The SuperRepTraining.com Blog

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Q. If I were to work out once every nine days would I really gain more muscle mass than if I worked out three times a week?

A. The thing to remember is that your optimum training frequency is changing all the time. When you first start training you can probably work out three times per week and fully recover between workouts. But as you get stronger you begin to hoist some really heavy iron and it takes longer to recover from those workouts.

So the answer to your questions is “yes”. After training a few weeks the guy who sticks with three times per week is going to make zero progress while the guy taking time off to fully recover is going to make steady progress. I work with advanced trainees who work out once every six weeks and they show progress on every exercise every workout. They also hoist fantastically heavy weights and have never been so strong in their lives. Reason is a powerful tool.

What Customers Are Saying About the New 1-Ton Hooks

“Six times as many reps!!…with a heavier weight!”

“Just wanted to let you know how great the 1 Ton Hooks are working fantastic. Before the hooks, I was able to pull shoulder shrugs with a max of 365 lbs. for around 5 reps before my grip would fail and start to slip, I always felt I could perform more reps, but out of fear of dropping the weight I would rack it. Now with the 1-Ton Hooks I am pulling 405 lbs. for 3 sets of 10 and my friends at work are saying ‘Man your shoulders are getting bigger.’ That’s what I’m talking about!”

Vern F.

“You can’t function without them.”

“If you’re gonna do PFT (like me) or SCT you HAVE to have these, otherwise, you’re killing your workout. [I recommend 1 Ton Hooks] everyday of the week to any lifter that uses PFT or SCT. You can’t function in these workouts without them. There is no way to push yourself through the plateau if you don’t have them. ”

Brandon S.

Train With Your Girlfriend…And Show Her the “Magic Bullet”!

The fact is most women are pretty intimidated by the weightlifting area of the gym. They see a bunch of guys in there sweating and grunting…and some of them are even lifting weights. So women view weight training as a “guy thing” for people who want big, masculine muscles. By contrast, for the most part, women go to the gym to lose fat and to “tone” their muscles into a tight, firm look.

To make matters worse, popular women’s magazine totally mislead readers into thinking they can have the body of Brooke Burke by doing arm curls with one pound dumbbells or pressing on their desktop with their fingertips. Please!

The truth is you can do your girlfriend or wife (Or both! Yuk, yuk.) a huge favor by taking her into the gym and showing her the benefits of a high intensity weightlifting workout. And please remember that “intensity” is a relative term. While you might hoist 300 pounds on the bench press, a beginner woman might get equal muscle growth stimulation from lifting just 75 pounds.

Magic Bullet

But here is the real “magic bullet” that women are missing by staying on the aerobics mats instead of pumping iron: body transformation through new muscle growth. Take a look at this chart that shows the body composition of two women who both weigh 140 pounds.

Subject A has 14 pounds less muscle and 14 pounds more fat than B, yet they weight exactly the same. So one of them looks a bit flabby and out of shape and the other one looks lean, firm and fit.

And the news gets even better!

Muscle is called “active tissue” because it has higher energy requirements than fat. In fact every extra pound of muscle burns about 60 calories per day. That means that Subject B, above, burns a whopping 840 calories per day more than Subject A. So she can eat a lot more than Ms. A and not gain any weight…or she can eat the same number of calories as Ms. A and lose about 7 pounds of fat in a month! How cool is that?

Be Gentle The First Time

So you’re doing your girlfriend a huge favor by getting her into the gym to pump some iron. By showing her this “magic” method of transforming her body, it could change her life permanently! You’re giving her a lean, hard body and the ability to eat more without gaining weight!

This workout is designed to target key areas that many women want to improve. I’ve stayed away from really heavy, intimidating exercises in favor of some easier ones that will build confidence and feel good. It’s intense enough to deliver results for beginners yet gentle enough to keep her coming back. If you follow it to the letter your friend will enjoy it and want more. If you insist on that “20 sets per bodypart” macho crap it’ll be the last time she sees the gym…and maybe you. For ALL of these exercises you can increase intensity by performing a 5 second static hold instead of doing multiple reps. If you are familiar with SCT, that is definitely the way to go.

Arms:
Women enjoy having good definition in their upper arms; they hate that flabby, flaccid look. Women also wear clothing that exposes their entire arm much more frequently than men do.

Preacher curls:
Perform one set of 8 to 12 partial reps in the strongest range of motion only. Act as a spotter to prevent the barbell or machine from moving into the weak range of motion. Use a weight that she can only lift 8 to 12 times. If she can do more than that the weight is too light. Don’t be gallant and give her a puny weight…you’ll be wasting her time. After her set load up the bar and do a single set for yourself with a weight you can only hoist 8 times.

