For a time, I was a gamer. Or perhaps, I’m still a gamer at heart, in that way that you never really give it up. Although I don’t play as much now as I used to (subject to change, as Diablo 3 is out this week), there was a time when gaming was my preferred means of  wasting time entertainment.

During that time, role-playing games—or RPGs, as they’re known to the initiated—were the dominant iteration. I spent time in Hyrule. I explored all of the worlds the geniuses at Square could come up with.

From an early age, they developed my problem solving skills, as well my appreciation for the value of those skills. I believe that RPGs helped me develop creatively, fostered my love of reading, and in some ways even helped shape me as a writer. In some ways, they made me better; I learned a lot of word 9-year olds generally don’t know. I understood character development, and the depth of story lines.

However, I think they also created and encouraged habits that have had some severe influences on my development.

As any true RPG player will tell you—especially those who played high fantasy RPGs on consoles—you want to do everything, uncover everything. Anytime you come to a crossroads in a dungeon, you explore one path, but always make sure to come back and hit the other one.

After all, if you don’t go into the OTHER cave, you might miss a treasure chest. That treasure chest might contain something valuable: It could be a powerful sword or piece of armor that will help you get through the dungeon. It could also just be a health potion that you can add to your collection of 45 other potions that you don’t use because it’s generally faster and easier to use regenerative magic to heal yourself.

No matter what, you would HAVE to go back and look; it’s this sort of strange internal drive, a response to an unwritten directive to explore every room and every crevice. On those occasions where a door locked behind you and you couldn’t go back and look, you’d be left with the choice of either: re-loading a recent save and start from the beginning (we’ve all done this); or proceed to the end of the dungeon with some sort of resigned compunction that you’d committed a crime against the natural order of things.

But you hadn’t.

Which is the damnable irony of it all. Games then were designed in a very specific way; if you needed something—really and truly NEEDED it to beat the game—the game was going make sure you got it.

If, at the end of the game, you needed the Earth Crystal to activate a portal taking you to the Big Boss, then at some point in the game, you’d get it. You’d wind up in dungeon about halfway through the game, and somewhere in that dungeon, you’d find the Earth Crystal. You HAD to find it, because there’d be some door that you couldn’t open unless you had the Earth Crystal, preventing your exit.

All of those extras were irrelevant. If you missed something—if you were ALLOWED to miss it—then it ultimately didn’t really matter. It wasn’t essential to the game, to the quest. If you missed that potion, you were fine. Even if you missed something kinda awesome, which seemed important, it might not have been. Sure, it’s nice to get a new set of gauntlets—the boost to your Armor Class is wonderful, but guess what? Chances are, when you get to the next town, there’ll be a better set of gauntlets to buy.  An important point that seems irrelevant to someone exploring a dungeon with the ardency of an addict looking for the next fix.

I’m not the only gamer who’s noticed this, by the way. In his snarky analysis of Skyrim (appropriately titled “5 Personality Disorders Skyrim Forces You to Deal With“), CRACKED writer Robert Brockway observes:

“[...]I totally acknowledge that this is a personal failing within me. This terrible habit – of scouting out every single other pathway before the main one – may be a leftover impulse from older RPGs, where many areas became inaccessible after you advanced through them. So if you wanted to make sure you found all the secret spells and legendary weapons, you had to explore every other path before the right one, otherwise the story might drag you, kicking and screaming, away from the best toys. That’s no longer the case with modern games. Most let you visit and revisit any area at any point, but it’s too late for me: The behavior is learned, and the damage is done.”

Both Brockway and I are aware of the strangeness of our behavior, and it’s source, and—while I can’t speak for him—there’s something that becomes clear with the benefit of hindsight gifted 10 years after having last played through Final Fantasy 2 (known as Final Fantasy 4 in Japan, and, incidentally, my favorite of the series).

And that something, which should have been obvious, is simply this:  those gauntlets aren’t really that important.

It doesn’t matter though. Not if you’re like me. Because if you’re like me, you need some help. You’re a gaming god, a fantasy fiend—you’ve got RPG OCD, and damn it, you need those fucking gauntlets. But you don’t.

Even if you find an item that does have some magical property that helps you in that specific area of the game (you’re in a fire dungeon? Oh, look! Gauntlets that improve your defense against fire!), you don’t NEED them. You can beat the dungeon without them. You can beat the game without them. You can win the princess, free the kingdom, save the world without them. In other words, you can do your actual job—finish the game—without the gauntlets.

And now, years later, even though I recognize the behavior, and the reason for it, I am a victim of this strange RPG-OCD. This behavioral disorder makes you want need to try everything – you’re always afraid you’re going to miss out on something. Makes it hard to order at a restaurant (what if the ribeye is better than the strip steak?) hard to select a workout (what if I go on this mass gaining program, and then I decide I want to go to Mexico, but I’m not ripped enough!?), and even hard to select a city to live in (I love Cali…but if I leave NYC, I might miss media opportunities!).

In other words, you never, ever, want to feel like this:

Essentially, role-playing games have fostered a mild fear of commitment, because you’re afraid you’ll miss out on stuff. I won’t bother making obvious jokes about how this might have affected my personal life (har har), but what I will talk about—what I’ve really wanted to talk about this entire time—is how this affects me as a content creator.

The main job of anyone who writes isn’t really to write something: It’s to finish writing it. 

What I’ve come to realize after a few years of having my income derived primarily from things I write (whether it’s articles or programs), is that nothing really counts until it’s done. Magazines don’t pay you for half finished articles, and clients wouldn’t accept incomplete programs.

Obvious, of course, and no one, reader or writer, needs to see that in print to realize it.

However, despite my acceptance of the fact that my job is ultimately to finish the main quest, my RPG OCD and years of gaming have conditioned me to not only accept but to seek out side-quests and mini-games. To look for things that are not truly essential to the task at hand, but that allow for expression or embodiment of some other feeling.

Put somewhat more directly, allowing for a potent dose of the insidious drug to which every writer is at least partially addicted: distraction.

Every writer has a different process, and they differ so widely that it’s very hard to spot common threads. Save one: every single writer I know—and probably all the ones I don’t—has, as part of their process, procrastination. Which is, by turns, either the genesis or the product of distraction.

To write and bring ideas from heart to page is, at least for me, to engage in battle with oneself. 

In his work on writing (appropriately titled The War of Art), Stephen Pressfield agrees. No stranger to writing about battles great and small, Pressfield makes a number of compelling arguments in his book.

The best of these is the first, and it’s simply this:

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.”

If I may take it a step further, I’d like to suggest that nearly anything that must or will be written is, I think, already written. It lives deep within the heart and mind of the writer, who must only bring it out. If only it were that simple.

Writers seek—crave—distraction. It’s inherent in the process.

Those writers who can acknowledge this and find a way to master it are the most productive. (A great example of this is Craig Ballantyne, who is so ruthlessly opposed to allowing for distraction that he does not have internet in his home, and spends just 180 minutes per day of internet access in a coffee shop, all to avoid the temptation of distraction.)

Swinging back to me personally, and back to RPG OCD, we come to my specific issues and how I contend with them.  For me, distraction manifests itself in a few particular ways, which don’t prevent me from writing per se, but rather make my writing an incredibly circuitous process.

I am not so much distracted from writing as I am distracted by writing—and this allows my RPG OCD to take hold.

As I working diligently on an article I mean to finish by the end of the day, I will mention something in the piece, sort of as an aside. And that’s when the trouble begins.

This reference, whether it’s to something related to the article or just some pop-culture color, will cause a bizarre chemical reaction deep in my brain. Thoughts and ideas begin to boil, deep down below the surface; the ideas germinate and eventually force their way to the top, percolating through the thin membrane of my willpower, and taking center stage.

This idea, whatever it’s origins, must be given some attention. The other cave, now presented, must be explored.

It pains the gamer in me to say this, but there is very clearly a certain lack of discipline inherent in allowing yourself to explore these caves, because they interfere with your job: finishing something—anything.

It is the job of both the hero and the writer to finish the quest.

Remember:

Half done is still very much not done, and there are no rewards for a half-saved princess.

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I know this. I know it. I arm myself with this knowledge daily. And yet then I go, even so knowing, into the darkness of the other cave, seeking treasures. Not always. Just usually.

At the best of times, there is a simple reorganization of thoughts and words in the existing article, allowing me to give voice to the idea that must be born. Other times, the thought was one I fleshed out long ago, and I am able to address the attention hungry idea by embedding a link, joining these related ideas permanently. But those are the best of times, and not frequent.

More often, this idea demands a sentence or a paragraph; many times, it becomes a tangent. If you have read my writing, you are familiar with these things, although for your benefit I have often tried to rein them in.

In worst instances of such frenzied non-productivity, the thought, the tangent, the distraction becomes unruly; it must be plucked at the root from the place that gave it birth. The idea—though no longer at home in the piece of writing that birthed it—is not done with me. Snipped neatly with a deft combination of COMMAND + X, the idea is moved a new home. A blank document will be the new home to the idea; scratch-marks clawed onto the wall of the other cave.

Regretfully, I must say that I have a good number of such documents. An astounding number, a depressing and maddening number of caves, some less than half explored–because my RPG OCD is so severe that even when exploring the other cave, I’m still tempted by ideas that spring up while writing, and then all of a sudden, I’m in the other, other cave.

There are moments of victory, I think, and I am getting better. I have at least, become better at recognizing when an idea will become a tangent. At these times, I am able to explore the cave slightly, and—to stay with this video game metaphor (despite having thoroughly exhausted it)—mark a spot on Link’s map, promising to come back to it. This allows me, at times, to focus on the task at hand, the quest I’m on, and finish my article. At times.

Controlling these impulses, the desires to explore every cave that presents itself, is a daily struggle. It is the daily struggle; the great battle I must wage every time I set pen to page, meaning to give voice to heart. I fail often.

But, as is the case with any type of art (a word I detest applying to my writing, which I both love and loathe by turns, and in equal measure), there is occasionally victory in failure.

While rare, there are times when one of those errant notions becomes more than just a seedling. The paragraph becomes a tangent, and then it becomes an article until itself. Sometimes, that offshoot article is better than the root from whence it sprung. Sometimes, a stray thought leads you into a cave where there are treasures worth finding; not necessary, perhaps, to the completion of the quest, but which make the journey more enjoyable.

It is at these moments where you realize the beauty of writing, and the reason we write. Because there are times, though not many, when even when you lose, you win. 

Very probably, I will live a good number of my days cursing Hironobu Sakaguchi for creating the genre-defining Final Fantasy series, for which I blame this inconvenient affliction. However, there are days when I thank the heavens for his creation—for through it’s creation, and that of my disorder, I have given breath to some of my best work.

This very piece of writing is one such example. Not in the sense this this is some of my best work; I have no illusions of that, and in fact the opposite will be shown over time, or so I must believe, if I hope to improve at this craft. Rather, this piece is like those others in the way it came to be: Quite by accident.

Of all things, this article began a Facebook status. Meaning only to make a silly comment about the relationship between RPGs and writing, I wound up with about 937 individual instances of word-vomit. With 937 words written and more to say, I drew forth my shears, and with a quick cut/paste, entered into a cave I didn’t think I’d explore; at least, not publicly, not with you, not yet.

It’s likely the case that any bit of writing concerning itself with video games cannot be good writing, so I won’t call this that, but I do hope at least to give some perspective; not on the writing process, but on a writing process, even if it’s just my own.

But, if nothing else, there’s honor in honesty, and I have here been honest, and laid bare some piece of myself that many of you may have wondered about, opening myself to your scrutiny; and there remains a bit of myself (and my work) here that I am not ashamed of. Perhaps, if I am very lucky, I’ve made a deft stroke here or there, and given you something worth reading and sharing.

This piece—this blog or article or rant or crack in the armor—was born of a moment of hesitant creation, a moment where I reluctantly followed my RPG OCD into a cave that I just could not leave unexplored. It’s frustrating as hell, to have such moments so frequently, for through them the quest is prolonged, and sometimes forsaken—at least for a time.

Some moments turn out okay, though, and you have to appreciate them. If you don’t, you’re dead. At those moments, you have to step back, shake your head, and just appreciate the awesome randomness and the random awesomeness that can come from unnecessary, irresponsible exploration.

Because, really, it’s not all bad.

After all, those fire gauntlets are pretty fucking sweet.
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WRITERS and BLOGGERS: I want to hear about YOUR biggest challenges with producing! Is it distraction? Motivation? Idea generation?

Let me us know in the comment! Just 30 COMMENTS, and next time, I’ll post in interview with one of the most successful writers/bloggers in recent years!

Well, summer is approaching, which makes me think of three very specific things.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, True Blood will be back in just a few weeks, which means we all get to bask in some awesome violence and steamy vampire sex.

(If you’re into that sort of thing. Which I am. Because it’s awesome.)

The second notion is sort of a result of the first. True Blood, like many shows on Premium Cable, is filled with people walking around mostly naked (or all naked); which is to say, if you watch premium cable, you can’t go one episode without seeing someone’s ass.

Seriously.

There are more naked people on this show than in most porn.

Observe:

This dude is about to get naked for the 9th time in 7 minutes.

Now, depending on your perspective on nudity—and, of course, the ass in question—this is either a very good thing or a very bad thing. Thankfully, most of the time the booties are in great shape, because, let’s face it, this is HBO and they don’t screw around.

The third, and most pertinent to you, came as a sort of afterthought when considering the previous two points: if there is anything that should inspire you to work your butt into tip-tip shape more than looking at werewolf tushie, it’s the mere fact that summer is around the corner and it’s going to be on display.

True, for guys the boo-tay-tay is not on display as much as for the ladies (unless you wear a Euro swimsuit. I’ve tried; didn’t work out); but, still, for a guy that follows the fashions (ahem, me) you’ll be wearing some tight shorts, so it behooves you to get to work.

To that end, in the spirit of summer and getting you into the kind of shape that justifies nudity for 40 minutes out of a 60 minute television show, I’ve complied a list of my top 6 exercises to get your butt in shape. Literally.

And, before you get all whiny on me, I should mention that all of these exercises will also improve athletic performance, as well as have carryover to stuff like squats and deadlifts.

So, ready to get your ass into gear*?  Awesome.

*NOTE: I fully exercise my right to make as many butt-related puns as I feel like it during this article.  Enjoy.*

Before we begin, here’s a fun picture of Jamie Eason

In addition to her butt, Jamie also has incredible hamstring and adductor development. This is a woman who takes her training seriously.

A Gaggle of Exercises for Glorious Glutes

 1) SINGLE LEG ELEVATED GLUTE BRIDGE

We’ll start with the exercise that is the easiest to perform and requires the least equipment—the bodyweight glute bridge.

