Bodybuilding tactics

[DCR]

Getting a little cheaty on the reps sometimes doesn't hurt either, form Nazis are not usually bearing evidence of success.

This always bears repeating. No one who gives a big shit about form on pulling or curling movements has a jacked back or bis. No one. The only thing I’ll add, though, is you have to keep some semblance of mental connection on the muscles in question. Shit like turning your elbows over on to hoist up DB curls is pointless.

Is that so ? There are several bodybuilders (with and without cell tech) who use rather strict form: Jeff Alberts, Mike Israetel, etc. I would consider them "jacked".

I've not spent time watching either of these guys' videos, and so you may be perfectly right, although it was very common back in the day for bodybuilders' actual training to look little like what they preached and what they did in promo videos. (Actually, even the promo videos rarely looked like what they preached.) Again, I'm not qualified to comment as to whether that applies to these guys, and you may be right.

That said, I don't consider Alberts' back to be even slightly impressive, size-wise. Israetel is a monster in that area; perhaps I should have limited my comments to folks without certain assistance.

[DCR]

Getting a little cheaty on the reps sometimes doesn't hurt either, form Nazis are not usually bearing evidence of success.

This always bears repeating. No one who gives a big shit about form on pulling or curling movements has a jacked back or bis. No one. The only thing I’ll add, though, is you have to keep some semblance of mental connection on the muscles in question. Shit like turning your elbows over on to hoist up DB curls is pointless.

Obviously form matters to some extent for hypertrophy, otherwise kipping pullups would be just as good an exercise for muscle growth as strict pullups.

I agree - I said as much above.

I see strict form as a tool, rather than a straitjacket. Not every movement has to be strict, but if you're not getting the growth you want out of an exercise, maybe take some weight off, slow down the reps, and really focus on making sure you're hitting the muscles you want to be hitting with the exercise by controlling the movement over the full range of motion. I like cheaty barbell rows as an exercise to assist your deadlift and build explosive strength, but for me they honestly kind of suck for hypertrophy and developing mind-muscle connection.

Well sure - if something’s not working, trying something else makes sense, and one alternative to try is hoisting less weight and dialing in form. My N=1 experience is that this never works for back/bis in particular, and I’ve never met anyone for whom it worked either. To your point above, though, I’m not talking about shit like kipping pull ups - there’s got to be some semblance of a mind/muscle connection. I’m talking about some body english on your one arm rows (which then can still be done with a slow negative and a big stretch).

[lehman906]

What kind of black magic do people do to grow big ass arms? It's so common to see people with huge biceps it can't exactly be hard

I don't exactly have huge arms, but I will swear to my dying day that chins and strongman training made my arms and legs bigger even controlling for total bodyweight. Lots of volume on chins but rarely to failure, lots of carrying, pulling, and loading events, and lots of overhead pressing. Most of this SHOULD be too indirect to actually trigger more growth than isolation work, and yet. Personal variability plays a big part, as well as the fact that I find isolation work boring.

[DCR]

What kind of black magic do people do to grow big ass arms? It's so common to see people with huge biceps it can't exactly be hard

I don't exactly have huge arms, but I will swear to my dying day that chins and strongman training made my arms and legs bigger even controlling for total bodyweight. Lots of volume on chins but rarely to failure, lots of carrying, pulling, and loading events, and lots of overhead pressing. Most of this SHOULD be too indirect to actually trigger more growth than isolation work, and yet. Personal variability plays a big part, as well as the fact that I find isolation work boring.

That’s my experience with tris. The more I benched and pressed, the bigger they got. Not so for bis though, for me. I can pullup or row til I’m blue and my bis just don’t give a fuck, although that may explain my back development (whatever I do when I row, I seem to be getting all back and no bis).

[lehman906]

That’s my experience with tris. The more I benched and pressed, the bigger they got. Not so for bis though, for me. I can pullup or row til I’m blue and my bis just don’t give a fuck, although that may explain my back development (whatever I do when I row, I seem to be getting all back and no bis).

That sounds like what's supposed to happen with rows, right? I seem to mostly feel them in my shoulder joints unless I go crazy light. If you're at all interested in trying something new, figure out some carrying to add to your program. Preferably not DBs if possible. Farmers implements, sandbag, two bags of dog food tied with a belt.....anything. Do that along with upping your pulling volume and see if something happens. Worst case scenario you got a little more athletic.

[CamLeslie]

What kind of black magic do people do to grow big ass arms? It's so common to see people with huge biceps it can't exactly be hard

I don't exactly have huge arms, but I will swear to my dying day that chins and strongman training made my arms and legs bigger even controlling for total bodyweight. Lots of volume on chins but rarely to failure, lots of carrying, pulling, and loading events, and lots of overhead pressing. Most of this SHOULD be too indirect to actually trigger more growth than isolation work, and yet. Personal variability plays a big part, as well as the fact that I find isolation work boring.