Triceps press downs:
Use the high pulley and perform one set of 8 to 12 partial reps in the strongest range of motion only. Pull the bar down for her so she only has to move the weight a quarter rep in her strongest range. Again, after her set is done select a heavier weight and do a single set for you with a weight you can only hoist 8 times.

Upper back:
Again, women wear clothing that exposes their back and, in my opinion, the upper back is one of the most beautiful and overlooked parts of a women’s body.

Lat pulldowns:
While you’re at the high pulley, sit down and adjust the seat so the lat pulldown bar rests at her upper reach. Using a wide grip, pull the bar down one quarter of the way for 8 to 12 reps. Then do a heavy set for yourself.

Chest:
Improving the muscle tone in the area of the chest behind the breasts is a great way to improve the look of the bust. It is essentially a “lift” without resorting to using a scalpel.

Bench press:
Do one set of quarter range reps in the strongest range of motion. Use a weight she can only press 8 to 12 times. After her set, load up the bar and impress her with your power….8 times.

Legs:
Strong legs make a woman look great in a pair of jeans. Working the legs has an added benefit of stimulating the entire Central Nervous System, which triggers all muscle growth. So this is one exercise where you never want to go too easy on yourself. Or your girlfriend.

Leg press:
Sit in a leg press machine and slide the sled to its upper limit and engage the safely stops. Adjust the seat so her legs are about 4 inches from lock out. Load the sled with enough weight to limit reps to 8 to 12. do not remove the safety stops!.

Calves:
Leave the leg press set up as it is and perform a set of toe presses. Place the balls of her feet on the bottom of the sled with heels not touching the sled. Press the toes forward to move the sled a couple of inches. Most people can perform this exercise with the same with they leg pressed. When your friend is finished just load a few hundred more pounds on the sled and do your leg press and toe press set. You’re done!

This beginner’s workout is simple and invigorating. Best of all, it will introduce your girlfriend or wife to the enormous benefits of strength training. It simultaneously works to build lean, firm muscles and to remove excess fat. Truly “magic”!

Have a great workout!

Q. Is there a way to workout with relatively little weight using your principles?

A. The human body reacts to various forms of stress with a so-called “adaptive response.” For example, when bright sunlight shines on light colored skin the adaptive response is to darken the skin with a tan. That tan protects you during future exposure. But if that future exposure involves more intense sunlight then the tan is made darker.

In the realm of strength training the adaptive response is very similar. If you expose your muscle to higher rates of overload they will adapt by getting bigger and stronger. If the subsequent overload is greater, the adaptive response is greater. So, if you restrict yourself to “relatively light weight” you will get a relatively small adaptive response; likely not enough to change your physical appearance in any way.

The fact is the average adult male has muscles capable of enormous strength. His legs can lift over one thousand pounds, his trapezius muscles can lift hundreds of pounds. The only practical way to get those muscles to be bigger is to work them at the limits of their capacity. So light weights aren’t much help, just as shade is not much help in building a good suntan.

What Customers Are Saying About the New 1-Ton Hooks

“Greater gains than ever!”
I love the new 1 Ton Hooks that I purchased from your web site. They are much more comfortable than the hooks that I had before. Due to the increased level of comfort I am able to shrug and dead lift significantly more weight and I’m making greater gains than ever. Thank you very much for developing such a great product. — Dr. Bill T

“A 90 pound increase on first workout!”
I went from 225lbs. shrug to 315lbs. shrug on my first workout with the hooks. Overall these are the best hooks I have ever used. I would recommend 1 Ton Hooks to everyone to try. Don’t let the price discourage you. Hooks at half the price are half as good. — Brian P.

Bodybuilding Myths - Pitfalls to Avoid - Part 2

A few weeks ago we talked about three different popular myths that can lead to a lot of wasted time and frustration in the gym. Now let’s take a look at three more myths I can almost guarantee you’ve heard.

As I mentioned, there’s a ton of free advice dispensed in gyms that, if taken as gospel, can really set back your progress. That can lead to the kind of frustration that makes guys think they are “hard gainers” or need to resort to the needle to get the physique they desire. Not true. Let’s take a look at more of the pitfalls to avoid while you train rationally.

Myth #4 “You need high reps for definition and low reps for mass.”

A muscle can only do one of three things. It can get bigger, it can get smaller, or it can stay the same size.