While you can do this bilaterally, I specify the single leg version simply because—although it’s a tad more advanced—it’s really the only version worth doing if your goal is posterior development.  In addition to allowing your body weight to serve as a greater load allowing for all the benefits of unilateral training, you’ll need to stabilize anti-rotationally, so you get some core work, too.

Here’s a video of both versions:

When performing this, it’s important to focus on two things: recruitment and position.

In order to make sure you activate and recruit the glutes to the fullest extent, don’t just think about lifting your hips; instead, think about driving your heel into the bench and focus on using your posterior chain to raise your body. Also, remember to flex and squeeze the working glute the entire rep. To increase activation, lightly rest your hand on the cheek…it’ll look silly, but help out a bit.

As for position: how you finish the exercise is important here. Don’t just drag your ass off the ground and stop when you’re in the air—a fully executed rep ends when your hips are completely “locked out.” To make it simple, raise your hips as high into the air as you can; in the finished position, you should be able to follow a straight line from your knee to your shoulder.

This exercise is great for development, but I find it works best as both an activation exercise during a warm up, and a teaching tool for helping people to understand and develop increased awareness and activation.

2) BARBELL GLUTE BRIDGE/HIP THRUST

Staying with the same theme, let’s look at barbell glute bridges. Popularized by Bret Contreras, the barbell glute bridge (or BBGB, as I like to call it because it’s more fun to say) is the exercise contributed heavily to Bret becoming known as The Glute Guy. (NOTE: It probably also helped that he registered the domain thegluteguy.com and uses it as his blog; but let’s not split hairs.)

There are a number of variations of the BBGB, the main difference between them being the number of benches used, which varies from 0 to 2. Using multiple benches increases the range of motion the difficulty, and the name.  Once you add in a bench, the name generally changes from a glute bridge to a hip thrust.

Difference in names notwithstanding, the movements are similar in a few ways, not the least of which his that they both involve using your tuckus to drive your hips up while loaded with a barbell.

Here’s a video of big Bret rocking out the BBGB with just under 500 pounds.

Moving on to the hip thrust, this is you have your shoulders elevated, increasing the range of motion and lines of force.  The hip thrust is more difficult, and because of that perhaps more effective in a number of ways.

Here’s a video of Bret’s client, the lovely Kellie Davis, banging out reps with 225.

I have no idea if she’s single, gents, so maybe give her a call…if you’re okay with her being stronger than you, that is.

For more videos, check out Bret’s YouTube channel, which is the biggest collection of ass-related videos not on a porn site.

3) HALF-SQUAT FROM THE BOTTOM

I don’t think there’s a butt in the world that can’t benefit from squats; moreover, I don’t think that there are many great buts that have been built without them.

Today, we’re going to take that one step further with an exercise designed just

This highly specialized version of the squat is done for just half a rep—the bottom half.  You see, the glutes are recruited more heavily as squat depth increases (1,2); therefore, it is the bottom half of the squat that involves them the most. By limiting the movement, you focus on the goods.

Here’s how it’s done: In a power cage, set the pins at just above where your shoulders would be if you were in the “rock bottom” position of a squat. Load it up, climb under, and ignore the looks you get. As you come up, focus on flexing the glutes. Halt your ascent at roughly one-half of the way up, pause for half a second, and come back down. Allow the bar to come to a stop on the pins. No bouncing!

This is a killer exercise because you’re moving the bar from a dead stop for every rep, there’s no possibility of cheating, and you completely take away any effect inertia would have had. The movement becomes much harder and is very effective.

Now, this variation of the squat is very specific; while useful in the context of glute training, in general you should be doing regular squats as well.

5) KETTLEBELL SWINGS

I’ve often heard people say things like, “I do the stair climber for cardio because I also work my butt.”  While that’s not totally untrue, it’s also not the best option; if you want to get your ass in shape figuratively while getting your ass in shape literally, KB swings are the way to go.

Now, I’ll say right off the bat that I’m not really a kettlebell guy. I like kettlebells as a conditioning tool, and I see some value in terms of specific applications. This differentiates me from pure kettlebell gurus, a number of whom are so passionately dogmatic about kettlebells that I suspect KB swings are part of their masturbatory rituals.  A hyperbolic assumption, perhaps, but it made you laugh, so deal with it.

Anyway, that brings us to the topic at hand. Kettlebell swings, not masturbation.

Again, KBs are good for condition and specific application, one of those applications being glute training.

For a simple movement, it’s hard to beat the KB swing. Done with proper form, it works the majority of the posterior chain, and hits the glutes like little else. (It also teaches the hinge quite well, having carryover to other stuff.)

You can use the swing with mildly heavy weight as part of a more complete program, or you can do use lighter weight and higher reps for a cardio/conditioning effect; each effective for different goals, but both effective with regard to your butt.

No kettlebell? No problem. Here’s a video of me doing a version with a dumbbell:

FURTHER READING: Tim Ferriss wrote a detailed post on how to use the KB swing to sculpt the KB swing to sculpt the perfect posterior, which you can read here.

5) GLUTE-HAM RAISE

I don’t know why I even bother to include the GHR, other than the fact that if I don’t, other fitness pros will lambast me for leaving it out.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome exercise, if you’re in the small 2% of people who doesn’t mess it up.  Since I’ll assume that all of my readers fit that, we can discuss.

There are two ways to perform the glute-ham raise: on a machine, and without one, which is called a natural glute ham raise. The machine version is generally easier for set up—at least in the sense that you don’t need a partner for it—but executing is murderously difficult.

A few companies make decent GHRs, but the best one by far is produced by EliteFTS. If you’re considering picking one up, that’s the model I’d go with.

Most gyms don’t have a GHR machine; so, let’s talk about some modifications.  The first of these is to use a friend. I don’t do this version that often because I don’t have any friends. (Just kidding, everyone loves me.) It’s somewhat difficult to manage, though.

To perform Kneel down on some padding and have your partner secure your feet behind you. Keep your trunk upright (your back straight and in line with your hamstrings) and lower yourself to the ground as slowly as possible. If you can pull your self back up, do so. If you cannot, simply use your hands to work back into the starting position and perform another negative.

It looks like this:

If you don’t have any friends a partner, there is another variation that makes use of the lat pulldown. Essentially, you’ll be using the knee-rollers to hold your ankles in place, and perform the GHR.  This is the first version that I ever tried, and in most gyms is the one I do when traveling.

Here’s a lil’ sippy-snippet:

Looks easy? Nope.

All variations of this exercise are murderously difficult. And pretty easy to screw up.

Now, here’s it’s awesome: while in many ways this is a hamstring exercise, it still works the glutes, oddviously. Specifically, this will work what we in the biz call, “the gluteal fold,” or the glute-ham tie-in; the often saggy flap where your butt meets your leg.  Meaning that the GHR is going help your ass look awesome when you’re naked more than almost any other exercise.  Making it exceptionally important.

You’re welcome.

Closing Thoughts

Despite my tongue in cheek (I am not even gonna touch that pun) approach in this article, glute training is important, because strong glutes are important. The exercises mentioned above make you stronger, faster, and hotter.

Give them a shot, and you’ll never look back…except to look at your butt.

References:

1. Caterisano A, et al. “The effect of back squat depth on the EMG activity of 4 superficial hip and thigh muscles.” J Strength Cond Res 2002 Aug;16(3):428-32.
2. Vakos JP, et al. “Electromyographic activity of selected trunk and hip muscles during a squat lift. Effect of varying the lumbar posture.” Spine 1994 Mar 15;19(6):687-95.

Bonus Exercise – hill sprints!!!!1!1!1!1!

Yeah, hill sprints. That’s my bonus exercise for you.

Not only are these pretty much the most awesome form of cardio you can do. How do I know this?

Here’s a quick breakdown using my patented rating system:

Impact: 7
Efficacy: 9
Convenience: 10
Equipment Needed: Hill, legs
Difficulty: Varies (6-8)
Impressiveness: 9

So, basically, hill sprints are convenient, effective, and make you look awesome. They’re hard, but it’s worth it.

Also, because of the incline, the work the gluteal fold and make you bootylicious.

Walter Payton, the greatest running back of all time, did these religiously.  Whenever I’m home on Long Island for long stretches of time, I go to my old high school, and sprint the same hill my coach made us run when we were late for practice. We stopped being late partly because hill sprints make you faster. (See what I did there?)

Just for fun, here’s an awesome picture of a great ass.

I make no excuses for this gratuitous picture of Kim.

All right, folks—time to sound off.

What are YOUR favorite glute exercises? Let’s get a list going; if we get 50 comments, a new post this week!

As we wrap up this bout of muscle building content on the blog, we’re going to touch on some new stuff.

I strive to make this site a resource for all types of fitness information.  To that end, I believe that nearly every topic should be covered in an in depth way, with expertise.

Of course, I am not an expert on every facet of fitness—which means that there are things I might not be able to cover; however, I am an expert networker, and so if there is something that I can’t write about myself, I know someone who can.

It’s for that reason that I occasionally feature guest posts on my site—like today’s post.

You see, while I can’t talk about gaining muscle, I can’t talk about it in one specific way: from the perspective of a “skinny guy” or hard gainer.  I’ve never been skinny. In fact, I’ve never even been of “average” weight for my height. And most importantly, I’ve never had any trouble putting on mass.

Which means that although I can teach you how to build muscle, I can’t necessarily speak to the specific concerns of the hardgainer from a personal perspective.  So today, we’ve got someone who can.

I’d like to introduce you to Chris Smith—former hardgainer turned record-holding powerlifter and great trainer.

Chris is one of my business coaching clients who has recently been killing it: in the time since we’ve been working together, he’s started training at PEAK Performance (best gym in NYC bar none) and had his first article published on T-Nation.

All of which is to say, simply, that Chris knows his shit—and he will provide and “insiders” look into how hardgainers can put on some mass.

So, without further adieu, enter Chris.
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For some, building muscle and gaining weight is easy. We all know that guy who can just look at a weight, drink some milk and somehow build muscle **cough cough ROMAN cough cough**

Most people are not so lucky—the rest of us who have to bust our asses day in and day out just so we don’t lose weight. I should know – I was that guy.

Hell, I still am.

In fact, I have such a hard time gaining muscle that there is a specific term for me and people like me: hardgainer.  (Clever, right?)

Now, despite the prominence of this word and the millions of people claiming to be one, there is still a lot of debate over whether or not there is such a thing as a hardgainer.

For people who gain muscle easily, it can be hard to believe that someone just “can’t” gain muscle. It’s easy to swear that this is a creature befitting classification next to big foot if you are one of those guys who develop huge quads by just standing up.

Those of us who struggle to build muscle, however, feel differently; when you’ve been dealing with the unenviable situation of eating and training but never getting anywhere, it’s hard not to feel like you’re in a Sisyphean prison with your own body as acting the Warden.

I fall somewhere in the middle of this argument.

Truthfully, I used to swear that I was a hardgainer. If you asked me, I would tell you that I ate a ton of food, but I never could gain weight because my metabolism was so ridiculously high. These days, I know better: it’s not that I wasn’t trying; it’s simply that I wasn’t focusing.

You see, I’m not claiming that there are no hardgainers like some people do. I just have a different definition: in my eyes, hardgainers are skinny guys who aren’t committed to building muscle.

They are the guys who swear they are eating exorbitant amounts of food and doing all the right things in the weight room…but really aren’t. And maybe that’s not all their fault.

There are plenty of knowledgeable guys out there giving advice on how to build muscle and gain weight – and most of them really know their stuff. But how many of them have ever truly spent most of their lives as the smallest guy in the room? I have, and now I want to share with you the benefit of my experience.

The following are tips that I figured out the hard way.

Eat. More.

I can hear it already: “But I eat so much already, I can’t eat anymore!” My response is simple: no, you don’t.

Every hardgainer I’ve ever spoken to—myself included—swears he’s eating in abundance; the truth, however, is that you are usually eating frequently, but not with enough volume. The simplest example is leaving food on your plate. If you suffer from “eyes bigger than your stomach” syndrome and always have some food left over this is probably one of your problems.

Even if you aren’t leaving food on your plate chances are you weren’t putting enough there to begin with.

So your first step is simply to start eating a little more than you are already. That doesn’t mean you have to go and gorge every time you eat – just start increasing the amount you eat at every meal a little at a time.

Write Down What You Eat

For those of you who are still convinced that you are eating plenty and it’s just that evil rapid metabolism sabotaging your muscle gains this is for you. Start writing down everything you eat. With smart everything and the apps that come along these days this is the easiest thing in the world to do. I use a simple calorie counting app on my phone. It’s a good way to get an idea of the amount of calories and macronutrients you are taking in daily.

But beware! Chances are you are going to be in for a rude awakening if you do this. This simple task was what made me realize that I was chronically under-eating for weight gain. I was routinely falling hundreds of calories short of my daily goal but thought I was eating enough. If you have trouble adding pounds this is a vital step, as it will help you realize just how much you need to start eating.

There are two ways you can apply this. The first is simply to set a calorie goal and shoot for it every day. There are different formulas out there and a quick Google search will yield many. The one that I used to set a goal range was:

Bodyweight (Pounds) x 19 = Goal Calories

Simple and straightforward. Unfortunately this doesn’t take into account things like body composition and individual differences. The other method you can use requires a little more work.

You’re going to keep track of your calorie intake for 2 weeks while monitoring your weight every morning (this is where calorie counting apps come in very handy). This will give you an idea of the amount you’re eating and how it’s affecting your weight. If you are trying to gain weight but failing, you know you need to increase your calories.

If that happens you can start by adding about 250 calories a day and see how it affects your weight.

But Seriously – Eat More

This is so important it merits being mentioned twice. You could be doing the greatest mass building workouts in the world, but if you aren’t putting the nutrients into your body to recover you’ll never gain weight. You body needs calories to build muscle and if it’s not getting them all you’re doing is breaking yourself down without rebuilding. Nutrition is easily as important as training for building muscle. You can’t build a house without materials – and you can’t build muscle without food.

Squat, Press, Pull, Repeat

Now the other side of the coin: if your diet is in order and your training program sucks, you’re still not going to build muscle. Focus on the right exercises and you’re going to see a tremendous difference in your results.

As a general rule the following movements should make up the heart of your program: squats, deadlifts, standing and bench presses, pull-ups and rows.

Learn to do those correctly; they will give you the most bang for your buck and are practically guaranteed to add some mass to your frame. I will even go so far as to say that the majority of your training should be done with the barbell.

This allows you to use the most weight in the safest manner, which is essential to stimulating muscle growth. Get strong on these before you start trying to throw in lots of isolation movements and fancy exercises. I have a rule: if you can’t do 10 strict chin-ups, you shouldn’t be training “arms”.

If this is news to you then you are in for a pleasant surprise if you start to implement this. The brutal simplicity of these movements is also what makes them so effective. They train huge amount of muscle mass simultaneously and create a growth stimulus throughout the entire body.

And for the love of all that is holy: please at least break parallel when squatting.

