I will be back

For long i have been writing a lot about High intensity training and workouts. For the past year and half i am researching on HIT. So i thought i should post videos of my early age. This will be a proof for my growth when i compete again and post my new contest video. I will be competing again after june.

So have fun watching me competing in small but very memorable and valuable contests of my life.

Mr.Jets 2006...... An important person of my life, my lifestyle, my friend, philosopher and my future came to see me perform on stage. We were just good friends at that time. Should i say best friends!!!!!

Mr.Kanchi 2006.... This was one of the toughest i have been in for the level of development i had. But still i enjoyed each and every moment of it

Will upload my new video after i compete.

Till then i will continue writing blogs.

Quality is better than quantity. So try to have quality workouts rather than focusing on quantity of the workouts.

Workout frequency & Volume

One of the most controversial topics in bodybuilding and in fitness is “The workout frequency”. Some say train each muscle group once a week, some say train each muscle group 2 times a week, some say train 6 days a week and some say train 4 days a week and so on…

And the next one is workout volume. The common words that you would hear in the gym are something like this.. Train 25 sets for your big muscles and 20 for your smaller muscles or sometimes you would hear, just train until you absolutely kill the muscle and so on…

For the new bodybuilding aspirants the workout routine of their favorite superstar is just the correct routine for them. They never seem to analyze or understand the volume and the frequency involved in their workout.

Let me be clear on one thing here, “WE NATURAL BODYBUILDERS” cannot follow the pros workout regiment. Let me explain why!!!!

Just pay attention to the following topics, you will know why.

Logic of growth:
Most of you might know but still I will explain the growth process. When we train in the gym, let us assume that I am doing bicep workout today. When I do my barbell curls, indirectly I just break the muscle tissue in the bicep region. After the workout when I eat enough protein with all the other macro-nutrients I send materials to my bicep to recover. When I recover I first repair the damage. And after the recovery I overcompensate the muscle tissue. When I repeat this, my bicep grows. Remember, growth does not take place at gym. It takes place while you rest.

Recovery ability:
The ability of a muscle to recover from a workout is called recovery ability. This is where the genetics plays a vital role. You would have read that Arnold trained each muscle twice a week. It was because his genetics were really good and was able to recover. The same is with most of the pros. If all of us had the same type of genetics then there won’t be any difference among the humans.

When Pros can train each muscle twice a week why not you?

The answer is simple. If you feel that your muscle recovers fully in two days, yes you can. But let us be practical here, We do not use huge amount of steroids to recover fast. These steroids just improve the bodies recovery ability, but with a lot of health hazards. So never try that. Never schedule a workout before you feel fully recovered.

Rational bodybuilding:
Now that you know about logic of growth and recovery ability, my job of explaining workout frequency and volume would be easy.

As you all know, we damage the muscle at gym and the growth occurs while we rest. So let us imagine the damage of muscle tissue as creating a hole on the muscle.

When we do a very intense set for a muscle, here we virtually create a small hole on the muscle (let us imagine damage to hole here for the sake of understanding).When we do another intense set for the same muscle, here we make the hole deeper. Another set and the hole gets still deeper. As I said earlier the growth process starts after the workout when we rest. So if the hole is very deep, all the protein that we take will be used up to fill the hole. But what about the overcompensation? Before the muscle fully recovers it would be more than a week. So our “go to gym” syndrome will kill the growth and we would train the same muscle again. So if you observe here, our progress is zero. This is the reason why most of the bodybuilders lack to make gains.

So what should you do?
Just try to be logical and rational about your workouts and your frequency. Train optimal, train no more than what is required to create a small hole onto the muscle. But remember lazy workouts are not going to help. What I mean here is just choose very minimal amount of exercises per body part and do several warm-ups and do one or may be two all out sets to failure. By reaching temporary failure of the local muscle you can be sure that you created that required damage to the muscle. In other words, the optimal damage. When you reach your failure, you not only damage the muscle but also induce the growth stimulus of your body’s growth mechanism. So when you rest and eat proper nutrition, you have no other option but to grow.

