know it.
• If you don’t have any way to measure progress, then you’re doing it blind, hoping for the best.
• If you can measure your progress (or lack thereof) and express it in real numbers, then you know if you’re going in the right direction or not.
• One of the most effective protections against getting stuck in a rut of no gains is keeping a training and diet journal. I consider it vital to making long-term gains.
• Building your ideal body takes time.
• The key to growing your muscles is to always get stronger. For your muscles to get stronger and adapt to progressively heavier weights, they must grow -- it’s that simple.
• Your goal each week is to do just a little more than last week.
• The successful workout is one where you did one more rep on your lifts than last week with the same weight, while the failed workout is one where you did the same weights and reps or less than the week before.
• In the [training journal], write a series of things for each training day: how many weeks it’s been since you took a week off to rest and the day, date, and body part you’re going to be training that day. You should also weigh yourself once or twice a week (in the morning, in your underwear, after the bathroom, and on an empty stomach) and record it in your book. You then list out the exercises you’re going to do and look at the previous week. You asses whether you’re going up in reps or weight this week and then start your first exercise, writing down what you did. You move through your workout this way, always looking back to ensure that you are doing more reps or more weight than the week before.
• As you’ll soon learn, dieting is a very precises activity, especially when you’re cutting. It requires that you split an exact daily requirement of calories, protein, carbs, and fats into 6 or 7 meals to be eaten every 2-3 hours. The easiest way to do this is to eat the same food every meal, every day. If you don’t mind doing it, it’ll make your life easier.
• The primary use of the diet journal isn’t to just record what you’ve eaten throughout the day, but to plan out your meals for each day (and then record what you actually end up eating, of course).
• Once you know how many calories and how much protein, carbs, and fats you should be eating each day, you can plan out your meals using a nutrition facts database online.
• Then, in your journal, write out the following for each day:
• Your dietary target for calories, protein, carbs, and fats.
• The foods you plan on eating for each meal with the total calories, protein, carbs, and fats noted.
• A note of what you actually ate for each meal. You can simply put a checkmark next to the meal that you planned if you stuck to it, but if you had to deviate you should note what you ate instead along with the calories, protein, carbs, and fats.
• As the old proverb goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” This is very true with diet. It is basically impossible to get shredded without planning and preparing in the way I’ve just described, and this is why most people fail to achieve the results they desire.
• If you’ve trained before, you know what makes a great workout: pushing yourself to the limit with the weights feeling light.
• The secret to having this kind of workout every day is lifting with intensity and focus. Training with maximum intensity and focus will enable you to lift the heaviest weights possible and thus literally force your muscles to grow.
• Intensity is simply the level of physical and mental exertion you give to your workout.
• A high-intensity workout is one where you feel like you didn’t leave anything in the tank.
• By focus, I mean mental concentration, having your mind on your lifts.
• While there’s nothing wrong with talking while resting, don’t get carried away in conversation because it’ll inevitably be distracting.
• The building blocks of a great body are more like pillars than puzzle pieces. Weaken one enough, and the whole structure collapses when overloaded.
• There are five aspects of nutrition that are of primary concern when trying to build muscle and lose fat. They are calories, protein, carbohydrates, fats, and water. Protein, carbohydrates, and fats are known as “macronutrients” (macro means “of great size; large”), and how you structure these in your diet is vitally important to your overall results. Of secondary concern to success are vitamins and minerals, which are known as “micronutrients,” and these are essential for body’s performance of many different physiological process connected with building muscle and losing fat.
• A calorie is a measurement of potential energy in a food, whether it comes from protein, carbohydrate, or fat.
• A gram of protein has about 4 calories, as does a gram of carbohydrate (regardless of the source, these numbers hold more or less true). A gram of fat contains about 9 calories.
• Knowing how to determine your body’s caloric needs and then how to translate them into specific amounts of protein, carbs, and fats is crucial to maximizing your muscle growth.
• Your body needs protein for virtually every “growth” process it engages in.
• Weightlifting places considerable protein demands on the body, and as you gain more and more lean muscle, your body needs more and more protein to maintain it.
• Eating enough protein every day is rock-bottom fundamental to building muscle and increasing strength.
• Not eating enough protein and not eating it frequently enough is the easiest way to ruin your gains, get stuck in a rut, and quit.