Eat the Right Things – Prioritize Protein

This obviously ties in to the above points about eating more. If you increase your calories but aren’t getting the right macros you’re not going to get anywhere. In other words if you have been falling 500 calories short of your goal, but add those calories in as Cherry Coke, you’re doing it wrong.

You must know that you should be prioritizing protein in your diet and should have a significant protein source at every feeding and that’s a good start.

General protein intake recommendations vary, but it’s a good idea to shoot for 1.5g per pound of bodyweight at a minimum if trying to gain weight or even go as high as 2g per pound. Remember that your body builds muscle from protein. If the protein isn’t there the Arnold fairy isn’t going to magically make them appear.

Supplement Protein Before Bed

In my experience, with both clients and myself, this tip alone can help you build muscle. Why? First of all you need protein to build muscle (as mentioned above). Secondly, this is basically a meal that you wouldn’t otherwise be getting and thus is a source of a few hundred calories that otherwise wouldn’t have been there. An average protein shake has around 300 calories depending on what’s in it.

Boom! That’s 300 calories that didn’t exist in your diet before if you never did this. It’s also another 30-50g of protein. The other great thing that you might notice from drinking shakes before bed is increased recovery.

Since your body is getting loaded with nutrients right before sleeping it has plenty of stuff to repair all that damage that you do in the weight room during a crucial recovery period (sleep). So not only are you building more muscle this way, you are also better recovered for when you hit the weights again.

Commit

This may be last, but it’s actually the most important.

If you’ve always been the skinny guy with no body fat and you start trying to gain weight this is what will most likely happen: you’ll start off dedicated and probably put on a few pounds. Then the first time you step on a scale and see a weight you’ve never weighed before you will promptly shit yourself, turn into a 16 year old girl and think you’re going to get fat. You will then lose that dedication and focus on a diet that is going to get you “cut.” Do you see the problem there?

This seems to be something that people who weren’t always the smallest guy in the room don’t understand. I’m here telling you to stay the course. If you do it right, yes, you might gain a little bit of body fat but you shouldn’t end up looking like Jabba the Hut. But deep down, psychologically, when you see that scale climbing it’s going to bother you a little bit. That comes with the territory. Just remember the goal and stick with the plan. If you do notice that you’re gaining significant amounts of body fat, look back at your food log and make some changes – but keep focusing on protein for muscle. Like any goal, this requires serious mental commitment if you want to achieve it.

If you count yourself as a hardgainer, these tips should resound with you. They are things that I have used with great success over the years and learned the hard way. If you put in the work and commit yourself to a realistic goal then there is no reason you shouldn’t reach it. Good luck, now go squat. Just eat something first. And then again after.
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Chris makes some great points in the above article; while it’s just scratches the surface, I think the fact that he gives very basic information makes a point in itself: gaining muscle isn’t as complicated as you think it is.

Of course, my heart goes out to you skinny guys…which is why I am going to cover gaining muscle in my new book, being published by HarperCollins next year!

In the meantime, it’s still worth looking into some of the resources available to you, such as the Super Hero Workout or MI40.

Now, let’s hear it from YOU – what are your TOP SOURCES for muscle gaining information?

If we get just 50 Comments, tomorrow I’m going to post a brand new article on everyone’s favorite subject: ABS!

NOTE: Before we get into the thick of things, let me first just apologize.  I know you guys were expecting a ‘cool’ title like “Back to Basics” or “Big Back Attack” or some trite bullshit like that.  I don’t blame you—years of reading fitness magazines will do that.  And to be honest, naming stuff like that is kinda fun; in defense of my ego, I’m willing to say that in the past, I’ve come up with some nice ones.  This time, though, I couldn’t do it.  All the good have already been used. While I may buy into corny names, I refuse to be unoriginal.  And so, bereft of a witty pun, I decided to go with the above—which is still kind of amusing, in a snarky and ironic sort of way. It was the best I could do; so do me a favor validate it with a chuckle.  Thanks.

Okay, let’s talk training.

Whether you’re an aspiring bodybuilder hoping to see his back from the front, or an intermediate trainee looking to add some intimidating muscle, a strong, dense back is one of the hallmarks of a great body.

Aesthetically, the back has the most potential for impact:  Seen bare, its many muscles can move individually or in concert with one another, creating an effect that is part artistic tapestry, part topographical map. Seen clothed, a big back shows through any shirt, jacket or parka; a guy with prominent posterior looks big and powerful from any angle.

And for guys just lookin’ to get sexy, a well developed back is the key to achieving the v-taper associated with a healthy body.

For WOMEN, a well-developed back can help emphasis your hourglass look and create instant sexification in a strapless dress.

With that in mind, what follows is a 6-week back specialization program designed with you in mind.  Nearly every facet of both back training and specialization training was considered.  Things that were deemed unnecessary (or beyond the scope of this program) were thrown away.  What remains is the essentials: a combination of varying volume and some incredible exercises, all designed to bring you to the next level of your development.

Specialization Training Refresher

As I mentioned in my recent post on specialization training , I believe that there are a few necessary principles to follow for any program intended to rapidly increase the size of a single muscle group:

1. High Frequency – At least 3 workouts per week, preferably every other day.
2. High Weekly Volume (moderate volume each workout, though) – ~50 sets per week in various rep ranges
3. Moderate High Intensity – 90% of max weight in any rep range
4. Large Variety of Exercise Types – workouts include compound, explosive, isolation, unilateral, and ‘wacky’ or unfamiliar exercises.

When writing a program specializing a body part, I stick with the above, and normally assign 3 individual training days, rotated as frequently as possible. I prescribe such programs for short durations (3-6 weeks) and maintain other body parts with a fully body circuit performed once per week.

When prioritizing back, though, I take it a step further; with so much confounded complication going on back there it becomes necessary to be a bit more exacting.  To that end, I insist on four separate back workouts, each with its own intended goal.

“Back” Training Is Inadequate

Why so specific? Well, simply, because there is too much going on back there for it all to be considered a single muscle group. In the words, saying you’re going to train your back is like saying you’re going to train your front.

This thought addresses the uber-complicated musculature of the area itself; essentially “the back” is simply made up of too many muscles attached in too many places, doing too many things to be considered a single muscle group or be targeted with a single session.

The upper back is made up of a myriad of different muscles, most of which have multiple functions, and have various fiber make-ups.  And, as if many different fiber types weren’t annoying enough, things are further complicated by the fact that our multi-layered posterior chain is composed of muscles whose fibers run in all different directions.

While I have no desire to turn this into a lecture on posterior anatomy, a quick overview of the area is in order.

Latissimus Dorsi: Translating literally to “big back muscle,” the primary role of the lats is to make you look hyooooge in tight t-shirts.  Aside from that, the muscle serves to conduct functions such as extension, adduction, and medial rotation of the shoulder.

Teres Major:  Originating on the outer (lateral) edge of the scapula and attaching to the humerus, the Teres muscles work with the rotator cuff muscles muscles to stabilize the shoulder joint and works with the Latissimus Dorsi muscles to move the humerus posteriorly.  The teres major is heavily involved in everything from high-fives to Wii Tennis.

Rhomboids (major and minor): The rhomboids are a muscle group located deep to the latissimus dorsi that lies in between the shoulder blades. Their main role is to adduct or retract the scapula; that is, to bring them together, towards the spinal column.  I have no joke to include here.  Sorry.

Trapezius*: This is a long, trapezoid-shaped (hence the name; clever, eh?) muscle that runs down the upper section of the spinal cord, originating at the base of the skull and attaching down in the middle to lower back.  With fibers running in many directions, the traps perform several actions, which include scapular (and clavicular) elevation, scapular adduction, and scapular depression.

* For our purposes, we’re mainly going to be concerned with mid and lower traps.

Of course, this is not a complete list, and I beg the forgiveness of the anatomy geeks among you for these quite basic descriptions, but I want to keep the focus on training.  The above is enough to get us started.

Training Considerations

PLANE OF MOVEMENT: Given the sheer multitude of muscles, and the function of each, for the purposes of increasing size of your entire posterior upper body over a 6-week period of time, it is by far more effective to split your training into days primarily dedicated to one plane of movement: two days dedicated to vertical pulling and two will be dedicated to horizontal pulling.

REP RANGE:  As I mentioned above, and as I stated in my previous article, in order for a specialization program to be optimally effective, it must cover a multitude of rep ranges.  For most muscles (particularly smaller groups, like biceps or triceps), it is effective to utilize a variety of rep ranges each workout.  With larger muscle groups (especially legs and back, it isn’t the case.

For larger muscle groups, a wide intensity spread generally crosses too many borders to be maximally effective: that is, the focus of the training stimulus is lost and the results are not optimal.  By staying training within a narrower spread of reps, the training session with the Law of Repeated Efforts and generally elicit a more favorable response to the training effect.

To that end, the aforementioned training sessions will be dedicated to a particular rep range.

THE WORKOUT(S)

It is important to note that these are specialization workouts: they are intended to work the targeted body part.  They are quick, painful, and effective.  Consisting of less than 20 sets per workout, they should take you no longer than 35-40 minutes.  Get in, get out, grow.

WORKOUT ONE – Low Rep Horizontal Plane Training

A) Bent-Over Barbell Row w/ 3 Second Pause (supine grip)

Sets:  6
Reps: 3
Rest: Begin at 45seconds. Each set, add 5 seconds of rest.

Note: hold for 3 seconds at the top of the movement. What should be mentioned is that this hold will necessitate that you use weight that is probably slightly below what you would normally estimate as being your 3RM. Therefore, use your 5RM.

B) Explosive 1-Arm Bodyweight Row

Sets: 5 per arm
Reps: 6
Rest:  15 seconds between arms, 45 seconds between sets

            Note: Perform in a smith machine or power rack.

C1) ‘Wrong-Way’ Cable Rows with V-Handle
Description: These are to be done “Arnold Style” – Rather than maintain a completely upright posture, allow the weight to pull you forward a bit on the negative (you may also protract your shoulders).  On the negative, pull back with your upper back, shoulders, and generate a bit of  force with your lower back.  This allows for a much greater stretch and contraction of the traps, rhomboids, and lats—and used correctly, extreme growth.  Just be smart with the weight and don’t blow a disc.

Sets: 3
Reps: 8
Rest: 60 seconds, then move to C2

C2) Sternum Chin-Up
Description: Take an underhand grip on the pull up bar and get ready to feel silly.  Lean back as far as you can during the chin, aiming to perform a lever as you do.  That is, in the end position of the chin up, your goal is to be as horizontal as possible.

Sets: 3
Reps: 6-8
Rest: 90 Seconds, then back to C1

WORKOUT TWO – Higher Rep Vertical Plane Training

A) Mechanical Advantage Pull Up Drop Set
Description: Begin with a wide grip pull up, then narrow grip, and finish with a parallel grip. This is ONE set. Each pull-up should be performed from a dead hang, with the strictest form possible.

Sets: 1
Reps: For each phase of the drop set, terminate 1-2 reps shy of failure
Rest: 5 seconds between phases.

B) Single Arm Cable Pull Downs

Sets: 4
Reps: 10, 10, 8, 8
Rest: Zero seconds between alternations, 60 seconds between sets

NOTE: Perform 10 reps with your right arm, then 10 with your left. Without resting, perform 8 more reps with your right arm, and 8 more with your left.  That’s ONE set.  You will perform 4 sets, for a total of 54 reps per arm

C) Bent-Over Straight Arm Press Down (rope attachment)
Description:  Set an adjustable cable pulley to roughly belly-button height.  Stand about 4 feet from the pulley and bend at the waist. Your head should be just below the pulley.  From here, execute a straight-arm press down. Pause at both phases of the movement, allowing for maximum stretch and contraction.

Sets: 3
Reps: 12-15
Rest: 60-75 seconds between sets

D) Jump Pull-up
Description: Crossfit style jump pull-ups from a platform of some kind; this pull-up variant is exceptional for increasing your ability to close the gap on the last part of a pull-up ROM; also incredible for density and adding size, if used correctly. Be sure to actively pull yourself up and push yourself down from the bar; focus on flexing and squeezing the entire 30 seconds.

Sets: 2
Reps: As many as possible in 30 seconds.
Rest: 30 seconds

Note: This exercise is done for time, not reps.  Simply perform as many as possible for the given time period.

E) Mechanical Advantage Pull-up Drop Set
Description: Begin with a wide grip pull up, then narrow grip, and finish with a parallel grip. This is ONE set. Each pull-up should be performed from a dead hang, with the strictest form possible.

Sets: 1
Reps: For each phase of the drop set, go to failure.
Rest: 10 seconds between phases.

WORKOUT THREE – Higher Rep Horizontal Plane Training

A) Compound Row
Description: I first started doing this exercise about four years ago, and truth be told I thought I made it up. I called it the “Roman Row.”  Then Nick Tuminello published an article with the same exercise; evidently, he is not an arrogant bastard like me, and didn’t name it after himself. He called it the Compound Row. We’ll use his name. In any event, while this isn’t a great mass builder, it is particularly effective for increasing mind muscle connection and preparing you for maximal recruitment for the rest of the session.

Sets: 1
Reps: 15-18
Rest: 20 seconds then proceed to B

B1) Chest Supported DB Row

Sets: 3
Reps: 8-10
Rest: 30 seconds, then proceed to B2

B2) Side-to-Side Inverted Row
Description: In a Smith Machine or power cage, set a bar to about waist height. Laying underneath, take the bar in an overhand grip.  Pull yourself up and to one side, then lower down to the middle. Repeat for the other side. That’s one rep.

Sets: 3
Reps: 16 (8 per side)
Rest: 30 seconds, then return to B1.  After your last set, rest 90 seconds and proceed to C

C) Standing Cross-Body Cable Row
Description: Stand offset to a cable attachment. Pull across your body, completing a row.

Sets: 2
Reps: 10, 10, 10, 10
Rest: Zero second between arms, 90 between sets.

NOTE: Complete 10 reps for your left arm, then 10 reps for your right. Switch immediately back to your left arm, then your right again. That’s ONE set.  Rest 90 seconds and complete a second set. Rest 90 seconds then proceed to D.

D) Mechanical Advantage Barbell Row Drop Set

Description: begin with a wide spaced overhand grip; then proceed to narrow overhand and finally underhand. Begin with a weight you can lift roughly 15 times on the first phase.

Sets: 2
Reps: Work until failure on all phases
Rest: 10 seconds between phases, 140 seconds between sets.

WORKOUT FOUR – Low Rep Vertical Plane Training

A1) Snatch Grip Rack Pull
Description: In a power rack, set the pins to around thigh height.  Take hold of the bar in a snatch grip and hoist that bitch.

Sets:  5
Reps: 3-6
Rest: 45 seconds then move on to A2

Note:  Hold at the top of the movement for at least 5 seconds, or as long as possible, whichever comes first. Use straps.