Now you would have understood about the volume of workout. There is one more important topic, the training frequency. Just make a practice of listening to your muscle. Don’t train when you feel that your muscle is not fully recovered. Take a day or two off. Believe me you wont loose your gains. Have you noticed that after a complete week or two of rest you always come back stronger to the gym. You are able to feel your muscle better during the workout!! This is because your muscle is fully recovered. So don’t go by the magic numbers specified in the magazines, listen to your muscle and train accordingly. You will make optimal gains.

The nutshell:
There is no magic number of sets or number of days you must train in a week. All you have to do is train each of your muscle with no more than what is required to induce the body’s growth mechanism and not train the same muscle until that muscle and its supporter muscles are fully recovered.

As of now, according to my recovery ability, I train each of my muscle 2 times a month. And I make it a point that I don’t train two continuous days, because I might not train at my optimum because of the previous days workout. The results are amazing. I gained about 10 pounds in the past 10 weeks. And I have increased my strength by 10% in all my lifts. So remember quality of the workouts gives you results, not the quantity of the workout.

This blog is a tribute to the legend, Late Mike Mentzer. He was the man who really introduced the High intensity training methodology and made the bodybuilding world think logically and rationally towards the workout.

That’s all folks. Train smart, think rational and gain fast.

Stiff legged deadlift – A more effective approach

In my recent blog I just explained about a better way to squat, a overall leg builder. But this time I just thought of revealing a small trick about developing a really overlooked muscle – “The hamstrings”.

It was about 2 years ago, I saw a person. I saw his face for 2 seconds and till the end of our conversation just saw his humongous legs. Especially his hamstrings. So during the end of our conversation, I asked him about his ham workout. He told stiff legged deadlifts in all workouts. I asked,” can u demonstrate it for me? ”. He did not hesitate and showed me how he did that. He kept two small plates on the floor. Placed his toes on it and did the normal dead lift.

The very next day I tried it the same way he told me to do. I felt my hamstring working right from the first rep. But in the traditional stiff legged dead lift I will fell my hamstring during the end of the set. From then on I never did the traditional stuff. And my under developed hamstring came proportionate to my quads in a matter of 3 months. Just thought this might be useful to those who desperately wanted to improve their hamstrings. So here we go….

So now let me explain the exact way to execute it and then explain you why this thing works better than the traditional way of doing it.

How to do?

Place two 25 pound plates touching each other (one for each foot). They should be right beneath the barbell you will be using for the exercise and placed side-by-side so you can set your feet on both of them.

Stand in front of the barbell with your feet half on the plates and half off. The front parts of your feet will be on the plates and your heels will be on the ground.

Now bend over and pick the bar with an overhead grip. Keep your knees in a locked position but with a little bend. Always look forward while coming up and going back down.

Pick up the bar slowly from the ground without any momentum till your upper body goes little bit above parallel to the floor and don’t go any further in the motion. The real stretch of this exercise is between this positions and the starting position. If you go any further up to an upright standing position you loose tension on the hamstrings and the intensity of the workout is reduced.

Come down slowly, being absolutely sure to keep the arch in your lower back. Hold that stretch at the bottom position for a moment or two then reverse the direction without bouncing.

Repeat this for some 8-20 reps. If you do this correctly with control without cheating, I am sure you will not be able to walk without a support after your workout.

Try this and you will be amazed with the results.

Scientific reason for the effectiveness of the position:

To understand the effectiveness of the workout let us see the anatomy and biomechanics of each muscle involved in this movement.

The stiff legged deadlift places maximum stress on the muscle at the maximum stretch position. So in order to intensify the workout and for maximum gains we must maximize the stretch at this position.

The hamstrings are tied up with the hips and gluteus, so bending the hips places a very good stress on the muscle. So that’s how the traditional workout was formed. But if we watch closely the calves are also tied up to hamstring and while stretching the calves we stretch the hamstrings also. So if we place our toes in an elevated position we automatically stretch the lower part of the hamstrings. And if we bend our hips and reach down we stretch the middle and upper parts of the hamstrings. So we stretch all the parts of the hamstrings together and place maximum load on the muscle. When such load is placed on the muscle the hamstring has no other go but to respond to the stress and grow big to withstand the stress on the next workout session.

