Low Calorie, High Protein Taffy!
Vic,I am an advanced guy who competes in bodybuilding. I am looking for a change of pace going into my competitive off-season. I compete in a local drug-free federation and despite being able to come in ‘shredded’ (I usually step onstage carrying around 7% body fat) I always place out of the money. I have asked the judges what I need to up my placing and the collective answer seems to be I need size, particularly in my thighs. I was a high school gymnast and have that kind of build: good shoulders, arms and pecs and light leg development. Any advice would be gratefully accepted and implemented – I am tired of placing 5th! I need some thigh size! Tom, Reno
I would recommend an Old School Parrillo mass program called “10 sets of 10.” You identify a weak body part and once a week blast the targeted muscle using 10 sets of 10 reps with static poundage and a “big” exercise. I have a really good mental image of your physique based on your own comparison to a gymnast. I knew a champion gymnast in high school. This guy was really good and won a college scholarship. His specialty was the rings and as long as he kept his pants on he looked like Hercules; once he pulled on a pair of shorts he looked like half a Hercules. Or, as one of my old training partners used to say about top-heavy bodybuilders; “That guy looks like a muscular man riding an ostrich.” I would suggest the following routine: for illustrative purposes I will assume you can squat 200 pounds for 10 deep reps in the squat…you can adjust this hypothetical poundage up or down based on your actual current 10 rep squat maximum. Day I: Squat Warm up 95×10 reps then squat 150 pounds for ten consecutive sets of ten reps.
Here’s the deal: whatever your current 10 rep squat max is, use 75% for 10 x 10. Even though you can do a lot more for one set of 10 reps (33% more to be exact) trust me when I tell you that on the final sets with 75% the cumulative effect will make that 150 feel like 500. By the time you have finished this workout you will have done 100 repetitions with 75% of your 10-rep squat max! In the following workout in the following week, and assuming you successfully hit 10×10 with 150, you bump the poundage up to 160 and repeat the process. This is brutal stuff and I wouldn’t recommend it for a rookie. Since you are a seasoned competitor and have developed some degree of pain tolerance, this is the ticket for blasting those puny thighs up to the next level. Squat like this once a week and finish the leg workout with some lying leg curls and seated calf raises. Need I tell you that you have to “smart bomb” with a 50/50 PlusTM shake after this slaughter-fest? I would recommend a double or triple serving. One helpful hint: I suggest you drink your 50/50 PlusTM shake in around the 5th or 6th set as this will help you make it across the finish line. Also: be sure and use spotters and make sure to take more and more rest as you get deeper into the 10 sets. Squat once a week: the overall goal is to push the 150 pound 10 x 10 up to 200 pounds 10 x 10 in five consecutive weeks. If you slam down lots of quality calories you can add 2 full inches to your thighs in five weeks time. Squat low and don’t start fudging on the depth as you get deeper into the sets. This routine will work – assuming you can handle it. Write back and let me know how this works out. Be sure and use Parrillo fascial stretching between each and every set. I like the “hurdler layback” stretch. Forget about leg extensions and lunges for a while: Man Up with 10 x 10!
Vic,I was watching the Olympics on TV yesterday and caught some of the weightlifting. I saw this incredible 17 year old, 123 pound Chinese kid snatch 286 and clean and jerk 363 pounds – how are the commies getting away with this? Obviously this kid is on drugs. What’s the deal? How is it possible that a midget kid so young can shatter all-time world records and not be gassed to the max – obviously the Chi-Coms have found a way to beat the drug test.
Disgusted in San Relemo
Several possible explanations….1. The kid is not on drugs. Allow me to explain. In a totalitarian society containing 1.3 billion people, the coaches and sports medical people have a lot of specimens to pick from. In the United States we have less than 1,000 competitive Olympic weight lifters. In China they have over 1,000,000 competitive lifters in the 123 pound class alone. That’s a big pile to pick from. In China they have an incredibly sophisticated “farm system” designed to spot potential Olympic athletes at the earliest possible age. Kids are identified early based on body type, degree of muscularity, genetic gifts and mental toughness. The best of the best are sent to regional coaching facilities and if they excel they are sent to national training camps for their respective sports. The cream of the crop are usually identified by age five and the 17 year old you saw (I saw him lift) likely had ten years of expert coaching under his belt. By having a huge pile of athletes to pick from, and given the fact that parents willingly give up their kids, it could be possible that this kid was drug free. 2. Another explanation is that the Chinese have developed some sort of genetic engineering to create a race of ‘super kids’ – wait till you get a load of their 14-year old teeny girl gymnasts. Most sport scientists agree that at some point in time it will be possible to alter the genetic codes of children to improve their physical characteristics. Is the future now? Have the communist sports doctors figured a way to create genetically superior children through gene-splicing? Have they taken budding superstars and magnified the already gifted through medicine and science? I sort of doubt this scenario – but the smartest sports scientists I know tell me that this eventuality is not a matter of if but when. 3. The idea that the Chinese have invented an undetect-able drug is a distinct possibility. It would take a massive effort involving tons of money, an army of scientists and a protracted effort involving coaches, doctors and lots of coordination at the highest levels. Could it happen? Absolutely! Is it happening now? I honestly don’t know. Again, they have so many athletes to choose from it is impossible to know with any certainty. My gut instinct is that I sort of doubt it; I lean towards the first explanation.
