3 KEYS TO GAINING MUSCLE FOR THE HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETE
Here are three quick tips before I go to bed that are guaranteed to put some size on those bones, serious size….
1. Eat at least one meat source per day, 2 mass gaining shakes and 2 PBJs. I don’t care what else you take in, get this stuff down!
2. High rep, heavy squats. I know this sounds like an oxymoron, but trust me on this. This is one of the most powerful tools you can have in your arsenal and it takes a qualified eye to make sure you are gutting these out. I wish more bodybuilders would use this method to gain size.
3. Sleep at least 10 hours per day, maybe not all at once, but make up the difference in a nap. Very simple guys. How bad do you want it? No one can want it for you. I am going to bed, good night!
DOWN WEEK
It is very important to schedule in recovery weeks into your program and for you coaches out there, your athletes programs. You should not try to go balls to the wall every workout. This is part of the art of being a good coach. Today marks the 5th week of my own current plan. I have been breaking records literally every week! However, this week, I am not hitting the heavy stuff. I am getting a touch of a cold and I know that the CNS has to be carefully monitored. But I find that every 4th to 5th week should be more of a repetition week (hypertrophy, recovery, bodybuilding) and then get back to it. Now instead of squatting 500 this morning, I put 135 on the bar and squatted it for 3 straight minutes! The video will be up on the site tonight or so. I am not sure how many reps I got, but I am pretty sure it was more than 50! The point is, I got plenty of blood to the lower body and I have not been training for strength endurance at all, but I have been getting strong as hell and to make my point even more clear: STRENGTH LEADS TO ENDURANCE!!!! Peace-K
STRENGTH LEADS TO ENDURANCE
I started reading a book by Rippetoe last night called Starting Strength.
Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training
Rippetoe is very good at writing about strength training and his views are unique. I often tell people that strength leads to endurance and often they don’t understand what I mean, so I break it down for them using the bench press as an example. Rippetoe used a different example, one that I would like to share with you here. Let’s say you were a bicycle rider and you competed in local races. If you averaged 18 mph for the race, that means on each pedaling revolution you applied x/135lbs. of force to pedal. If your max squat was 135 pounds, each pedal equaled a percent of your maximum strength, a load that was required to for a few hours. If we were to train you at increasing your max strength, doubling your squat to 270 pounds, then those revolutions would now equal a much smaller percentage of your maximum strength (x/270), meaning you required less of your maximum strength over a the same amount of time, leaving you with more in the tank. Of you could have increased the 18 mph so your work output was equal to the previous percent of your old max at 135, meaning you would finish the race much faster. However, endurance does not lead to strength, it actually destroys it. Check this one off to the strength, another reason why weight training is a must.
HOW TO TRAIN LEGS
I have been getting a ton of emails lately about leg training. I know I have posted on here about different leg training strategies so I figured I would make it more of a regular thread. No matter your exact goal, I would perform 2 days a week of lower body. One day would start off with a dynamic exercise such as box jumps, broad jumps, light box squats or lightened deadlifts for speed. I would focus more on the posterior chain and low back as these two areas are going to give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to physique development and performance. I would also make sure to include a single legged movement, as this transfers over much more the real world than double legged movements. So in summary: speed movement/explosive movement, posterior chain movement, low back-posterior chain movement and make sure one of the last two are single leg. I would not do more than 4 exercises per workout, especially if you are doing twice per week. On the second day, the first exercise would be a max effort exercise. Squat or deadlift variation. To be continued….
