What’s your opinion of doing interval cardio as opposed to cruising along at a steady pace on an exercise bike? I have been trying an intense aerobic approach called Tabata. It’s Japanese and claims to burn off more fat in four minutes a day (done three times weekly) faster and better than regular aerobics. I have been riding my exercise bike five times a week before work for around 40 minutes. I break a pretty good sweat but I have to admit, it gets kind of boring. If Tabata is a better and faster way to burn off fat, I would love to switch over completely. If you can burn as much fat in 4 minutes a day (twelve minutes total per week!) as I do in 40 minutes per day and 200 minutes per week, I’m there! So what’s the deal? Is this real? Or are Tabata claims too good to be true?

Bobby, Daytona Beach

I love interval work: sprinting, leaping, jumping, bounding, grappling and racquetball…nothing is more intense and sweat producing (my cardio benchmark,) nothing makes an aerobic session go by faster than a three game set of racquetball with a good opponent or rolling around the mat with a topflight jujitsu opponent or instructor. No cardio goes slower (for me) than tooling along on a stationary bike indoors. Having said all that, I have got to take issue with Tabata. The claims they make are physiologically senseless. There is no way in hell that doing cardio for four minutes a day – no matter how intense – is going to burn off more fat than 15 times that amount, assuming you use a “Parrillo-style” aerobic pace and huff and puff and break a huge sweat. Oh sure, if you barely pedal along and read the newspaper and yawn and watch a TV and don’t break a sweat, then 4 minutes can outperform 40 minutes: if you sweat and huff and puff and push and stay just below the oxygen debt threshold, if you motor hard then your cumulative results from 200 minutes are going to smoke Tabata’s twelve minutes.

Tabata Training was developed by Izumi Tabata at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan. The Tabata method was the result of comparative studies between moderate intensity endurance exercise and high intensity intermittent training, what we call interval training. The comparisons used VO2 max and anaerobic capacity as the report card. The moderate intensity group training program produced an increase in VO2 max of about 10% and no effect on anaerobic capacity. The high intensity group improved their VO2 max by about 14% and anaerobic capacity improved by 28%. The study took six weeks with two groups working out five days per week. The Tabata protocol is simple: go as fast as possible for 20 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds. Do this for four minutes. Yes, this is super intense work. You can use just about any mode or exercise format; the mode is of secondary importance to the strict protocol. Having said that, it is important to use exercises that utilize the whole body – while concentration curls are unacceptable for Tabata, front squats work well.

Tabata users might sprint all out for 20 seconds then rest for ten seconds: you could sprint outdoors or sprint on an exercise bike; it could be a stationary bike or an elliptical machine. You could do clean and jerks or power cleans with a barbell. Yes it’s tough work and it is grueling work, but the short amount of time will not yield nearly the calorie burn rate you are getting now. Think about it: since you only “work” 40 seconds out of every minute, the Tabata protocol amounts to eight minutes of intense cardio per week! Tabata spikes the metabolism and Tabata shines when compared to sissy cardio; it won’t work for a bodybuilder because there is just not enough cumulative work. John Parrillo has advocated intense cardio for decades, long before anyone heard of Tabata. Back when fitness idiots coined the phrase “fat burning zone,” a sissy philosophy embraced by sissies, Parrillo punctured this lunacy by simply pointing out the obvious: “Let’s assume for a moment – and I do not assume – that tooling along at 50% of maximum intensity burns a greater percentage of body fat than going hard and fast. The sheer number of calories burned tooling along at 50% is insignificant; the entire premise is ridiculous: who cares if someone burns a slightly higher percentage of calories if the total calories burned are 105?

Parrillo wants sessions where the big athlete burns off 1,000 calories per session! Tabata is all about intensity but its brevity is its fatal flaw. The whole idea that a four minute session done three times a week is all you need to get ripped is ridiculous. If you have thirty pounds of excess body fat and a pound of fat contains 3,500 calories, then you theoretically need to burn through 105,000 calories to oxidize 30 pounds of body fat. Parrillo wants his bodybuilders to hit it hard and long and blast away five, six or seven days per week in sessions lasting 40 to 60 minutes. Parrillo cardio is done tooling along at a torrid pace, John wants his bodybuilders huffing and puffing, just below the level where lactic acid buildup forces them to quit. Before a bodybuilding competition John advises bodybuilders to add a second daily cardio session – and these two daily sessions (now we’re talking 12 to 14 sessions per week) aren’t done at 50% of capacity and staying in the fat burning zone! And these sessions aren’t over in four minutes! Get a grip: do the math. If you’re an average guy packing 20-30 pounds of excess body fat you are going to need to do a lot of cardio – intense cardio – this is the only way you’ll burn off those tens of thousands of excess calories in a reasonable amount of time. If a training system seems too good to be true, 99.9% of the time the claimed results are too good to be true!

Iron Man,

How do you slam as much protein as Parrillo recommends constantly and consistently? I keep telling myself I’m going to take in 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day – but it never seems to happen. I’ll get 2-3 days in where I make it happen then I fall off the protein wagon. How do you stay consistent? I once actually made my 300-grams-per-day goal for a full seven days and I gotta say; I felt like I was on steroids! It was great! I felt full and powerful and I tore up my weight training and ripped through my cardio. Needless to say I couldn’t keep it up. I just couldn’t deal with making all that food ahead of time and eating all those meals actually made my jaws sore. I got sick of grilled chicken breasts and the sight of steamed broccoli made me gag. I guess I just didn’t want it bad enough. I sure loved the effects I got from consuming 300 grams of protein per day – but I couldn’t deal with all the preparation and chewing. Any ideas? Am I destined to be a complete loser?!

Protein-challenged,

Washington, DC

It was great that you got a glimpse of the miracle of massive protein intake. When regular guys get serious and start firing down protein at the rate of 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight per day and do this consistently, they all experience that burst of power and energy that you talk about. Here is a little secret: you don’t have to cook and chew every bite of protein. Most trainees that work fulltime jobs and have wives and families and kids and all the rest of it will eat three food meals per day and consume two or three supplement meals per day. I suspect that you are completely ignorant of the breakthrough world of Parrillo “engineered foods.” Let’s walk through a perfect Parrillo day of perfect high protein eating.

The Parrillo Protein Blitzkrieg

Wake up at 5 am and hit an intense, Parrillo-style cardio session for 45 minutes followed by an intense Parrillo-style weight training session; blast the hell out of two muscle groups. Attack them ferociously to blast muscle to the point of utter and complete exhaustion and decimation. The lifting session should take 45 minutes. Immediately afterwards consume a serving and a half of Parrillo 50/50 Plus™. For the rest of the day try some variation of this template (see chart below)…times and food selections can vary…

This little assemblage of food and supplements creates a terrific daily protein total: over 300 grams assuming you eat big portions – and not a chicken breast or stalk of steamed broccoli in sight! Use your imagination, the fabulous Parrillo shakes, bars and engineered foods allow you to easily hit the magic 300 mark! Give those tired jaws a break!

Vic,

Did you see where multi-time World’s Strongest Man, the monstrous Mariusz Pudzianowski fought in an MMA, Ultimate Fighting-Style cage match with former UFC champ Tim Sylvia and got demolished! The giant Polish strongman tapped out (quit) one minute and fifteen seconds into the second five-minute round. I didn’t see the fight but apparently Mariusz quit from “exhaustion.” No submission as far as I know – he just quit because he was so gassed out he couldn’t lift his arms. Bas Ruten, the famed Dutch fighter and now one of the best commentators in the fight game said, “Big muscle guys use so much oxygen that they gas out really fast and become big helpless punching bags.” I thought this got exactly to the point you were talking about a few months back. Guys with massive muscles somehow think that this makes them great fighters. Like that story you told about the monstrous bodybuilder that got his ass beat stupid by some skinny hillbilly.

Ronnie P, Port Arthur

You would not believe how much angry mail I got from muscle guys in response to my comment that “just because you are a physical giant doesn’t mean you can fight a lick – in fact, more than likely you can’t fight a lick!” So many bodybuilders (and powerlifters) think, “I can bench press 400 and I can do high intensity cardio for an hour straight – plus I’m a physical monster. Ergo, I can kick anybody’s ass! Wrong! Ask Mariusz. He no doubt thought that he’d waltz into UFC style competitions and just start beating people to death with his strength. He thought he’d toss them around like rag dolls; that he’d pick them up like those 500 pound rocks he handles with such ease and crush opponent’s heads like empty beer cans. The problem is that rocks don’t squirm around when you grab them and empty beer cans don’t hit back! Mariusz dominated the world’s strongest man competitions like no one ever has. He stands 6 foot, weighs 300 pounds and is (relatively) ripped: he sports six pack abs with 21 inch arms covered with veins. The Titanic Pole had terrific cardio fitness – for strongman competitions. Here are a couple of WSM feats that MP was capable of; this kind of cardio gave him the false impression he had the type of cardio necessary for cage fighting: Mariusz could walk with 440 pounds in a bear hug for 70 yards; he could pull a 2,000 pound truck for 1/8^th of a mile; he could drag an 800 pound chain for 200 yards and flip a 660 pound tire over fifteen times in

a row.

He was big and massive and fit and lean and in shape and he gassed out in a matter of minutes – what’s up with that! On paper he looked like a fabulous prospect: he had enough power to knock a man unconscious with a six inch punch – assuming that the opponent would stand still long enough and let MP crack them in the head. He had the strength and he had the cardio. “So let’s fight!” The promoters lined up a slightly washed up ex-UFC champion, the tall and awkward Tim Sylvia. Tim had a nice run (for a while) in the UFC competing in a very weak division, the heavyweights. He lost his UFC contract after a bunch of successive losses and is now trying to scratch out a living fighting in smaller venue matches. Mariusz looked like he could be a great fighter and many felt Tim would be easy pickings for the giant Pole. This was a far better matchup for Mariusz than say having to face a fighter with great athletic ability, even on the downside of their career, like say Andre Arlovski or Ken Shamrock. Bas Ruten points out that the type of cardio MP thought he had is not “fight cardio.” As I pointed out a few months back, when a man is in a real fight they push, pull, punch, tug, kick and all that 100% exertion combined with adrenaline and suddenly a man’s available energy is totally expended: this happens at a radically accelerated rate. MP might have tremendous cardio capacity compared to the other WSM competitors, but in the cage his little 10 gallon gas tank, massive by WSM standards, is pathetically small compared to the 22 gallon gas tanks that elite mixed martial artists possess. If he was serious about fighting he’d reduce his bodyweight down to say 240 pounds (he’d still be huge at 6 foot) and trade in some excess power for some fighter cardio.

I am going to get back into fitness – not that I was ever really into it. My husband is a big fan of yours and he is fit and lean. I am fat and overweight. I want to do this on my own. I hate training with my husband. I find him overbearing and too critical. I tried the local fat girl facility, but while my husband expects too much, the trainers at this sissy spa expect too little so I never make any gains – there is a lot of talk about ‘self esteem’ and ‘being alright with being overweight’ and ‘positive self image’ at the sissy spa. I AM NOT alright with being 50 pounds overweight. BTW my husband has a whole cabinet full of Parrillo supplements and we have a full gym in our two car garage.