A2) Alternating Single Arm Cable Pull Down
Description: Holding one side of a V-handle cable attachment in your left hand, pull down and back, squeezing the lat as hard as possible during the entire range of motion.  Slowly return the weight to the starting position, and pass the attachment off to your right hand.

Sets: 5
Reps 6-8
Rest: No rest between arms, rest 30 seconds and return to A1. After your 5^th set, rest 90 seconds and move on to B.

B) Negative Only Weighted Chin-Up

Sets: 4
Reps: 4-6
Rest: 60 seconds between sets. After your last set, rest 90 seconds and proceed to C

Note: Select a weight you can perform 1-2 concentric chins with. Do not perform the concentric, simply control yourself down over a period of 3 seconds per rep. Use a stool or bench to get back into position.

C) Explosive Pull-Up

Sets:  1
Reps:  Explosive singles till death.  Okay, extreme failure.
Rest: 2 seconds between reps.

Note:  Set yourself up under the pull up bar, hop up, and hold.  Pull yourself up explosively as fast as you possibly can.  Your goal should be to get your waist above the bar.  Control your descent only casually.  Drop to the floor, shake your arms out, rest 2 seconds, and do another.  As you fatigue, begin to use the explosion to assist the movement—that is, use the momentum from your jump towards the bar to help perform the pull-up. Repeat this until you either die, or cannot do anymore. Your call.

Full Body Workout for Maintenance

As I mentioned in the post on specialization, it doesn’t take that much to make sure you don’t lose size or strength on body part that aren’t being specialized. A full body workout once per week is enough to provide stimulus and maintain everything.

This is the workout you’re going to be doing to maintain the rest of your size and strength for all other muscle groups.  There are 6 exercises listed, but how your set the workout up is up to you.

I’ll just give three rules:

1. This workout is to be no more than 15 total sets.
2. No more than 3 sets on any single exercise
3. The reps per set should not exceed 10. (Generally, lower is better.)

That’s it.  The rest is up to you.

Here are the exercises:

Front Squat
DB Low Incline Chest Press
Romanian Deadlift
Reverse Lunges
Push Press
Plank

Here is your Plan of Attack to Get a Huge Back (sorry, couldn’t resist).  Okay, okay.  This is your schedule for the next 6 weeks.

Closing Thoughts

There you have it: a six-week specialization program that will give you the posterior development and definition, without compromising the rest of your body.

Whether you’re a guy trying to pack on size, or a woman trying to pack on sexy, after six short weeks, you’ll be ready to go.

So, let’s get YOUR thoughts on all this!

Who’s going to try it? What other specialization routines do YOU want to see on the blog next?

Let’s get 75 COMMENTS and I’ll post another awesome article!

A long time ago in a gym far, far away…Roman was a bodybuilder.

Okay, it wasn’t that long ago, and probably not that far. It was the years between 2002 and 2004, and the gym was on Long Island.  So, more accurately it was eight years ago and 30 miles away.

Still, things have changed so much that it feels like the experience of bodybuilding may as well have happened in another galaxy, on a planet where binary sunsets are a daily occurrence.

All right, enough with the melodrama.  In all seriousness, while the lifestyle of bodybuilding is extreme, and certainly different than my current one, it’s pretty awesome in it’s own way, and sometimes I miss it.

Sometimes I miss the control of it, of measuring everything, knowing how much weight you could lift on any given exercise to the quarter pound; the exactitudes that are necessary to excel.

While it was all consuming (for me, at least), and probably wouldn’t fit well with my current life, sometimes I do miss it.

Right now is one of those times.

You see, as I write this post, I am sitting in an airport, waiting to board a flight that will take me away from Columbus, Ohio and the Arnold Sports Festival, where I’ve just spent the weekend wandering around in sheer awe of the spectacle.

Formerly known as simply, The Arnold Classic, ASF is a yearly event that was originally made up of just a bodybuilding competition. Well, not “just” a bodybuilding competition—a big one, second only to the Mr. Olympia in both size and prestige.

Now entering it’s 24^th year, the Festival (or, “the Circus,” as I’ve heard it called) is comprised of everything from bikini competitions and martial arts bouts to strongman events and power lifting meets, all surrounded by hundreds of booths (collectively known as “the Expo”), each the representative of a nutrition or equipment company, and each employing a slew of gorgeous fitness models giving out samples.

Not a bad place to be, and not hard to see why “Circus” might be a good description.

Still, however, the Main Event is the bodybuilding competition, and the top of the top come to step on stage. This year, that included my buddy Ben Pakulski, who I met in Tampa a few months back. Ben took 4th, which is a huge accomplishment for his first time at the Arnold.

This was my first year at the Classic, and, truth be told, the first time I’ve attended a bodybuilding event since I did my last show in May of 2004.

As I start thinking about the guys who compete, as well as my own history, I’m starting to get a familiar itch: a longing not only for the thrill of competition (both against myself and others), the strange curiosity to see just how much muscle I could pack on my frame, and the general desire to dedicate myself to a specific physical goal and pursue it with ardent determination.

I’m feeling the itch, and while I don’t know that I’ll explore by competing or going on a muscle-gaining spree, I DO want to explore it somewhat academically, by going over some of my bodybuilding based routines with you.

And so, if you’ll be patient enough to bear with me on this little trip through memory lane, I think you will not only get to know me better, but perhaps learn a but about training. At the very least, you’ll get a workout out of it!

Roman the Bodybuilder: Stats, Lifts and History

I wasn’t always a bodybuilder.  I wasn’t even always fit.  If you know my history, or were kind enough to read my about page, you know that I spent most of my adolescent life a bit overweight. Never super-fat, but never lean.

I’m not sure when I started thinking myself as a bodybuilder (or when I stopped, for that matter), but I do know that after maintaining a lean and athletic (read: small) frame of 160-165 for the first 7 or 8 months following my initial weight loss, I wanted to pack some mass on.

Essentially, I wanted to look like I worked out when I had my clothes on, instead of only when I was walking around shirtless.

And so, around the time I hit my 20^th birthday, I started trying to pack on as much mass as possible, while staying lean.  I did a lot of the bulk-and-cut type approach, but I never bulked so much that I got above 12 or 13%, and never cut enough to lose muscle.

In the first 6-month block, I went from about 165 to 190, then dieted back to 185; essentially I put on about 20 pounds of quality mass. This seems insane to some, because it was about 3+ pounds of muscle per month.

Surprisingly, this was not that difficult for me; perhaps because my body was primed for growth, or perhaps because 185 was still 15 pounds lower than my heaviest weight when I was a chubster. It’s also worth mentioning that as a mesomorph, I tend to put muscle on easily.  And, of course, eating enough calories was never a challenge for me.

In a very strange way, the first six months were easy.

The second six were not. Instead of gaining another 15 pounds, I gained 5.

By the time I was 21, I was walking around at a pretty lean 190, and decided that this was a “good start.”

I did a body transformation contest for T-Nation, trying to come in both pretty big and pretty lean, while mastering my particular training and nutrition theories. Here’s what I looked like in the middle of that contest.

Some time after this transformation, I decided to try my hand at competition.

Now, I won’t bore you with the rest of the story, but for the next two years, I threw myself into gaining mass and getting lean.

I went back and forth a lot, because I was doing bulk/cut. For my first contest (of the three I competed in), I dieted too hard and came in at about 188, very lean but just a bit smaller than I would have liked.

At my heaviest, I was tipping the scales at 214 pounds with more body fat than I was comfortable.  From there, I dieted down to what I would consider my peak shape as a bodybuilder: 203 pounds at about 7% body fat.

I wish I had more pictures to show you, but I lost nearly everything in a computer crash in May of 2010, and this picture just happened to be one that I had from an article I wrote.  I will try to dig in and find a few more.

As for some lifts, during this time, I was also close to my strongest, and was training the Big Three very consistently.

For those interested, my best weights ever were:

• Bench Press: 365 for 2 reps
• Squat: Parallel with 525 for 4 reps, Ass-to-Grass with 315ish for 8
• Deadlift: 660 for 3 reps (there’s a video of this floating around…either Joel or Eric Cressey may have it)

FULL DISCLOSURE TIME: I recently posted the above picture on my Facebook page, and one person in particular was absolutely insisting that I used steroids to achieve the physique the shot.

To that, I’ll say honestly that while I have considered steroid use, as of now, I have not used them. (This may change as I age, but I have no intentions of using for performance or physique enhancement).

Personally, I am not against steroids, in the same way that I’m not against drinking or drug use: whatever you put into your body is your business.

All of that said, I DID use something called “Pro-Hormones.”  Pro-hormones (or PHs) are substances that exert an anabolic effect in the body, either through the conversion of or the potentiation of existing hormones.

Meaning that the substance either converts to, for example, testosterone (or something similar) once it’s in your body OR increases your own production of it.

The PH I used was produced by Biotest (parent company of T-Nation), and called “Mag-10.” A combination of 4-AD and 1-AE, Mag-10 was available at GNC or the like for about 75 bucks, and designed for use in two-week blocks.

I used it on two occasions; once to gain some mass (going from 201 to 209), and another time to hold to muscle when I was dieting down for a shoot (going from 198 to 188 or so and not losing muscle).

This may or may not negate my “natural” status in your eyes, but that’s a decision for you to make.  I’m pretty open about stuff like this, and I don’t credit more than 1% of my success to stuff like that.

Anyway, that’s my general history; I make mention of it simply to diffuse any speculation before it starts, and, again, because I see no drawback to being honest.  Let’s move on to some training information.

Training Schedule (and a Workout)

It would be really hard to give you a complete breakdown of how I set up my training, because it varied so much throughout the year. I often set up my muscle gaining programs into four phases, each lasting four weeks.

That would look something like this:

• PHASE 1 – Weeks 1-4: Full Body Training (3-4 times per week)
• PHASE 2 – Weeks 5-8: Upper/Lower Split (3-4 times per week)
• PHASE 3 – Weeks 9-12: Body Part Split (4 times per week)
• PHASE 4 – Weeks 13-16: Specialization Program (varies based on body part)

I have talked about full body workouts ad nauseam on this blog, and while upper lower splits are fun, since this is a bodybuilding blog, I’d like to talk about how I set up the training most normally associated with that: split routines. (Next week I’ll talk about specialization programs).

Here is the schedule I used for the PHASE THREE of most of my muscle gaining programs.

SCHEDULE

Monday AM: Chest
Monday PM: Biceps

Tuesday AM: Quads
Tuesday PM: Shoulders

Wednesday AM: OFF
Wednesday PM: Forearms (I know, how lame to have a forearm workout. But it’s a weak part and tried to bring them up) and some extra medial delt work.

Thursday AM: Back
Thursday PM: Triceps

Friday AM: Hamstrings
Friday PM: OFF

Saturday AM: Calves

Sunday: OFF

EXPLANATION OF SCHEDULING

Now, you’ll notice on most days, I was training twice; once in the morning and once in the evening. (Usually, 11AM and 7PM.) I do NOT think two-a-days are necessary for muscle growth, and I think this program would had worked just as well if I combined the AM/PM workouts into a single session.

However, you need to keep in mind that I was training full time, and in gym literally 12-14 hours per day, so it was actually more convenient to train multiple times per day. Instead of a single 90+ minute training session, I had two shorter ones of 30-45 minutes each.

This was better for me in terms of scheduling around my clients, for one thing. For another, I have always preferred shorter workouts, as I find that I get distracted after the 60-minute mark and the last part of my workout is pretty useless.

A NOTE ON MUSCLE PAIRINGS

I never subscribed to the idea that chest and triceps (or back and biceps) should be trained together.  In fact, it seems absolutely silly to me.  In that set up, assuming you’re training intelligently, you’ll do all your chest work. Smart. However, your triceps are going to take a beating from all the pressing in your chest workout.  Meaning that the triceps portion of your chest/tri workout is compromised before you do a single rep; you’ll have to use lighter weight, and that can be a problem.

In my set up, after my chest workout, I hit biceps. They are completely fresh and I can get a great workout in 30-40 minutes.

Then, when I hit back and triceps on Thursday, my chest and biceps will get hit again (to a lesser extent) if I’m using compound exercises. This means that I’m getting the same weekly volume as in a chest/tri set up, but have increased frequency and intensity.  Overall, I feel it leads to better gains.

WORKOUT

I want to give you as much value as possible, while also making this sort of reflective piece for myself; so rather than just giving a workout, I’m giving you my workout, which will include everything from sets and reps to the actual weights I used.

Regarding those weights, keep in mind that this workout is taken from my training journal when I was in strength/bodybuilding mode. While I was never the strongest guy in the world, some of these are numbers I can no longer hit, because I don’t train for these things specifically anymore.  Perhaps I’ll try this workout sometime soon and let you know my weights and performance.

Monday Morning (11AM)
CHEST

A) High Incline Barbell Bench Press

Sets: 3
Reps: 6/15/8
Weight: 225/155/185

B1) Low Incline DB Bench Press

Sets: 5
Reps: 15/15/15/15/13 (almost made it!)
Weight: 65lb dumbbells

 B2) Wide Grip Pull-Up (to near failure)

Sets: 5
Reps: 17/13/10/10/9
Weight: bodyweight

 C) Flat Barbell Bench Press

Sets: 2
Reps: 8/8
Weight: 275

D) Machine Fly

Sets: 2 (one regular set, one set with a drop set)
Reps: 15, 13–>8
Weight: 145

[[ROMAN’S NOTES]] Looking at this chest workout many years later, a few things stand out.  The first thing I notice is the position of the flat barbell bench press—it’s my third chest exercise, and my fourth overall. I did just two sets, and not for many reps; just reinforces that even at that point, I didn’t consider the bench press a very good mass builder, at least not for symmetry.  (I stated this in this blog post.) I probably only included it to keep my strength up.

I have no idea why I included the wide-grip pull up, but I suppose it was just to break up the monotony. On the other hand, at that point I could have been prioritizing the movement (not noted in my log), and just trying to increase efficiency. In any case, I’m impressed with the fact that I did so many.  I can bang out 18 wide grip now, but I think my drop off in subsequent sets would be much greater than in the workout above.

You’ll also notice that my total volume isn’t super high. I only do a total of 12 sets for chest (13 if you count the second part of the drop set as it’s own set). While this is fair amount, most bodybuilders do 18+ sets. However, keep in mind the structure of my schedule—on Thursday, I’d be working back and triceps, with the triceps portion of the workout being comprised of stuff like dips and close grip bench press, which would hit chest as well; again, similar weekly volume, just greater frequency.

Finally, some things I’d change: I would probably include squeeze presses in there to alternate with the barbell bench press. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with the workout.

