Rules of Size Defined
Well, they're more like "guidelines" - (Pirates of Caribbean).
We will go over the "rules" which I labeled in last blog to decrease some confusion.
1) Time under tension.
2) Rule of Three
3) Rule of Five
4) Primary Movers First
5) Stress on any System Will Cause Change
6) Guyton's Text: All-or-None PrincipleOkay. These are quite simple. For the first time in my life of bodybuilding, I began writing the rules out in a journal when I started timing myself and pseudo-scientifically analyzing my approach in the gym around 1994-1995. I bought a journal, calculator, stopwatch at this time. Had this stuff for around three months of training and left it all behind in the gym one day and they were never seen again. I hope whoever found my stuff learned from it all and got huge.
Time under Tension: Simple. The more tension a muscle group is put under for a short amount of time, the greater the growth potential. This is where the increased reps come in on one set and/or the two minute set. Something which is similar is when you perform a drop-set, from high to low weight. This is a true stressor rule and also conditions your body for changes as well as joint and tendon lubrication which is extremely important for maintaining non-injury status.
Rule of three: Performed after initial warm-up of ten when you are well-conditioned, good sleep, eating right. Three reps per set until you have tendons warmed for your max set of 6-8. The reasoning for three is to get the tendons ready for tremendous weight. Also, three is just enough to condition, but not enough to fatigue. You save your energy stores for the "real" working weight which is what you really want. The real working weight is your max weight since this is the true stressor on the system and not the piddly working-up weights. The threes are injury breakers. If there is potential for injury anywhere in the workout it is at beginning of training and usually with minimal weight on the positive motion of any reps versus the negative. The lead-ups (ten and then threes) to max weight should be performed carefully to prevent injury and to assess current days' condition. Very unlikely for injury to occur once you get in max ranges.
Rule of Five: After initial ten warm-up. Same as rule of three, basically, but used when you may be fatigued, lack sleep or food, or have been under unusually greater amount of stress. When Fives are used, be acutely aware of your overall condition to find how much you can take on this day.
Primary Movers First: Beginning set(s). The non-glamorous movements which emphasize only the muscle you are working versus utilizing "helpers" or ancillary muscles. The easiest example would be with chest. A fly movement is primarily only chest work. If a bench is performed, then ancillarys come into play and you are using shoulders, triceps, and back stabilizers. Attempting to work a primary movement can be somewhat difficult to assess. The idea is to eliminate as many muscles as possible in performing a movement for any one part which is being worked that day. It can lead to a non-fun workout sometimes as the other movements will go down in weight due to depleted energy. It can also lead to increased growth due to changes made and stresses put in different order. After primary movers is used, end the workout utilizing an overall movement - like, again, with chest I may end workout with dips which incorporate all ancillarys and give my chest a final burn.
Stress on any System will cause Change:To grow, you want change. To change, there must be stress. In my programs, I create a medium of decreased time and increased weight. There's a two-fold here. With decreased time, the weights go down although the interpretation by the system is an overall increase in stress due to increase in pounds per minute. This makes it easier to influence the system by not having to greatly increase any one increment in order to create stress on the system. All it really takes is one little tweak in the next workout to maintain stress on the system. Makes it so you consistently do more work in less time. When I take time off for let's say, one month, and get back in the gym then I greatly rely on knowing that I can do just about anything and my system is stressed. So I start out on the lighter side of things and the results are then seen in less than two weeks. Some of my friends have called me a freak because of the way I know I can get my body to respond in such short time due to my utilizing the Stress/Change Rule. Some of my friends also "feel" like they haven't done enough once we get through a workout. They don't understand the solid concept of this rule.
This rule also applies to eating - the fuel in your body, sleeping - anything going on mechanical, chemical. It all comes down to conditioning. If your body is conditioned for something, the more effort you must exert to create change. The less you have conditioned yourself for something, the greater response you will receive. My system of rules surrounds maintaining a non-conditioned organism in order to gain great response with as little increase of stress as possible.
The System Under Stress Rule is very important to understand. Because of my knowledge of this rule, I get to eat Cap N Crunch in the morning and Oreos at night. Interspersed, of course, I make sure I get good food in and also I don't skip the cheese sticks. Crazy. Anyway, remember that the goal here is to get as large as possible (muscle) without having to exert much stress for optimal response.
All-Or-None-Principle: The all-or-none law is the principle that the strength by which a nerve or muscle fiber responds to a stimulus is not dependent on the strength of the stimulus. If the stimulus is any strength above threshold, the nerve or muscle fiber will give a complete response or otherwise no response at all.
It was first established by the American physiologist Henry Pickering Bowditch in 1871 for the contraction of heart muscle. According to him, describing the relation of response to stimulus,
“An induction shock produces a contraction or fails to do so according to its strength; if it does so at all, it produces the greatest contraction that can be produced by any strength of stimulus in the condition of the muscle at the time.”
The individual fibers of both skeletal muscle and nerve respond to stimulation according to the all-or-none principle. ---------This is taken directly from Wikipedia. It was first brought to my attention in 1994 where it is written and explained in Guyton's Physiology (Bible of Physiology). There are references to this all over the web.What this law states, basically, is that when a muscle is primed, then it is ready to fire (you are ready to lift). The one conundrum a person must deal with is tendon strength. You can warm a muscle and it is ready to go, but the tendons must be insured as to not pop. No injury is the name of the game. This is why we have the Rule of Three and the Rule of Five. Utilizing All-or-None really comes into play after your first max set. We don't namby pamby pyramid our way through the subsequent max sets and ruin/deplete our energy stores. We get on it and maintain another max set after another with each being a different exercise in order to influence the entire muscle (and to escape boredom) which also greatly influences our overall pounds per minute. This is putting All-or-None to work in our favor. This is the key which doubles our pounds per minute versus old school. Using the law is painful and grueling. After our initial max, there is no downhill. Its all work, work, work. The work increases overall stress in short period of time and the work is non-stop for a straight twenty minutes utilizing All-or-None. If there be one great thing to understand in building powerful strength and greater size, then this one thing is the All or None Principle.
That's it for my rules. I have a coupla others utilized, but these are the basics and foundation. I don't know if my rules will ever change as I still have yet to see them beat in routine practice. If I were ever to desire enormous size again, these are the basics I would still stand by, only intensified and with proper diet, etc. Right now and after two month lay-off I have begun my prep for a poolside body and by next week, I intend to see the fruits of my labor.
Some tips in the gym:
Keep in mind at least two exercises for each set. This is to avoid being held up by campers lounging around on your first exercise choice. Just move on to your next choice.
Be creative in your exercise choices.
Talk to people along the way for a more enjoyable workout.
Help the old ladies and old men who look lost.
Keeps dem headphones and hats off so you may make an impact on others when you see a need.
Rack your weights properly.
Help those little girls who have to unload a bunch of 45s left over by that jerkoff who doesn't know how to properly rack the gear.
If the handicap guy is having trouble, then help him out. - Even if its just tying a shoe.
Walk through the new gym first and check everything out in order to figure the layout and make a plan.
Don't allow trash to muck up your house - Deposit in the can.
Do sneer at the dawg who slams the little 40 pounders on the floor after a set - those are your DBs he is abusing.
Don't mind too much the guy who slams the 175s after doing 15 - he's just tired and probably just made a mistake.
Watch those who actually know what they are doing - you may learn something.
Enjoy the spa and facilities after you've done your work - you should be rewarded for a job well done.
Key to all of this: Get In, Get Out, Move On.
Thank you and God bless.
sm
KURT and his wife, Alex...and the Spyder
