Beyond-Brawn-2nd-Edition

BEYOND BRAWN
pounds a week in a big exercise. en as you get very near to your former
best poundages, get out the 1-pound discs and nudge yourself up to your former
best, then continue with the 1-pound discs as you go into new poundage
territory. Perhaps later on you will need to use the very little discs.
7.66 Doing it this way, assuming you are continuously healthy and well rested,
and well short of your ultimate strength potential, this week’s full-bore 256
pounds in the bench press, for example, should feel as difficult as last week’s
255, and as difficult as next week’s 257, and the following week’s 258. Once
you have found the volume, frequency and intensity of training, along with
your optimum nutritional and rest schedule, that enables you to progress
like this, you can maintain it for long periods—this is the “slow cooking”
way to gain. en you will have found the Golden Fleece of bodybuilding and
strength training—linear progress for long periods. It will not be a pound a
week on every exercise, but it can be for the biggest movements. And it could
even be two pounds a week in the deadlift and squat, for a long period; then
later on dropping to a single pound a week. In smaller exercises the progression
could be half a pound every week or two.
7.67 You could argue that this method takes months to build up substantial
poundage gains whereas just a couple of weeks at a bigger weekly increment
will get you there, thus saving you weeks or even months. If you can keep the
bigger increments coming, in good form, then you will make more progress.
But if you try to increase the weights faster than you can build strength,
your form will break down, the momentum of your training cycle will be
killed, and you may not even make it back to your former best poundages,
let alone exceed them. Much better to take the long and sure route rather
than try the supposedly fast way but only end up short-circuiting the cycle
and killing your progress.
7.68 Work at the rate of 1 pound each week to get from 255 pounds to 265, for
example, and you will have a good chance of doing it. And after the ten
weeks you would need, maybe you could keep going for another ten weeks
at half a pound a week, thus adding a total of 15 pounds to your best bench
press work set. ough a beginner can progress at a faster rate than this, this
is a fine rate of progress for any other category of trainee.
7.69 ere are hundreds of thousands of people training with weights who stay
roughly at the same poundages for year after year. Break out of the common
rut of stagnation.
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