Monday Evening (7PM)
BICEPS

A) V-Handle Chin-Up

Sets: 4
Reps: 8/8/8/8
Weight: bodyweight +35lb dumbbell

B1) Straight Bar Curl

Sets: 2
Reps: 6/12
Weight: 145/110

B2) EZ Bar Curl w 3-second pause midway (full squeeze)

Sets: 2
Reps: 15/8
Weight: 80/100

C) Nautilus Machine Curl

Sets: 1
Reps: 10
Weight: 115

D) DB Incline Hammer Curl

Sets: 2
Reps: 10
Weight: 40lb dumbbells

[[ROMAN’S NOTES]] I know, I know. You’re probably thinking, “geeze, Roman! Not only did you do curlz 4 ur beecepz, you did so many variations! Y u such a bro, BRO?”  Or something like that. Yes, I did a lot of curl variations. If you just know, I just happen to love bicep curls, and my arms always grew very well from them.

Of course, I started the workout with a big compound movement, the V-handle chin-up, which I still think a great start.

What jumps out most about this workout is how strong I was, in terms of both the amount of weight I lifted and the number of reps I lifted it for.  As an example, hitting a straight bar curl for 6 reps is, looking back, just a crap-ton of weight. I’d be lucky if I could do that for even one rep now.

In terms of volume, I’ve got 11 sets and am hitting everything from 6 to 15 reps; not bad for a biceps session, especially considering that I’d have back to come later in the week. The set up seems fine to me overall, but if I were to design this workout now, I would probably include drag curls to get some scapular retraction, and do about 50% of the exercises with Fat Gripz to get some forearm work.

That’s what my typical “Phase Three” workout looked when I was a bodybuilder—which is why, by the way, Phase Three of the Super Hero Workout is not only “bodybuilder-y” in terms of the set up, but also uses a body part split like the one above: it’s always worked for my clients and myself.

Farewell to Arms: Transitioning Away From Bodybuilding

Of course, as you know, I wasn’t a bodybuilder for too long. I hit my peak at about 24 (pictured above), and after just 3 contests decided I didn’t really find it fulfilling. I knew I didn’t really have the desire to be a pro, and so I started looking at other things.

Eventually I got into fitness and under modeling, which required that I lose a bit of size. For those shoots, I would be anywhere from 175 to 193, with 190 being my “perfect” size.

Losing the mass wasn’t that difficult in terms of actually doing it (just required eating less, not training any differently, but took a while.

Here’s a shot of me in transition from bodybuilder to fitness model.

Photo Credit: Eric Jacobson

Firstly, how freakin’ hilarious is that cheesey grin on my face? Clearly, my ambition was to get a job in a Colgate commercial.

Anyway, in terms of my physique, you can see that while I’m not as big as I was in the BBing shot, I’m still holding a lot of mass. I think I weighed in at about 198 here. In particular, my arms look smaller, especially in relation to both my chest and my lats.  My chest is still beefy here, most especially at the shoulder tie-in. My lats are both thick and wide, which is great for bodybuilding but not so much for modeling (especially in clothing).

Eventually I would get smaller overall, and that led to some other stuff, but that’s another blog altogether.

Closing Thoughts

As I get ready to board this plane and fly away from the Circus of Bodybuilding, I realize that I’m not flying away from the itch. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to be a bodybuilder, but will always appreciate the dedication required for success, and value the lessons learned from the process. While I haven’t done one in a long while, I love workouts like the one above. And, reading it now, I’m pretty tempted to train like this for a few weeks and see where it takes me.

SO!

That’s the abridged version of my bodybuilding journey.  I want to hear YOUR thoughts on all this!

Did you like me better as a model? A builder? Should I gain some mass?  Hell, you can even just make fun of my pictures.

TRY THE WORKOUT and let me know your thoughts!

If we get 60 COMMENTS, I’ll post about Phase 4…specialization training (including a full program)!

But, not everyone is focused on fat loss all the time; sometimes, we’d like to know how to build a bit of mass, or just improve the look of a body part without increasing size–even if we don’t have a lot of time.

And this is never more true than when it comes to arms.

Guys, have you ever looked at a guy with really big biceps and thought, “wow, he must have great genetics”?

Ladies, have you ever looked a woman with toned arms and thought, “completely natural, she doesn’t work out?”

I’m guessing no.

That’s because, unlike many other body parts, arms aren’t something that people view as natural: they’re something we consider the product of hard work and time under the iron.

I believe anyone can have really great arms, even if they don’t really train correctly (as evidenced by the guy with big guns and tiny legs).

However, if you DO train correctly and have a well proportioned body, a good set of arms can be the cherry on the sundae—and, thankfully, it’s really not hard to do.

That’s true even if you have less than 20 minutes to hit the gym, especially if you have the right plan.  This plan—because with this 15-minute arms workout, you’ll be able to get in, train your arms, and get out in less time than it probably takes you to drive to the gym.

If you’re looking to make the most of your week, this is a great workout to throw in at the end of a leg session, or sprints, or even on a planned off day.

The workout consists of three supersets for your arms; each intended to hit the muscles differently, recruiting different muscle fibers and prioritizing different functional aspects of each of the muscles.  By alternating exercises for biceps and triceps, you manage time and rest periods more efficiently.

Workout

Superset 1 – Big, Heavy Compound Movements.  These exercises involve multiple joints and muscles, so you’ll be strongest here. The heavy weight force you to recruit fast twitch muscle fibers; these recover quickly, so rest is kept brief.

Perform 5 sets of 5 reps using heavy weight, resting 30-45 seconds between exercises.  After your last superset, rest 30 seconds and move to superset B.

A1) Neutral Grip Chin-Up
Sets: 5
Reps: 5

A2) Neutral Grip Floor Press
Sets: 5
Reps: 5

Superset 2 – “Moderate” Compound Movements.  These exercises are more isolation based, but still recruit other muscles.   In this case, in addition to hitting your bis and tris, both of these will hit your shoulders and traps, helping you beef those up as well.

Perform 4 sets of 8 reps for each exercise, alternating with only 10 seconds of rest in between.  After your last superset, proceed immediately to superset C.

B1) Barbell Drag Curl
Sets: 4
Reps: 8

B2) Dips
Sets: 4
Reps: 8

Superset 3 – High-rep isolation movements. This last superset is going to be as close to isolation as you can get while still providing maximum muscle building variety.  Both movements work the target muscles intensely; however, they also put a lot of mechanical stress on the muscles of the forearms.  This superset will help complete the look of you arms by developing the lower arm and strengthening the grip.

Perform 2 sets of 15 reps for each exercise, alternating with 20-30 seconds of rest in between.  After your last superset, proceed to the mirror and flex for 2-3 minutes.

C1) Zottman Curls (dumbbell)
Sets: 2
Reps: 12-15

C2) Reverse Grip Overhead Triceps Extensions (barbell or cable)
Sets: 2
Reps: 12-15

A nice set of arms looks good on anyone. It helps the guys look stronger and the girls look sexier. And, of course, the other way around.

Great guns come with a price: time and energy; thankfully, with the right set up, you can minimize your investment, and still see maximum results.

So!

I want to end with a controversial question: what do you think is the BEST overall exercise for biceps–and then for triceps!

Leave your responses below…60 COMMENTS and we get another workout this week!

It’s impossible not to notice trends in the fitness world.

The majority of these—like the shake weight, for example—last for a year or so and then are either forgotten or shoved underneath the bed next to the dust balls and discarded dirty underwear.

But some trends are beneficial—they work so well that they become staples in the training programs of thousands of lifters.

Take weight-training circuits, which I’m very fond of for fat loss.  These are becoming so popular that now we’ve got a term for them—we call this metabolic resistance training.

Essentially, MRT is training with weights in a way that challenges you metabolically, mainly through the use of circuits.

This is so prevalent that now we’ve got subdivisions of MRT, which are becoming equally trendy. And one of these types of MRT is complexes, which are incredible for fat-loss.

I love complexes so much that I included them as part of the training protocol in my two latest programs, the Super Hero Workout and Fat Loss Forever. When programmed properly, they have the potential to strip off fat faster than nearly any other protocol. (When half-assed or shoddily constructed they…well, don’t.)

And today, I’m going to teach you how to build them.  That’s right: This article will teach you how to set up your own advanced complexes to burn the most fat without screwing up and hurting yourself.

NOTE: For those who own SHW or FLF, this article is perfect—it’ll allow you to modify the existing workouts, and write your own allowing you some variance in depth in the programming.  For those who don’t have either of those programs…once you design some complexes, you’ll probably buy them =)

Wait…

What’s a Complex?

Ah, yes, 0f course.  Some of you might now know what these are—so let’s cover the basics.

It’s pretty straightforward: cycle through a series of exercises without putting the bar down, transitioning smoothly from movement to movement, and performing all the assigned reps on one exercise before moving to the next.

Personally, I’ve always it’s a pretty basic concept, and that great complex design would be common sense…however, I was recently proven wrong.

I was in the gym and saw a student athlete muscle his way through what I can only assume was his version of a home-brew complex. (And by that, I mean he would do a bunch of reps on one exercise, and then a bunch on another, with no real thought to the order.)

Despite the great examples that can be found, I still see people absolutely ruining themselves in the gym.

Here’s the issue.

Efficacy vs. Expediency

When looking at complexes, and what makes one “good” or “bad,” it’s important to keep in mind the goal: to create fast-paced, interval-type weight training workouts designed for fat-loss. This is a good thing, and truth be told, these type of workouts make up a good part of my clients’ programming for fat-loss.

Overall, the idea is to do as much work as possible in the shortest period of time, focusing on training speed and density.

However, when people randomly throw exercises together to create a complex, they’re often not really paying attention to anything other than the idea of complexes. They’re too focused on doing more work in less time to lose fat and haven’t even considered if the exercises they picked were effective.

Let’s say you have a guy doing the following complex:

• Deadlift
• Power Clean
• Front Squat
• Overhead Press

He’s doing a lot of big movements, but is he really getting much out of some of them? Hopefully the deadlift is his strongest movement, but he can’t really use a weight that’s challenging since he’s limited by the overhead press, which is undoubtedly weaker.

In terms of “doing a lot of stuff” in not a lot of time, this guy is on point. He’s very expedient. But he’s missing out on a lot since the complex isn’t very deep in terms of efficacy. It’s simply effective as it could be.

But if this guy used a different set up, he could work with a weight that’s challenging for all parts of the complex and would get significantly better results.

Complexes 2.0

Here’s where a lot of coaches and I part ways. Many trainers who prescribe complexes are OK with the notion that your weakest exercise limits your strongest one. I consider it a limitation of basic complex design that can be completely eliminated with a bit of forethought and some ingenuity.

Going back to the example above, the weight is incredibly light for our guy to deadlift, but perfect for the overhead press.

Popular training literature suggests that we shouldn’t care about that, since the complex is not intended to challenge you in the same way that traditional weight training is. That is, an overly light deadlift is of no concern, because we are deadlifting just to lose fat.

I’m calling bullshit.

Instead, what if we did twice as many deadlifts as overhead presses or only used exercises where the weight was appropriate for the same number of reps on each?

What I’m about to show you aren’t regular complexes. They’re advanced. Or as I like to call them, Complexes 2.0—they are designed according to specific rules in my system, and that system makes them more effective.

But first, let’s look at some of the problems with current complexes.

1. IMPROPER EXERCISE ORDER.  I can’t stress enough the importance of properly ordering exercises for maximizing the effectiveness of your complexes. Throwing presses, cleans, squats and deads together in any haphazard order is silly.
2. TOO MUCH FOCUS ON UNIFORMITY OF REPS.  I have no idea where it came from, but there seems to be some unwritten rule that when you perform a complex, you need to do the same number of reps for each exercise. Sure, it’s one way to do it, but it’s only effective if that same weight is equally challenging on all of the selected exercises.To be clear, I use this method in the complexes in my mass-market programs—unless I actually know an individual and their strength levels, I can’t design a more advanced complex for them (you’ll see why below).  This is a good method, but it can be made better.
3. IMPROPER EXERCISE SELECTION It’s always going to make for a more effective workout if the weight be equally challenging on all exercises. So if you’re not going with a variable rep method like I mentioned above, it’s better to select exercises that require an equal level of intensity to perform.

Roman’s Rules

for Designing Complexes

Rule 1: When Arranging Exercises, “High Skill” Exercises Come First.

Exercises should be performed in a descending order from the most demanding to the least demanding. I mean, why the hell would you put a hang clean in the middle of your complex? Also, by “demanding” I don’t just mean the hardest exercises. I mean those requiring the highest level of technical proficiency.

High skill exercises include the Full Clean, Full Snatch, High Pull From the Floor, and Overhead Squat.

Moderate skill exercises include the Hang Clean, Hang Snatch, High Pull From the Hang, Power Clean, Power Snatch, Push Press, Deadlift, and Front Squat.

Low skill exercises include the Bent-over Row, Overhead Press, Lunge Variations, Back Squat, and Dumbbell Squat.

Rule 2: Use a Non-competing Exercise Order.

Non-competing exercises are those that don’t rely on the same muscles. The benefit of this protocol is simple: while one group is working, the others are resting. Given that complexes work with series of muscle groups at once, don’t get too hung up on specifics here. Generally, try to alternate a pushing exercise with a pulling exercise, or an upper body movement with a lower body one.

Rule 3: Don’t Select a Weight Heavier than Your 10RM on Your Weakest Exercise

This is generally in place for beginners who haven’t done complexes before. I believe that complexes should be short. The entire draw is that they’re brutal but brief. By imposing a 10RM weight limit based on our weakest exercise in a given complex, we ensure that the complex will generally stay in the area of 6-8 reps, which I believe is the most effective range.  And, for noobz, allows for form to stay tight.

Methods of Complex Execution

Given everything I’ve told you about the right and wrong way to set up complexes, it seems reasonable that there are some contradictory ideas, especially if you’re used to the “old method” of just doing random exercises in a random order for a pre-set number of reps.

Instead, here are two advanced methods for extreme masochists looking for extreme fat-loss.

REP-BASED METHOD: Select exercises you can do for roughly the same number of reps with a given weight. Assume you want to do complexes with roughly 5-6 reps. Choose a series of exercises that you can do for roughly 12 reps (not your 12RM) with the same weight, and set up your complex according to the rules.

WEIGHT-BASED METHOD: Select the exercises you want to perform in the complex as based on the above rules. Then, test your absolute max number of reps on each exercise. For the complex, do 50 to 60 percent of your max number of reps for each exercise. In this way, you might get a complex that requires you to do six overhead presses followed by 12 front squats followed by eight bent-over rows.

Both of these methods are highly effective. Here are a few examples to get you started.

Sample Complex 1 — The Rep-Based Method

Here’s a complex I’ve been using for both my athletes and myself. (I’ll use myself as an example.)