Linda, Flagstaff

You go girl! I am proud of you and your dissatisfaction. You don’t need the overbearing old man and you sure as hell don’t need the “I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re okay with being fat and out of shape’ gals at the pretend gym. We need to ease you into the mix – the further in we get the more you can do and the more momentum you’ll

develop. Here’s what we do to get you started…

1. Before breakfast: every morning hit a twenty minute cardio session. Initially you could power-walk around the neighborhood or jump on one of the cardio machines you have in the garage. Because you are overweight and out of shape, it won’t take much to elevate your heart rate and cause you to sweat. Sweat is King in Parrillo World. Each session push yourself without killing yourself. No need to jog or run or do anything intense and crazy right off the bat as that could rip or tear soft tendons and unused ligaments. Each week add three minutes to the duration of the session until you are at 45 minutes. Do this every day as soon as you get up; coffee or tea is fine before but no food. Over time, as your bodyweight drops and you become fitter, walking will not be enough to jack up the heart rate and make you sweat. Morph into more intense aerobic exercise modes when walking or power walking no longer suffice. Walk before you run, literally and figuratively.

2. Weight training: three times a week do the following (have the husband show you these exercises)….bodyweight squats, deep and upright, no leaning over; lying leg curls, slow and steady; calf raises on a stair-step, deep stretch at the bottom and all the way up on toes; dumbbell bench presses, lower all the way down, pause and press; overhead dumbbell bench presses. On both bench presses and overhead presses, inhale as you lower, exhale as you push; wide grip lat pulldowns to the chin; seated narrow grip rows. Perform three sets of 8 reps: on the 1^st set use 50% of the 3^rd set poundage, on the 2^nd set use 75% of last set and on the 3^rd set use 100%. In each session add two reps and when you are able to do 12 reps with particular poundage on the 3^rd set, add five pounds and drop back to 8 reps.

3. Nutrition: Parrillo-style nutrition requires you eat something acceptable and allowable every 2-3 hours. This continual grazing “builds” the metabolism. For example, oatmeal mixed with Parrillo Hi-Protein^™ makes a great breakfast; a Parrillo Energy Bar^™ and an Optimized Whey^™ shake is a great mid-morning meal; how about a chicken breast and a salad for lunch? 50/50 Plus^™ and a Parrillo Cupcake^™ mid-afternoon and some sort of fish and some green vegetables for dinner. Parrillo Cake^™ with Parrillo Frosting^™ makes a terrific evening treat. Use Parrillo engineered foods to overcome any sweet tooth addictions. Look to lose 2-3 pounds of bodyweight per week for 10-15 consecutive weeks. Systematic weight loss is the key.

Lock this approach down across the board and you’ll feel better by the end of the first week. You’ll look significantly better by the end of the first month and you’ll blow minds by the end of the third month. Write back anytime for advice or corrections. Let’s show family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and the husband that you are an independent self-starter and completely capable of engineering your very own physical transformation. Train hard, train consistent, eat with discipline and hold the course!

Iron Man,

What’s the best way to get my bench press up? I have been stuck at 315 for 1 rep for years. I would love to be able to bench 365 and eventually 405. Is this realistic? I have been pumping iron forever. I am 6 foot and weigh 200. I am fit and in-shape and recently completed a mini-marathon. So that part is the good part. The bad part is it seems like everybody at the gym I workout at can out-bench me. Any ideas for upping my bench would be greatly

appreciated.

Stan in San Diego

Likely you are benching all that you are capable of at 6 foot and weighing 200 pounds. There is no magical bench press routine that allows a guy to miraculously jump from 315 to 405 without adding a significant amount of muscle. Unless you resort to performance-enhancing chemicals or unless you use one of those hideous bench shirts, the only logical way to significantly increase your bench press is to significantly increase the amount of muscle mass you have to push a bench press. Let’s say at 6 foot and 200 pounds you currently have a 46 inch chest and a pair of 16.5 inch arms: you have built a nice, legal bench press of 315. You are maxed out for the amount of muscular firepower you currently possess.  In order to hit 365, a 15% increase in poundage, you’ll need to beef up the muscle mass of the chest, arms and front delts roughly 15%.  In order to bench press 405, a 30% increase in poundage, you’ll really have to beef up chest, arms and front delt muscles. I would guesstimate that you’d need a pair of 18 inch arms and a 50 inch chest to bench 405. The trick is adding muscular bodyweight and not adding a bunch of body fat. Oddly, the solution to improving your bench press lies not in finding some miracle bench press routine, but innutrition. Want to bench press 405? You’ll need to add 15-20 pounds of pure, lean, fat-free muscle. How do you do that? Get on a high-calorie, clean calorie, Parrillo-style nutritional game plan.

Vic,

I am bored with my food. I am beginning to develop chicken breast hatred and tilapia is really starting to get old. Any ideas?

Ready to binge, Dallas

Human beings are creatures of habit and the hardest thing to do is to break out of old habits and patterns. Insofar as bodybuilding proteins, you have two choices: widen the selection or learn new preparation tactics for existing protein choices. Let’s take a look at expanding the protein selections: are you using eggs, canned tuna, lean beef, turkey and differing types of seafood? How about buying a pound of shrimp for a weekend treat? I love scallops, oysters, mussels and just about any type of shellfish is acceptable and unusual. Try some new types of fish. Canned tuna is probably the second most used protein in the history of competitive bodybuilding – chicken breast being number one. Eggs are cheap. Insofar as preparation techniques, you got to school yourself! Watch the Food Network for protein preparation ideas. I learned how to make flank steak and skirt steak eatable and delicious watching episodes of Alton Brown’s Good Eats TV show. I learned from Emeril Live a great way to make giant quantities of white meat chicken and rice Cajun style and totally acceptable in the Parrillo system. Learn how to bake eggs and vegetables in the oven to create soufflés. Slow roast turkey and tough beef cuts to make them tender and flavorful. How hard is it to steam some shrimp or make a fabulous tuna salad? Don’t forget the huge variety of Parrillo “engineered foods.” It seems that every few months John and Dominique Parrillo devise some fantastic new food creation. Have you tried Contest Cookie Mix^™, Protein Ice Kreem Mix^™, Butter Flavored CapTri^®, Parrillo Chew Bars^™, Hi-Protein/Low Carb Pudding^™, Hi-Protein Pancake and Muffin Mix^™, Hi-Protein Cake and Cupcake Mix^™, Contest Brownie Mix^™ or Protein Frosting Mix^™? Plus let’s not forget Parrillo Sports Nutrition Bars^™, Energy Bars^™, Protein Bars^™ and Hi-Protein/Low Net Carb bars^™…you need to jump outside your comfort zone and try some new things out – the only thing holding you back is a lack of imagination.

Iron Vic Steele,

I am getting in shape for football camp held at the end of summer –  any ideas on how to get into better shape? I am a three year starting linebacker and tight end and have a pretty good shot at a college scholarship if I have a good senior year. I am 6-1, weigh 195 pounds and run a 4.7 forty. I can dunk a basketball (with one hand) and also run track as a high hurdler. I need power, speed and size.

Ronnie, Dayton

You sound like an excellent athletic specimen with a lot of great genetics and innate athletic ability. Speed is a gift and cannot be improved upon to any great degree. While a great training regimen might drop a fully formed man’s time by a half second, no amount of training is going to cause a mature man running a 5.5 forty to drop to 4.5 weighing the same. My generation of ball players was best exemplified by the great Pittsburg teams of the early seventies. The Steel Curtain and that great offensive line trained in the basement of a bar using barbells and dumbbells. They relied on the most basic of movements. Hall of fame center Mike Webster (RIP) is widely considered the best center to ever play in the NFL. He was 6-2 and 280 with 9% body fat. Webster could bench press 550, squat 800 and was the only man to ever run every set of steps in the old Three River Stadium without stopping. Webster, Kolb, Mean Joe Greene and the other Steelers used heavy squats and bench presses, power cleans, deadlifts, curls, rows, dips and nose-breakers to near exclusion. I think this approach is ideal for low-tech high schools that are lacking in fancy exercise machines. Run your ass off, sprint till you drop, run steps, do field length crabs and generally push yourself like a demon in the summer heat. The harder you push yourself leading up to summer camp the easier camp will be and the bigger jump you’ll have on your opponents and teammates. I would invest in canisters of 50/50 Plus^™ and drink this restorative shake down in double servings after practice and training. I would also advise taking five to eight Max Endurance^™ capsules before summer practice. If you smell ammonia in your sweat you are creating urea and this is not a good thing. Max Endurance^™ will help clear ammonia, which robs endurance. All the best. Working hard before camp will make camp seem easy.

Vic,

How come UFC fighters “gas out?” I know they engage in savage training sessions and do all sorts of crazy stuff to prevent gassing out – yet they still gas out. What’s up with that? I saw Shane Corwin beat the ever-loving snot out of Brock Lesner in their recent title match during the first round then completely run out of gas in round two and get choked out! I saw Corwin train in a TV special on Spike TV and the guy was training like a crazy man…lifting objects, carrying training partners, tossing heavy medicine balls, wrestling fresh opponents when he was tired; he was doing everything possible in training to prevent gassing out in the fight and then he gassed out!

Jack, New Mexico

You might increase the size of your endurance gas tank (to use a car analogy) and you might be able to replace a 15 gallon gas tank with a 20 gallon gas tank – but when the 20 gallons is used up the 20 gallons is used up! Energy is finite. I saw a TV show where a dude was driving a brand new McLaren Mercedes on the German Autobahn at 200 miles per hour. The driver commented that to maintain this speed meant that he would have to stop at a gas station every 22 minutes! While UFC fighters can increase the size of their endurance gas tank, they still have a finite amount of energy. Shane Corwin no doubt built a much bigger energy reservoir with his intense training. Still, when you are swinging, punching, pummeling, pushing, tugging and throwing with all your might, when adrenaline and endorphins are being dumped into the bloodstream in torrents, it is the equivalent of that Mercedes screaming along at 200 miles per hour – the fuel goes fast! The elite UFC fighters have even taken to conducting training camps at high altitudes in order to force the body to adapt to thinner oxygen; the idea being that when they fight at sea level and can inhale much richer oxygen, they will be able to go longer before gassing. Still, there is no escaping the physiological reality that every human being has a finite amount of energy and going all out exhausts available energy at a dramatically accelerated rate. Hell, a man might be able to build a 40 gallon gas tank – but when the 40 gallons is used up the 40 gallons is used up! Put another way, if they didn’t train to improve endurance, they might only last half as long.

You mentioned that you periodically train at commercial gyms – you must go crazy watching these no-nothing personal trainers put regular folks through their paces. I myself get a kick out of watching the blind leading the blind. Is it me or has the art of personal training gone backwards over the past few years? Some of the stuff I see taught absolutely defies logic. It seems to me the PTs I see either baby their clients or try and kill them.

Ron, Reno

One quick example: I saw a muscle-less female trainer (follow me on this) set up an incline bench between the cable crossover machine. She had her muscle-less client sit on the incline bench and lay back with two small dumbbells; I thought she was going to have the guy perform incline flyes or bench presses – but no! She then proceeds to hook his wrists up to the low pulleys. Now she hands our hero two light dumbbells. So he has a pulley cable attached to each wrist and a light dumbbell in each hand. The guy begins doing dumbbell incline presses with a low pulley attached to each arm! Insane. A perfect example of the ludicrous crap I see used by idiot personal trainers on a regular basis. My question is where do they come up with this stuff? Is there some moron-ish website dedicated to crazed resistance exercises?? The rationale is pretty easy to figure out: in order for a personal trainer to differentiate from other personal trainers they feel they need to come up with exotic

exercises.

Worse yet are the sadistic personal trainers inspired by the queen of mean, the prison guard fitness guru Jillian Michaels, that bozo from that god-awful show The Biggest Loser.  Jillian Michaels is the fitness equivalent of terminal cancer: she is slowly killing legitimate training with her cruel antics. Her client beat-downs are so horrific that if she were to subject prisoners at Gitmo to what she routinely dishes out to clients (and never participates in herself) she would be indicted as a war criminal. I’ve said this before: Biggest Loser fitness is prison camp fitness. Think about it – what do they do to inmates in a prison camp? Guards subject prisoners to hours of forced labor then starve them within an inch of their lives; what do they do on the Biggest Loser? They subject participants to endless hours of intense physical activity then starve them. Plus they mentally and psychologically torture participants by tempting them with sweet treats and savory foods. How is this any different from a prison guard beating the hell out of inmates then placing delicious food just outside the barb wire fence?  I hope someday this “expert” is forced to undergo the pain and depravation she so easily, callously and cruelly hands out to anyone that falls into her gruesome clutches.