So try this for yourself and I am sure you will be wonderstruck with the results.

Shut up and squat

This time I just thought of explaining a little trick in doing the king of all exercises…. Ya, the Squats. As every true bodybuilder knows, squat is the exercise which distinguishes the wannabes and the big boys. There is no doubt with the name given to Squats “The king of exercises”, because it is the best. They not only work to increase muscle-mass in the lower body, they also have a beneficial anabolic effect on the entire body. They have actually been known to increase the hormone levels in the body. So why skip your leg workout and complain about your hormone levels. Shut up and squat regularly to sky rocket your hormone levels.

Recently I’ve been writing a lot about the high intensity training. Here is an easy way to increase the intensity of a regular squat. You can combine this technique with the pre-exhaust or the drop sets which I explained in my earlier blogs. Some of you might already do this, but here is a “how to do” just in case if you don’t do this.

Do your regular warm-ups. On your working set, drop your weight by some 10%. Perform your squats as usual, squat as deep as possible but with full control. I always suggest people to squat below or at least up to parallel in full control without momentum. Here is the trick – instead of locking out your knees at the top of the movement, try to maintain continuous tension on your muscle by stopping shot of lock-out position and slowly squat back to as deep as you can. Repeat this for a set of about 8-20 reps without locking your knees. At the end of the set you will feel as if your quads are going to explode. Scientific studies have shown that legs respond better to high reps, so try to do a few more reps to your legs in comparison to your upper body exercises.

Try using this with other HIT methodologies to get maximum results.

Have a blast on your next leg workout.

Drop Sets – For accelerated growth

In this blog I am going to explain a very basic and a maximum result giving technique called the drop sets. As with any technique there exist a number of names for this technique such as breakdowns, descending sets, triple-drops, down the rack or running the rack, strip sets, etc., They've been around for a very long time. They are particularly popular with the high intensity crowd. And they're a true test of your concentration and focus. I'm talking of course about Drop Sets.

I learnt about the drop sets from a local bodybuilding magazine and tried it the very next day. And the results were mind blowing. I trained my biceps (was the weakest muscle on my body) on that day, believe me or not it took me 10 days to recover from that biceps workout. And I trained my biceps only after 2 full weeks. The point I want to stress here is that u need more recovery period when compared to your normal workout regiment.

Now let us go to the real deal… How to execute?

So, for instance, let’s say you are doing barbell curls for your biceps. Finish off your warm up. By warm up I mean really good warm up(I personally do one light warm up say about 12 reps, one moderate warm up say about 8 reps and one heavy warm up say about 6 reps).

• Now take a heavy barbell on which u can do a maximum of 5 or 6 reps(try to load the barbell with many small plates for example, If you are gonna curl 120lbs then load each side with three 20lbs plate)
• Start curling the barbell and do each rep with full concentration (without any cheating or momentum).
• Do the curling until you cannot do one complete positive rep.
• Now remove one 20lb plate from each side and do your biceps curls in a slow manner without any cheating or momentum. Curl till you cannot do one complete positive rep.
• Now again remove one 20lb plate from each side and do your biceps curls till you reach your failure.

That’s it …

The biceps workout is done for the day.

One important point to note in this training principle is that you carry your body beyond your failure. So this induces your body’s growth mechanism better than the traditional volume principle.

Bicep curls are just an example. They can be done for all body parts. I personally feel that drop sets should be followed with compound movements to get maximum results and should be done with a spotter when done with free weights. Again I want to stress that you need more rest between your workouts in order to give time for your muscles to recover and grow(REDUCE YOUR TRAINING FREQUENCY WHEN ON HIT PRINCIPLES LIKE DROP SETS).

That’s all folks.

Try this and you will be really amazed with the results that you get.