Elite Physique The New Science of Building a Better Body

250 Elite Physique
Then they began their routine. One brother would lift and lower the other in
the most challenging ways you can imagine. I’d seen impressive feats of strength
in the gym, including a triple body weight deadlift, but I’d never seen anything
like this. Each part of the routine was more astonishing than the last. I couldn’t
believe they could do it without tearing a muscle. Not only that, they did it twice
a day, five days a week, for months on end.
How was this possible? How could two guys develop such incredible physiques
and put their mind-blowing strength on display 10 times a week? Nothing I’d
learned in my exercise science courses could explain it, regardless of any pharmaceutical
help they may or may not have had.
That show made me reevaluate
my clients’ training programs. I
knew that training a muscle more
often will lead to more muscle
growth, but I also knew that
growth requires sufficient recovery
between training sessions
(see figure 10.1). I thought three
sessions a week was the highest
training frequency you could use
without compromising recovery.
But if three sessions weren’t
enough to maximize growth in
Frequency
Growth
Recovery
FIGURE 10.1 Optimal growth requires optimal
overlap between training and recovery.
E8315/Waterbury/F10.01/670367/mh-R1
muscles like the biceps or calves, it made sense to have those clients target those
muscles with a few sets outside of their full-body workouts.
One thing became clear almost immediately: More was indeed better. The open
question was how much more. That led to a lot of trial and error over the next
few years as I searched for the right balance between extra training sessions and
recovery. By 2012 I had accumulated enough data and experimentation to write
High Frequency Training, followed by High Frequency Training 2 in 2014.
What you’ll find in this chapter is simpler and more effective than what I published
in those books. In part those refinements come from the data and feedback
I’ve accumulated from clients and patients since 2014. They’re also based on a key
element to faster muscle growth that I should have learned back in 2001. No, I’m
not talking about the Alexis brothers. I’m talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Back in 2001, when I saw the Alexis brothers perform, I was also reading
Schwarzenegger’s New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (1987). This passage
is especially relevant to what you’ll see in the programming later in this chapter:
“My left arm used to be slightly smaller than my right arm. I noticed that
whenever I was asked to show my biceps, I would automatically flex the right
arm. So I consciously made an effort to flex my left arm as much or more than
my right, to work that weak point instead of trying to ignore it, and eventually
I was able to make my left biceps the equal of my right.”
Back then, I used that quote to support the idea that training a muscle more
frequently would lead to more growth. Today I have a different interpretation,
and a more practical way to apply it. That’s because I now know that simply
squeezing a muscle three times each day will augment the results of a targeted
HFT plan. The tension you achieve with an intense contraction can be similar to
the levels you achieve with weights in the gym. That’s why professional bodybuilders
often report muscle soreness the day after practicing their posing routine.