I agree with you in that most personal trainers seem to fall into the “baby the client” or “kill the client” category. We all know about the baby-the-client types; they’ve been around forever. Their modus operandi is easy to understand; they talk a great game, they are terrific salesmen and usually they are good looking. They usually specialize in “training” the opposite sex. One guy who sticks out in my mind as the epitome of this type plied his trade at a facility I trained at a few years back. He was, as Derek Zoolander described himself, “insanely good looking.” We’ve all seen this type: if they’re guys they develop a stable of overweight women clients; if they’re good looking women they work both sides of the street, training lecherous guys and adoring females. We used to call this type the “paid friend.” They spend more time talking to the client and empathizing with the client than actually training the client.

This type always needs to touch the client during the set and with their perfect hair, perfect teeth, great gym outfits, clipboards and stop watches they appear competent when they are factually incompetent. They depend on new business because they always lose clients that eventually quit because they never make gains. No one makes gains under the direction of this type because sub-maximal training using ridiculous exercises does nothing. The Biggest Loser TV show has spawned a whole new generation of sadistic personal trainers. The new breed confuse sadism with training and beat the client into the ground using routines and practices better suited to a forced labor prison camp than a fitness facility. They yell platitudes and slogans at the pathetic client and make the unfit suffer as they do endless sets using horrible exercises until the client collapses. These idiots routinely hurt or injure clients and when anyone complains they scream and rant. This is fitness malpractice and their hurtful practices are turning off generations of potential new clients. People see this stuff and go, “I want to get into shape as much as the next person – but no way am I going to subject myself to that hell on earth.” The Biggest Loser has projected the erroneous idea to millions that getting fit is all about sadism and pain and injury.

The lucky few that have access to a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer have the best of all worlds. The elite Parrillo Personal Trainer has a battle-tested strategy for weight training, cardio and nutrition. The PCPT locks all these strategies together in a tight, comprehensive regimen that acclimatizes the trainee to ever more difficult degrees of intensity; workouts are conducted in a logical and progressive fashion. The PCPT uses proven methods that actually build muscle and actually burn off body fat when coordinated with a comprehensive Parrillo-style nutrition program. The Parrillo nutritional strategy is the complete opposite of the prison camp/Biggest Loser philosophy of beat ‘em up and then starve ‘em. The Parrillo method combines hard training with a high calorie approach designed to accelerate the acquisition of muscle and the oxidation of body fat.  Parrillo nutrition flies in the face of the ridiculous starve ‘em strategies so prevalent and popular these days. If you are smart, contact Parrillo headquarters to see if there is a Parrillo Certified Personal Trainer plying his trade in your geographic area. Avoid the PT that babies the client and avoid the sadists that hurt the clients.

Vic,

I know this is a stupid question but what exactly is the difference between Optimized Whey Protein Powder^™ and Hi-Protein Powder^™? Which one should an intermediate trainer like me pick and why? I am looking to add muscle and lose fat (who isn’t!) and I am confused over which protein powder to go with.

Bobby V.  Oakland

Good question actually. First off, all Parrillo proteins are the best proteins available: both are expensive and effective isolate protein. Isolate protein is the Rolls Royce of proteins and costs two to three times what cheap non-isolate proteins do. The human body utilizes isolate proteins with far greater efficiency than it does the diluted proteins so widely used. The short answer, the simplistic answer is that the venerable Hi-Protein^™ is a caseinate/whey protein blend and releases its protein payload in a slow and sustained fashion. Optimized Whey Protein^™ is (obviously) whey protein and delivers its protein payload comparatively quickly. There are instances when slow and sustained is preferable and there are instances where instantaneous is appropriate. For example, many of our stable of elite bodybuilders will consume a Hi-Protein^™ shake right before bed. This strategy allows protein to be delivered while the athlete sleeps. To further amplify this excellent strategy, elite bodybuilders will also wash down a half dozen Liver Amino Formula^™ tablets and a handful of Enhanced GH Formula^™ capsules at bedtime. A single serving of Hi-Protein^™ contains 31 grams of slow-release high-biologic value protein. Each Liver Amino^™ tablet contains 1.5 grams of protein. The whey releases first then the caseinate starts systematically releasing protein and in about the time the caseinate is exhausted the protein from the Liver Amino^™ tablets comes online. Consuming the shake/liver combination before bed means 40 grams of protein are slowly released during the sleep cycle.

The Enhanced GH Formula^™ capsules are the icing on this muscle-building cake: growth hormone is secreted during the sleep cycle and the release of GH can be stimulated through the ingestion of two key amino acids: Arginine Pyroglutamate and Lysine Monohydrochloride. This four way combination of whey protein isolate and caseinate protein, liver tablets and GH-stimulating amino acids cause the bodybuilder to grow while they sleep. Optimized Whey Protein^™ is used by elite bodybuilders throughout the day. After a weight training session an Optimized Whey^™ shake means quick replenishment and speedier recovery. Quicker recovery means more training sessions can be squeezed in during the training week. Many of our elite bodybuilders consume an Optimized Whey^™ shake immediately upon arising in the morning. This quick infusion of protein breaks the catabolic state that exists after the long sleep cycle and breaks it immediately. Because a serving of Optimized Whey^™ contains only four grams of carbohydrate, consuming a whey shake upon awaking will not disturb the low glycogen status that makes early morning cardio so effective. The Parrillo athlete has both Hi-Protein^™ and Optimized Whey^™ in his supplemental arsenal. My advice is to have a canister of each on hand. For optimal benefit mix and match these two tremendous protein powders throughout the day as needed.

Vic,

I swear it seems my biceps get more of a workout than my lats when I do pulldowns, chins, seated cable rows or barbell rows. What’s up with that? No surprise that I have great biceps and very poor lat development. I have tried different grip widths, different handle attachments, different pull positions and different exercises and all to no avail. For whatever reason I cannot make a decent lat mind/muscle connection. I cannot activate my lats to save my life and my biceps are continually improving while my lats are going nowhere!

Larry Lat-less, Las Vegas

Actually your dilemma is so common we have a phrase for it, “Show me a man with great lats and I’ll show you a man with lousy biceps; Show me a man with great biceps and I’ll show you a man with lousy lats.” In order to activate the lats we have to pull some sort of poundage from arms length into the body. We can pull down to the body, we can pull in towards the body or we can pull upward to the body. The problem is you are pulling using your arms and not with your back. Arm pulling lat exercises can be avoided using this two-part

procedure…

• Use lifting straps

• Do not wrap the thumb around the bar or handle

Straps allow you to pull without activating the bicep and straps allow you to keep pulling long after the tiny bicep muscles are exhausted. Most people find using lifting straps cumbersome and awkward – this is a shame because correctly used lifting straps allow the bodybuilder to squeeze out extra reps, additional poundage or both. In my own case I can add two or three additional reps to any back exercise through the use of straps. Extra reps mean extra muscle growth. Straps take grip strength out of the back training equation. On limit pulldowns, chins, shrugs, rows or deadlifts the grip will give out before the back muscles give out. Straps allow you to keep tugging and pulling and repping way past the point where grip strength gives out. Buy some straps and learn how to use them.  Another secret to getting the biceps out of back training is to eliminate the thumb as you pull on poundage. Straps allow you to pull a barbell, dumbbell, pulldowns or machine without using the thumb. Place the strap around the bar or handle and cinch each strap tight. Do not wrap the thumb around the bar: leave the thumb atop the bar or handle and begin pulling. The straps allow you to pull without using the thumb and not lose anything off the poundage or reps. Try pulling a weight without straps and without using your thumbs and you will be lucky to pull 50% of what you are capable of using the thumbs. The rationale behind using straps to create a thumb-less grip is simple: the biceps cannot activate without the thumbs exerting pressure. This terrific tactic forces the lats into action. Be aware that you will need to drop the poundage back a bit until you get the hang of thumb-less strap work. Your pathetic, underworked lats will be forced into action whether they like it or not.

Metabolism Building

Mr. Steele,

How is it possible to “build the metabolism?”  I understand that this is one of the premier Parrillo precepts but I don’t get it – my father is a doctor and he says the idea that you can manipulate the metabolism to any significant degree is ridiculous. He is a podiatrist and not a sports physician and I admit that he is quite a bit overweight and smokes; still, he’s a medical expert and I would like a scientific explanation. You got to admit the idea seems whacky.

Don, San Diego

The “idea”  is hardly “whacky” and we’ve got thousands of flesh-and-blood examples of elite bodybuilders that have successfully built their metabolism through the expert blending of diet and exercise. Tell Pop that if he can put his Marlboro down for a moment he might want to check out The Parrillo Papers, assuming he is truly interested in the science behind the idea. Dr. Arthur Robinson has written eloquently about ‘metabolism building’ and regardless if you believe it or not, elite bodybuilders under John Parrillo’s supervision have been increasing their baseline BMR for nearly four decades. The procedure is based on the expert blending of intense exercise and Parrillo-style nutrition. Even your old man will have to admit that intense physical exercise accelerates the human metabolism. Think of the metabolism as the body’s internal thermostat and the higher the body’s thermostat is set, the more calories the body burns. Conversely the lower the bodily thermostat is set the fewer calories that are oxidized. A sedentary obese person has a slow metabolism and barely burns any calories. A champion athlete has a raging metabolism and his thermostat is set so high that calories are burned at an accelerated rate.

Intense weight training causes all body functions to accelerate and this creates a need for evermore calories to fuel the intense work. Intense cardiovascular exercise stimulates the body’s metabolism. If an individual runs, jogs, sprints, swims or uses an aerobic machine with great intensity, the body burns calories at quadruple the rate it uses at rest. In addition, the bodily metabolic burn rate stays elevated for hours after the conclusion of an intense workout. In the Parrillo System it is recommended that intense, hypertrophy-producing weight training be performed 4-6 times, each and every week. In the Parrillo System it is recommended that intense, fat-oxidizing cardio be performed 5-7 times, each and every week. That represents upwards of thirteen weekly exercise-induced metabolic spikes. In addition to intense exercise sessions that cause the metabolism to increase, the Parrillo nutritional system also has metabolism-spiking attributes running all through it. Ask your father if he’s aware that certain foods cause the metabolism to increase. This is related to digestion; while certain foods are easy to digest and have zero impact on the metabolic rate, other foods, like greens beans, carrots, broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, bell peppers, spinach and kale, present a difficult digestive task for the body. In order to break down a green bean or a carrot, the body must elevate the metabolism in order to break these difficult foods down digestively.

Ditto lean protein: the body has to “gear up” in order to break down protein. It is no accident that the classical “Parrillo Meal” consists of a portion of hard-to-digest protein and a portion of hard-to-digest fibrous carbohydrate. The final piece in the metabolism-building puzzle is the use of the multiple-meal eating strategy: if hard-to-digest foods are consumed at equidistant intervals throughout the day, the metabolism receives a bump each time the bodybuilder eats a meal. If a bodybuilder eats five Parrillo meals per day that equates to 35 metabolic food spikes per week; combine this with a dozen exercise-induced weekly metabolic bumps and all of a sudden the bodybuilder is self-administering upwards of 50 combined metabolic jolts each and every week! Keep that up for months on end and the metabolism is built! Mention to your Dad that we have thousands of flesh-and-blood examples, real live humans that have built their metabolisms using this procedure. One recent example of a well known sports star that built his metabolism was swimmer Michael Phelps. This kid swam upwards of eight hours a day, six days per week preparing for his eight gold medal onslaught: he needed to consume 10,000 calories a day to recover from his intense training – yet he was taunt and ripped. Phelps inadvertently created his own variation of this classic Parrillo procedure.

