Beyond Brawn by Stuart McRobert

• An average or even less-than-average potential for bodybuilding, if achieved, is stunning to an untrained person, and respected by almost any trained individual.
• Achieving your potential for muscle and might demands extraordinary discipline and dedication. There’s no place for half measures, corner cutting, laziness or lukewarm enthusiasm. If you don’t train well, rest well, sleep well, and eat well, you’ll get nowhere or make only minimal progress.
• You have tremendous control over your physique development, if only you would start to employ it.
• Negative thoughts and negative people will harm all your endeavours. If you imagine failure, dwell on it, and prepare for it, you’ll fail.
• With a good plan, and no time for negativity, you’re set for the confidence and persistence that lead to success. But the journey there will be neither trouble free nor easy.
• Lifting weights is a solo activity over which you alone have the power of control. Once you know what to do, you need rely on no one.
• Never lock yourself into using an exercise if it doesn’t suit you. The number one priority for any exercise is that it does you no harm.
• Don’t focus on what you’ll never be able to do well. Instead, focus on what you can do better.
• Use a rep count for a given exercise that best suits you, get as strong as you can in exercises that suit you and which you can perform safely, keep your body fat levels to below 15% (or below 10% if you want an appearance that’s stunning--assuming that you have some muscle), eat healthfully, perform cardio work, stretch regularly, and then you’ll have the full bodybuilding package.
• Experience has taught me that the conservative approach isn’t just the safest way, it’s the most productive and satisfying over the long term.
• Most people train too much. Not only is this counterproductive for short-term results, it produces the overtraining that wears the body down and causes long-term structural problems.
• The biggest exercises are uncomfortable when done with effort. If they were easy to work hard on, they would do little or nothing for you. But don’t use an exercise that’s harmful for you.
• In this book, “light” weight generally means that the set’s rep target can be met easily, with little or no strain. A “heavy” weight is one that demands much effort to complete the set’s rep target regardless of how many reps that is.
• One of the biggest and most disastrous errors in the training world today is the belief that basics-first abbreviated programs are only for beginners.
• Bodybuilding and strength training are almost laughably simple; but simple doesn’t mean easy. All that really matters is focus, and progressive poundages in correct form.
• Pick a handful of the biggest and best exercises for you and then devote years to getting stronger, and then stronger still in them.
• There’s even danger in using variety because you can lose focus and get caught up in an excessive assortment of exercises.
• Focus on the big basic lifts and their variations. Do this for most of your training time. Don’t try to build yourself up using tools of detail.
• You can’t get very powerful in the key basic exercises without becoming impressive throughout your physique.
• Never train if you don’t feel systemically rested from your previous workout. While some local soreness may remain, you should be systemically rested, and mentally raring to go for every workout. If in doubt, train less often.
• Once-a-week training for the biggest exercises is a good rule of thumb. Fine-tune your training frequency according to your individual recovery ability.
• Unless you walk every morning feeling fully rested, and without having to be awoken, you’re not getting enough sleep. And even if you are making gains in the gym, more rest and sleep could substantially increase your gains.
• Add small poundage increments when you’re training full-bore. Don’t go short-circuiting a cycle by adding a minimum of 5 pounds to eh bar at a shot. Get some pairs of little discs.
• Dependable training for typical people with regular lives is about doing things slowly, safely, steadily and surely. It’s not about trying to do in two months something that needs half a year.
• What matters is what works. If you can gain only from a routine that’s absurd in its brevity and simplicity by conventional standards, fine. But if you can gain well using a routine that most hardgainers wouldn’t gain an ounce on, that’s fine too.
• High reps, especially in thigh and back work, have been proven to pack on loads of muscle.
• Don’t neglect your calves, abdominals, grip, or the external rotators of your shoulders. This accessory work matters.
• Some neck work is mandatory if you’re involved in contact sport, and still a good idea if you’re not. And back extensions will help keep your lower back in good order.
• Once you have a good grasp of training, all you need is persistence and time. Then the realization of your potential for muscles and might is almost guaranteed.
• There’s not much if anything that’s really new in the training world. What’s “new” is usually just a twist on an old idea.
• With a dose of creative lingo and modern-day advertising hoopla, even something that has been around for decades can appear new.
• The dip, done in correct form, is a terrific exercise that’s much underused. It’s at least as productive as the bench press.
• Never, ever let your attention waver from progressive poundages in correct form. Never, that is, until you no longer want to build stronger and bigger muscles.
• Only you can find how far you can go by actually going as far as you can go.
• Urging realistic expectations doesn’t mean accepting mediocrity.
• Age isn’t the limiting factor untrained people usually make it out to be. The limiting factor is in the mind. Expect little from your body and that’s what it will deliver. Expect a lot from it and that’s what it will deliver.
