Beyond-Brawn-2nd-Edition

BEYOND BRAWN
Trap Bar
properly performed, and especially when done with a Trap Bar, is a wonderfully
productive exercise. For people who do not squat well, the Trap
Bar bent-legged deadlift is likely to be a more productive exercise. If you do
not have a Trap Bar, then the sumo-style bent-legged deadlift may be safer,
easier to perform, and more productive than the conventional-style deadlift.
But the sumo deadlift is not the equal of the Trap Bar deadlift.
3.5 My mentor would have taught me that bodybuilding is not about individually
hitting all the bits and pieces of the physique to ensure complete and
balanced development. Only by applying myself to getting stronger and
stronger still in the big exercises would I have gotten big all over. Even the
little areas would have come along. Once I was big and strong then I could
have focused on fixing the relatively minor imbalances.
3.6 My training life should have revolved around adding a little more iron to
each exercise every week or two. “A little” would have meant 1 or 2 pounds,
except very early in a cycle when I could have added a larger increment each
week. Bigger but less frequent poundage jumps could have been applied if
I was working with a rep range where, for example, I built up the reps from
say 12 to 20 in the squat. en, I would have increased the poundage by 10
pounds, dropped back down to 12 reps, and worked up to 20 again over several
weeks. Both progression methods work well.
3.7 Focus and progression, focus and progression, FOCUS AND PROGRES-
SION—these are the watchwords I should have lived by. All that irrelevance
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