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| This is French bodybuilder Serge Nubret, a contemporary of Arnold. |
Despite having an incredibly skinny neck: he's buff (understatement?). It may interest you to know that Serge never really trained heavy (could explain his neck) - he did rather large amounts of volume with 'medium' weights. His normal workouts included most of his exercises for six sets of twelve. He took very short breaks (a minute tops) and tried to focus on moving as much blood through his muscles as possible... it seemed to work.
I'm not saying that you should switch to six sets of twelve. It is interesting to note though that such an approach will work, provided the correct rest breaks are observed. It is also interesting to note that Bill Pearl, later in his career, trained in an almost identical fashion.
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| Bill was even a vegetarian. |
Where am I going with this? Am I really advocating high rep 'chase the pump' type training? Not exactly - the key thing here is frequency. Serge would do abs everyday, and it shows, but he'd do like two thousand reps everyday! I'm sure that hurt like crazy, I'm sure his six sets of twelve hurt like mad at times too. Both Serge and Bill would train six to seven days a week, or virtually everyday.
It may behoove us to take a note or two from these guys: train everyday - but not always heavy - and try to rack up some volume.
Let's put this into something you can take home. Most men would like bigger arms and shoulders and to look a little more built, maybe a lot more built but most don't want to really have to put in the time and devotion to getting that way - it's okay - I have a plan.
Ten Minutes a Day to More Manliness - No Equipment Required
Push Ups - start with girl push ups (bend at the knees) and keep your arms near your sides, make a fist and do your push ups on your knuckles. I want you to do sets of ten reps. On the first day do a very comfortable amount of sets, do more the next day and so on. I want you to build up to a day in which you go balls out and make a new best number of sets, then back off to 50% of that number and build back up again. This is called 'Undulating Periodization' and it works incredibly well with high frequency, high volume routines. I recommend doing this before bed because, on your 'max' day, you shouldn't be able to use your arms to even open a beer afterwards.
Once, you can do ten to fourteen sets of girl pushups you may switch to the real deal and build back up again, expect it to take longer this time. Then once you've done that switch to dips - all you'll need is two chairs.
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Or a counter top:
I've even used the corner of a chain link fence.
One very important point: keep your breaks incredibly short - less than a minute. Sidenote: You could trow in the same scheme for your favorite ab exercise or pull ups, or, for the masochists: Hindu squats. Remember that you don't have to do more and more is not necessarily better, master at least the girl push ups before you add anything or mess with the program. Make sure to to eat a huge protein filled breakfast the next day: I like back bacon omelettes (use at least five eggs). Go hard, have fun and reap the rewards.