• Never pile on bodyweight by adopting a long-term very-heavy eating program. You want a muscular physique, not a soft or flabby one.
• Once you can strictly press overhead a barbell weighing the equivalent of your bodyweight, you’ll be a better presser than nearly all weight trainees.
• What matters the most to you is your progress, and comparing yourself with yourself. Everything you study and apply related to training should be geared to this.
• You must have a great passion for what you’re doing if you’re to be successful at it. If you try to achieve at something that your heart isn’t really into, and that your body doesn’t respond to, you won’t get far.
• Your immediate short-term target should be to take the next small step towards your next set of medium-term goals.
• Never lose sight of the pivotal importance of progression. Organize your training program, nutrition, sleep, and rest habits so that you make progression a reality.
• To realize your potential, you need to become an achievement-oriented, goal-driven and success-obtaining individual.
• Achievement comes in small steps, but lots of them. Lots of little bits add up to huge achievement.
• Success is rarely an accident in any endeavour. Success in the gym is never a hit or miss activity. It’s planned.
• Deadlines are often imperative for making people take action, in all areas of life.
• Giving something a deadline and urgency, and it usually gets done.
• There’s nothing like the urgency of concentrating on a specific goal by a specific deadline to focus attention, application, and resolve. Without something specific to rally attention and resources, people tend to drift along and never get even close to realizing their potential.
• Avoid getting locked into tunnel vision that keeps you looking at the same sort of targets throughout your training life.
• If you want to be successful in achieving your potential you need to program that success. Step leaving life to chance.
• Achievement in any sphere of life depends on getting the individual moments freight, at least most of the time.
• An essential part of the organization needed to get each workout day right is a training diary. At its most basic this is a written record of reps and poundage for every work set you do, and an evaluation of each workout so that you can stay alert to warning signs of overtraining.
• It’s not enough just to train hard. You need to train hard with a target to beat in every work set you do. The targets to beat in any given workout are your achievements the previous time you performed that same routine/workout.
• Unless you have accurate records of the achievements to be bettered, you can’t be sure that you really are giving your all.
• Most trainees have neither the organization needed for success, nor the will and desire to push themselves very hard when the need to.
• Never become dependent on another person to get in a good workout.
• Effective training has to be intensive, and intensive training is very difficult to deliver on a consistent basis without a demanding taskmaster to urge you to deliver.
• Treat workouts as very serious working time. Get down to business and keep your training partner or supervisor at a distance. Keep your mind focused rigidly on your training.
• Always be able to train well by yourself. Have spells where you intentionally train by yourself, to be sure you can still deliver the goods alone.
• Take as much control over your life as you can. Learn from your mistakes. Capitalize on the good things you’ve done. Do more of the positive things you’re already doing, and fewere of the negative things.
• Any equipment other than the basics nearly always serves to divert attention from where most application should be given.
• Spoil trainees for choice, and you’ll spoil their progress too.
• Supplements will never be the answer to training problems.
• Until you get the basic package of training, food, sleep, and rest in general, to deliver good steady gains in muscle and might, forget about any fine-tuning with supplements.
• Ignore anything and anyone that will hinder your progress. You are in charge of your training. Never surrender that authority to others.
• The advantages you get from a home gym are so profuse and profound that, if you’re serious about training, you should do your utmost to get one.
• Parallel-grip bent-legged deadlifts, plus chins and dips, cover most of the body’s musculature. Just those three exercise, if worked progressively and for long enough, can produce a lot of muscles.
• If you have to load or unload a heavy barbell that rests on the floor, lift the end up and slip a disc underneath the inside plate. The raised end will make plate changing much easier.
• If it’s training day today, and so long as you feel well recovered from your previous workout, train today.
• Use a belt very selectively--for low-rep squats and deadlifts, and overhead presses--or not at all. Otherwise, you’ll become dependent on it to generate the necessary intra-abdominal pressure you need to protect your spinal column during heavy lifting; and without that armor you’ll be a shadow of your usual self.
• Successful weight training in its various forms is about progressive resistance. Despite this being so obviously central to training, it’s implications so often go ignored or only barely noticed. Successful training is about making lots of small bits of progress, with all the bits adding up to huge improvement. To achieve this you must have persistence galore, patience in abundance, and revel in knocking off each little bit of accumulation. Concentrate on knocking off one little bit at a time, and long-term success almost takes care of itself.
• As always, your barometer of progress is poundage progression. If the poundage gains aren’t coming, cut back your training volume by reducing total sets and/or exercises, and perhaps by training less frequently. Less work but harder work, and less total demand upon your recuperative abilities, will usually get the poundage progression back on track.
• If you’re gaining in your core exercises for a given cycle, you’ll be gaining in size and strength generally. The core movements are what you need to focus on as the cycle gets ever heavier and more demanding, and closes in on its end.
