BACK TO EARTH BY LARA McGLASHAN While New Age training disciplines can be precarious, for building muscle there's absolutely no replacement for basic exercises Back in the day, the gym was a steely place, where the hardcore wielded heavy iron bars and cumbersome dumbbells, straining and stretching to build their biceps, back or whatever muscle group they were attacking that day. But with the turn of the millennium, the gym grew soft, equipment was plasticised and training became "functional" instead of fierce. Colourful BOSU, balance boards and bungees now occupy every corner, and trainees sit, stand and perch on these wacky gadgets and multitask the crap out of their workout in a vain attempt at muscular fitness. But standing on one leg atop a BOSU while performing sets of dumbbell lateral raises alternated with single-leg Romanian deadlifts does nearly nothing to encourage hypertrophy, which is the bodybuilder's goal. "To build quality muscle, you simply need to put it under tension through bodypart-specific overload training," says David Sandler, assistant professor of exercise physiology at Florida Atlantic University. "There's a time and a place for training everything, but trying to train everything at one time and place can actually inhibit your progress." Add an unstable training surface, and you're fighting a losing battle. "It's impossible to put the same kind of force on your muscles when you're on a BOSU or exercise ball as when you're completely solid on the floor or a bench," explains Sandler.
So step around the BOSU and kick that exercise ball into the aerobics room, leaving those gizmos and others like them to the personal trainers more concerned with their bank accounts than your physique. Seasoned bodybuilders need to remain focused, beginners need guidance through the fad fog, and we all need to get back to basics. TRAINING FUNDAMENTALS Think back to your original intentions in the gym. Why did you start training? To build your muscles. And how did you build your muscles? By lifting weights. Your muscles will only grow according to the level at which they're stressed, and doing this requires progressively overloading your body and asking more of yourself day in and day out. And although gadget-makers would have you believe it requires the very latest and greatest techno-super-duper-ab-core-balance-cruncher, muscle-building really is a simple process. "From now until the end of time, bodybuilding comes down to two things: the breakdown and build-up of muscle tissue," says Bob Cicherillo, IFBB pro bodybuilder, personal trainer and seasoned gadget cynic. "You simply cannot break down muscle tissue effectively by using bungee cords or by balancing on one leg like a flamingo in the zoo. If you want to build muscle — real hardcore, quality muscle — you have to return to good, old bodypart-specific overload training." Split systems have worked for every pro bodybuilder in history. Parcel your muscle groups into a weekly plan in which you work each part hard and give it plenty of time to recover. In the most basic form, each session focuses on one or more separate bodyparts, like chest and triceps. Then you dedicate each set of that workout to breaking down those muscles with as much weight and as many repetitions as possible until you reach failure. Sound simple? It is. Even so, some guys are probably still out there wondering, But when do I train my core? The answer: you train it all the time, every time you do an exercise. Just because you're not standing on a balance board or BOSU, your core isn't sleeping. CORE TRUTHS It used to be that "core training" delineated the main exercises in a bodybuilder's training regime, such as squats, bench presses and deadlifts. But recently, it has come to denote the training of the innermost part of your body, typically the deep muscles surrounding your spine, abs, obliques, serratus, lower back and hip flexors. Some argue that core training should also include the glutes, lower chest, hips and upper thighs, while others insist that the conceptual core varies as your body changes position in space in relation to the ground. Take these varied and tenuous opinions, pepper them with plastic gadgetry, season with a dollop of uncertainty and you've got a nice stew of hocus-pocus for gym chains to market to trainees. Now, before you buy any of that crap, listen up: in daily life it's nearly impossible to keep your core from working, whether you're sitting on the couch, walking down the street or doing a triceps pressdown. Some way or another, the intricate muscles encircling your spinal column and all your core stabilisers are activated, whether you like it or not. "Probably the people with the strongest cores on the planet are powerlifters, bodybuilders and strongmen, and they don't spend any time at all standing on a disk or a ball trying to lift weights," notes Sandler. "Shockingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger, DorianYates and Lee Haney somehow got through their careers without setting foot on a balance board to train their core, " Bob adds. This isn't to say you shouldn't focus on training your core muscles. You should — just not while training other parts or