That’s my experience with tris. The more I benched and pressed, the bigger they got. Not so for bis though, for me. I can pullup or row til I’m blue and my bis just don’t give a fuck, although that may explain my back development (whatever I do when I row, I seem to be getting all back and no bis).

Speaking of my own experience, coming out SS with the belief that the big compound movements "are all you need" for a great physique, I just don't think that is true anymore (maybe extra supplementation helps idk). I've started adding in 5-10 sets a week of direct arm training, chins + curls, and dips+pushdowns and I'm already seeing some results in the arms race. I really like the big compound followed by the refining exercises. Like Bench, then Dips, then Tri Ext and just going for the pump. I know it's bro sciency but hey maybe those bodybuilders knew something after all. Also, again only speaking for myself but as someone who did the Texas Method for months and got patellar tendonitis, ran a Shieko, did BBM programming, did Hanley's crazy pyramid thing with squats outdoors in Grand Cayman, doing curls is super easy. Mostly it's my own ego that prevents me from doing them more.

[AlanMackey]

That’s my experience with tris. The more I benched and pressed, the bigger they got. Not so for bis though, for me. I can pullup or row til I’m blue and my bis just don’t give a fuck, although that may explain my back development (whatever I do when I row, I seem to be getting all back and no bis).

Have you tried a supinated grip? It’s supposed to get more biceps recruitment.

[DCR]

That’s my experience with tris. The more I benched and pressed, the bigger they got. Not so for bis though, for me. I can pullup or row til I’m blue and my bis just don’t give a fuck, although that may explain my back development (whatever I do when I row, I seem to be getting all back and no bis).

Have you tried a supinated grip? It’s supposed to get more biceps recruitment.

Never liked the way it felt. That said, I did recently switch from pullups to chinups, because getting my chin over the bar lets me quantify a good rep, and the added biceps recruitment is a nice bonus.

[DCR]

I know that he just put it out in January, but has anyone tried Cody Lefever’s General Gainz Body Building program? I’m intrigued.

[EricK]

@Hanley, just tell me how to get svelte and swole with minimal effort. Bikini season is looming.

[Hanley]

@Hanley, just tell me how to get svelte and swole with minimal effort. Bikini season is looming.

Dude, I'm so fat. And pale. Like a prototypical Dadbod made love with a Scottish E.T. and had a lovechild

[TornAlien]

Slow count negatives and pauses, in particular, help with time under tension and targeting different muscle fibers. The mind-muscle connection is crucial for maximizing gains, and unilateral exercises can address muscle imbalances. Those techniques were really effective for me.

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[Michiganian]

Pauses are great for training stability / bracing / balance

I'm gonna try 'em next DL day. I'm beginning to have trouble keeping my back as neutral as I'd like, so I'm going to drop the weight back down just a bit and do paused DLs on a couple DL days.

Drop sets are great for hypertrophy (I think most folks probably neglect the hypertrophy potential of fatigue resistant muscle fiber).

I've used 'em to help get me over stalls in both benches and presses.

I use supersets all the time, but primarily for time efficiency.

They're also good to get the heart really pumping

The "mind-muscle" thing is legit.

No question about that.

After my wife interrupting me during a set, and my failing that set I should not have failed, I asked her to please not do that. If she needed to speak to me while I was working out, please wait until I've finished the set.

[DCR]

Appreciate the bot necro-ing this. I have no memory of starting this thread, nor of anything that I wrote in it except that form Nazis never have back/biceps worth shit (which just came up in the logs, was true then, and is true now), but I reread the whole thing and there's a ton of great info here from various folks.

This wasn't even that long ago and my life completely has changed in the meantime.

[Renascent]

Appreciate the bot necro-ing this. I have no memory of starting this thread, nor of anything that I wrote in it except that form Nazis never have back/biceps worth shit (which just came up in the logs, was true then, and is true now), but I reread the whole thing and there's a ton of great info here from various folks.

This wasn't even that long ago and my life completely has changed in the meantime.

Had a similar moment of lucidity when I checked this thread this morning (or maybe yesterday morning -- shit's blurring together, and I don't like it).

But, um, I only checked in just to verify ... is the Alien bot gone?

[lehman906]

I agree with all of this. Plus, real athletes do unilateral leg exercises, so if your goal is at all athletic, so should you. I am doing them now for that reason (and because I constantly tweak my back or knees during squats, but that's FINE), but correcting imbalances is a nice side benefit.

Use all of these. Get obnoxiously strong in movements you're bad at, then transition back to the stuff you want to do.

[lehman906]

I find pauses to be useful for targeting the quads during squats. Pausing during an SSB or high bar squat makes it easier to drive with the quads out of the bottom as opposed to bouncing out of the hole with the hips. The anti-hip-drahve, if you will.

