Myths

There are many myths how to train. Like some people just thought about some weird movement, tried to execute it, they stayed alive, and voila, it is a valid exercise now. But the truth is cruel: they suck. Empiricism can be good and has its use, but when there is science available, not even the biggest fool would rely on goddamn tales, while avoids the facts. Like wtf, really?

Low reps for mass, high reps for shreds?

If you hear this, you better avoid that person in your entire life. I mean it, like block them on Facebook, move to a different town, invite North Korea to invade your country, whatever. The benefit will be not only Kim Jong Un as your Supreme Leader, but the biggest fitness peasant would be eliminated. For real, imagine that the muscles can count. They can fucking count. Get it??? They will count the reps out loud, and after the 12th rep, they stop slapping the mortar on your muscle walls, take out the flamethrower, and burn everything the fuck down!!! But only in the area of the actually trained muscles. Imagine you train your bicepses with high reps, but your tricepses with low reps and the biceps part is shredded af, like a dry meatball, while your triceps looks like a hanging-wiggling plastic bag of lard. Your biceps looks like a 20-year-old athlete’s, while your triceps wiggles like the old fat lady’s from the local post office. Ok, I guess now you get it.

Free weights vs machines?

Free weights bring mass, machines bring definition, that’s what everybody’s saying. Well, they can say many things, but it won’t be true, only because everybody believes it. Your muscles sense only the resistance you train with, won’t ask for a mass gaining license nor for a defining one either before assembling the growth consilium to decide what should they do. If a machine works for you well, if you can control the weight more, then the answer is obvious.

You can train properly even without the best machines, indeed. There are many people bigger than you training with “obsolete” stuff, and one’s aware that some stuff is just shiny utter uselessness. Nevertheless, if you can have a much bigger focus on the particular muscle on a new shiny machine, then you know the answer.

Is lifting not functional?

Sure, when you lift, it is only good for weight lifting movements, but other sports are functional benefitting in every part of your life, and only bodybuilding is the black sheep in the family of sports, right? Seems legit. You’ll get stiff, you’ll get short, you’ll get joint pain, you’ll be impotent if you are a man, grow beard if you are a woman, moreover, your clitoris will turn into a hairy dick; but if you start swimming, oh, swimming, you’ll be a sportsman, healthy af, and you’ll live 100 years, you’ll cure cancer not only for yourself, but even for your neighbour. Actually, the truth is: bodybuilding did 911.

Imagine you are swimming, how functional it is! You can….what can you do with it? Cross the Atlantic? So functional. But running, oh the trendy running! What can you do with it? Catch the train? So useful, much advantage…

Also, surprise: training for something means you train for something, therefore if you train for strength instead of speed or whatever, and you’ll be stronger but not faster, then it’s not some secret society trying to undermine your life, but it’s just that you lack basic cognitive abilities and would not deserve the right to vote.

The various exercises the better?

People tend to think that they need to use different exercises every training, because their muscles “will get used to them”, or because it looks more professional or self-conscious maybe? There are many junk exercises that are either useless, cannot be done with proper weight, or worse, they are anatomically incorrect and may cause injury sooner or later. Here you can find only the exercises that will provide the biggest progress and healthiest safety, can be done with a proper form even with bigger weights, so you will actually improve your health while getting in shape and not the opposite. Oh, and there are some core exercises that can be used in every workout, because they rock.

The more the better?

Wrooong! The point is to cause hypertrophy or progressive overload, not a trauma. Work smart, not hard; less is more; etc. or other pseudo-wisdom bullshit. Less work equals progress and happiness, more work equals chronic pain and potentially permanent injuries. You need to realize that with this way it’s not you who does the lion’s share of work, but the time. Just sit back and wait, that’s it. Seriously, what is wrong with you? In my method progress happens when you rest, deal with it.

Will a famous bodybuilder’s training plan work for you?

What do you think? They don’t have a job, don’t have a life, they eat, train and rest. How is your life similar to theirs? Also, they’d never suggest you to train with low reps, because that is not politically correct. Oh, I almost forgot: no matter what they claim, they are NEVER natural, which means, they are full of steroids. What do you think? Will something work for you that works for someone who ate a pharmacy for breakfast?

Will you get overly muscular?

Do not think you start to lift and accidentally look like a veiny cloud. Hypertrophy is the muscle’s maintenance. It means the muscle is used, not your vanity to get bigger. People work for that full-time, spend tons of money and use drugs enough for a third world country to look like a veiny cloud, so if you thought you pick up a dumbbell and the gym fairy enchants +50 kg of muscle on you out of nowhere, then you need to stop LSD, seriously.

Do you really need to make faces?

Why do bodybuilders always look as if they were having the most painful constipation of their life? Is it some highly encrypted communication in the mysterious secret Brotherhood of the Chicken Breast? Is it a ritual to activate their anabolic chakras? Oh, and those voices! Imagine you are watching a workout video and your mother thinks you are into some really hardcore porn. Why is this happening?
Well, trust me, with the proper weight, you’ll make faces and noises that you’d not be proud to show on a job interview.

Facts

Ok, now I just mocked everything, but where is the alternative? So how should you train then, right?

Two magic words:
HOT POOP

Hypertrophy Oriented Training (HOT) & Progressive Overload Oriented Program (POOP)

Hypertrophy is the mechanism muscles grow by. It’s a natural process that ensures constant adaptation. It won’t only make you more muscular, but also stronger, it’ll kick your metabolism, so you won’t get fat easily and it’ll keep you young. And the easiest way to reach it is by training. Whoa, who would think this, such precious information, holy grail! Meanwhile Progressive Overload is actually not much different than hypertrophy. If your form and effort stays the same, which means you don’t powerlift the weights, then the progressive overload – hypertrophy relationship will come to a “chicken or egg” impasse.

