5 Training Principles for Building Muscle (What Works)

Training principles for building muscle, right? That's what we're covering. So firstly, what is a principle? It's a proven rule or idea that guides. And what is a technique? A technique is a way of carrying out or performing a task. The problem is that most trainers will just simply yell techniques at their clients without understanding the principle behind them, right? And this is where the guys say today, for example, have been instructed, I want you to teach them the principle, not the technique. Get them to failure. That means that if we're doing whatever system we're doing, which is death sets for example, they might take you to the death set on set 3 instead of set 6 or whatever it is, or they might get you a different exercise. We're not going to follow it strictly to the rule because we're going to use the principle, not just the technique. Principles can be scaled up and down. The principle doesn't change. The technique of mechanical drop set, you do the technique or you don't, but you can understand the principle behind it. So understanding principles behind the technique is, is the key. 'Cause with techniques without principles just makes you like a rubber bouncy ball, which, and I see this with a lot of trainers, is they go from program to program to program to system to system to system. And you know, they've had careers of coaching and then, you know, this month they're doing Christian Thibodeau's program and next month they're doing Mark Carroll and the month after they bought Kasim's program and the month after that they go to Ben Pakalski and the month after that they do Sebastian Oreb and the month after that, there's no shortage of influences, right? And they bounce around and they don't actually learn the principles behind any of them at any of the coaches. They just go from program, program, program and they do a system and they wonder why their clients don't get results, right? You got to understand the thought process behind all of them and what makes those systems work. What are they trying to achieve in that and why? What is the construct of making it work? Someone brought up before yesterday about DUP. I know a lot of coaches who I'm very good friends with, they're very good friends of mine who you and I— they get results. And I have coaches here who used— and I was having conversation, we'll have this conversation with Tyrone when he comes on at 11. Spoke about DUP The thing is, and Tyrone and I agree, that there's no real definition of like— so many different coaches use it in a different way. The point here is that you got to understand the principles behind everything that you're doing. Here are 5 principles that if you understand this very crude Venn diagram that I put together, almost won the game of hypertrophy, right? So what is this crude Venn diagram? There is a big circle. The big overarching circle is intensity. And again, when we talk about intensity in the strength world, what are we talking about? Load, 100%. This is really— you need to understand this. When you're talking to a strength coach and you say intensity, they assume that you mean percentage of 1RM load. So if I say intensity to a strength coach, they are assuming that I'm talking about a percentage like a 90% of their 1RM. So if you lift 100 kilos, I'm talking in objective terms in the strength world. If I go to a bodybuilding coach and I say the word intensity, Most bodybuilding coaches aren't smart enough to realize this, but what they actually mean is proximity to failure. This is what I mean, same word, two different meanings, two different worlds of where you come from, right? So if you say the word intensity, and the way I define intensity in the bodybuilding world is proximity to failure, 'cause it's not based on load, 'cause load is its own parameter, right? Intensity in the bodybuilding world is about proximity to failure, which is what is the overarching of all the systems, whether it's DUP, 8x8, 1-6, whatever it is, whatever method you use to get hypertrophy, If you have that piece and you can actually train hard, you'll get results, right? Because that is the overarching stability, load, tension, volume. Now I want to, I want you to think of these 4 things as vectors of attack because I can attack you with high amounts of load, you'll get a hypertrophy response. I can attack you with high amounts of tension, you'll get a hypertrophy response. I can attack you with high amounts of volume, you get a hypertrophy response. Stability is the interlinking piece between all of them. You need that in everything you do to keep you safe and injured-free. Free. But really, the 3 vectors and the one— the overarching vector that's going to make all of it work is proximity to failure. If we use the famous bodybuilders of our era and previous eras and future eras— Mike Mentzer, Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman— they're all famous for what? Intensity. We talk about intensity. It was that balls-to-the-wall style, you know, I do 6 reps, you know, heavy weight builds muscle, don't do volume. Ronnie Coleman, one of the greatest bodybuilders of— I'm just going to say all time, of ever, the GOAT. How did he train? I mean, he did what, 800 pounds at 2 reps? Stronger than most powerlifters, stronger, you know, one of the best of the best strong bodybuilders ever to grace the earth. Dorian Yates, very much