Hey Vic,

What’s the best way to bring up lagging arms? My guns are .22 caliber peashooters and I want .44 caliber howitzers! I train my arms once a week and typically perform 4-5 sets for my biceps and 4-5 sets for my triceps. They haven’t budged in a couple of years: they barely stretch the tape to 16 1/8th and I want to push them to 17 inches. Do you have any ideas?

Paul, Denver

Performing 4-5 sets for the arms once a week is a maintenance program! If you are serious about bringing up your pipsqueak popguns you’ll need to shock them into growth by quadrupling the amount of work you are currently doing. You will also need to add bodyweight. One of the biggest myths in all of muscle-dom is that by finding some magical arm routine a bodybuilder can suddenly grow his arms from 16 inches to 19 inches in a matter of months and do so without adding any bodyweight. WRONG! A man weighing 190 pounds packing 16 inch arms will need to push his bodyweight up to 200 pounds + in order to add an inch of arm muscle; talk about an inconvenient truth! In addition you will need to embark on a sustained and comprehensive “arm specialization” program: blast the biceps and triceps twice weekly. Arms lend themselves to super-setting (alternating) like no other body parts. Super-sets allow the bodybuilder to double the amount of work done within the same amount of time. Here is how I would lay out a six to ten week arm specialization program….

• Day I

Incline dumbbell curls super-setted with…

Single dumbbell overhead tricep extensions

Preacher curls super-setted with…

Tricep cable pushdowns

Cable curls super-setted with…

Reverse grip cable pushdowns

• Day II

Standing barbell curls super-setted with…

Dips

Concentration curls super-setted with…

Lying barbell nose-breakers

Machine curls super-setted with…

Machine tricep pushdowns

Each exercise should be done for a minimum of 3 sets and as many as 5 sets. Use a progressive set strategy; take a set or two using sub-maximum poundage to get grooved in before using max weight on the 3rd thru the 5th set. Some days you will be able to match or exceed your current best and other days you will not; that’s okay – we can’t exceed our all-time best in every single workout on every single exercise – but what we can do is work up to our capacity on that particular day. I would suggest you add one pound of bodyweight per week in conjunction with this program. Keep this up for six to ten weeks. Adding bodyweight ensures anabolism: keep the extra calories clean and weight gain will be muscle gain. I would also insist that after every arm session you consume a double serving of 50/50 Plus^™. CapTri^® is the ideal weight gain supplement for bodybuilders seeking to add muscle size. Drizzle a tablespoon (or two) over each food meal and add 500-1000 clean calories per day. CapTri^® and 50/50 Plus^™ are critical to building big arms. To grow bigger guns you’ll need to add size – worry about delineation, definition and muscle clarity after you have something worth delineating or defining: no one cares about a ripped and shredded 13 inch arm.

Vic,

I know you are a big mixed martial arts fan – I heard that Rampage Jackson suddenly and without notice quit fighting. I also heard a rumor that he was going to go into the movies?! What’s up with that? Have you seen any of the heavyweight action on this year’s reality TV show “The Ultimate Fighter?” Pretty disappointing I think you’d have to agree. I thought the big guys would be great but it turns out they suck!

Tad, Nashville

My sources tell me that Jackson got so pissed off big time at UFC major domo Dana White that he “retired” from fighting and messed up the Ultimate Fighter finale where he was scheduled to fight opposing coach Rashid Evans. It gets better: apparently Rampage had secretly been made an offer by a famous Hollywood movie producer. The offer was too good to pass up: in a bit of casting genius, Rampage Jackson will become the character played by Mr. T. in the big screen remake of the 80s TV show “The ‘A’ Team.” Rampage is perfect for playing a modern version of Mr. T – who by the way was a genuine bad ass. Mr. T got his big break when he appeared as a contestant in a short-lived TV game show called “The World’s Toughest Bartender.” In this goofy show contestants (that had to be real bartenders or bouncers) competed in feats such as busting through doors, beating up customers and boxing one another. My favorite event – and I kid you not – was tossing dwarfs for distance! Mr. T won the whole show and was crowned “The World’s Toughest Bartender.” That would have been the end of it and Mr. T would have headed back to his bouncer job at a tough Southside Chicago dive had not Sly Stallone happened to catch the finale on TV. He was searching for a new villain for Rocky IV and when he saw the burly, Mohawked bruiser, he contacted him about auditioning for the part. Mr. T ended up as one of the most memorable and convincing villains in cinematic history.

I am as disappointed by this year’s Ultimate Fighter reality TV show as you are: I had thought that with several former NFL players and knockout artist Kimbo Slice, this year would be the best year ever. On the contrary, this is the worst season ever because none of these guys can fight a lick. One episode was particularly revealing: one fight contestant was a nondescript college wrestler and the other guy was a former NFL player that looked, acted and trained like a world beater. The NFL guy stood 6-5, weighed a lean and muscular 275 pounds and moved like a big cat. The trouble is the guy couldn’t fight worth a damn. The wrestler beat him in a boring bout. This reaffirmed my long held view that just because you are big and strong and fit and lean and athletic doesn’t mean that you can fight. It also explains why the heavyweight division in MMA has the least amount of talent. On a related Rampage Jackson note: I saw a TV show a few months back where scientists set out to determine what created the highest impact upon the human body in all of professional sports. By using sensors hooked up to lifelike human dummies, the scientists determined the hardest hits: they tested a hockey player crashing an opponent into the boards, a quarterback being tackled from the blindside (for this test they had NFL megastar Ronnie Lott do the tackling) and the third test was Rampage Jackson administering one of his patented MMA body slams.

There was a famous MMA “incident” in which Rampage was being choked out by a Brazilian jujitsu expert in a fight. The Brazilian was on the ground and had Jackson in a triangle choke when Mr. Rampage proceeded to pick his 210 pound opponent clean up off the ring floor. While the jujitsu expert hung on, Rampage, in an inhuman display of pure strength, lifted the clinging Brazilian up over his head and slammed him back to the mat, knocking the jujitsu expert unconscious. On the sport show they had Jackson replicate his lift-and-slam with a 200 pound test dummy loaded with sensors. They determined that Jackson’s slam created the hardest impact ever recorded in all of sport: he propelled his opponent downward with an impact that clocked in at a staggering 152 miles an hour – ouch! I love Rampage and think he exemplifies a classic fighter, a real fighter. Being big and strong and athletic does not make you a fighter.

Free Weights

Vic Steele,

I am a ‘house husband.’ I work from home and watch our two kids while my wife does the corporate thing and makes the real money. I put in a lot of long hours between transporting kids all over the place and working as an accountant.  My available training time is extremely limited. Realistically I can squeeze in no more than 30 minutes of training, four to five times a week.

Is it possible to build any muscle with super short lifting sessions? I work out at home and have constructed a really nice home gym. Exercise variety is not a problem. I have about every exercise machine and device known to man. Could you set me up an abbreviated workout schedule?

Ron, Denver

You can build a ton of muscle using super short sessions. I would rather see a man kick ass in an abbreviated half hour session than loaf for two hours, playing patty-cake in some fern bar spa/fitness club where the clients spend more time talking than training. Give me a short and sweet session using a rusty Olympic barbell and a pile of plates done in some musty basement, a cluttered garage or a roasting hot summer shed. Unless you are an elite lifter hoisting super heavy weights that require lots of warm-up sets, you can cram a ton of work into thirty minutes. The strong take longer to train: a really strong guy might squat 505 for 5-8 reps. He would need warm-up sets with say, 135, 225, 315, 405 and 465 before he would be ready to tackle his top squat set with 505. That takes a lot of time. It takes a lot less time for a normal guy to work up to say 225 for 5-8 squat reps.  Fewer warm-up sets means less training time. A man squatting or bench pressing 225 for 5-8 reps would likely only need one or two or three warm-up sets, perhaps only 135 and 185. Being weaker makes it possible to get through a lot of sets in a concentrated and compacted 30 minute session. The answer to your situation lies in using Time Compression tactics. Use Super sets, Tri-sets and Giant sets to make the most of your limited amount of training time.

Adopt a strategy that pairs up “non-conflicting” exercises, exercises that compliment one another. Weave complimentary exercises together and get done two or three times the amount of work in half the time. Why perform a single set of a single exercise – then sit around for three to five minutes, lounging about while waiting for the muscle(s) to recover? Instead why not fill those 2-3 minutes of recovery time with other exercises, complimentary exercises that attack muscles in entirely different regions of the body. Here are three excellent examples of well-structured super-set, tri-set and giant-set strategies…

• Single-set Squat
• Super-set
• Squat
• Leg curl
• Tri-set
• Squat
• Leg curl
• Overhead press
• Giant set
• Squat
• Leg curl
• Overhead press
• Arm curl
• Tricep extensions

Using the classical, single-set lifting protocol, the trainee performs a particular exercise then rests until recovered. Repeat the same exercise again and again, until the requisite number of sets is completed. Using the Time Compression strategy, additional exercises are performed in the rest periods between sets. The exercises are carefully selected (and sequenced) so as to not negatively affect one another. The thighs might be exhausted after a set of squats however performing a set of leg curls immediately after the exhausting squats is doable and will not interfere with the muscular recovery of the thighs. The Tri-set protocol would add in an additional set of (deltoid-attacking) overhead dumbbell presses. One exercise is followed immediately by the next. At the conclusion of the super/tri/giant set, the lifter rests until breathing normalizes. Perform 2-5 additional sequences. Using the Giant Set protocol, the athlete might roll from squats (thighs) to leg curls (thigh biceps) into overhead pressing (deltoids) before finishing the sequence with arm curls (biceps) and lying tricep extensions (triceps.) A Giant Set is comprised of 4 to 5 exercises, all sequenced in complimentary fashion. The trainee rolls from one exercise to the next without hesitation. Complimentary exercise selection ensures fatigue is avoided from one exercise to the next. Here is another Time Compression template….

• Single-set
• Bench press
• Super-set
• Bench
• Calf raise
• Tri-set
• Bench
• Calf raise
• Barbell row
• Giant set
• Bench
• Calf raise
• Barbell row
• Curls
• Lat downs

Use this approach to jam the maximum number of sets into the least amount of training time. John Parrillo would recommend 3-4 cycles. Make maximum use of the rest time taken between super-sets, tri-sets or giant sets and slip in some fascial stretching. Don’t rush between cycles. A serious trainee can cram a minimum of 15 to upwards of 30 sets into a single 30-minute workout session.

Iron Vic,

I have been extremely diligent in my Parrillo-style diet and training over the past three years and as a direct result I have lost 50 pounds of fat. I am 31 years old and have dropped my bodyweight from an unhealthy 270 pounds to a much better 220. I am on my way to eventually weighing 180 pounds.  My problem is a bit strange: I have lost weight so quickly that my skin is saggy. In the places where I have lost the most body fat I now have droopy pec skin and hanging tricep skin – is this common? Is it correctable? No beach for me until I get this loose skin thing straightened out. Am I ruined for life?