• The daily quantity of protein isn’t the only important aspect -- the frequency of eating protein is just as vital. As you know, your body breaks proteins down into amino acids, and then your blood transports them around the body for use. In order to achieve optimal muscles growth, you want to have a constant supply of amino acids in your bloodstream, ready to be used for repair, growth, and other process.
• Just know that you will need to eat protein about every 3 hours to keep your body anabolic.
• The glycemic index is a numeric system of ranking how quickly carbohydrates are converted into glucose in the body.
• A “simple” carb is one that converts very quickly (is high on the glycemic index), such as table sugar, honey, and watermelon, while a “complex” carb is one that converts slowly (is low on the glycemic index), such as broccoli, apple, and sweet potato.
• The amount of carbohydrates that you should eat every day depends on what you’re trying to accomplish: gaining muscle or losing fat. Gaining muscle requires that you eat a lot of carbs, while cutting carbs and upping protein is the best way to lose fat while retaining muscle strength and size.
• Fats are the most dense energy source available to your body.
• Healthy fats, such as those found in olive oil, avocados, flax seed oil, many nuts, and other foods, are actually an important component to overall health.
• Certain fats are unhealthy, though, and can lead to disease and other health problems. These types of fats are called saturated fats and trans fats.
• Saturated fats are a form of fat found mainly in animal products such as meat, dairy, and egg yolks.
• Trans fats are scientifically modified saturated fats that have been engineered to give foods longer shelf lives.
• The human body is about 60% water in adult males and about 70% in adult females. Muscles are about 70% water. That alone tells you how important water is to maintaining good health and proper body function.
• I highly recommend that you drink at least one gallon of water per day.
• You want a continual supply of vitamins and minerals running through your body, supporting every growth and repair process that occurs.
• The easiest way to get all of the essential vitamins and minerals is a good multivitamin product.
• Cutting is when you adjust your diet and usually also add cardio to your training routine in order to maximize fat loss with the usual byproduct of minimal muscle gains.
• Bulking is when you adjust your diet to maximize muscle gains with the usual byproduct of gaining some fat along the way.
• Maintaining is when you adjust your diet to enable you to make slow muscle gains without the addition of any fat.
• I recommend that you get a good fat caliper. When you learn how to test properly with this simple device, you will get very accurate measurements.
• When you want to gain significant amounts of muscle (10 pounds or more), bulk until you’ve gained the size you want, and then cut to lose the fat. This is the fastest way to look the way you want.
• If you want to gain muscle as quickly as possible, you’re going to gain some fat too simply because it’s going to require you to eat a lot of calories each day.
• A bulking diet requires that you eat a relatively large amount of calories every day.
• Here’s how to determine your starting point:
• Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 2 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 1 gram of healthy fats per 3 pounds of body weight per day.
• If you aren’t gaining weight, you should up your calories by about 200 per day for another week or two and see if that fixes it.
• As a note, you should adjust your calories up by about 200 for every 15 pounds that you gain. You can add these calories however you’d like (protein, carbs, or healthy fats).
• Studies clearly show that meats increase testosterone levels, but scientists aren’t sure why.
• I recommend that you stick to the lean varieties of meats as eating a lot of saturated fat just isn’t necessary. That means fish, lean cuts of beef (90% lean and up), chicken, turkey, pork tenderloin, and so forth.
• When bulking, if your daily calories are within 100 - 150 of your target, you’ll be okay. I actually recommend that you err on the higher side when calculating your meals (better to be 200 calories over than under).
• Try to get at least 50% of your daily protein from solid food, however -- it makes a difference.
• Losing fat simply requires that you reduce your daily caloric intake, and as you’ll see, most of the calories you cut from your diet come from reducing your carbs.
• Cutting, of course, requires more precision than bulking as you’re looking to keep your calories at a very specific level that will allow you to steadily lose fat with minimal strength and muscle loss.
• If you’re losing a lot of strength, you’re also losing muscle (which means your calories are too low or you’re allowing too much time to pass between meals).
• Here’s how to calculate your starting point:
• Eat 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 1 gram of carbs per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 1 gram of healthy fats per 7 pounds of body weight per day.
• If, after a couple of weeks, you’re not losing 1 - 2 pounds with minimal strength loss, then you should be cut your calories by 200 per day and see if that fixes it within the next two weeks. To cut these calories, simply cut your carbs by 50 grams per day. Don’t eat less protein or fats.