I selected exercises I’m about equally strong on, could do for 12-15 reps, and chose a weight of 175 pounds. For me, those exercises were:

Power Clean (can normally get 15 reps without a problem…but I don’t do it often. Because it sucks.)
Front Squat (15+ reps for multiple sets)
Bent Row (12 with perfect form, usually for 5 sets)
Push Press (12 but the last rep is a struggle)
Stiffy Leggy Deady Lifty (normally can do multiple sets of 15-20)

It’s only five exercises, but I’m using the same fairly heavy weight for each. Now, I’m not the strongest guy in the world, but for me, this was absolutely brutal.

Note the order of exercises: I started with the one that required the most technical skill. From there, I alternated non-competing muscles. Generally I go upper/lower, but in the case of moving from the bent-over row to the push press, it’s obviously just moving from a pulling exercise to a pressing one.

In terms of number of reps, I normally aim for about six to start.  I’ll do up to six rounds of this, with 90-120 or so seconds of rest in between.  This is pretty basic.

However, we’ve done all sorts of fun variations at my gym including:

• Descending pyramids (6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1) with 45-75 seconds rest in between
• Descending-Ascending Pyramids (4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4). Rest periods are 90s, 60s, 45s, 20s, 20s, 45s, 60s

Keep in mind there are dozens of ways to set up your rep protocol.

Sample Complex 2 — The Weight-Method

This is a complex designed for one of my female soccer players. Lauren is dedicated, strong, and never complains—the kind of client that makes me love my job.

For her complex, we set the weight at 55 pounds and pre-tested her maxes for the following exercises:

Here’s how we set it up:

In this example, Lauren is obviously weakest in the bent-over row. If we were to follow normal complex protocol, we’d just do the same number of reps for each exercise, most likely five reps.

But in this case, she could do nearly twice that number of reps on almost every other exercise. Sure, the old method would still be moderately effective for fat loss, but with these adjustments we have optimized it.

Instead of being limited by her weakest exercise, we have set things up in a way that challenges Lauren supremely on every part of the complex.

Rather than focus on arbitrary prescriptions for reps, we allow for a little leeway and have to think a bit more during the complex. It’s harder, more involved and infinitely more effective.

Finally, once again, please note the order of the exercises: we start with a highly technical exercise (Full Snatch) and then proceed to work non-competing body parts. This allows Lauren to recover faster and continue to work harder. Overall, the entire complex becomes more efficient.

NOTE: if you’re going to go with this method, it’s important to mimic and measure “game time conditions.”  That is, test your maxes for each exercise in the order you’ll do them in the complex.

Take Lauren for example: maxes were tested in the exact order of the complex, with 3 minutes of rest in between; so, while she can obviously get more than 17 reps on the back squat with 55 pounds under normal circumstances, after she’d done snatches (descending into the bottom of a squat) and reverse lunges, her legs were a bit tired.

Closing Thoughts

Sure, you can probably drop a good deal of fat with “regular” complexes; after all, they do force you to do a lot of work in little time.

However, if you want to take your fat loss to the next level or challenge yourself in a whole new way, why settle for just expediency?

Instead of just tossing a barbell around, put in a few minutes of planning, follow the rules and methods described above and make your complexes both expedient and effective.

Okay guys, time to sound off–what’s YOUR favorite complex?  If we get 60 comments, I’ll be back tomorrow with another training post!

In the last article about intermittent fasting, I gave you a brief primer on the practice.  In that article, we covered a definition of IF, as well as some of the general aspects of practice that are consistent along various types of IF.

To briefly summarize, let’s look at what IF is – essentially, abstaining from food for a predetermined period of time, ranging from as little as 16 hours to as long as 36 hours (sometimes longer, just not generally in practices in the fitness industry).

The benefits of IF vary from hormonal management to caloric reduction and decreased hunger, and which benefits are prioritized will be dependent on which “type” of IF you use.

In this article, I’ll give you a complete analysis of the most popular IF styles currently discussed in the fitness world, benefits and drawbacks, as well as my own personal experience.

Given that the most obvious difference between each of these methods is the length of the fasting period, that is how I’ve organized them; below, you will find each listed from longest fast to shortest.

Got it?

Great.  Let’s get going.

Feast/Fast

SUMMARY: The feast/fast model, which I’ve been using consistently for close to 8 years, is my own small contribution to the fasting community, although its inception had nothing to do with the benefits of fasting.

Some time around 2004, I noticed that while I was getting a ton of benefit from cheat days in terms of fat loss and mental reprieve, the “digestive aftermath” wasn’t pleasant.  If I cheated on a Sunday, I would pay for it Monday in terms of intestinal distress.  Not only would I be in the bathroom more than I wanted, but my stomach would hurt and eating was a huge chore.

I had come from the old school bodybuilding mentality of, “if you fall off the wagon, get right back on, immediately.” The old way of thinking essentially stated that even if you had a cheat meal/cheat day, if you didn’t go back to your regularly scheduled meals, you’d do more harm than good.  In my case, this meant a bowl of oatmeal and several eggs first thing in the morning.  After a night of eating pasta, ice cream, brownies and steak (yes, all at once), this last thing I wanted to do first thing in the morning was eat.

After some time, I discarded the bodybuilding “rules” and started pushing my first meal of the day back by a few hours…then a few more.  Eventually, I stopped eating altogether.

Any my results got even better.

This eventually worked its way into the way I practiced Cheat Your Way Thin, and, from there, the Xtreme Fat Loss Diet.

I’ve written about this both here and here, so let’s move one.

BENEFITS: When I started looking into fasting (mainly to justify my not-eating), I came across a few different reasons why the feast/fast worked so well; some had to do with fasting, obviously, but there is some stuff that has to do specifically with the cheat day as well.

Like any style of fasting, removing food for an extended period of time can lead to fat loss, because it often leads to lower caloric intake. Pretty simple.

However, the reason this works well is because it’s coming on the heels of a cheat day.  Again, I’ve written about this before, so I’ll be brief.

The abridged version: when you’re dieting, leptin levels drop, which slows down fat loss. When you overfeed (cheat), leptin levels get bumped back up, increasing rate of fat loss.  Putting a fast fat after a cheat, therefore, does two things:

1. Prevents any fat gain from the caloric spillover of eating, oh, I dunno, 14,000 calories worth of ice cream by creating an immediate deficit.
2. Elevated leptin levels from the cheat prevent stagnated fat loss, allowing the hormonal benefit from the fast (explained HERE) to proceed uninterrupted.

More than anything, this is just a practical approach, and was created to alleviate discomfort. I started using this method before looking into science of any kind; it just happened to work.

DRAWBACKS:  There are a few here.

There first is that in order for this to be applicable, you have to have a cheat day—can’t exactly do a feast/fast without the feast.  Some people don’t like cheat days (I know, weird, right?). I made a pretty compelling argument for the inclusion of cheat days here, but if you don’t like them, you don’t have to use them.

From there, the main drawback is that you’re really looking at a 32-36-hour fasting period.  If your last meal on your cheat day is before bed (assume 10PM) on Sunday, and you don’t eat at all on Monday, your first meal is breakfast Tuesday morning.  For a number of people, this has proved to be a pretty difficult thing to do.

I believe that with some practice just about anyone can abstain from food for an extended period of time with little discomfort, but for a lot of people, the idea of going without food for a day and a half is a bleak proposition.

For these people, I let them keep the training wheels on for a few weeks: I’ll allow people a small dinner on Monday night, to take the edge off of the hunger.  This won’t detract from any of the hormonal stuff, it just adds in some calories where there weren’t any before.

HOW (AND WHEN) I USE FEAST/FAST: I am a big fan of cheat days, so I use this method nearly every week.  I like my cheat days to coincide with Sundays—because, call me crazy, but I like wings and nachos when I watch football.

This means that Mondays, I don’t eat AT ALL. I think this is a good fit for most people – Monday happens to be the busiest day for most people (myself included), and so if ever there was a time where it helped to free up a few hours by not eating, this is it.  Also, since people are busier, they tend not to realize they’re hungry.  Overall, this is a fantastic combo that works very well for most people.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:  Again, this is my method, so I can’t really be objective here, but it’s worked well for me in the past, and all of my clients who have tried it.

24-Hour Fast (aka Eat-Stop-Eat)

SUMMARY:  A 24-hour fasting period is essentially what it sounds like: if your last meal is at 8pm on Monday, then you simply do not eat again (at all) until Tuesday at 8pm.  This can be done 1-3 times per week, with 2 being the most common iteration.

It’s impossible to talk about 24-Hour fasts without talking about Brad Pilon and his book Eat-Stop-Eat, which is the definitive book on this style of fasting.  ESE has been around for several years, but Brad continues to publish updated versions with more science whenever he can.  It’s a well-researched book that also happens to be well-written.

Brad was one of the first people talking about IF, and his approach to it is one of “lifestyle, not diet.”  Brad discussed much of this in an interview I did with him, which you can read here.

BENEFITS: The 24-hour fast works well for a number of reasons. The first of these is that it is easily adaptable to any lifestyle, and it’s very hard to screw up.  The only rule is “don’t eat” for 24 hours.  As mentioned above, this is much easier than a 36 hour fast, especially for those new to it.

Secondly, like most methods of fasting, the abstinence from caloric intake for large periods of time is going to be a large part of the reason for success.

For example, if you generally eat 2,000 calories every day, that’s 14,000 calories over the course of a week.

If you remove two of those days, you’re eating 4,000 calories less.  Without any other changes to your lifestyle, you’d be on pace for over a pound of fat per week. Even if you “compensate” and eat a little more on the days you’re not fasting, you are still going to wind up with a fairly substantial caloric deficit.  Add in some exercise, and it’s not hard to see consistent weight loss.

Caloric manipulation aside, this style of fasting works incredibly well because of the affect that fasting has on your overall hormonal environment.

More specifically, when we talk about fasting, we’re really going to talk about two hormones: insulin and growth hormone.

With regard to insulin, it seems that the less often you eat, the less often you raise insulin levels.  This is not surprising, obviously.  It’s even less surprising that this would lead to fat loss, since we know that chronically elevated insulin levels make it very difficult to lose fat.

Therefore, if you’re eating less often, you’re going to have less insulin issues—even if you’re eating the same foods in the same amounts.  (This, by way, is a pretty strong argument against the popular frequent feeding method of 5-6 meals per day).  However, while fasting and infrequent feeding helps to control insulin and keep it low, that’s not enough to stimulate fat loss…unless growth hormone is present.

That is, if insulin AND growth hormone are both low, there isn’t a huge effect on fat loss.  And so, while insulin management is important, growth hormone management is even more important.

Which brings us to the very predictable point: The effect of fasting on growth hormone is incredibly important.

Your body releases GH pretty consistently, but researched has shown increased secretion of growth hormone in three specific instances:

1. During/immediately after sleep
2. After exercise (as little as 10 minutes)
3. During and immediately after a fast

Looking at these three things—all of which are thoroughly discussed in Pilon’s Eat-Stop-Eat—it’s not hard to come up with a “best of all worlds” scenario.

If you produce a lot of GH while sleeping, and you product it while fasting, then the obvious way to combine these is to continue fasting after you wake, allowing for prolonged GH secretion; from there, exercise will allow for increased production in addition to your prolonged secretion.

Overall, this maximizes both the presence of GH and its effect; and in addition, the elevated GH in combination with the low insulin is a deadly one-two punch to your body fat.

Finally one of the main benefits of both this style of fasting and the book itself is the incredible flexibility of the program and the ease with which you can adapt it to your lifestyle—you can fast any day you like, and can move it around at will to suit your social life, which is important.

DRAWBACKS: There aren’t many here.  The main problem that clients of mine seem have here is that 24 hours seems like a long time to go without food; however, this is not unique to 24-hour fasting.

That said, there are some people who seem to have genuine problems with abstaining from food for significant length of time—in particular, people with low blood sugar seem to have an issue.  If you fall into this category, you may want to tread lightly.

The only other real problem here would be for people who don’t want to miss out on post-workout nutrition but find the need to train on fast days.  This can be alleviated by either moving your workout to the end of the fasting period, or simply scheduling your off days and fast days to coincide.

HOW (AND WHEN) I USE 24-HOUR FASTS: This is a style of fasting I tend to use when I get very busy and have to train in the evenings.

Also, I use this pretty much any day when I have to go out to a large social dinner and am not going to be watching my diet.  For example, if I am going out on a Friday night, I might make my least meal Thursday at 8pm.  Then, at dinner Friday, I’ll get to eat a lot of food, perhaps enjoy dessert, and be fine, even if I go out after and eat again.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: While this type of fasting is suitable for more than “damage control,” it works well for me in an occasional fashion. However, for many of my coaching clients, this is a sort of “every other day” approach that works well with them.

More than anything else, I frequently finding myself referring people to Pilon’s book as a an IF primer, and a good resource for understanding a lot of the science behind why fasting work, and I’ll make that recommendation here: check out Brad’s site and book for more info.

20-Hour Fast (aka Warrior Diet)

SUMMARY:  The Warrior Diet was the first type of structured fasting that I tried.  I initially read about it in an interview with the author, Ori Hofmekler on T-Nation back in 1999. I tried the diet for the first time in 2002.

Simply, the diet is, in theory, a 20-hour fast followed by a 4-hour feeding period; as the name implies this is inspired by the nutritional habits of the warriors of antiquity, who certainly weren’t in the habit of eating six meals per day.

Instead, warriors in cultures ranging from Roman centurions to the Spartan elite subsisted on one to two meals: a large meal in the evening and (sometimes) a small meal in the morning; according to the author, that is.

The diet itself is modeled after this type of eating schedule; however, it’s worth noting that this is often criticized for not being “true” IF.

That is, in most cases, while having a small breakfast and a large dinner will probably work for weight loss, there may only be 8-10 hours between them…which, some people posit, isn’t long enough to get the benefits of fasting.

Moreover, during the fasting part of the day, the diet allows for mild consumption—you’d be allowed to eat a few servings of raw fruits and vegetables, and a few servings of protein (protein shakes included) if needed/wanted. These are kept quite small. Having said that, some fasting purists understandably maintain that Warrior Dieting, should you choose to exercise these options, is not fasting.

In practice, however, most people skip the small meal and simply have one large meal at the end of the day.

BENEFITS:  Much like a 24-hour fast, a 20-hour fast allows you to reap the hormonal benefit of increased growth hormone.  And, like all fasting, generally will result in fewer calories being consumed.

The benefit that is unique to this type of fasting is that you’re generally eating one large meal and, therefore, the make up of such a meal isn’t as important as you might think; as long as you get adequate protein, you can eat “junkier” foods and still do well.

Moreover, having only one meal makes life pretty simple, and less thinking means less screw-ups.

DRAWBACKS:  On the flip side of that coin, once again we’re running into the issue of hunger; and again, this isn’t unique to Warrior Dieting.