Sag Man, Parts Unknown

Not to worry Sag Man – assuming you are under age 50, your skin is elastic and resilient and will eventually shrink and tightly encase those newfound muscles. The longer you have been heavy, the longer it will take for the skin to shrink and retract. There is nothing you can do to accelerate the process, just do not get fat again and be patient. By-the-way: great job and kudos for reducing from 270 to 220. Losing the next 40 pounds is going to be a lot tougher than losing the first 50. I would strongly suggest you NOT fall into the trap of slashing calories in order to lose weight. Most obese folks make the tragic mistake of slashing calories. They cut too many calories too fast and shut down their metabolism; thereby causing the body to hang onto its precious body fat. When the human body senses starvation it will eat its own muscle tissue in order to feed itself and preserve precious fat reserves. Use Parrillo’s BodyStat technology to ensure weight loss is fat loss. The skin will snap back, but it might take some time.

Greetings Vic,

My name is Ted and I am getting conflicting advice regarding how much protein is optimal to consume at a single sitting. I am what you would call an intermediate trainee. I have been hitting the Parrillo System hard for a good long while. I have made great gains following Parrillo principles over the past two years. I’m 6-2 and weigh 230.  At the gym I have an old pro telling me that… ‘The body cannot process more than 30 grams of protein at any one time! Eat more than 30 grams of protein at any single meal and the excess is pissed, passed or turned into body fat.” He sounds so authoritative and sure of himself that I wanted to run it past you. If I am reading correctly, Parrillo recommends a LOT more protein than that!

Randy, Alton Bluff

I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve heard that fitness Urban Legend! Let’s explode this old myth right away. The idea that “the human body can only digest – at most – 30 grams at a time” is ludicrous: it makes no allowances for size differences. So a 300 pound professional football player and a 100 pound female figure skater would have the identical protein assimilation capacities? Bull S—! The big man’s internal digestive plumbing will be 2-3 times larger in diameter than an athletic woman 1/3^rdhis size. This 30 grams per feeding myth ignores bodyweight: it also ignores differences in the metabolism. An athletic individual with a raging Basal Metabolic Rate (an elite Parrillo bodybuilder) will have a much higher food assimilation capacity than another individual (the same height and weight) with a sluggish metabolism. Parrillo-style bodybuilders have trained the body to be able to process massive amounts of food, quickly, efficiently and effectively. A person on a multiple-meal eating plan consumes upwards of 50 meals in a single seven day stretch: that’s a lot of digestive practice! A pro bodybuilder living on 5,000 calories per day, eating clean food, taking potent Parrillo supplements, will have a hell-of-a-lot more assimilation ability than a sedentary individual. Obese people have snail-like metabolisms and often live on less than 1,000 calories per day; starvation dieting destroys muscle. These obvious differences between the elite and the obese are ignored by the ‘one-size-fits-all’ crowd of experts. These guys pontificate with the greatest of ease, saying with great authority that “no one” can assimilate more than 30 grams of protein at any one time.” Politely I say – Poppycock!

Iron Man,

I wanted to know your opinion of resistance exercise machines. As an intermediate trainee I use a lot of machines in my workouts. I probably perform 70% of my workouts using the different exercise machines…the curl machine, pec dec, Smith Machine, shoulder press machine, bench and incline press machines, Hammer Strength, cable crossover, tricep pushdown…I use a lot of machines on a lot of exercises. Then I read where you say that free weights are way better and that exercises done on a machine are inferior. Am I wasting my time using machines? I thought I was getting some pretty good workouts!

Confused in Cincinnati

No need to freak out. Some machines are better than others and some machines are not machines at all. Free weights rule! As you push or pull a free weight, muscle stabilizers are forced to fire – something that doesn’t happen (often) when using exercise machines. Stabilizer muscles spring into action to keep a free weight within the technical confines of a particular lift. The true exercise machine eliminates the need for muscle stabilizers to fire. The machine has its resistance locked into a predetermined groove. There is no need for side-to-side stabilizers to fire during a bench press performed on a Smith Machine, or during a seated overhead press or a curl using a machine. Some machines are NOT machines at all. Cables allow the implement (the cable handle or handles) to move through space in whatever pathway the trainee chooses. So cable work is highly recommended. The bottom line is that you have the ratio of free weights to machines Bass-Ackwards: switch to 70% free weights and 30% machines. I hope that clears up the confusion.

Vic,

What is the reasoning behind Parrillo’s insistence that aerobics should be done intensely? I never really understood the rationale – I like to jog at a nice even pace for say five miles. If I understand correctly, this type of cardio is not nearly as effective as the more intense interval-type aerobic activities that John Parrillo recommends. Am I missing something? Do I need to sprint instead of jog?

Bob, Saint Louis

You should assuredly augment your jogging with a few weekly sessions of sprinting or other “stress aerobic” activities. All the enzymes responsible for fat burning are contained within the cellular mitochondria. Ergo the amount of fat you can burn is limited by the number of mitochondria you possess. Some folks are genetically blessed with loads of muscle mitochondria; others are born with barely any mitochondria at all. John Parrillo discovered in his research that new mitochondria can be constructed if a muscle is subjected to sustained cardio exercise that includes an element of resistance. The best way to build additional mitochondria within a muscle is to continually subject that muscle to a cardio protocol that involves muscular effort. If you perform cardio and glide along, which sounds like what you are doing – the stress inflicted on the working muscle is insufficient to cause the muscle to create additional mitochondria. On the other hand, if the type of cardio you select causes muscles to work really hard – as in sprinting, intense ball and racquet games, leaping, jumping or bounding – the working muscles can and will construct additional mitochondria. While sprinting repeatedly over a protracted period of time certainly will build additional muscle mitochondria in the calves, thighs, hamstrings and glutes – no growth will occur elsewhere on the body. I would strongly suggest you dedicate a day or two each week to cardio activities that require “huffing and puffing.” The more mitochondria a muscle possesses, the greater that muscle’s capacity is to burn body fat.  Let’s mix up the cardio: augment steady-state jogging with sprints and intense games that cause you to run and move
and exert.

Vic,

I want to go on a 10-week mass-building regimen. How would you lay out the supplement part of a mass-building nutritional program? I am coming off a terrific summer season. I got super lean and attained my lowest bodyweight of the year, 188 pounds. I currently weigh 195. I would like to push my weight up to 205 or 210 and bench press 380. Then I want to cut back to 195 (or thereabouts) for a bodybuilding show next spring. I’m lightly muscled compared to my competitors.

I hold body weight well – I carry a 10% body fat percentile year round. I have a hard time eating enough to push my weight up. I also want to enter a bench press competition. I bench 340 raw, weighing 190. Not bad for a tall guy. I am ready to add some muscle and I’m ready to up my bench press. I just don’t want to turn into a fat pig while doing it.  Please write me up a Parrillo supplement shopping list, one aimed at complimenting a power program.

Ron, Raleigh

You’ve maneuvered yourself into an enviable position. I would suggest adding 10-15 pounds of bodyweight in 10 weeks time. Do it in a smart way and take your time. Don’t go crazy. Incorporate Parrillo’s patented BodyStat technology. BodyStat is a tool that allows you to assess your current body fat composition: what is your current ratio of fat to muscle? With BodyStat you eliminate the guesswork. No more diet or nutrition moves based on subjectivity. Make objective decisions using BodyStat. Most serious trainees use BodyStat every week. Perform the 9-point skin-fold test and come up with your current body fat percentile. Create a realistic goal and work backwards. Divide what you want to accomplish into weekly mini-goals. In your case, ten weeks, it would be perfect to push your bodyweight up one to one and a half pounds per week. 10-15 pounds added in ten weeks. Ideally, gain the weight while maintaining your current lean and ripped condition. Maintain your current degree of leanness through constant BodyStat readings. Sync up a power training regimen with the Parrillo nutritional strategy. You will need 1.5 grams or more of protein, per pound of bodyweight, every single day. That’s 280 grams of protein per day for a guy that weighs 192 pounds. Use BodyStat to achieve a degree of leanness you thought unimaginable. BodyStat allows you to exert a degree of exactitude that has to be experienced to be believed.

You MUST consume more calories than you burn off on a consistent daily basis; you must intake nearly 300 grams of protein per day: supplements are the nutritional solution. Keep eating what you are eating, when you are eating it, in the same amounts. Obviously whatever you are doing is working. Parrillo supplements can add 1,000 additional calories per day.

This supplemental template is ideal for a serious individual intent on making rapid gains. Your foundation is gut-busting gym effort and disciplined nutrition. You need to eat often and with clocklike regularity. The deeper into this 10-week periodization cycle you get, the more calories you have to consume. More rice, fish, turkey, potatoes, chicken, fiber vegetables…more Parrillo supplements of every type and variety…supplements are taken often and taken methodically.

w Start the day with a Parrillo Optimized Whey^™ shake and five Liver Amino^™ tabs. The catabolic sleep fast is broken with 40+ grams of high BV protein.

w Consume the first of five daily servings of creatine monohydrate.

w CapTri^® is drizzled over each food meal. CapTri^® contains 120 calories per tablespoon.

On account of its structural construction, CapTri^® is transported directly to the liver via the portal vein. Calories derived from CapTri^® are virtually impossible to end up compartmentalized as body fat. Parrillo supplements are the key to building mass: the magic combination of power training and heavy eating is augmented with ample amounts of potent supplements. To avoid adding body fat during the process, BodyStat is used to alert you if things are on track or flying off the tracks. Fat gains should be miniscule and acceptable. If a man adds fifteen pounds of rock solid muscle and coincidentally picks up a few pounds of body fat in the process, then we’ve been successful. Lift weights four to six times a week and hit the cardio hard especially on the “off days.” Use Parrillo supplements to create a consistent caloric surplus. You need to gain a pound, to a pound and a half of bodyweight per week, every week for ten consecutive weeks, come hell or high water. Use CapTri^® and creatine multiple times each day. Load up with mega-doses of branched-chain amino acids in the form of Muscle Amino Formula^™ before and after weight training. Take five to eight Liver Amino^™ tabs every couple of hours. Each tablet contains 1.5 grams of protein and is loaded with blood boosters. Be selective and discriminating with the calories you choose. Create the caloric surplus needed to construct new muscle using potent Parrillo supplements.

PS – If you successfully add ten to fifteen pounds of rock-solid muscle, you’ll be repping 340 and bench pressing 400!

Greetings Victor,

I want to know how to increase my bench press. How does a normal dude (like me) increase his bench press by say 50 pounds without having to gain fifty pounds of bodyweight?  I am 5-7 and I weigh 150. I have a real tight physique. Not that it couldn’t be better. I would like to push my 200 pound max bench press up to 250 without adding a bunch of bodyweight. I bench twice a week and have been training seriously for 10 years. Any hints or tips would be greatly appreciated.

John, Camp Springs, Maryland

Here’s a bench press routine that was used for many years by Ed “The Giant Killer” Coan. Ed was the greatest powerlifter of all time. Incredibly Eddy is a longtime Parrillo Product user and at his peak, (around 1990) weighing 219 pounds, Ed could bench press 550 pounds (raw) for a double! Ed used this super basic bench routine for nearly a decade…His “cycle” lasted twelve weeks.

Day I

Bench press: three types of flat benching using three different grip widths

Competition grip bench: work up to one max set of 8, 5, 3 or 2 reps

Wide-grip bench

(with paused reps): work up to two max sets of 10, 8 or 5 reps

Narrow-grip bench

(no pauses): work up to two max sets of 10, 8 or 5 reps

w For the first two weeks, one max set of 8 reps using the competition grip

w For the next six weeks, one max set of 5 reps using the competition grip

w For the next two weeks, one max triple using the competition grip

w For the final two weeks, one max double (2 reps) using the competition grip

After a few bench press warm-up sets, work up to a single, all out set using the competition width grip for whatever reps are proscribed: 8, 5, 3 or 2 reps. Ed would then reduce the bench press weight by say 90 pounds and perform his two sets of wide grip bench press using paused reps. The wide grip bench reps are higher than what is used in the single set using the competition grip. Ed would then knock off another 90 pounds and perform two sets of narrow-grip bench press in ‘touch and go’ style.