the same, you know, 3 sets, super, super heavy weight. They were the champions of intensity. Did they get results? Absolutely, because they took everything to failure. Then on the other side, Jay Cutler, Phil Heath, Arnold's, they were the champions of volume. They all, they all achieved fame and fortune in the bodybuilding world and had legions of fans. Except what happens is people attach themselves to one or the other, and it's not really— it's just they like this training system. And what you like does have a merit in terms of what you follow. They like the training system, they use the training system, and then people say it worked for me. Well, of course it worked. They're doing what they enjoy, which is a huge part of it, because if you hate your training every day, probably not going to look forward to your training. You know, there's that famous clip that Arnold in Pumping Iron where he says, you know, the pump is like coming, right? He loved training. You can see that he loved training, loved talking about training, loved being in the gym. But he's famous for, you know, having 4-hour workouts. And then guys like Mike Mentzer would go train with him and be, you know, depressed because the workouts last 3 hours or 4 hours. Whereas Arnie's like, oh, this is great. And then you had in the middle, which is Tom Platz. Did a seminar with Tom Platz, the great Tom Platz. You know, Tom Platz is a freak, but I really feel like someone like Tom Platz is kind of the in-between. He did do a lot of volume, but he also was unbelievably strong and was able to bring the intensity. So, you know, one of his feats of strength, I think it was 228 kilos for 23 reps squatting like a high bar squat as an Olympic athlete, not a powerlifter. He squatted high bar like an Olympic athlete would, Olympic weightlifter would. Unbelievable range of motion. His legs— the reason why he didn't win the Olympia was because his legs didn't match his upper body. His legs were too big. Referred to as Quadzilla. Fortunate enough to do a seminar with him, and yeah, amazing guy, super motivated. But you see these systems, and then we start to, you know, look at this Venn diagram again. We start to understand, okay, what do we need? We can achieve our results using any of these vectors. So we understand the principle behind it, we can understand the success behind the training systems. It's not one or the other. Again, intensification, accumulation is built on these. Stability overrides everything, and it's an element too, because if you don't have stability, you're not going to be able to train. And lift heavy weight. Because again, using load, you might just say, well, I'll use the pink dumbbells, 1 kilo, do 100 reps every day. It's not enough overload to create tension. So these things do have to match— stability, mobility, strength, performance. Having the stability, having mobility, having the strength allows you a greater degree to get proximity to failure. So for James, would I feel comfortable bringing an incline curl to failure for him? No. Hell no. Why? Might actually tear his bicep. We've got to build it up slowly, so I'm not comfortable bringing that to him. Performance is always the goal, or in bodybuilding terms, failure is the goal, right? So overload, again, you can't just use the pink dumbbells. All of these vectors have to be equally matched, so to speak, because you're going to use the pink dumbbells, then you're going to do a lot of reps. This is where the research will show that one of the best you can have for hypertrophy— this is the meta-analysis that came out more, more recent time which was it showed that hypertrophy can occur anywhere from 2 reps to 25 reps. It's like, what? You can have hypertrophy from 2 reps? So what's the optimal rep range? One that you enjoy and assists in your goals and the way you like to train. So there's an inverse relationship between sets and reps, an inverse relationship between sets and intensity, which means that the higher your intensity, less sets you're going to do. Obviously, Tom Platz would speak about he would train legs every fortnight. Obviously, when you're squatting 20 reps of 200 kilos, he would do one set and then be done for 2 weeks. There was a lot of load that went through his body. He had to recover. But most guys and girls can't go there the way Tom— Tom Platz is a different, different person. He's a different human, right? The way he's— go at his gym. One of my friends was on the leg press. He walks past and he goes, you're gonna get it today. You're gonna, you're gonna give everything or you're gonna die. Just like the level of intensity that he had was just, you know, that's how he framed it, was it was life and death in the gym for him. Tension is important, comes back to lever point, and time under tension is important. You need tension to create. So it's not just throwing weights around, you can have the intensity. So I can throw a lot of weight around on a bicep curl, but there's going to be less tension. So do I want to throw a lot of weight around, or do I want more tension? It's not to say that like there isn't merit in throwing a lot of weight around safely, there is, but you're going to— it's going to be at the trade-off for tension. So again, these are vectors in which we attack. I'll finish on this point, which we already did an example, which is perfect, right? In proxy, this is the thing that links everything together.