• The secondary exercises should not restrict progress in the core movements when you’re focusing on building mass. [...] In practice, to maximize gains on your core exercises, you may need to phase out some of the secondary movements as you approach the end of a cycle, or reduce their training frequency.
• Continue with the slow poundage increments, and progress will continue to feel smooth, good, and strong.
• While it’s essential to add poundage to the bar as often as possible, it’s imperative not to be enslaved by it.
• The greatest number of consecutive full-bore workouts is no good if you’re not recovering fully from each of them.
• Don’t be fullhardy, or else you may regret it later. Back off and come back next week for a hard workout when you’re ready. This aspect of conservatism especially applies once you’re in your thirties, and older.
• Remember, safety first, at all times. Patience, conservatism, and training longevity will serve you best over the long term. Haste and shortcuts invariable backfire. Haste makes waste.
• When adding poundage to the bar, use smaller rather than larger increments.
• Don’t ruin the potential magic of abbreviated routines by adding poundage too quickly, in too large jumps, or by training too frequently.
• Find the time to develop a flexible body and then maintain it.
• Eventually you will reach the point where no progress is being made, or is forthcoming. This represents the end of the cycle for that exercise.
• Conservatism, with few exceptions, is the way to go for most people who lift weights.
• Make haste slowly.
• The harder you train, the less training (volume and frequency) you need to stimulate strength and increase muscular growth.
• As you gain experience of training hard, you’ll learn to tolerate more discomfort.
• A steady diet of extremely heavy weights imposes enormous stress on the body. To pre-exhaust will reduce the size of the poundage needed in the compound movement to deliver a good training effect.
• Training intensity is a means to an end, not the end in itself.
• Training intensity is a fundamental and irreplaceable component of making muscle growth and progressive poundages a reality, but that’s all.
• Whatever you try, never persist with something that doesn’t help to keep your training poundages moving up, no matter how much it may be promoted by others.
• Don’t assume that anyone who claims to be a qualified personal trainer really knows what he’s doing. Strings of letters that indicate certifications of various organizations, or degrees obtained, don’t necessarily signify competence as a coach.
• Potentially, the square may be the most productive single exercise you can do provided you can perform it safely and progressively. The more efficiently you squat, the greater the potential benefits you can extract from it.
• Mastering the squat, and then intensively and progressively squatting on a consistent basis is a linchpin of successful bodybuilding and strength training. Don’t miss out on your chance to exploit this wonderful exercise.
• If you can’t squat safely and productively using a barbell, you should try both the hip-belt squat, and the parallel-grip deadlift.
• The parallel-grip deadlift isn’t just an alternative to the barbell squat. It’s an excellent exercise in its own right.
• Some form of deadlifting should be part of every program.
• If you don’t barbell squat you must find an alternative that at least approaches the quality of the squat. If you don’t barbell squat, you should parallel-grip deadlift, hip-belt squat, or leg press, along with some form of deadlifting for the latter two exercises.
• If you don’t find a good alternative to the barbell squat you’ll greatly reduce the potential value of your training for building muscle, if not almost extinguish it.
• Shrugs done face-down on a bench set at about 45-degrees work the musculature of the upper back differently to the regular standing shrug. In the incline shrug the whole upper back is involved, especially the lower and middle areas of the traps, and the muscles around and between the shoulder blades.
• The incline shrug in particular will help improve posture for people who have rounded shoulders.
• The parallel bar dip works more muscle than does the bench press.
• The developmental effects of the bench press in your particular case should also be a consideration in exercise selection. If you find that you get overly heavy lower pecs from the bench press (or dip), the incline press should be a preferred choice.
• There are seven small areas that shouldn’t be neglected during the focus on the core movements. This support seven can have a big impact for keeping you free of injuries. It’s made up of specific work for your calves, grip, shoulders external rotators, neck, midsection, lower back (work from back extensions additional to that from deadlift variations), and finger extensors (to balance the strength of opposing muscles in your forearms). The leg curl should be included too, to provide hamstring work additional to that given by deadlift variations. And the lateral raise is a valuable isolation exercise, to help produce healthy shoulders.
• Deadlifting using a thick barbell provides tremendous grip work. Add the thick-bar deadlift to your deadlift day’s work, either on top of your regular work if you recuperate well, or instead of a little of your regular work, in order to keep the total volume of work constant.
• Most bodybuilders and strength trainers perform their reps too quickly.
• Perform each rep as an individual unit that ends with a brief pause prior to performing the next rep. Take the time you need to set yourself to perform the next rep perfectly.
• Abbreviated training is the most productive type of training for typical drug-free trainees. The potential effectiveness of abbreviated training rests on the brevity of its routines and its infrequent workout frequency relative to conventional training methods.
• Particularly in the pre-steroids era, working out three times a week with a full-body program was the standard.