Then Ed would work the hell out of his triceps…

Dips: sets of 10 reps with 200 additional pounds strapped around his 220 pound torso

Pushdowns: two partners would stand on each toe to keep him from launching upward

Nose-breakers:

300+ pounds for reps

A few days later Ed would come in and perform 3-5 sets of a strict bench press with his feet up on the bench. He could push 315 for twenty super strict, wide-grip paused reps. He’d work biceps for perhaps 6 total sets, using one or two exercises. That was it. This is a classical training template well worth reviving. Coan was a rabid Parrillo Product user: Ed used John’s products through the peak years of his career. “I loved John’s products and particularly his bars; some of them taste great and some taste incredible! I used to go through a box of bars every few days!” Ed was the greatest ever. He was powerlifting’s version of football immortal Jim Brown.

Vic,

I know you are a big UFC fan. The whole MMA world is total chaos. For six months one guy is the champion in a particular division before someone comes along and whips him; now the new guy is proclaimed as the next great thing. Leasner, Machida, Silva, Franklin’s reemergence, Rampage’s saga…The UFC is one big addictive soap opera. What’s your take? Are you including any of their brutal training tactics in your training regimen? Their cardio is kick ass!

Big Ron from Hollywood

Watch for a feature article on UFC cardio training in an upcoming issue of the PPP.

Big Ron do you really live in Hollywood? That used to be my line! Years ago Dr. Fred Hatfield (Dr. Squat) and I would dazzle foreign women at international powerlifting championships with lines like, “Hello ladies! We are two lonely world powerlifting champions stuck in this dull city. We are here until we win our world titles, awards and medals, then we will jet back to our mansions in Hollywood. Did we mention we were rich? My friend here is a Doctor. Do you two live around here? Are you a Capricorn?”

Insofar as your UFC MMA queries, I think we are witnessing a new fact-of-MMA-life: no one is unbeatable! Some guys are custom made to beat other guys; some men fight so unorthodox that they frustrate formally trained fighters. When a champ has been around for a while, his opponents begin to dissect his style. Witness the demise of Tito Ortiz. With his size and power there was a time (and not too long ago) when it seemed that he was the perfect fighting machine, an unbeatable man. He quickly morphed from unbeaten into beaten and beaten more often than not. What happened? The other fighters figured out how to defend against him. Ditto for Chuck Liddell. For a while it seemed Chuck would never be beaten; then everyone began beating him. The rocket ride of Rampage Jackson makes for perfect soap opera fare. He is a great fighter plagued by outside dramas; the type of dramas that have plagued fighters from time immemorial. How about the disintegration of KroCop and the tarnish coming off Wanderlei Silva’s mystique…then there was the rise of Forest Griffin, Rich Franklin and Rashid Evans…all peaked quickly and faded just as quickly. The current dominance of Anderson Silva (the Sugar Ray Robinson of MMA fighters) is fascinating. Man Mountain Brock Leasner finally came through to match his hype: he is now the dominant big man.

The current 205 pound champ, Machida, is one of the most eloquent MMA fighters I’ve ever seen. He fights like Fred Astaire danced. Could he be the long-term 205 dominator? Fedor Emilienenko’s career is a disaster and a debacle: rumored to be “mobbed up,” Fedor’s Russian handlers take one giant misstep after another. Meanwhile the best fighter in the world watches the best years of his career steadily flow by, unproductively. Round and round it goes – what it all points to is that there is no such thing as a completely dominant fighter or a completely dominant style. I am really looking forward to this year’s Ultimate Fighter show. The heavyweights will train under Rampage and Rashid. With Kimbo Slice and several ex-NFL players thrown into the mix, this show promises to be one big Pier 9 brawl from start to finish. When fighters are crammed together and made to live in a single house for six weeks without a TV, bad things are bound to happen. And I want a ringside seat!

Dear Stupid,

How can you put stone-age dudes like Bill Pearl, John Grimek and Reg Park on your all time top ten list and leave off modern greats like Jay Cutler??!! I have zero idea who Reg Park is. Bill Pearl couldn’t take 100^th place in the 2009 Mr. Los Angeles. What’s up with this stupid idea of placing old timers with lousy physiques ahead of the modern greats?  Time for you to retire

Iron Victor Steele,

I love your column but you sure make some dumb picks as far as your top ten bodybuilders of all time. How can you have Dorian “one arm” Yates ahead of Ron “eight time” Coleman, or Lee “seven time” Haney?? Get a grip!

John Lee, Greenwood, Mississippi

Steele Head,

I really liked your Top Ten BB list. I like how you handicapped the list in order to compare past to present. I would have added the most symmetrical bodybuilder of all time, Samir Banout to my list.

Jossie, San Jose

Vic,

How could you rank Haney so low? Dorian looks like a blocky powerlifter and that weird way you ranked those old guys made no sense to me. I think you were just trying to figure out a way to get your old- time buddies onto the list.

Arn, Falls Church

Iron Man,

Loved the list of top ten bodybuilders – would my list have been different? You bet! Arnold is Numero Uno! Still it was cool to see who you ranked and why.

James, New Orleans

This is just a sampling of the hundreds of replies I received regarding my ranking list of the greatest bodybuilders of all time. As I mentioned in the article, bodybuilding is completely subjective. Bodybuilding is like going to an art gallery and picking out a painting that appeals to you. The painting that you love might not appeal to me in the slightest. That is the beauty of art and that is the beauty of bodybuilding: any list I offer up is guaranteed to generate a lot of negative comments. Any of those that attacked my list could offer up their own list and trust me when I say I could pick their list to pieces with the greatest of ease. There is no single list of ten bodybuilders that would be universally praised and make everyone go, “Oh that’s a great list, a list totally beyond criticism, indisputably perfect and correct!”

Probably the most controversial aspect of my list was my ‘handicapping’ of the older guys in order to level the playing field. I happened to watch a special on ESPN yesterday titled, “The top ten National Football League pass rushers of all time.” Guess what? The top three spots were given out as follows…number three, Lawrence Taylor, a guy that retired twenty years ago; number two, Reggie White, a guy that retired a decade ago; number one, David “Deacon” Jones, a guy that retired thirty five years ago. Obviously ESPN is handicapping for pass rushers just as I do for bodybuilders. The rationale behind handicapping is as follows: if Deacon Jones of 1966 was magically transported to 2009 he would be unable to play in the NFL on account of the players being so much larger, stronger and faster. What the expert handicappers take into account is that if an ancient player were to come up in this day and age, they would have access to all the modern advantages as it relates to training, nutrition, coaching and science. As a result, they would be 10-20% better. The second factor the handicappers look at is how dominant the ancient player was in relation to the rest of the athletes of his day. I tried to do the same thing with bodybuilders and so should you. The fact that some of you are ignorant about many of the ancient greats is not my fault.

Iron Vic,

I am intrigued by what you wrote a few months back regarding the Parrillo 100-rep Five Phase Giant Set. I was thinking about using this training approach in conjunction with a summertime ‘slice-dice-and-shred’ strategy. I have a couple of months that promise to be relatively calm and wanted to link up this 100-rep weight training routine with a super-tight diet. I currently carry 14% body fat and want to get down to 9%. I want ripped abs, defined quads and that bodybuilder look – what do you think? I am so ready for a new approach. I thought I’d use the 100-rep set, with a lot of cardio. By adding a super-strict Parrillo diet to the cardio and 100-rep approach I could get shredded. Could I get the look I want in eight weeks?

Ron, Richmond

Hell Yes you could. I think this would be a perfect use of the Parrillo 100-rep strategy. There has been a ton of interest generated since the article on John’s 100-rep Five Phase Giant Set training strategy was published. This approach is unusual and I dare say revolutionary. It needs to be understood to be used properly. I think syncing the 100-rep approach up with an eight week lean-and-rip program would be ideal. Parrillo devised this approach a few years back when he was researching ways in which to reconfigure the composition of muscle fiber. Every muscle has X number of mitochondria; mitochondria are cellular blast furnaces and the more mitochondria a muscle has the greater the growth potential. In addition, a human body loaded with mitochondria is far less likely to accumulate body fat. Now the interesting thing about mitochondria is that intense and prolonged physical effort causes a working muscle to build additional mitochondria. For example, back in the 1860s railroad tracks were laid by hand, not machine, and a railroad spike driver would use a four pound sledge hammer to pound railroad spikes for 8-10 hours a day: the spike driver would develop arms, forearms and shoulders loaded with mitochondria. His legs would not. John Parrillo
devised the Five Phase 100-rep Giant Set specifically to build additional muscle mitochondria. For example, if you are training thighs, here is one way in which you could structure a 100-rep workout….

one set of 20 reps – proceed
immediately to…

Leg extensions

one set of 20 reps – proceed
immediately to…

Front squats

one set of 20 reps – proceed
immediately to…

Sissy squat

one set of 20 reps – proceed
immediately to…

Leg presses

one set of 20 reps – rest, then

repeat this cycle 1-2 more times

Now that is one tough workout! It gets even tougher when you take into account that you perform 2-3 of these Five Phase Giant Sets – do the math – that’s 200 to 300 cumulative reps for a single muscle in a single workout! John is quick to point out, “You have to use poundage light enough to allow you to make all 100 reps – however, once you select the poundage you never drop the poundage from one cycle to the next. Don’t get too ambitious and start too heavy. If you make all the 20-rep sets, do not slash the exercise poundage on the subsequent cycles. This is not ‘drop set’ training.”

I would suggest you start off by using the Parrillo 100-rep Five Phase Giant Set for one or two body parts per week. In order to effect muscular reconfiguration you will need to stay with this strategy for a minimum of four weeks. Eight weeks is recommended. You don’t build new mitochondria in a single workout; this is a strategy that needs to be used consistently and for an extended period of time. You MUST eat big and eat clean if you train this way. I would suggest in the strongest possible terms that as soon as you are finished with the workout you consume a double (or triple) serving of Parrillo’s magnificent post-workout smart bomb supplement, 50/50 Plus™. Then, a few hours later, have a second “recovery meal.” If you train this hard and under-eat, if you neglect post-workout supplementation, you will end up in a world of hurt. I would suggest you combine several 100-rep weekly workouts (say legs on Monday then chest on Thursday) with consistent, torrid, early morning cardio and a tight, Parrillo-style nutritional program. In eight weeks, assuming you do it right, I guarantee you will drop from 14% body fat to 9% body fat.

Vic,

I got a canister of the new Parrillo Contest Cookie Mix™ (butter-flavor shortbread) and had a tough time getting it to mix evenly – do I need a blender or a food processor to mix my cookie dough prior to baking? My dough comes out lumpy…I am sure I am doing something wrong. What’s the right procedure?

Deidra, Pontiac

I talked with Parrillo HQ about this and Dominique Parrillo (who is directly responsible for bringing so many new Parrillo products into the marketplace) suggested the following cookie dough prep procedure…

“Use a fork and a bowl. No need for a mixer or blender; place two scoops of dry Contest Cookie Mix™ into the bowl and add four tablespoons (not teaspoons) of CapTri® to the dry mix. Work it in with a fork, mashing the liquid and powder together. Allow the putty-like mixture to sit for a minute or two; then knead the “dough” with the fork for another minute. At this point the mixture should be even in consistency. If not, try adding another tablespoon of CapTri®.”

I have found that Dominique’s “fork method” works superbly. I like to make my cookies LARGE. Instead of the recommended twelve per batch, I end up with about a half a dozen per batch. The bigger the cookie, the longer they need to bake. I will flip them over after five minutes in order to get them crispy on both sides.