• If your strength takes a serious hit when cutting -- a drop of more than 10% in the weight you can handle in your exercises -- then your calories are too low, and you’ll lose too much muscle if you continue. Add 200 calories in carbs per day and see if this stabilizes your strength (it should).
• As a note, you should adjust your calories down by about 200 for every 15 pounds that you lose. You should subtract these calories by reducing carbs (reduce by 50 grams per day).
• Unlike bulking, cutting requires that you be very precise with how much you eat.
• Get the majority of your carbs after you work out, because this is when your body can best use them.
• Depending on how lean you want to get, you may need to include cardio to achieve your desired results.
• When cutting, don’t eat any carbs after dinner for the reasons given earlier.
• Plan one day per week where you eat double your normal amount of carbs. This will replenish glycogen stores in the muscles and kick the thyroid into gear. I recommend you plan it on a day which is followed by a training day.
• It’s very important that you work out exact meals and stick to them because, as you know, all it takes to kill your fat loss is a few hundred hidden calories per day.
• I don’t recommend bothering with any kind of maintenance diet until you’re basically happy with where your body is.
• Until you’ve reached this point, I really recommend that you purely bulk and cut until you’re satisfied with your look.
• Always set goals and be looking to improve. Don’t just try to stay the same because things tend to either get better or get worse.
• Here’s how to determine your starting point:
• Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 1.5 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 1 gram of healthy fats per 5 pounds of body weight per day.
• When maintaining, I like to see about 1 - 2 pounds of weight gain per month.
• Your breakfast should be the largest meal of the day, and meals should get progressively smaller as the day goes on. This is because your metabolism is at its natural peak in the morning and then slows down as night approaches.
• You will also need to get used to eating several small meals per day as opposed to 2 or 3 large meals with 6+ hours in between each.
• You should be eating protein every 3 -5 hours. You never want to go more than 5 hours without eating protein because your body will start to break down muscle.
• Most of your daily carbohydrates will come before and after training, when your body needs them most.
• As a general rule, any other carbs eaten throughout the day should be low-GI (under 60).
• It’s also important when cutting to not eat carbs within several hours of going to bed.
• So, as a general rule, when you’re cutting, don’t eat any carbs within 4-5 hours of bedtime. You should only consume lean proteins after dinner.
• I like to get most of my fats in one go by drinking 1-2 tablespoons of Udo’s Oil (a delicious blend of plant-based oils) with my breakfast.
• About 30 minutes before training, you want to eat about 30 grams of high-GI carbs and about 30 grams of fast-digesting protein (such as whey).
• It’s vitally important to eat within an hour of finishing your workout, and to eat a substantial amount of carbs, and a moderate amount of protein.
• A slow-digesting protein should be the last meal of the night, and should be consumed immediately before going to bed. I like egg protein powder, but casein is another common choice.
• There are two main sources of protein out there: whole food protein and supplement protein.
• Whole food protein is, as you guessed, protein that comes from natural food sources, such as beef, chicken, fish, etc. The best forms of whole food protein are chicken, turkey, lean red meat, fish, eggs, and milk.
• Protein supplements are powdered or liquid foods that contain protein from various sources, such as whey (a liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained in the process of making cheese), egg, and soy (the three most common sources of supplemental protein).
• Your body can only digest and absorb so much in one sitting.
• To be safe, you can assume 40-50.
• Another thing to know about protein is that different proteins digest at different speeds, and some are better utilized by the body than others.
• In case you’re wondering why I left soy off the “recommended list,” it’s because it’s just a bad protein source.
• I recommend eating a fast-digesting protein like whey after working out to quickly spike amino acid levels in your blood, and eating a slow-digesting protein like egg or casein 30 minutes before going to bed.
• Your daily carbohydrate intake is vitally important to gain size and strength. Carbs not only fuel your workouts and enable you to properly overload your muscles; they play a crucial role in pre- and post-workout meals.
• Stay away from these carbs at all cost:
• white bread bagel
• corn chips
• pretzels
• breakfast cereal
• candy bar
• wheat or corn cracker
• rye cracker
• rice cake
• popcorn
• white rice
• pizza
• raisins
• whole wheat bread
• white bread
• baguette
• english muffin
• baked potato
• muesli
• Eat carbs in the medium-high range of the glycemic index (70-90 is a good rule of thumb) about 30 minutes before you train and within 30 minutes of finishing your workout.
