Get in touch with your body’s feedback, and put an end to bad workouts forever!
Over the years, I’ve used just about every training protocol available in my quest to build my body to its genetic potential. I’ve tried volume training, power training, Heavy Duty, H.I.T., heavy weights, light weights, high reps, low reps and every intensity technique you can think of…and also some of my own invention. I’ve also tried every conceivable training split from 2 days a week, to 7 days a week, and everything in between, with varying degrees of success… and of course varying degrees of failure as well.
I don’t have the most favourable genetics for bodybuilding…not by a long shot, In fact, simply put, my genetics suck, but I love to train and compete, so I refused to quit, and instead, I kept plodding along year after year doing the best that I could do to make gains in some form or another.
As a kid, I had the metabolism of a hummingbird on ephedrine, and a tiny sparrow like bone structure, so I had to literally slave in the gym to earn every little bit of muscle I have added to my frame thus far…in spite of these shortcomings, I have put on over 80 pounds since I first started training, so if you garner only one single bit of advice from this article, it should be that persistence pays off!
All throughout my training career, which is quite extensive, I have always used a routine for 4-6 weeks at a time, and then discarded it. At times, if I felt I was still making gains, I would do it for 8 weeks, then alter it, and go for it again doing the usual 4-6 week stint. I would follow the workout routine religiously…exactly as I had written it out on paper, never deviating from it even if I was making nothing for gains. After all, most of the magazines said this 4-6 week time period was the amount of time needed to actually give the workouts time to do their supposed ‘magic’, this was how professional bodybuilders trained, so who was I to argue with that kind of ‘time tested’ logic?
A few years ago, while training with a friend of mine at our local gym, I dipped into my gym bag to retrieve the new program I had written out the night before, to review exactly what I had on the agenda for today’s workout. This workout routine was just another one in a long line of great routines that would propel me to the top of the bodybuilding ladder…just like the thousands of others I had written over my many years of training. Watching me intently as I perused the notebook I retrieved from my bag, my buddy asked me what I was reading, I told him it was the new workout that I’d be using for the next 4 to 6 weeks.
He looked amazed and shocked, and asked me why I didn’t train instinctively, and make up my workouts according to how I felt on any particular training day. He went on to say that training in this instinctive manner was an advanced technique used by tons of advanced
bodybuilders, and that it was sort of a "muscle confusion" type of system, which kept the body from adapting to any set routine or exercise scheme, thereby guaranteeing continuous slow but steady gains in size and strength.
I honestly felt that he may as well have been speaking Greek as I explained to him that all my training was well thought out, and was designed to accentuate weak points, and to de-emphasize my better body parts, with the main intention of building better proportions and
balance to my physique. I also told him that if you failed to plan, then you planned to fail, and that his line of thinking sounded like a hit or miss affair at best. He went on to say that if I was to train in the manner that he described, it would allow me to use a much wider variety of exercises to keep things fresh and interesting, and he also talked about the body’s ability to adapt very quickly to a set routine.
$AD$
After much discussion with him and mulling things over in my mind for a few days, I decided that his training ideas were pretty sound, I certainly had nothing to lose…it wasn’t like my usual pattern of training was going to transforming me into a Mr. Olympia contender anytime soon…and after all, I would still be training hard, just not on my usual type of set regimen, so I more than likely wouldn’t lose any of my previous gains, and just possibly, I thought I might just make some much needed progress due to the extreme change in training.
What really solidified my decision to begin implementing his ideas was that when I talked to other friends who were also very serious trainees, I found that the majority of them all did something similar to the training approach that he had described…I felt like I had been living in a cave or something!