Hey Vic,

How important is post-workout supplementation? What is the best time to ‘smart bomb?’ Before, during, or after the workout? I understand that the ideal smart bomb needs both protein and carbohydrate – how much should you consume in relation to bodyweight? I would assume a 220 pound man would need a bigger post-workout smart bomb than a 120 pound woman or a 150 pound guy. What is the best balance between protein and carbs? Whey? Caseinate? Is regular food okay as a recovery meal? BTW -Great column – you be da’ man!

Bam, Columbus

First and foremost: if you blast away at your weight training as hard and heavy as you are supposed to, a post-workout ‘smart bomb’ is indispensible. It is a remarkable thing when you think about it: by eating or drinking the right combination of protein and carbohydrate after a workout, you actually obtain better results than if you performed the identical workout and neglected to smart bomb. Optimally the ingredients are pure and potent; truth be known, most commercially available products start off using weak protein concentrates and add chemically-drenched filler to fluff up the final finished product. Parrillo Performance Products created 50/50 Plus™ specifically as a post-workout supplement. 50/50 Plus™ uses the finest, purest, most potent protein isolates in combination with low-glycemic, slow-release carbohydrate powder. Each serving contains 150 calories and provides 21 grams of protein along with 17 grams of carbohydrate. No sugar, no fat, no chemically-drenched toxic filler crap. I think a single serving of 50/50 Plus™ is fine for a trainee weighing 200 pounds or less; the heavyweights need 1.5 or 2 servings.

I throw two servings of dry 50/50 Plus™ into a Parrillo shaker cup and toss this into my gym bag. When I’m ready I just fill it up at the drinking fountain and shake it up. I like to drink my 50/50 Plus™ shake about halfway through my workout. This eliminates energy nosedives that usually occur towards the end of a killer workout. Ever notice how the last exercise in a tough session usually suffers and you lose reps or have to drop the poundage? Consume a serving (or two) of 50/50 Plus™ mid-workout and watch how your energy stays high all the way through until the end of the session. Yes regular food can be eaten and used as a post-workout recovery meal: I prefer the liquefied 50/50 Plus™ shake because it is ready to go and circulates to the shattered muscles far faster. Optimally, take a 50/50 Plus™ shake halfway through the workout and as soon as possible afterwards have a Parrillo meal, a food meal consisting of a portion of lean protein, a portion of fiber and starch carb. Be smart and understand that smart bombing improves workout results. I always take a handful of Parrillo Muscle Amino Formula™ capsules after every workout: MAF provides a concentrated dose of branch-chain amino acids and accelerates recovery; MAF “spares” muscle protein breakdown by providing BCAAs.

Parrillo Cupcakes

Vic Steele,

Here’s my problem: I am stuck at a bodyweight of around 165 and cannot add weight to save my life. I am 5-9 and very, very lean. I have entered the Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon in years gone by and currently have a 7.5% body fat percentile. I know this for a fact because I had myself tested at the University of Kentucky Sports Laboratory a month ago. This was an underwater dunk test and I registered a 7.44% body fat percentile. I lift four times a week using a basic Parrillo split routine. I recently read an old column of John’s and was thinking about trying his “10 sets of 10 reps routine.” My goal is to add ten pounds of muscle without blowing my leanness…is that possible? Perhaps you could lay out a routine and supplement schedule. Currently I take 50/50 Plus™ after my workouts and every morning I take Max Endurance Formula™ (I do 45 minutes of intense cardio every single day) plus I take Bio-C™ and Natural E-Plus™. I was thinking about adding Muscle Amino Formula™ and Evening Primrose Oil™. Thanks again and keep up the no-bull advice…

Randy, Lexington

This is a good problem to have: lean as a steel post, you are seeking to add some quality muscle mass. I would suggest a 10 week game plan: let’s look to add one pound of bodyweight (muscle weight) per week for ten consecutive weeks. Do you have the Parrillo BodyStat Kit? If not, order this incredible tool. The BodyStat Kit ensures that weight gains are muscle gains. Let’s look at the training first and then we’ll discuss the supplements – the key for adding bodyweight in your particular case is to blast the hell out of your body then feed it a lot of clean calories. I love the idea of using John’s infamous 10 sets of 10 reps routine and obviously your current eating habits are spot on; otherwise you would not be sporting a 7.5% body fat percentile. Keep your ‘regular food’ strategy in place and let’s add extra calories through the intake of Parrillo supplements. Here is the training portion…

The Parrillo

10 sets of 10 reps Routine

(not for sissies)

• Day 1: legs – tri-set: squats, leg curls, calf raises
• Day 2: chest – bench press, flat bench dumbbell flyes
• Day 3: back – deadlift, chins
• Day 4: shoulders – dumbbell overhead press, press-behind-the-neck
• Day 5: arms – pick one curl, pick one tricep exercise
• Day 6: off
• Day 7: off

The procedure is the same for every exercise: perform 10 sets and perform 10 reps on every single set. Take a set or two (or three) to warm-up; then perform 7-8 sets using static poundage.

Take a few sets to get up to the maximum poundage for that particular day; then stay there for the remainder of the ten sets. In the squat, for example, if you are capable of squatting 250 x 10 reps (for a single, all out set) then the 10 x 10 procedure would be as follows: set #1, 135 x 10; set #2, 185 x 10…now perform 8 sets of 10 reps with 225 pounds. You initially want to use 10% less than your maximum 10-repetition single-set capacity. If a trainee is capable of 250 x 10 for a single set, trying to perform eight sets of ten reps with 250 on day one in session one would be suicidal! You would never make it! Drop the poundage and go for volume. The idea is to make the target weight and the following week bump the leg and back poundage upward by 10-20 pounds. Bump the upper body stuff up by 5-10 pounds on chest/shoulders/arms after a successful session. Caution: ease into this; don’t get too poundage crazy initially. Remember it’s not where you start at on week one that counts, it’s where you end up (poundage-wise) in week #10 that counts! This is a mass building program without peer – assuming you can take it!

Supplements: CapTri® should be at the top of your ‘must buy’ list. Drizzle a tablespoon of CapTri® over each of your 3 to 5 daily “food meals.” This simple procedure will add between 400 and 500 calories to your daily intake. CapTri®’s unique molecular structure makes it impossible for CapTri® calories to end up as body fat. Keep up the 50/50 Plus™ post-workout supplementation; however I need you to double the post-workout serving size. The 10 x 10 regimen has a devastating effect on the human body and you need extra 50/50 Plus™ to cope. Order a couple of canisters of Parrillo Optimized Whey™ protein and a couple of boxes of Parrillo Energy Bars™. Here’s the deal: lean protein (and CapTri®) are the best friend of the lean athlete seeking to add muscle size without adding body fat. Consume an Optimized Whey Protein™ shake the minute you have finished your morning cardio. This will provide 30+ grams of high BV protein. Drink a second Optimized Whey™ shake the last thing at night before going to bed. This will keep you growing while you sleep. The final piece to the supplement puzzle is the venerable Parrillo Energy Bar™; eat at least one bar per day each and every day. Add it all up: two daily shakes provide 66 grams of protein; a double serving of 50/50 Plus™ adds another 40 grams of protein; a single Energy Bar™ adds 14 grams of protein. Parrillo supplementation adds 120 grams of protein and 500 additional calories per day. Add the CapTri® calories into the mix and you have added 1,000 clean calories per day! This combination, 10 x 10 training and intense Parrillo supplementation, is a surefire way to add 10 pounds of pure muscle to an already lean body. At the end of ten weeks you will experience a dramatic increase in muscle mass with no increase in body fat. Keep me posted steel post man.

Vic,

I broke my foot in a bar brawl. I would like to continue training legs but need some help figuring out a program. I am a hardcore trainee and I normally train five times a week. I had worked my squat up to 550 x 5 wearing just a belt and wraps before I had to spank the drunk that took a pass at my girlfriend. He won’t be bothering any other ladies anytime soon. I don’t want to lose my leg strength. The doc says it’ll be six weeks before I can start squatting. What do you think?

Sonny, Oakland

Even though the foot is screwed up and you are unable to do squats, leg presses or hacks with both legs, you can still do single-leg leg presses and calf raises, along with double-leg leg extensions and leg curls. Leg extensions and leg curls can be done without impacting the foot. Let’s shoot for 4-5 sets of two-legged leg extensions and super-set these (alternate) with 4-5 sets of two-legged leg curls. You can work the thigh muscles on the uninjured leg with the one-legged leg press. You can also perform single-leg calf raises with the good leg. When performing the one-leg leg presses, cut the poundage way back: don’t be stupid and try to leg press 50% of what you can do with two legs. 30 to 40% of what you are capable of with two legs would be fantastic. You are a strong guy, so if you were able to leg press 600 for 10 reps using two legs, I would work up to no more than 200 to 250 for the single legged-leg press, at least to start off with. Bring the leg press sled all the way down. Avoid partial reps. Perform a couple of light sets while playing with the feel and foot positioning on the sled. Another trick is to get maximum effect from minimum poundage by slowing down the rep speed. If you lower slower and push slower (not ridiculously slow) then the poundage will feel heavier. For an injured athlete this is a good thing: you will be able to work the hell out of the good leg and obtain maximum results using a relatively light weight. Start the session with 4-5 sets of leg extensions alternated with 4-5 sets of leg curls. Then move onto the single-legged leg press and the single leg calf raise. Single-leg calf raises can be done using the seated calf machine, the standing calf machine or by standing on a stair-step while holding a dumbbell in the opposite hand. Keep calf reps in the 10-15 rep range. This is quite a bit of leg work and will keep the bad leg relatively strong while it heals. By working the uninjured leg, you will be able to maintain the Lion’s share of your current power. Let me know how this works out.

Vic,

What’s up with the new Parrillo Protein Frosting Mix™? Also the Parrillo Ice Kreem™ rocks! Between all the various Parrillo “engineered foods” a person with a sweet tooth could live on Parrillo Products and never break bad! I had a heck-of-a-sweet tooth but by using Parrillo products I have been ‘sweet free’ for six months!

Alex, Old Town Alexandria

Let’s examine the nearly limitless Parrillo possibilities: the Parrillo Sports Nutrition Bar™ comes in three flavors. The Parrillo Protein Bar™ comes in nine different flavors. The venerable Parrillo Energy Bar™ comes in seven flavors; the Parrillo High-Protein/Low Net Carb Bar™ comes in three flavors and the new Parrillo Chew Bar™ has no less than ten different flavor possibilities. Now shift to the engineered foods: Instant Hi-Protein Low Carb Pudding™ has four flavors. Hi-Protein Pancake and Muffin Mix™ comes in two flavors and my personal favorite, the Parrillo Cake and Cupcake Mix™, comes in three flavors. The latest Parrillo offering is Protein Frosting Mix™. This is used to top Parrillo cakes and cupcakes and is available in vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter (allergen-free) and cream-cheese flavors. This particular creation is already being abused by bodybuilders. One acquaintance of mine mixes up Protein Frosting Mix™ by the cupful and then greedily eats it with a spoon. Parrillo Protein Ice Kreem™ requires an inexpensive ice cream machine. Pick one up at the local Wal-Mart for around $30. Ice Kreem™ comes in five different frosty flavors. All in all, there are no less than fifty different flavor possibilities spread out between ten different Parrillo Products. If you have a sweet tooth then the Parrillo products are the way to lose fat, build muscle and do so while satiating sweet cravings.