• The reason you want some carbs before training is that you need the energy for your training. The reason you want them after is that your muscles are starved for glycogen, and by replacing it quickly, you actually help your body maintain an anabolic state and not lose muscle tissue.
• All other carbs you eat should be in the middle or low end of the glycemic index (60 and below is a good rule of thumb).
• Below are some examples of tasty, healthy carbs that you can include in your diet:
• multigrain bread
• multigrain muffin
• whole grain sourdough bread
• basmati rice
• brown rice
• apple
• yam
• black beans
• peanuts
• almonds
• strawberries
• blackberries
• oatmeal
• orange
• Keep your intake of saturated fats low (below 10% of your total calories).
• If a fat is a solid at room temperatures, it’s a saturated fat.
• Completely avoid trans fats, which are the worst type of saturated fat.
• Get your fats from unsaturated fats such as olive oil, nuts, peanut oil, avocados, flax seed oil, safflower oil, sesame oil, or cottonseed oil. If a fat is liquid at room temperature, it’s an unsaturated fat.
• The types of proteins, carbs, and fats that you eat will not only determine your gains but will also dictate how you look.
• When you want to get really lean, you want to do more than just restrict your calories. There are certain foods you want to focus on and others you want to avoid altogether.
• Stick to lean white-meat proteins such as chicken, fish, turkey, and eggs.
• Avoid baked goods and pasta.
• Most guys find cardio necessary in order to get into the “super lean” category (8% and under) because someone can only cut calories so much before starting to lose strength and muscle.
• The worst cardio mistakes I see guys make is doing cardio right before or after lifting. Another common mistake is doing too much cardio when trying to focus on gaining muscle.
• The 3 commandments of cardio
• Do cardio no more than 4 times per week.
• Do cardio for no more than 30 minutes per session.
• Separate your weights and cardio sessions by 8-12 hours.
• Never do cardio and weights in the same workout. Don’t do cardio immediately before or after lifting weight.
• Training heavy is especially important when you’re cutting because that’s how you’re going to preserve your muscle -- you’re going to force your body to maintain its muscle mass by continuing to overload it.
• A huge killer diet trap that many people fall into is they eat a lot of “hidden calories” throughout the day then wonder why they aren’t losing weight. Hidden calories are calories that you don’t realize are there.
• Losing fat isn’t hard, but it is unforgiving. It requires precision, and when you oblige, it’s actually extremely easy.
• The bigger leaner stronger training formula:
• Train 1-2 muscle groups per day
• In order to achieve maximum overload and muscle stimulation, you will be training one or two muscle groups per workout (per day).
• By training only one major muscle group per day, you will be able to give it 100% focus and intensity and train it hard.
• Do sets of 4-6 reps for nearly all exercises
• In order to achieve maximum muscle growth, you will be doing 4-6 repetitions per set on virtually all exercises (the only exception to this is when training abs and calves, for which I recommend using wight that allows you to do 10-12 reps).
• Another big advantage of training with heavy weights is the fact that they stimulate the most growth hormone and testosterone production.
• Yet another reason to train heavy is the fact that your sets are short, which allows you to fully concentrate and focus your energy on the lift.
• Do 6-9 working sets per muscle group
• Your workouts will consist of 6-9 “working” sets per muscle group trained. A working set is your heavy 4-6 rep, muscle building set, as opposed to a warm-up set, which we’ll soon go over.
• Just as 4-6 reps is the sweet spot for set volume, 6-9 working sets is the sweet spot for total training volume for each muscle group given the weights you’ll be handling.
• Rest 2-3 minutes in between sets
• Basically, the whole point of resting between a set is to prepare your muscles to lift maximum weight in the next set.
• The in-between-set recovery period should last about 2-3 minutes.
• Don’t, however, drag out rest times to 5 or 6 minutes or beyond.
• The test isn’t whether you want to do the next set or not; it’s whether your body’s heart rate has come down since the last set and you feel like you have the energy to do another set.
• Train for 45-60 minutes
• If your workouts are going longer than an hour, something is wrong.
• The usual reason why people’s workouts pass into the 90+ minute range is that they don’t pay attention to their rest times and chat with friends in between sets.