The way to make a muscle bigger is to subject it to a progressive intensity of overload. That is, the intensity of today’s workout needs to be a little higher than your last workout for that muscle. If you want to keep a muscle the same size you can just perform the same workout every time. And making a muscle smaller is easy…just don’t exercise it. However, the idea that one type of exercise “defines” muscle and another type of exercise makes it bigger has no basis in reality. Muscle definition is a function of two characteristics in the body: muscle size and the absence of bodyfat. So if you want better definition you need to increase the size of your muscles through the aforementioned progressive intensity and you need to reduce your bodyfat.

So I can hear someone asking, “But don’t high reps burn off bodyfat the way running or cycling would?” Well, yes, any long duration activity will burn more calories. But if you use light weights and high reps to burn calories how will you make your muscles bigger? You won’t. It makes much more sense to burn calories and reduce bodyfat through jogging or cycling or some other repetitive activity and to simultaneously build more muscle mass through heavier, lower rep weight training. As a bonus, your new muscle mass will also burn more calories and contribute to fat loss. So next time you hear this myth, correct it by thinking: “Low, heavy reps for mass, lower overall bodyfat for definition.”

Myth #5 “New muscle gains diminish after 48 hours.”

Here’s a myth that has led to more wasted man-hours than the search for perpetual motion. The idea is that you need to go to the gym and lift weights every two days because after 48 hours your body starts to lose whatever muscle you build recently.

I’m amazed this myth hangs on because anybody can test this for himself and find out it’s pure BS. Back in 1992 I was doing Power Factor Training and working my way up to a milestone of a one million pound workout. Around the point where I was hoisting about 400,000 pounds per workout (calculated by multiplying weight x reps x sets for five exercises) I decided I’d try a lift I’d never done before.

I saw a guy doing a clean and press, which involves lifting a barbell from the floor to your chest and then pressing it overhead. I tried it for the first time with 250 pounds and as I held it overhead my balance shifted and I felt something go “click” in my low back. Well, that put me out of the gym for six weeks. When I came back for my first workout after that long layoff it was my intention to only try to approximate my last workout. Instead, I set personal records in all five exercises!

After a six-week layoff I’d returned to the gym much stronger. That’s 1008 hours off and my body hadn’t lost a scrap of muscle. Nowadays I work with advanced trainees who only train half their body every six weeks. That means it takes them twelve weeks between training each muscle group…and these trainees show progress on every exercise, every workout. We just laugh at that “48 hour” nonsense. You should too.

Myth #6 “For best results, you need to train ‘instinctively’.”

“Dr. Freud, can you please tell us about man’s bodybuilding ‘instinct’?” Yeah, right.

As myths go, this one is fairly new and likely sprang out of the New Age movement. It is sometimes more generally expressed as “Listen to your body.”

Admittedly, listening to your body does work when some part of it is screaming in agonizing pain. But the notion that an “instinct” will tell you whether the intensity of 13 reps with 125 pounds in 45 seconds is higher than 9 reps with 155 pound in 60 seconds is just too much to hope for.

As I have said one hundred thousands times before, you make muscle-building progress by progressively increasing the intensity of your workouts. When the tools of reason and math are right in front of us and deliver very exact answers regarding this progression, why would we rely on a vaguely defined “instinct” to guide us?

Would competitive runners and swimmers throw away their stopwatches and do all their training by instinct? Would a pole-vaulter or long-jumper stop measuring his progress with feet and inches? Of course not. So why should a bodybuilder throw away the proven, effective tools of reason and math in favor of a bodybuilding instinct that has never been proven to exist?

Now you know six myths and pitfalls to avoid in the gym. I hope the exercise of understanding how these ideas are flawed will help you spot other time wasting, freely dispensed gym lore.

Have a great workout!

Q. I’ve hit a plateau in my training and haven’t made any progress for weeks, what can I do?

A. Some plateaus in training are inevitable but they should be very short lived. That’s because there are things you can do to get your progress moving again. If you are training very efficiently and effectively you should spot a plateau the first day it occurs. In fact, the slow down in progress will likely show up in one or two exercises out of an entire workout. These yellow flags indicate it’s time to make an adjustment in your training before full-blown stagnation sets in. This is a simple concept, yet I’ve known guys who’ve trained three days a week and never noticed they had five months of no progress whatsoever!

Here are three things that will bust any weight training plateau.