• The incline shrug is the best all-purpose upper-back shrug.
• If your training poundages are moving up steadily, and your form is consistently good, you’re bang on course. To be able to gain like this you may not need to train any exercise more often than once every five to seven days. And there are some people who may be better off training some of their exercises and body parts less often than once a week.
• Most people weight train too frequently, and don’t provide enough time for their bodies to grow stronger and bigger. Thus they fail to progress; and in addition they accumulate wear-and-tear injuries because their bodies are being worn down.
• The more progressive workouts you put in, the faster your overall progress will be. But if you train too frequently you’ll not be able to produce many if any progressive workouts.
• It’s a dedication to results that counts most, not a dedication to mere gym attendance.
• Don’t weight train if you’re still dragging your feet from the previous workout.
• Results from your weight training come from using incrementally ever-greater poundages. To achieve progressive training poundages you must rest between workouts long enough to recover from the impact of each workout, and then rest a bit longer so that your body can build a smidgen of extra strength and muscle.
• Successful weight training is about stringing together as many progressive workouts as possible. Twenty progressive workouts over ten weeks will produce far better results than thirty workouts over the same period but with only a handful of them being progressive.
• Weight-training success is about results, not just about how many hours you clock up at a gym.
• Experiment with training frequency to see what delivers steady exercise poundage gains for you. This will be relative to your individual recovery ability and the type of training program you use.
• A good training program that doesn’t yield good results can often be made productive by supplying more rest, sleep, and nutrition.
• “Best” is defined as what consistently produces poundage gain on all your exercises.
• Twenty-rep rest-pause squatting and deadlifting are extremely demanding, which is why they can be extremely productive, but only when combined with a very abbreviated training program, lots of recovery time, and plenty of quality nourishment.
• Single-rep work is exaggerate rest-pause training where the pause between reps is extended to several minutes, making the individual reps into sets of one rep each.
• Remember, many if not most people don’t have the robustness of joints and connective tissue needed to prosper on singles.
• Choose exercises you can safely perform over the long term.
• Once you’ve found your preferred major core exercises, stick with them over the long term. It’s a fallacy that you must regularly change your exercises in order to keep progressing. Changing your exercises around excessively is even counterproductive because it stops you from applying yourself to a given group of exercises for long enough to really milk them dry and make sufficient progress in strength to yield a difference.
• Rather than look for a better way to train, look for ways to recover better between workouts, and to focus better during your workouts so that you can train harder and with better form.
• Training each exercises just once a week doesn't necessarily mean training each body part only once a week.
• Sleeping well on a regular basis is of critical importance. You need to take action to correct any sleeping inadequacies you may have. Otherwise your inability to sleep adequate will continue, your recovery will be compromised, and your rate of gain in muscle and might impaired.
• Unless you wake every morning feeling fully rested, and without having to be awoken, you’re not getting enough sleep. And even if you’re making gains in the gym, more sleep and rest in general could substantially increase your gains.
• Getting adequate sleep is pivotal for enabling your body to recover optimally from training. Most trainees shortchange themselves of sleep, and as a result restrict their rate of progress in the gym.
• Use chalk everywhere you need the help, especially in back exercises and upper-body pressing movements.
• A flexible body helps protect you from injury so long as you don’t perform your stretches in a way that exposes you to injury in the first place.
• Have the courage to swim against the training tide.
• Life is too short to waste any of it on useless training methods.
• The first requirements for realizing a very demanding goal are lots of resolve, heaps of persistence, and tons of effort. [...] There’s no easy way to reach a demanding goal.
• Gravity in general, and the stress of heavy exercise in particular, compress the joints of the spine, and the muscles and soft tissue of the back as a whole, but especially of the lower back. This is at the root of many back problems. But with the appropriate therapy this compression can be relieved, leading to a healthier and more injury-resistant lower back.
• One of the simplest measures for taking care of the lower back is to take pressure off the lumbar spine. Not only is this inversion therapy a preventative measure, it can help during rehabilitation following injury.
• More isn’t better with inversion therapy (as with much of physical training and therapy). Just one minute or so is all you need to achieve maximum decompression of your spine. A longer duration isn’t necessary, and a shorter time may work very well for you.
• Better to have several very short inversions per day rather than one long one. Invert for up to 60 seconds one or more times per day, and you may experience immediate benefits.
• Even if your body can tolerate singles and very low-rep work, avoid using such high-force training for long periods.
• If your body isn’t suited to singles and very low reps, stick to medium and high reps. Use a rep count for a given exercise that suits your body.
• Avoid medium- and high-impact aerobic and cardio work.
• The harder and more seriously you train, the greater the need to satisfy nutritional requirements. Better to oversupply on the nutritional front than undersupply. Don’t give your all in the gym and then sabotage your progress by cutting corners with your diet!