• Train each muscle group once every 5-7 days
• Remember: you signal your muscles to grow by overloading them, but the growth itself occurs outside of the gym, when your body adapts the muscle to better deal with future overloads (by growing bigger and stronger).
• Recovery is what makes or breaks all of the above work to get the body you want.
• Take a week off training every 8-10 weeks
• Taking a week off training every couple of months is actually an important part of overall recuperation and recovery.
• Not only does improper form stunt gains, it opens the door to injury.
• When performed correctly, the squat is a safe, incredibly powerful exercise that you will come to love because of how beneficial it is to your overall gains.
• Bench press: Your elbows should be pointing out from the body at about a 45-60 degree angle (between parallel and perpendicular to your torso). Keep your elbows “tucked” like this the entire time. Flaring them out puts undue stress on the shoulders.
• When you’re lowering the weight, think about the coming drive up.
• Make sure to finish your last rep before trying to rack the weight.
• As you narrow your grip [on the bench press] on the bar, the chest does less work, and the triceps do more.
• The purpose of the warm-up is to infuse enough blood into the muscle and connective tissues so that they can be maximally recruited to handle the heavy sets.
• The warm-up should not fatigue your muscles -- period.
• A correct warm-up introduces blood into the muscle while progressively acclimating it to heavy weight, but it does not fatigue the muscle.
• The 3 don’ts of warming up
• Don’t use pyramid training principles.
• Never go to failure on a warm-up set.
• Don’t warm up the same muscle group twice unless completely necessary.
• Pyramid training is terrible. It produces a large amount of muscle fatigue and little overload, thus producing little muscle growth or gains in strength.
• How you train is just as important as what exercises you do.
• The most effective exercises you can do are few, and building a great body only requires that you work hard and heavy at those week after week.
• If you’re bulking, I recommend 2-3 days of cardio per week, and if you’re cutting, 3-4.
• Workout Plan:
• Day 1: Chest and Abs
• Flat bench press - warm up sets and then 3 working sets
• Incline bench press - 3 sets
• Weighted dip - 3 sets
• Cable crunch - 3 sets
• Captain’s chair leg raise - 3 sets
• Bicycles (to burnout) - 3 sets
• Day 2: Back and Calves
• Barbell deadlift - warm up sets and then 3 working sets
• one-arm dumbbell row - 3 sets
• close-grip lat pulldown - 3 sets
• seated or standing calf raise - 6 sets
• Day 3: Shoulders
• Barbell military press - warm up sets and then 3 working sets
• side lateral raise - 3 sets
• bent-over rear delt raise - 3 sets
• barbell shrugs - 3 sets
• Day 4: Legs
• barbell squat - warm-up sets and then 3 working sets
• leg press - 3 sets
• romanian deadlift - 3 sets
• Day 5: Arms and Abs
• dumbbell curl -- warm-up sets and then 3 working sets
• tricep pushdown - warm-up sets and then 3 working sets
• barbell curl - 3 sets
• seated tricep press - 3 sets
• cable crunch - 3 sets
• captain’s chair leg raise - 3 sets
• bicycles (to burnout) - 3 sets
• I recommend that you always do a t least one incline press in your chest workout, as this is the toughest type of movement you can do.
• I highly recommend always keeping the deadlift in your routine.
• I like to keep my shoulder workouts simple: one exercise for each head, always starting with an overhead press.
• Working legs is very, very simple. Rule #1: always do squats. Rule #2: Always do squats. Rule #3: You get the point.
• The barbell curl and straight bar curl are widely considered the best overall mass builders for the bicep, and I agree.
• Many guys don’t realize that the tricep is actually about two-thirds of your arm’s mass. If you don’t have big triceps, your arms will never look impressive.
• The “secret” to having a six-pack is being lean, but it does take ab work to have a fully developed set of abs and obliques.
• If you can only train 3 or 4 days per week, the following three-day program has worked best for me:
• Day 1: chest (9 working sets) & tris (6 working sets)
• Day 2: back (9 working sets) & bis (6 working sets)
• Day 3: legs (9 working sets) & shoulders (9 working sets) -- this day is hard
• Most everything you see on the shelves of your local supplement store is utterly worthless.
• Protein is the nutrient most responsible for muscle growth and repair. Using protein supplements such as whey, egg, and casein powders isn’t necessary, but it is convenient.
• Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) are the three “building blocks” of your body: leucine, isoleucine, and valine. They make up about 35% of your muscle mass and must be present in the body for muscle growth and repair to occur.