Since the majority of people want to improve their life, mental & physical health, and looks, we will focus on hypertrophy rather than raw strength, but there will be a powerlifting program available soon too.

Actually, it may seem this simple, but it is certainly not. Usually, hypertrophy is only a side product of activities, because either some people want to work harder for the same result, or it is everybody’s own fucking business how they enjoy spending their free time. Anyway, let’s say you crave olives, but instead of buying a whole jar of it, you order 829635 pizzas. Doesn’t seem as the smartest idea, don’t you think?

Okay okay, but wait, is this some magic or what? People who can’t understand science, may call it magic, so yepp, it is actually some goddamn magic shit.

What are then the differences between these and other sports?

Sports have never been invented to move, but to play and compete. And not playing with yourself (I know you do it, you naughty) or competing with yourself, but with each other. When it comes to mainstream bodybuilding, at first glance, it may seem hypertrophy oriented, but for some reason, it is “being pumped” oriented. Modern bodybuilding is the cult of “pizza thinking”.

And this is it, the measured performance is the amount of hypertrophy you cause, and not the repetitions, weights lifted or how much you feel pumped. This you cannot compare to anyone, you cannot quantify it, because the results will appear later.

Results of hypertrophy:

• physical strength
• mental strength
• exceptional health
• good looks
• slow ageing
• less injury
• no overtraining
• better sleep

Side effects of hypertrophy:

• you may be pumped a little bit sometimes

As you can see, when it comes to strength, power style wins, but it’d be quite the rape of the very logic itself if not.

Whatever you do for a living, I bet you don’t want to drain yourself physically or mentally by staying healthy, thus keeping yourself away from living and enjoying your life. No pain no gain is a bullshit, just like you don’t need to go to a war during every workout. Just go to the gym, get things done, leave home and that’s it. Work less, earn more. You train to improve & enjoy your life, you don’t live to train.

So what now?

1. Forget everything that you’d think how to get a weight from point A to point B.
2. Think about the muscle you want to target, focus only on its contraction.
3. Avoid stress on the tendons! Don’t overstretch them during the exercises where the force vector is too high (assuming you know elementary school level physics).
4. Choose a weight you can do 5-6 reps in the first set. Do 3 sets, not more!
5. Go until failure in the 2nd and 3rd, no need for forced reps unless you feel like it.

If something wasn’t included here, it’s not a coincidence. No drop sets, supersets, giant sets and all that bullshit.

Execution

So, we know hypertrophy is the goal, we also know it requires targeted movements. If you’d ever need a personal trainer (I mean the one who actually knows things), then it will be in this case. If you are a beginner, it won’t happen overnight, but eventually you’ll find your way. No weird tribal dance movements btw, just plain stimulation.
Here you can see all the exercises executed properly.

Stretch-mediated hypertrophy over extensive range of motion – The biggest BodyBuilding Wisdom (BBW) ever!

I know that for a layman it seems the bigger the ROM is the bigger the gains are, as it’d seem logical, but after you graduate from a kindergarten, and get introduced to the Basics of Physics in elementary school right after you learn how to read, you’ll understand. When you overstretch a muscle by the ROM, you’ll put extreme pressure on the tendons, and only a slightly more pressure on your muscles, which means you taunt your fate on a regular basis until you’ll get an injury, and then you can finally grow your so wanted dadbod, and mock athletes that training is actually unhealthy, as you’ve already got veteraned by it, and you are just unsolicitedly sharing your profound wisdom as a personality trait. So no, instead of over-stretching the muscle at your joint, you can increase its stretch indirectly by positioning your limb. For example, seated leg curls have more stretched hamstrings than standing leg curls, while standing leg extensions have more stretched quads than the seated ones. For your arms it’s the same, overhead triceps exercises will bring you bigger gains than when your elbows are back enough, and for biceps elbows behind the torso’s line will be the utmost beneficial (assuming you have a machine for it). This also means that both for your calves and forearms you should prioritize exercises with straight limbs over the bent ones.

So where are my training plans?

The proper execution is the alpha and the omega of the whole thing. That is something you need to stick to. But the plan is something that sticks to you, to your lifestyle, to your schedule, to your physique and to your regeneration.
Here you can see all the training plans.

When to train?

Here comes the basic rule of this entire website: when it’s the best for you. For some people working out on empty stomach is OK, then some need to have at least 1-2 meals before going to lift. You will find out. The only important part is to get it done.

What to do before a workout?

For many people, there is no life outside the gym. They build up their entire lifestyle around their workout routine. Before the gym, they prepare for battle, after the gym they have the feast of the winner, then rest. Do you really want such a pathetic way to spend your days in the name of “healthiness”?

• you can train on empty stomach
• you can train 1.5-2 hours after a meal
• doesn’t matter if you train in early or late hours
• try to put it somewhere close to your fix programs, like work and school, it’s easier to stick to it then

What to do after a workout?

• drink a post-workout shake
• eat after 45-60 minutes
• do not care about what time it is, carbs are always welcomed after a training
• if you rest, do not rest because of your muscles, but because your mind and body need it

Any last words?

Well, all the aforementioned stuff can go to the garbage, if you don’t enjoy it. Choose the volume-intensity interval that you like the most, that can motivate you, and you are all set. Nothing bad happens if you use 12-15 reps in each set, just at that point, you train more your mind than your muscles, you cause more pain, you drain your energy more, but it won’t make an impact on your progress. So if there is no high rep fetish, then why would anybody pay higher price for something that can be obtained cheaper? Never forget, this website presents the most efficient method, but not the only method, which means, that with consistency and hard work you can achieve your goals regardless what you follow!