vice versa. To paraphrase Confucius, if you chase two rabbits, you'll lose them both. "You can't do push-ups on an exercise ball, for example, and expect to grow your best chest," says Sandler. "There's just too much going on with the shoulders, abs and lower back to be able to put enough tension on the chest to elicit the results you want." Pick a muscle, train it with specific intention and you'll get results. BACK TO BASICS STANDING OVERHEAD DUMBBELL PRESS START | Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Hold a dumbbell in each hand above shoulder level with a pronated grip (palms facing forwards). MOVE | Keeping your shoulders back, press the dumbbells overhead in an arc, but don't let the weights touch at the top. Slowly lower to the start position and repeat. BARBELL CURL START | Stand holding a barbell with an underhand grip, arms extended. Keep your abs tight, chest up and head straight. MOVE | Contract your biceps to curl the bar towards your chest, keeping your elbows at your sides. Hold and squeeze at the top, then slowly return to the start. BENCH PRESS START | Lie face-up on a bench and have a partner hand you a barbell. Using a slightly greater than shoulder-width grip, hold the barbell steady with your arms extended, chest flexed, head straight and feet flat on the floor. MOVE | Slowly lower the bar to the bottom portion of your chest, but don't bounce the weight. Pause briefly, then press the bar back to the starting position without locking out your elbows. SQUAT START | Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart holding a barbell across your upper back. Keep your abs tight and chest up, head and eyes facing forwards. START | Begin the descent by slowly shifting your hips and glutes backwards as if you're going to sit in a chair. Descend until your thighs are roughly parallel to the floor. Pause, then drive up forcefully through your heels, bringing your hips forwards while extending your knees until you return to the start position. NUTRITION >> TO CONSTRUCT A MUSCLE, you first have to tear the tissue down, but then you have to build it back up. "No one ever built anything in the gym — ever. No one," says pro bodybuilder Bob Cicherillo. "If that were the case, every construction worker would look like Lee Haney." The building up of muscle mass occurs on your off days when you rest, eat and refuel. All bodybuilders should eat at least 5–6 meals a day, consisting mostly of low-fat, whole foods. Keep your protein (1 gram per pound of bodyweight per day) and complex carbs (2–3 grams per pound per day) high, and eat as many steamed veggies as your colon can handle. And unless you're built like Olive Oyl and need to drink melted butter to keep from disintegrating, keep your fat intake under control. "You can eat nachos and wine gums once in a while, but they're very poor recovery choices," Bob notes. "If you don't have enough of the right nutrients from lean protein and clean carbs to repair the tissue you worked so hard to rip apart in the gym, you won't make the big gains you want." He also warns against using supplements to replace food. "Protein powders are great, but you can't make huge gains with just powder," he advises. "It's a supplement and shouldn't be the mainstay of your diet." Perfect times for protein powders are before and after workouts as well as between whole-food meals. KISS STILL ROCKS >> THE KISS SYSTEM of training has been around even longer than the rock band of the same name, and while Keep It Simple, Stupid might sound insulting, it's never been more appropriate. "If you want to look like a bodybuilder, you have to train like one, by performing basic exercises using heavy weight, good form and controlled speed," says pro bodybuilder Bob Cicherillo. Bodybuilders of all levels should keep their training focused and purposeful, emphasising basic moves such as dumbbell presses for chest, barbell curls for biceps and squats for legs. David Sandler suggests beginners and time-crunched athletes follow a Monday/Wednesday/Friday split based on a push-pull system, with legs between upper-body days to avoid overtraining delts. As you improve, or if you have more time to work out, split your training further into one bodypart per day, with at least 1–2 days of complete rest per week. Also consider single-arm exercises. If you're a beginner, perform no more than 9–12 total sets for each bodypart; this gives your neurological pathways the chance to develop properly. Work your way up to 12–16 sets as you improve. Regarding rep ranges, start with 10–12 and decrease to 8–10 as you become stronger and lift heavier. "You should rest long enough that you catch your breath and feel ready for your next set, but not so long that you can read War and Peace — about 1–3 minutes generally," Bob advises. As for poundage, leave your ego at the door and start at the lighter end of the dumbbell rack. "Training overly heavy, especially for beginners, is counterproductive, because you're going to use momentum to move the weight and risk possible injury, " says Bob. M&F Former fitness competitor Lara McGlashan is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. She can be reached at larafitgal@aol.com