The main drawback in my experience comes from the meal itself—trying to get all of your calories in a single meal means that meal is, by necessity, quite large; so large, in fact, that eating it often leads to discomfort.  This is why many people turn to less wholesome foods: getting in 2000 calories of chicken, veggies and rice isn’t nearly as easy as getting it in chicken wings and French fries.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: A generally good dietary practice, and certainly easy to follow.

One criticism often made is that the points are made via story and anecdote, with very little in the way of scientific evidence to support the arguments. While some IF authorities dismiss the Warrior Diet based on that, I feel it should be respectfully acknowledged, given that it was the book that got people taking several years back.

Moreover, while the book does lack in science, it’s truly an enjoyable read. The author has a very engaging writing style and adding to the fun is the fact that he was an editor for Penthouse.

16/8 Fasting (aka LeanGains)

SUMMARY: Popularized by Martin Berkhan, Leangains or 16/8 is a style of IF where the fasting period is 16 hours, and the feeding window is shortened to 8 hours; during this time, users may eat as few meals as they like, with the most frequent iteration being three meals.

Designed specifically with training in mind, and mean to to be used for such, the 16/8 method has specific post-workout suggestions and recommendations, and, in nearly all ways, is the most sophisticated form of intermittent fasting.

Berkhan is great in terms of showing his research, his clients get excellent results, and, if the rumors are true, he is one of the few people aside from myself who liked Final Fantasy 6 better than the inferior but infinitely more popular FF7.

BENEFITS: In addition to having all of the benefits inherent in other types of fasting, the 16/8 methods is a stand out because it offers an advanced level of hormonal management.

While something like 24-Hour fasting or Alternate Day Fasting will give you these benefits, these methods are not for daily practice, whereas 16/8 is.  This means that you arte going to have a daily increase in GH, which leads to greater effects.

Moreover, daily practice (obviously) means that you’re eating the same way every day; this means that you don’t experience ups and downs in hunger, as with some other forms of fasting.  (Put another way, some people experience difficulty with fasting for 24-36 hours because they do it infrequently; not an issue with daily practice).

Going from there, there is also the benefit of hunger management. A number of studies have recently shown that larger, infrequent meals are better for satiety than small, frequent meals—so you’ll be fuller, longer.

DRAWBACKS: There are very few drawbacks to this style of IF, and these mainly come from scheduling. You see, from everything I’ve seen and read, the LG protocol is MOST effective if the workout is performed in a fasted state, and the meal that breaks the fast is immediately post workouts.

For some, execution can become a little impractical; for most people, adhering to that simple rule forces them to shift the feeding window to inconvenient times.

I find that most of my clients are able to workout either in the morning (roughly 6am, before work) or in the evening (6pm), after work.

Given that we want to have a 16-hour fasting window that ends with the PWO meal and begins an 8-hour feeding window, you can see how either of those times present some issues. For example, let’s look at 6am. In order for this to work as your first meal, your last meal is going to be at 4pm (allowing you to fast for 16 hours for your next feeding window).

Right off the bat, I see three (theoretical) problems arising here.

• This first is that having your last meal at 4pm can present some social issues, at least if you ever want to have dinner with your friends or family. (The exception is Sunday “dinner” in any Italian household, which for some reason inexplicably begins around noon and ends just after sundown.)

• The second is that your feeding window is going to coincide almost minute for minute with your workday, making it difficult to eat your meals, let alone enjoy them.

• The third problem is that a good number of you fasting hours are after your feeding hours have ended. I’ve said in other articles that in my experience, it’s often very clients who try to have  ‘cutoff’ time for eating aren’t successful.

That said, if you’re looking to try 16/8 and can only work out in the AM, it’s certainly doable, just be aware of this going in.  And, of course, this “problem” is really only applicable to certain people.

Like any other style of eating, make it work for you—within the rules of the system.

HOW (AND WHEN) I USE 16/8: This style of fasting fits very well with my life, because I work from home.

For me, it’s very easy to plan my meals and workouts around one another, and making last minute changes isn’t a problem.

Most days of the week—usually Wednesday through Saturday—I do some form of 16/8.  I like to workout anywhere between 12 and 2pm, so I just judge my last meal the night before based on when I’m going to train the next day.  Sometimes I’ll wind up with an 18 hour fast instead of 16, but, again, this is really no big deal.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: This is probably the most refined style of IF, in terms of both intention and execution. While most fasting is effective mainly because it prevents you from eating, the Lean Gains style is really about making your hormones your bitch. Which is awesome.

This style of IF is best for serious folks and those who are already lean; and, again, this is the ONLY style of IF that was designed specifically with fitness-oriented people in mind, and therefore yields exceptional results for folks who train consistently.

It’s worth mentioning that Berkhan is one of the guys most responsible for the “IF movement,” and spent years arguing against ideas that many fitness pros (myself included) thought were “fact.”

All in all, he (along with Pilon) is a big part of the reason guys who weren’t talking about IF last year are talking about it this year. So, while he didn’t invent IF, I feel I should give him a wi-five.

If you haven’t already, please check out his site here.

WRAPPING UP

That’s about it!  You now have a very firm overview of the most popular types of Intermittent Fasting, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of each.  If you’re looking to try an IF plan, simply choose from those above, and read up on them.

While all of them are effective, the most important thing is to choose the one that fits in best with your lifestyle, and give yourself the greatest advantage.

One final point: specifically because IF is not a diet, it lends itself well to nearly anything that is a diet. That means that you can practice intermittent fasting regardless of your nutritional restrictions or preferences—it doesn’t matter if you’re a low carb-er, a Paleo dieter, lactose free, vegan, or anything in between; you can simply apply the IF system of your choice to your current diet.

This is because intermittent fasting is a way of eating, a nutritional lifestyle that will allow you to reach your goals in an efficient and convenient manner, and then hold onto your physique one you achieve them.

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If you’re interested in the hottest Intermittent Fasting program on the web, check out Fat Loss Forever – it contains ALL of these benefits and more.

Okay, time to sound off! If you’re NEW to IF, leave ANY questions below.  If you have done IF before, leave your experience – let’s here it!

You’ve probably experienced the frustrating fat loss phenomenon before.

You exercise, eat healthier and lose weight…and then suddenly your success stops.

Your solution? You exercise more, diet harder, or combine the two and expect to bust out of your plateau. Only nothing happens.

The reason: At some point, just thinking about “calories in versus calories out” isn’t enough.

Your better-body goals are dependent on the type of deficit you create. You see, once you’ve hit a fat loss plateau or when you’re trying to lose the last few pounds, fat loss becomes a game of hormonal balance. And if you’re not taking the right approach, your metabolism slows and it becomes harder for you to transform your body.

That’s why I created Final Phase Fat Loss. It’s an inside look at what really plagues “real” people’s bodies, while making sure you’re never on a diet that’s so severe that you halt your progress. (this is what typically happens)

Your hormones can cripple your physique. They don’t just determine IF you gain fat—they determine where you gain it and whether you’re able to lose if from those areas.

This is why “problem” areas exist. They are a result of your hormonal environment, and they can force your body into particular fat storage patterns.

Consider this your guide to understanding why you store fat in certain areas, and the hormones that are to blame.

THE PROBLEM: BELLY FAT

Without question, the most common type of regional fat storage is belly fat. Abdominal fat storage obviously has a lot to do with your diet and overall body fat level; but outside of that, it’s all hormones.

The villain: Cortisol—oftentimes referred to as the stress hormone. When your body is under any type of stress—whether emotional or physical—your body produces cortisol, which encourages the storage of belly fat. That means while drinking less or sleeping more can help, it’s not the end-all solution that crushes your belly fat.

What you really need is resistance training; but any type of exercise won’t do.

Remember: cortisol is produced by physical stress, and exercise is actually one of the primary means through which your body will produce this sneaky little hormone. More specifically, long-duration cardio and extended lifting sessions are what produces the most cortisol. It’s the reason why so many runners end up looking “skinny fat.” Sure they lose weight—but their cortisol remains elevated and they still look fat.

Instead, short, intense training sessions using a particular type of training modality will help to counteract the effects of cortisol; both the muscle-wasting effect and the cortisol related belly fat storage. The result: You’ll not only lose weight, but also melt body fat in record time.

THE PROBLEM: FAT IN YOUR LOWER BODY

One of the most common types of fat storage that we see in women is the “pear shape” – fairly thin on top but heavy on the bottom (and IN the bottom, if you know what I mean).This type of fat storage is also heavily dependent on the female sex hormone estrogen.

High levels of estrogen are awesome for enjoying the Vampire Diaries and makin’ babies, but terrible for fat loss, which is why women usually have more trouble losing fat than men. However, anyone—male or female—with high estrogen levels will have trouble losing fat, especially from the lower body. In essence, the higher your estrogen levels, the greater the likelihood you’ll store fat in your lower body; mainly in your hips and thighs.

And yes, it IS possible for men to have high estrogen levels. Unfortunately, outside of having to deal with a declined rate of fat loss and lower body fat, these guys ALSO have to deal with the ignominy of man-boobs.

Fortunately, you can offset the negative impact of estrogen with certain types of training. In addition to helping you lose fat stored in the lower body, these specifically designed workouts will also be great for fat loss in general. Essentially, they’re great for burning calories and for shedding lower body fat through estrogen management. Combine the two and the result is rapid fat loss, with a heavy concentration on lower body fat stores.

THE PROBLEM: LOVE HANDLES

Probably my least favorite incarnation of regional fat storage is love handles and lower back fat. Even when I am in lean condition – I’m talking shredded pretty much everywhere else – I store some fat in my love handles and lower back. It used to take me an extra 3 weeks to get rid of it!

The reason I tend to store fat this way is because of how my body reacts to certain hormones, and because of the effect those hormones have on fat storage. The degree to which you are able to process and respond to glucose (sugar) in your body is called insulin sensitivity. The higher this is, the easier and more efficiently your body utilizes carbohydrates for energy, and the less likely you are to store carbs as fat.

On the other hand, insulin resistance is the opposite; you don’t deal well with carbs. And anything other than a low carb diet pretty much means you’re going to store more fat.

The good news is that insulin resistance (and the resulting regional fatness) can be mitigated with certain types of training. For example, with careful planning and workout progressions, you can start to whittle away at your love handles and lower back fat while you increase insulin sensitivity.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

While this knowledge alone can arm you for combat and allow you to get incredible fat loss results, there are even more specific information that you can use to take your results to the next level.

These tactics and strategies are based in science so new and so radical that it may seem pretty “out there”–but it’s in fact is the kind of cutting edge science I live for. And I want to share it with you…if you’re ready.

That’s why I created the Final Phase Fat Loss system – because when this sciences is leveraged, you can address these hormonal issues, and lose fat from the specific areas they plague.

And, to help you combat these hormones, I’ve put FPFL on sale for over 50% off–because I love you like that.

I just want to mention that FPFL isn’t just a “workout routine” – it’s a complete system of 8 individual components, each addressing a specific part of your programming.  In addition to some of the best fat loss information ever, I’ve covered everything from training sheets to supplementation to videos of all the exercises.  All you have to do is follow the steps.

Remember, all my programs are backed my a super-ridiculously-awesome 60-day money back guarantee, so if by some crazy fluke you don’t get results you want, I give you some money, an apology, and my first born.  (Or 2 out of those 3.)

So, what are you waiting for?

Click here to pick it up for an all-time low price of 52% off.

Questions about the program?  Drop them here and I’ll give you all the help you need!

Already have FPFL?  Leave your feedback below and let anyone considering it know how awesome it is!

Here’s to your success in 2012!

-Roman

Well, we’re coming to the close of another year—and, if the Mayans are to be believed, pretty close the end of existence—so I thought it would be a good idea to do a fun post and keep things interesting.

2011 was a pretty big year for ol’ Roman, and a lot of the things that I’ve long wanted to accomplish came to fruition.  Some of them were the result of a lot of hard work and planning…while others just fell into my lap.  Both are great, in their own way.

It’s important to note upfront that as I look over this list, the thing I’m struck most by is how very little I am responsible for.  That is, while all of these things are either achievements to be proud of or events and memories I’ll cherish, I can’t really take credit for any of them.

You see, every item on this was the result of either leveraging a connection, or simply being gifted with an opportunity.  And those connections and opportunities, as much as I’ve worked for them, belong to you as much as they belong to me.

I have you—all of you—to thank for helping me develop my business to the extent where, in 2011, I’m considered for things I wouldn’t have been in pervious years.

The growth of my business and the growth of my presence are indelibly tied together, which means that every time you link to this blog, or retweet something I’ve written, or like one of my ridiculous Facebook posts, you help me take a step further along the road.

You help me with every thing that I do—just by being part of the Roman Empire.

And so, this list is dedicated to you, and it’s with the utmost humility that I ask you to accept my thanks, and beg that you take credit for whatever small glories have yet or will soon attach themselves to my name. Therefore, when you read this, I ask that you view this not as a list of moments celebrated with braggadocio, but rather as a list of things that are acknowledged to be as much yours as they are mine.

Without all of you and your support, I wouldn’t be where I am, and I would have no shot at getting to where I’d like to be.

I should mention that these things aren’t listed in any particular order, and I would hazard to say that the list is incomplete. With that in mind, let’s take a quick look at some of the highlights of 2011, and the #RomanEmpireExpansion.

We Released Some New Products

It’s fitting that I should start here, because, after all, writing kick-ass programs is how I make a good part of my living.

I very intentionally say “we” here, because, as it happens, all of my programs were partnerships of some kind.  Final Phase Fat Loss is a partnership with Joel Marionz, at least during the launch—I created the product and he helps with the marketing.

FPFL Bodyweight Edition is a partnership between Adam Steer and myself, while Final Phase Abs is joint venture with Dr. Kareem.

Finally, the breakout program of the year (at least from my view) is the Super Hero Workout, which I co-authored with Matt McGorry.

All of these programs were successful in every regard: not only did they sell well, but more importantly, they’ve all received rave reviews and have helped people hit their goals.

It’s hard to really think about which is the biggest success, because that depends on your qualifier. However, if I had to choose one, it would the Super Hero Workout—if only because it was entirely a labor of love. Although the workouts weren’t something I’d been using for years (as in FPFL), I got to unite two of my loves: training and nerdery.

In terms of training, I finally got to address muscle building, and was also able to design a program based on progression and periodization. That was awesome. More personally, the comic book aspect of the program made it one of the most fun things I’ve ever worked on; truly, I enjoyed every part of creating it, from writing the workouts to selecting a comic book font that was just right.

Again, the most important thing is the outpouring of support I’ve received, and the emails talking about results and thanking me.  So, to thank you, I’m running a super sneaky sale on Super Hero.

So sneaky you can’t even see it.  If you go to the page, the price will be listed at 87. HOWEVER, when you click add to cart, the price will be 47 bones.  It’s like a sneaky Easter egg trick in a video game.

And, the only way to know about it is to read this blog.  So, just my little way of thanking you for reading and being awesome.