Iron Head,Have you tried the new Parrillo Chew BarTM? I got a box of Vanilla Chew BarsTM and loved them so much I went through the entire box inside a week! I love these things! I am looking to drop about 25 pounds of fat and I got to tell you, by the time I am done eating one of these delicious bars all my sweet cravings vanished! Tell Parrillo for me – great job! The Chew BarTM is going to allow me to break my ice cream habit! Roy P., The Big EasyJoin the Chew BarTM “love club” Roy. I am in total agreement with you. I love the way you are us-ing them. The Chew BarTM is a god-send for folks looking to quit sweets. In my opinion the Chew BarTM is the ideal nutritional sup-plement for a dieter with a sweet tooth. Back when I was a kid, one of my favorite candy bars was called “Bit-O-Honey.” Their candy bar slogan was “Just one bite lasts all day.” The texture of the Chew BarTM is incredible and puts me in mind of the ancient Bit-O-Honey. There is no way you are going to gobble a Chew BarTM down – the chewiness forces you to chew each and every bite and chew it for a long while. Nutritionists point to the fact that overweight people (by-in-large) gobble their food without chewing or tasting. One trick of the obesity trade is insisting fat folks chew each and every bite of food 10-20 times before swallow-ing. There are several reasons for this: chewing each bite for a lot of “reps” creates saliva and when lots of saliva is mixed with food, it improves digestion. Breaking each bite of food down into small parts via repeated chewing makes their digestive task much, much easier. The person that gulps down their food without chewing creates extra work for the digestive process. Obviously a bite of food torn into smaller parts and laden with saliva has a huge digestive jump on a big lump of swallowed food. Check out the Chew BarTM nutritional statistics: pro-tein, 20 grams; carbohydrate, 19 grams; sugar, 2 grams; fat, 2.5 grams (CapTri® MCT). Each bar contains 180 calories. The flavor selection is mind-boggling: Vanil-la, Chocolate, Strawberry, Peanut Butter, Hazelnut Expresso, Eng-lish Toffee, Licorice, Root Beer, Chocolate Graham Cracker, and Chocolate Toffee flavor. If you are looking to shed some fat and you have a sweet tooth, I can think of no better supplement than the Par-rillo Chew BarTM. Not only will this 50 gram powerhouse provide you with a bounty of nutrients, it will also force you to chew each bite 20+ times. This long-lasting taste treat is a welcome addition to the Parrillo Nutritional arsenal.
Iron Man, I am really digging watching the weightlifting on TV at the Olympic Games. I am noticing that all the lifters have relatively small arms and pecs – but their back and leg muscles are incredible – how do these guys train? Is there anything that we bodybuilders can do to develop traps and erectors like these dudes? My traps look anemic and deficient compared to those guys: big traps really make a man look powerful. Arn, Lake Windsor
I used to be an Olympic lifter and I still love the purity of this sport. I think there are a lot of aspects of their training that bodybuilders could expropriate strictly for muscle building purposes. Inter-national level Olympic lifters confine their training to six exercises and use extremely low reps: they do the clean and jerk, the snatch, back squat, front squat, jerk off the racks and power clean. Reps never exceed 5 and usually are singles or doubles. They train often, like six days a week and sometimes multiple times per day. The fact that they limit their training menu means that they get very, very good at the very few exercises they do. The reason they have small arms and pecs is they purposefully don’t do any exercise that stimulate these muscles. Top O-lift coaches feel that big pecs interfere with the shoulder flexibility needed to hold those 400 pound snatches and 500 pound jerks overhead. In addition coaches feel that massive pecs and arm muscles “take away” from adding more back and leg muscle. Two training tricks that bodybuilders can ‘steal’ from weightlifters: incorporate super deep squats and front squats and get real good at the power clean. Weightlifters squat super deep in training in order to be able to power upward from a squat clean with 400 + pounds racked on their shoulders. Dimas, the Greek 181 pound two-time Olympic gold medal winner, could front squat 660! That’s no typo Arn. Start squatting and front squatting low and watch those thighs explode with growth. The power clean is absolutely the finest trap developer of all time. Power cleans blow shrugs into the weeds when it comes to building traps. Use this procedure: stand over a barbell and keeping a tight back squat down to the barbell. Using a shoulder width grip, pull the bar straight up. When the bar reaches pec height flip the wrists and catch the barbell on the shoulders. Use a slight knee dip and always keep a tight, taunt back. Start light and develop the technique before piling on the plates. The trick is to accelerate the bar coming off the floor: if you simply pull the bar upward like a deadlift the instant you stop pulling the barbell will drop like a guillotine. The idea is to use a weight light enough so that you are able to create upward momentum. When you stop pulling the bar keeps traveling upward, allowing you that extra second to dip under and catch the bar. Take 2-3 light sets before tackling one, all out set of five reps. Each successive training week seek to add 5-10 pounds to the top 5-rep set. If the technique starts to disintegrate, stop and drop the poundage back. A correctly performed power clean is a trap and erector developer without peer – an incorrectly performed power clean is one of the most dangerous of all barbell exercises. Deep squats, including front squats, are the ticket to massive thighs; power cleans are the tickets to traps that look like a mountain range. I use straps on my power cleans.