I find that to be true even with LBBS to a lesser but material extent.

Did these with HBBS yesterday - the second time that I did HBBS in the last decade or so since my SS brainwashing - and they felt incredible. I may have said this the one other time I tried them in the past few years, but it felt like being 24 again, because HBBS were all that I did pre-brainwashing. The groove felt perfect, and my quads were trashed this morning, which hasn't happened in forever. LBBS obviously never did it, and I always fail front squats via my upper back rounding long before my legs are done. I'm not judging the quality of the session on soreness, but this is a good feeling.

Yeah, I won't confidently proclaim paused HB/SSB squats are the path to quad glory but I can definitely mirror what you have described. I almost never really feel my quads work during LBBS. I mean, I know my quads are obviously working, but I don't really feel strong contractions when squatting. With the paused HB/SSB squats, I feel like 80% of the force is coming from the quads. I feel them contracting hard and driving the weight up. It actually feels pretty damn good and "natural", if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense. In my 20s, I was a really good squatter. Not in terms of max strength (at the time, at a BW always around 160, I never squatted over 295), but I had pretty form, could rep out like crazy, loved the feel of the movement, and had jacked legs. I never needed a leg press or anything else - I was a guy whose legs grew solely from squats. Then I detoured into BW training for a few years, during which my legs shrunk, and when I came back to lifting in my mid-30s, I bought into SS hook, line, and sinker, and for the first time began squatting low bar. I eventually squatted an utterly unimpressive 355, weighing 50 lbs. more, and grew to hate the movement. My legs never really came back and all that it got me was a big ass and a nasty case of anterior pelvic tilt. It never felt right to me. I tinkered with it every fucking session for years, trying to find the cue or whatever that would make it feel "natural" like squats always had when I was younger. A few months ago, after literally years of loathing (and a few lower back injuries), I switched to front squats. Between getting bored with my inability to rep out on them, and seeing your initial post above, I came back to HBBS this week. Legit can't wait to get in tomorrow and do them again. (I am gonna keep some front squatting, though. I really believe that they helped my DL considerably.)

I'm a terrible squatter, but one cue that Zack Telander said in a recent video really clicked with me. He said when coming up from the bottom, think of pushing your knees towards the ground. It's weird, but for me it was the only thing that really allowed me to use more quad than posterior chain.

[aurelius]

This is my opinion after lifting for 10+ years: the most effective muscle building tactic by far is drugs. We discuss all of these different strategies and what nots that bodybuilders/athletes employ. While ignoring the single common factor: drugs. Ignoring the population that lifted during their magic years (teens through early 20's), I don't think any of us will achieve the size and aesthetics* of these bodybuilder/athletes naturally. Maybe I'm being too cynical. I also don't believe the health risks of these drugs are significant if used properly. Does anyone have experience contrary to this?

*size and aesthetics: Let's say a BMI > 26 with BF% <15% for men.

[janoycresva]

for about a decade I thought bodybuilding training was pump and fluff bullshit and you'd get just as big training for strength and doing submaximal sets etc

actually giving bodybuilding an attempt over the past few months has completely changed my view on this, there's a reason bodybuilding training looks so much different and it's not because the bros were stupid

[quikky]

This is my opinion after lifting for 10+ years: the most effective muscle building tactic by far is drugs. We discuss all of these different strategies and what nots that bodybuilders/athletes employ. While ignoring the single common factor: drugs. Ignoring the population that lifted during their magic years (teens through early 20's), I don't think any of us will achieve the size and aesthetics* of these bodybuilder/athletes naturally. Maybe I'm being too cynical. I also don't believe the health risks of these drugs are significant if used properly. Does anyone have experience contrary to this?

*size and aesthetics: Let's say a BMI > 26 with BF% <15% for men.

I think most people can achieve your size and body fat goals. If you're 6 foot tall, you would weigh 192lbs, and have less than 15% fat. That's pretty achievable natty.

As far as more broadly what legit bodybuilders achieve, there's two aspects there. One, we are certainly seeing a lot of selection bias, as people that don't look good/big are much less likely to post pictures of themselves flexing half naked, or acquire a sufficient social media following to even get noticed. Two, drugs aside, how many people do as many things right as those bodybuilders? How many constantly try to adapt their training to achieve better results, have perfect macro control in their diet, train 100%, etc? Diet alone is a huge failure point for a lot of lifters, and you won't go far if your calories do not match your goals and genetics.

There's also the issue of having emotional attachment to lifts. There are plenty of people that do not do well with SBD. Yet, because they are TeH bIG ComPOUnD lIFts and their manhood is tied to doing them, they will spin their wheels for years and fail to try something else aside from looking for some magic combination of sets and reps that finally makes their muscles explode with growth. There is a lot less of this tendency in bodybuilding because there is no reason to be married to any lifts, you just use all lifting implements available that work for you.