• A good pre-workout supplement is actually worth the investment, in my opinion. It will give you a kick of energy, a good pump, and increases muscle endurance.
• Creatine is an amino acid and decades of studies have proven that it’s a great strength and size booster with no negative side effects when taken properly. I definitely recommend supplementing with creatine.
• Glutamine is the most abundant single amino acid in your body. It plays a key role in muscle growth, and I can’t stress its importance enough. Bottom line: This is a supplement that you should always be taking.
• You should always be taking a daily multivitamin.
• Stick to protein supplements, a pre-workout drink, creatine, glutamine, a multi-vitamin, and throw in CLA and green tea extract if you’re cutting, and you’ll be supplementing the smart way.
• These [protein supplements] are used before and after workouts and in between your whole food meals to meet the macronutrient targets of diet.
• Whether you load or not, if you take enough creatine regularly over a longer period of time, such as a month or two, it will have a positive effect.
• One thing you should always do when supplementing creatine is take a serving after training.
• Just like training and diet, the most important aspect of supplementing is consistency.
• Special year one report: http://bit.ly/year-one
• Light weights don’t overload the muscles no matter how many reps you do. No overload = no growth.
• You can reduce fat by proper dieting and your body will decide how it comes off.
• Rest assured that you can lose as much fat all over your body as you want, and you can get as shredded as you want; you’ll just have to be patient and let your body lean out in the way it’s programmed to.
• Your body views fat as an asset and muscle as a liability.
• When you give your body more calories than it burns off, it stores fat. When you give your body less calories than it burns through the day, it must make up for that deficit by burning its own energy stores (fat), leading to the ultimate goal, fat loss.
• There’s something mystical about three months of training. That’s when many people quit.
• More reps eventually turns into more weight.
• You need to approach all lifts in the same way. Your mantra should be, “One more rep!”.
• If you can get one more rep on an exercise than you did last week (while maintaining proper form), pat yourself on the back, because you’ve made progress.
• If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
• Regardless of what type of carbohydrate you eat--broccoli or apple pie--the body breaks it down into two substances: glucose and glycogen. Glucose is commonly referred to as “blood sugar,” and it’s an energy source used by your cells to do the many things they do. Glycogen is a substance stored in the liver and muscles than can be easily converted to glucose for immediate energy.
• When you lift weights intensely, your muscles burn up their glycogen stores to cope with the overload.
• Your body’s ability to digest, transport and absorb nutrients from food is dependant upon proper fluid intake.
• If you’re vegetarian, your best options are eggs, low-fat cottage cheese, low-fat Greek yogurt, tempeh, tofu, quinoa, almonds, rice, and beans.
• My recommendation is to bulk to a size that’s a little bigger than what you want and then cut. You should be happy with your final size if you do it this way.
• You should be getting stronger almost every week, and you should notice little positive changes in the mirror and in how your clothes fit.
• The biggest mistake I see guys make when trying to bulk is not eating enough.
• Cutting Diet:
• Eat 1.2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 1 gram of carbs per pound of bodyweight per day.
• Eat 1 gram of fat per 5 pounds of body weight per day.
• Hidden calories are the number one reason why people don’t get results from properly calculated and planned diets.
• You should never feel starved and running on empty when dieting to lose weight.
• If you suspect that you’re eating too much, all you need to do is cut your calories by 200 per day and see if that fixes it within the next two weeks. To cut these calories, simply cut your carbs by 50 grams per day. DOn’t eat less protein or fat.
• Body composition is more important than body weight.
• Squat, deadlift, military press, bench press; These are the exercises that give you the most bang for your buck--the most total-body strengthening and conditioning for the time and effort.
• Overload means growth, and the only way to effectively overload your muscles is to lift progressively heavier weights.
• As long as you keep hitting the weights hard, your muscles will grow, and you will start seeing a difference.
• If your back tends to round at the bottom [of the squat], it’s because your hamstrings are too tight.
• The deadlift is one of the toughest and most rewarding lifts you can do.
• Warming up correctly is a very important part of training heavily and building muscle effectively.
• Sharp pains while lifting mean that something is wrong.
• The deadlift is, by far, the most effective back exercise you can do.
• The triceps are about two-thirds of your arm’s total mass. If you don’t have big triceps, your arms will never look impressive.