1. Take time off. The number one cause of lack of progress is overtraining. By simply not lifting weights for a week or three you allow your body to fully recover… and to add that new muscle growth you’ve already stimulated… so you can return to the gym and resume training effectively.
2. Space your workouts further apart. This keeps you from falling into the same trap over and over. A fixed training frequency will not work for building new muscle mass. It works for aerobics and for martial arts techniques and kayak padding skills and many other things… but it won’t work for building new muscle. As you get stronger your weightlifting workouts need to be spaced further apart.
3. Do heavy leg training. By far, the best exercise you can do to increase your body’s anabolic activity is heavy leg presses. Surprised I didn’t say squats? Squats are a great all around exercise but they are limited by how much weight you can comfortably support on your shoulders. Many people I work with do 3,000-pound leg presses. Accounting for the 45-degree angle of most leg presses, that’s equivalent to a 2,100 pound squat…and nobody in the world does that. The legs contain the largest muscles in the human body and when those muscles are forced to operate at the limits of their capacity the systemic anabolic effect spills into every muscle group in the body. It is literally true that heavy leg training gives you bigger arms!

Using Static Contraction Training I have managed to go from 33% body fat to 15% in about 6 months. I have gained 25 lbs of muscle in that time. All on 30 minutes every one and a half weeks. About time that someone bought this knowledge out to the world.

Johnson Varghese - Customer

Exercise - How Little Do You Need?

Most people work out way too often.

I’m talking about lifting weights here, not jogging or cycling or yoga. The primary function of cardio exercise (despite its name) is to simply burn off excess calories. Since fat gain is a result of “calories in” versus “calories out”, running or cycling provides a way to increase our output of calories and keep our weight in check. That’s why even walking, which barely taxes the heart, is still productive for weight loss. This type of low intensity activity can be performed every day.

Yoga and stretching can also be performed every day. Flexibility is probably the most neglected aspect of fitness. How many people in your gym are stretching compared to those doing cardio and pumping iron?

So it’s very ironic that when it comes to lifting weights and building muscle, virtually everyone is training far too frequently! You’d be amazed at how little high intensity exercise you really need!

Our Study

We recently conducted a study using eight middle aged golfers. We wanted to determine how little exercise could not only result in increased strength but also how it would transfer to athletic performance. We chose golf because swinging a club uses a very exaggerated range of motion and our abbreviated workout used no range of motion. That right, no movement.

The subjects were given a workout that consisted of six exercises perform on one day and six different exercises done on a different workout day. Each exercise involved a 10 to 20-second static hold. A weight was lifted into position (sometimes with assistance) and then held statically “without locking out.”

These workouts had an actual exercise duration of only 60 to 120 seconds. Over a six week period these subjects performed between 4 and 9 workouts, averaging 6.6 workouts in the six week period. So that’s as little as one minute of actual exercise about once per week for six week.

So what happened?

Their Astonishing Results

Measurements of their strength in twelve muscle groups were compared for before and after calculation of improvement. The results of their fourteen minutes of exercise over six weeks were as follows:

Chest +58%
Lats +60%
Shoulders +57%
Quads +86%
Hams +78%
Abs +170%
Lower Back +58%
Calf +51%
Triceps +133%
Biceps +72%
Forearm (Flexors) +87%
Forearm (Extensors) +93%

OVERALL +84%

Compare the above results with a conventional training protocol. Most people do at least two exercises per muscle group, perform three sets and perhaps 12 or 15 reps per set. Allowing just five seconds per rep, that makes for at least 36 minutes of exercise per workout. This is usually done three times per week. So in six weeks a conventional program would involve 648 minutes of exercise. That’s 42 times more than the subjects on our study! Are your results in the last six weeks 42 times better that their results? I doubt it.

Performance Improvement

Remember, these golfers were exercising in a way that did not involve stretching or moving the weight over a full range of motion. So how did this affect a full range of motion activity like a golf drive?

Every one of them showed an improvement. The increase in drive distance varied from 5 to 31 yards! Keep in mind that these subjects had been golfing for up to forty years and had handicaps as low as eleven. So getting any improvement in golfers who already play at this level is impressive. Getting it with 14 minutes of exercise spread over six weeks is truly revolutionary.

The fact is, every sport - even a finesse sport like golf - is improved by an increase in strength. Muscles are responsible for all movement in the body and stronger muscles will deliver more power to every aspect of movement, irrespective of its range of motion.

Since this study we’ve gone on to improve this method of training. Further research showed that static hold times could be reduced to even less that what the golfers used. Workouts can be spaced further apart as a trainee gets stronger. I work with advanced trainees who train once every six weeks! Yet they gain in strength on every exercise each time the work out. The weights they hoist are enormous.

We believe the time is coming when most people will have a better understanding the role of proper, efficient strength training methods and frequency. For the guy who wants maximum results with minimum time invested, an ultra-brief but ultra-intense workout will be performed about as often as he gets a haircut. Anything more is just lifting weights as a busy-work hobby.

Train Smart!