If you don’t have it, now’s the time to pick it up.

I Became Batman’s Personal Trainer (Sort of)

Speaking of Super Heroes, this is a cool little highlight from 2011.  Because of the success and attention SHW got, I became known as the super hero trainer.  Okay, not really.  I became known as the trainer who probably knows the most about comic books because I was (am) a big nerd.

Which is basically the same thing.

Anyway, Men’s Fitness asked me to look over Batman’s workout and critique it.  Yes, the real Batman’s workout.  Which makes me his trainer.

Here’s the deal: a book called The Batman Files was released earlier this year.  The book is almost like Bruce Wayne’s scrapbook; it begins with drawings by young Bruce and continues through his war on crime.  It’s filled with newspaper clippings, crime scene photos, schematics, and Batman’s notes—including those on his workouts.

That’s where I come in.  I was asked to review the workouts on behalf of MF.  I should note that this book is published by DC Comics, so, depending on which Batman storyline you follow, this is actual canon.

That having been said, the workouts were written by someone who doesn’t really understand physiology as it applies to training, and thinks that having an iron will is enough to become super human.

Here’s a look at the workout:

And here’s my review on MF.

This workout is ridiculous.  On his “off” days he’s running 20 miles at an elite level.  I tore the workout apart, because personally I don’t think it’s possible for a mortal man, even one who has all the money and steroids* in the world.  Most importantly, this type of training just doesn’t leave him any time for actual crime fighting.  Personally, I think if he reduces the volume by half and the frequency by two days, it’s a better fit.

So, take it from Batman’s personal trainer: don’t try the workout at home.

If you’ll forgive me for a mini-rant, I believe the draw of Batman is that he IS a normal guy, at least at his core.  Batman makes us think that you don’t need to be born with super powers, or be a mutant, or even get bit by a spider—he does all of the amazing things he does while limited by his humanity.

Batman embodies possibility.  We’re all drawn to him, in a certain morbid way.  To use one of my favorites quotes from author Neal Stephenson, Batman makes us feel, “that under the right set of circumstances, [we] could be the baddest motherfucker alive.”

We’d all like to think that if we had billions of dollars and our parents were gunned down, we’d train our whole lives and be like Batman.  However, we understand we’d still have limits—or else we’d want to be Superman.

That’s what makes him appealing, and it’s sticking to that realism that makes Christopher Nolan’s interpretation so compelling.  And, by the way, Nolan agrees with me so much that Batman’s ailing physical form with be a plot point in the Dark Knight Rises.  The movie takes place 8 years into the future, where a “less physically fit” Bruce Wayne is pushed to his breaking point by Bane.

*Note: if you think it’s insulting or outlandish to suggest that Batman is on steroids, you’re either delusional, or you simply don’t know anything about the goddamn Batman.  He’s out there Batmanning seven days a week, and as a vigilante he’s literally breaking the law every time he dons the cowl.  Do you honestly believe that Batman is going to let either legality or the moral vagaries of steroid use impede his quest for justice?  Of course not, because, as mentioned, he is the goddamn Batman, and his entire life is about sacrificing for the greater good.  So, yes, Batman is juiced up, and no, understanding that shouldn’t make you like him less, because it sits in complete harmony with the rest of his character.

I Got Published…Everywhere

At least that’s what it felt like.  As you know, writing is the larger part of my passion for what I do.  I’ve always said that writing is one of the more satisfying forms of masturbation, and I believe that.  I also believe that in a lot of ways, you can make a comparison between writing and sex: it’s always exciting to (ahem) break new ground.

To that end, one my focuses this year has been breaking into new publications, instead of just writing more articles for places I’m already established.  Oh, of course, I wrote a few great articles for T-Nation and the like, but recently I’ve been aiming elsewhere.

This year, I had a series of 15-minute workouts published in Men’s Fitness, was interviewed about sleep for Men’s Health, wrote a piece on digital publishing for Speaker Magazine, and even popped up in Fast Company talking about fitness trends.  This is all supremely gratifying, because it implies that the perception of my expertise is growing beyond fitness, and now encompasses aspects of business, marketing, and even publishing.  It’s really incredible.

One of the biggest developments has been a partnership with AskMen.com—I am writing for these guys about three times per month, exposing me a whole new (and very large) audience.  The best part is, AskMen allows me to re-purpose some of my old content, which means that I can give great info that I’ve written over the past two years and use it, rather than just let it sit on the back burner.  (I’m sure there’s another joke about sex there, but I am taking the high ground on this one.)

I’m breaking out of fitness and into more mainstream media outlets, as well.  In addition to Fast Company, I’m currently working on a piece with Details magazine.

Speaking of Mainstream Media, I Was on TV

It’s funny how life works.  One of my New Year’s Resolutions in 2010 was to have some TV appearances in 2011.

Well, in late January of 2011, there I was, on TV discussing hormones.  Not two weeks later, I was on TV for Men’s Health.

I’ve detailed each of these appearances in their own posts, but suffice it to say that they were both fun experiences.  I’m looking forward to more like this, and will be pursuing a lot this year.

As a complete aside, since we’re on the subject of TV, I was actually called by the production company that handles the Biggest Loser, sometime in March of last year.  They asked me to submit a tape, and we went through a few rounds.  As I understand it, I was in the final running to replace Jillian Michaels, but at the last minute they chose Anna Kournikova.

I know, what a cliché move right?  Dumping the busty brunette for a hot blonde right before the big dance?  Jeeze, I felt like they ruined my prom.

Okay, not really. I understand the direction they went in, even if it didn’t work out.  The point is that some of the previous TV exposure created an opportunity, and it was cool to be considered.

While I am not on the Biggest Loser, I do have big plans for TV, so I’ll keep you posted.

I Was on a Freakin’ BILLBOARD

While we’re on the subject of exposure, let’s talk about this ridiculous experience.

Yeah, I was on a billboard.  In Times Square of all places.  Check it.

This happened because of YOU.  You and your votes, that is.  Here’s how it happened: a start-up called About.me was purchased by AOL, and in order to bring some media attention for the company, they decided to purchase ad space on a digital billboard in the heart of Times Square.

So, to fill the billboard they held a contest to determine what profiles we be featured.  Long story short, you voted for me, and I was in the top ten.

I cannot tell you the surreal feeling of walking through and seeing myself up there.

Fun story: way back when I first started fitness modeling, I remember telling a few of my friends how some of my shoots went.  We were 21 and this was at a poker game at my buddy Mike’s house.  Some guys were supportive, and others…well, not.

I got a lot of “oh, that’s gay!” and some “don’t quit your day job” type stuff.  Mike, in particular, was not supportive.

My ego retaliated with a bold claim of, “oh yeah?  Fine, haters.  But one day I’ll be rockin’ a billboard in Times Square and you’ll all dying to play the Eric to my Vince.  I will happy receive your apologies.”

Or something like that.

It’s crazy that such a moment has come and gone.  Of course, I thought it would be a paid gig for some underwear company, but I’ll take it.  As it happens, Mike and I no longer speak (he had a negative energy, as you may have imagined), but I’m still very open to the apology…hater.

Anyway, I have to thank a few people:

Jason Lengstorf, my web designer, who put the profile together in a way that I couldn’t have.
Diana Levine, an incredible NY based photographer who took the picture I wound up using in the profile (and some I used in magazines).
Heidi Vance and the About.me team.  Heidi was my contact and a pleasure to work with; she really outdid herself organizing the event.

Thanks to those people and everyone else for the help on that one.

Men’s Fitness Spotlight Trainer for December

This is sort of like “Trainer of the Month” but “spotlight trainer” sounds less like a centerfold (to my great disappointment).

Sean Hyson, the fitness editor and Chief Bad-ass at Men’s Fitness was gracious enough to inform me that I’d been selected for this honor while we were at dinner together, and stuffing ourselves full of fried chicken and waffles at Southern Hospitality.

It’s a very cool accolade, and affirms that in addition to a piercing gaze and an uncanny ability to network, I also know what I’m talking about.

Unless he selected me simply because I bought him fired chicken and waffles. In which case it’s a ringing argument for cronyism.

Either way, it was awesome, and I got to share three of my best overall fitness/lifestyle tips.  Here’s a picture.

Those are pretty good tips, so write ‘em down or something.

I’m Like, Influential and Shit

Officially, that is.

In 2011, John Romaniello was honored to be included on a list of people who like talking about themselves in the third person.

Wait, that isn’t correct.

It was a list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Health and Fitness (which has a lot of capital letters so, clearly, is very important).  Compiled by health start-up Greatist.com, this list includes people like Craig Ballantyne, who is awesome, and Jillian Michaels, who is not.

The point is, this is a very solid assemblage of talent and I’m happy to be included, despite the fact that I will have to murder some of my best friends in order to get to the top of the list.

For those keeping score at home, I came in at number 45; so, if I may paraphrase the great philosopher 50 Cent, that means there are 44 motherfuckas who better watch they back, fool.  I think 50 Cent said that.  He may have also said something about magic sticks, but I forget.

I Went to India with Tim Ferriss and Watched Him Vomit for Four Days Straight

Once again, I wrote an entire blog post on this. 
However, it was a truly interesting experience, and certainly one of the highlights of 2011.  I got to meet some really interesting people (shout-out to Mark and Camille), as well as become exposed to a culture radically different from my own.

Unfortunately, Tim and his girlfriend fell ill, and a chunk of the trip involved caring for them when it seemed certain that if the microbial infection didn’t kill them, the hospital would.

That said, it was good overall.  And, I got to spend quite a bit of time with Tim, which led discussions about everything from Dungeons and Dragons to Intermittent Fasting.

Leading us to…

I’m All Up in This App, Yo!

Speaking of Tim Ferriss, I’m being featured in his new book, the 4 Hour Chef.  But that’s not until next year, and we’re talking this year.

Well, his Holiday Teaser app for iPad (and Kindle Fire) features me as well.  More to the point, it features my Intermittent Fasting synthesis as well as some of my workouts, including video me working through a barbell complex.  It also features a bunch of tasty recipes for everything from mashed cauliflower (better than it sounds) and tequila hot chocolate (every bit as good as it sounds).

That Christmas Countdown calendar in the upper left hand corner is all my stuff.  So, download it, cause it’s free.

The best part, I think, is that Tim opens by discussion a rant of mine about Dungeons & Dragons.

Tim is a stand-up guy and this book going to be pretty huge, so being featured in both the book and the app is really awesome.  It’s going to bring me some more exposure, which, in combination with a number of other projects, will create even more opportunities.

Since I’ve become known for Intermittent Fasting of late, I suggest you download the app.  Plus, it’s free.  (Note: I’ll be releasing my entire IF protocol in an ebook within the next few weeks.  If you don’t want to spend $700 on an iPad, you can grab it for less than 1/10^th that soon.)

Which reminds me…

I’ve Become Known for Intermittent Fasting

This was sort of a surprise.  However, I have spent over a year now experimenting with just about every form of intermittent fasting available (article coming soon), and word gets around.  Still, it was a shock that I had such a tremendous response to my blog.

I’m truly looking forward to releasing that program, because I know you’ll get a lot out of it, and it’ll bring my theories out into one place.

Keep in mind, I didn’t “invent” IF.  I didn’t popularize it, either.  It simply crossed my desk and I’ve gotten into it; I don’t take credit for anything other than my own synthesis.  Then again, no one invented “not eating” – and it’s ridiculous that people argue about which style of not eating is the most effective.  The fact that I think it’s ridiculous may be one of the reasons that I’ve become more known for it, simply because I am not beholden to any one “style.”

I’m generally not dogmatic, so I feel that, when it comes to a subject that draws strong reaction *cough Tim Tebow on the Paleo diet training crossfit while driving an electric car and using artificial sweeteners cough cough*, a more moderate voice tends to be appealing.  Or, as one of my Facebook readers it, “you’re not an asshole about it.”   Awww, you sweet-talker, you!

Whatever the case, I’m really looking forward to talking more about IF in the coming months, and even more so to helping the new people IF is bringing into the Empire—which is actually a lot.  In point of fact, “intermittent fasting” is now the number one search term that brings people to my blog, ranking above my own name.  This is not surprising, as I am ranked number one on the Big G for that term.

So, keep an eye out for LOTS of intermittent fasting stuff in the very near future.

The Big One…Time to Write a Book

I mentioned in a previous blog that I was going to branch out from digital publishing and write a print book.  Not just any print book—a best-seller.

Bold words, but I’m confident in them.  The first step is complete: I’ve written a kick ass book proposal with my co-author, Adam Bornstein.  Roughly 45 pages of epic epicness, we poured some extra awesome sauce on it with the help of our literary agent, Scott Hoffman, of Folio.

As you might imagine, I can’t currently talk too much about it.  However, I can tell you that the book is geared towards men (don’t worry ladies, there will be a second book for you), and the thrust is using various training and diet methods to maximize every aspect of your life, starting with fitness.

We start shopping it around during the second week of January, so fully expect some updates.

MOST Importantly…My Clients Got Incredible Results

My clients absolutely killed it in 2011.  It was incredible how many people had truly astounding results.

Clients like Andrew Edwards went from lean to leaner, getting from 17% body fat to 8% while getting stronger.  Skeptic turned evangelist Colin Wilson lost just about 60 pounds, getting to 9.9% body fat without losing any of his impressive strength.  Dudes like Gary V; despite the fact that our schedules sometimes forced us to take entire months off from training, he has made incredible progress—the guy can now bang out pull-ups and chin-ups for multiple sets of 10.

Ladies like Mel Caporn and Jen Graham saw their abs—impressive for a woman of any age, but both of these women are in their 40s.

Then there are guys like Claudio Espinoza—guys how have radically changed their lives along with their physiques.  Guys, like Claudio, who have become very dear friends in the process.  And of course, there are newer clients like Daniel Ketchell and Matt Somero; clients who are making strides in their physique who went out of their way to send very thoughtful Christmas gifts.

I can’t possibly mention everyone, but please know that I love you all, and that I’ve read every single email and smiled at your results.  Helping you has been the great honor of my life, and I can’t wait to continue in 2012.

Miscellaneous and Housekeeping

There were SO many more that I’d love to write about: taking business coaching clients; being asked to speak at events; getting invited to watch Jets games in the ultra-VIP Green Room at the Meadowlands; coming up with new product ideas every week.

Unfortunately, you don’t have the time to read much more, as this post has gone on way longer than it should have.

I just want to say again that I truly appreciate you all, and that I recognize how instrumental you are in the above achievements, both great and small.

Thank you for your support, and I look forward to helping you in 2012.

Roman

Okay, what are some of YOUR accomplishments in 2011?  Both fitness and otherwise.  You’ve helped me, so now I wanna hear how I’ve helped you.  If we get over 75 comments, one person will be randomly selected to win an RFS tshirt.