Iron Head,

I have heard that you can cook with CapTri® – I wonder how this works. I am not much of a chef but would like to try some new things. Like a lot of guys, I never really learned how to cook. Mom did the cooking. Now I am living in an apartment with a couple other guys and I need to get lean. I am thirty pounds overweight. If I can learn to do some elementary food preparation, I can get off the pizza, junk food, sodas and chips. When I do so, I know that I will shape up quick. In other words, I am so out of bounds with my current eating that if I clean it up – and I am ready – then I will make quick progress. So maybe you could pass along a few elementary cooking procedures. By the way I am a pretty strong and muscular guy: I have a 500 pound deadlift and can bench 350 – I weigh 230 and at 5-5, that is way too fat! Thanks in advance Vic.

Tom, Trenton

There are a lot of young guys that don’t even know how to turn on a stove, much less how to activate the oven or the broiler. Keep it super simple: start off by buying a large pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Here are two super quick ways to prepare breasts: cut the breasts into strips about the size of your little finger. Cover the bottom of a 12-inch Teflon non-stick skillet with 1/8^th inch of CapTri®. Get the oil hot – but not so hot that the oil starts to smoke and burn. Use a pair of tongs and place the chicken strips into the hot oil. When they start to turn color, use the tongs and turn them until all sides are brown. Pull them out and enjoy a chicken taste treat that will blow McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets into the weeds. I also like to buy chicken breasts still on the bone and bake them at 325 or sauté them gently in a Teflon skillet with a glass lid. Place the CapTri® in the skillet, place the breasts skin side down and cover; sauté over a low heat for 15 to 25 minutes. Use a cheap, $8 insta-read meat thermometer and poke the thickest part of the breast. When it reads 160-degrees, the chicken is done. Use the meat thermometer to make perfect bird every time.

Purchase brown rice. That’s easy to make. Yams can be baked in the oven. Small red potatoes and red onions can be diced and sautéed in Butter-flavored CapTri® – delicious! I will often throw in some broccoli crowns, garlic, spinach and diced bell peppers. For a terrific egg white omelet, start off with the diced onions and red pepper mix; separate egg whites from yolks and beat the whites in a blender for about 20 seconds. Pour the egg whites into the hot pan full of veggies. Start turning the mixture gently with a spatula until done. This veggie omelet makes a delicious breakfast and is ready to eat inside ten minutes. I would also suggest bachelor-types purchase bagged salad and bagged spinach. Fish is fabulous and easy to prepare; buy white fish fillets and bake them or sauté them in CapTri®. Redirect some of your grocery money towards the purchase of Parrillo supplements: I would start with Parrillo Hi-Protein Powder™, Parrillo Liver Amino Formula™ and definitely some Parrillo Sports Nutrition Bars™. The perfect Parrillo meal includes a portion of lean protein, a portion of starch (rice or potatoes) and a portion of fiber – vegetables. In the morning make oatmeal and mix it with a serving of Parrillo Hi-Protein powder™. Or make an omelet. For lunch (at work) stick to chicken or fish with a salad. In the evening make yourself some chicken, shrimp, shellfish, fish or a lean steak. Shrimp are particularly easy: steam them and they are done inside of five minutes. I would suggest steaming or sautéing fresh veggies. If you are pushed for time, make yourself a salad. I like to prepare flank steak on the weekends: roast or grill this lean beef cut. Be sure and eat a Parrillo Bar™ (or two) when the urge to eat sweets occurs. You can defiantly lose 30 pounds in three months while actually adding muscle in the process. Buy some basic cooking tools and learn how to grocery shop. Any dummy can learn how to cook. Remember the more you cook the better you get at it. Practice makes perfect!

Parrillo Muffins

Vic,

Any tips for a bodybuilder with a severe sweet tooth? I have been a competitive bodybuilder for a lot of years and while I don’t really crave sweets most of the time, when I swing into my pre-competition diet, I get intense sweet cravings. The deeper into my 12 week, low-fat pre-competition diet I get, the worse my sweet tooth gets! I had thought that at some point in my career I would outgrow these weird pre-competition sugar cravings – but it seems to be getting worse not better. Is my dilemma common among competitive bodybuilders? Am I a head case? Do I need to get hypnotized? Like a compulsive drinker, gambler or smoker? Seriously, I would do it if you thought it would help. I binged two weeks prior to a competition last year and it turned into a bad scene. I broke down and ate almost an entire cheesecake at a friend’s party – my system was so pure that I suffered sugar shock, fell down and almost went into a coma. No sh-t it was scary. I want to prepare for another show in August – but I am scared I will do something stupid. Have you ever heard of anything like this before?

PS – When I am not preparing for a competition my sweet cravings are almost nonexistent – this is why I am thinking maybe my problem is psychological.

Thad, Dallas

I really don’t have enough information to definitively say what the problem is. However I have a couple of possible answers and a couple of potential solutions. I suspect that the reason you mysteriously crave sweets when you swing into the full-on competition diet is fat – or more accurately the lack of fat in your pre-competition diet. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that your competition diet is super-strict and uses nothing but real food. I suspect your diet is virtually free of saturated fat. I would also bet the farm that you are not using any CapTri^® or Evening Primrose Oil^™. A lot of bodybuilders following the Parrillo dietary protocol limit their overall intake of fat to 5% (or less) of daily calories. This can be problematic for certain bodybuilders. A total lack of fat in the human diet has bad side effects – loss of hair, slowed mental cognition and blotchy, dry skin. Bodybuilders that eliminate almost all fat need to use CapTri^® and Evening Primrose Oil^™. Fat helps satiate all types of cravings. I do not think that your sudden sweet tooth is mental or coincidental. The dietary problem with fat is that long chain triglycerides, LCTs, are easily converted into body fat. Since LCTs and stored body fat are almost identical insofar as chemical construction, the body has a very easy time converting LCTs into body fat. CapTri^® is a medium chain triglyceride. MCTs have a different molecular structure and are preferentially used by the body for energy or for muscle construction. It is a virtual impossibility for MCTs to end up stored as body fat. CapTri^® has a ‘sweet tooth’ deadening effect, just like saturated fat, but without the LCT tendency to end up stored as fat.

One very real solution to dampening sweet cravings while on a strict bodybuilding diet is to supplement with CapTri^® each and every day. The simplest way to incorporate CapTri^® is to drizzle a tablespoon over each of your multiple bodybuilding meals. CapTri^® can also be used as cooking oil. Try putting Butter Flavor CapTri^® on your baked potato for a real treat. I love fried potatoes, fish, omelets or flank steak cooked in CapTri^®. Use CapTri^® as you would use olive oil or vegetable oil. CapTri^® cooking allows you to put some taste back into often bland diet foods. I strongly suggest you start supplementing with Parrillo Evening Primrose Oil^™: take 1 or 2 capsules in the morning and another couple before bed. Start using some of the various Parrillo “Engineered Foods.” These Parrillo Products allow the hard dieting bodybuilder to create sweet treats that taste sugary yet contain no sugar. Have you tried Parrillo Pancakes^™? The only thing better than a stack of Parrillo Pancakes^™ for breakfast is a stack of Parrillo Pancakes^™ drizzled with a tablespoon of Butter-flavored CapTri^®. Pancakes with CapTri^® are absolutely delicious and completely acceptable for the early stages of a strict bodybuilding diet. Parrillo Muffins^™ are made from the same powdered mix as the pancakes: mix with a cup of water and bake at 350 degrees for 18-22 minutes. Not only do pancakes and muffins satiate the sweetest sweet tooth, each power-packed muffin delivers 15 grams of protein, 5 carb grams with zero saturated fat and zero sugar. Parrillo Pudding^™ is another favorite. Each pudding serving contains 12 grams of protein. Parrillo Cake mix^™ is my favorite Parrillo food: I make mine into a fluffy cake in a toaster oven by baking the cake for 20 minutes. Each cake contains 13 grams of high BV protein, 11 grams of slow-release carbs and again, no sugar.

The various Parrillo Energy Bars^™, Protein Bars^™ and Sport Nutrition Bars^™ make for terrific sweet treats and contain no sugar. The latest Parrillo food is the mind-blowing Protein Ice Kreem^™. Each serving contains 42g protein, only 2g carbs, 0g sugars and 0g fat. If you have an inexpensive ice cream maker (available at any Wal-Mart for around $40) you can eat a delicious, imitation ice cream that will satiate the sweetest sweet tooth. To sum up: Try adding CapTri^® and Evening Primrose Oil^® into your pre-competition diet plan; try incorporating the various Parrillo foods and try Parrillo Ice Kreem^™. Let’s save the $150 an hour a hypno-therapist would charge and redirect the savings towards purchasing a pile of potent Parrillo products. Let me know how this approach works out – I am convinced yours is not a mental problem, rather a lack-of-fat problem.

IV,

I need to shed 20 pounds of fat by beach season – I am 29 and while not a bodybuilder, I am a longtime lifter and a pretty good athlete. Could you recommend a Parrillo supplement program? I figure I can recoup about $100 a month by not buying beer, frozen foods, chips, candy and desserts. I am serious as a heart attack and will do whatever you lay out – I figure I have the training part down – I need a diet/supplement program to compliment my lifting and cardio. I am fit, strong and FAT! I stand 5-8 and weigh 225. I can bench press 350 and play hardcore, run-and-gun playground basketball five days a week. I want to get rocked out by beach season so the hot babes will give me a serious second look! I got plenty of muscles – hidden underneath my lard! Help a fat Brother out!

Darius, Port Royal

You are typical of a lot of really good athletes: they have the lifting and the cardio down pat – but the eating trips them up. You guys can run a marathon, lift a house and mess it all up by living on fast food, microwave food, pie, pizza, booze, chips, sweets and candy. The problem is that at age 29 you are active as hell and still chubby; at age 39 when you drop the ferocious b-ball playing, you will undoubtedly balloon up to 260 pounds and start having all kinds of health problems. Being a smart guy, you recognize this. You have likely seen this happen to your older brothers and cousins: when they were young and active they were strong and fit; when they stopped training they packed on 50-100 pounds of blubber. Unless you make some dramatic changes now, you could end up weighing 300 by age 65! Let’s figure out a way for you to shed that deadly fat and still stay bull strong. The first thing you will need to come to grips with is cooking: you need to prepare your own food. Buy some pots and pans, learn how to steam veggies, fry fish, potatoes and flank steak in CapTri^®. Roasting chicken breasts is easy as hell. Once you learn how to prepare the bodybuilder basic foods ahead of time, once you learn simplistic cooking skills, you can make enough food on a Sunday afternoon to last you for an entire week! I would suggest purchasing a canister of Parrillo Protein powder, either Optimized Whey^™ or Hi-Protein^™. Drink a shake in the morning and another shake before bed. I would buy a canister of 50/50 Plus^™ and drink a serving after every workout. A box of Parrillo bars^™ is a must: these are used to dampen sweet cravings. Finally I would suggest a bottle of Parrillo Liver Amino Formula^™ tablets. Cheap and incredibly effective, take 4-5 liver tabs four times a day. Keep blasting away in the weight room; keep up the basketball; learn how to prepare your own food; start firing down those tasty Parrillo supplements and shed thirty pounds of fat in three months! The beach babes will look at you, leer, and say, “Who is that?!”

Vic,

Is there a certain way an athlete should train? I read all the muscle magazines and have a pretty fair idea about how top bodybuilders train. I am a football player and wonder if I shouldn’t be training differently than a bodybuilder. I watch the Ultimate Fighter reality TV show and the mixed martial artists are doing lots of crazy training. Should I be training like them? I am a good player looking to add size and muscle. What would you advise?

Confused, Port Arthur

Good question. Let’s talk about two completely different types of strength. A competitive athlete should always seek size and strength from his weight training. Size relates to muscle density per inches of height. A football player standing 6 foot 2 inches in height and weighing 160 pounds will use weight training and heavy eating to add muscle to his too-thin frame. It makes no sense for the too-thin football player to add fifty pounds of bodyweight if forty pounds of the weight gain is body fat. This is where Parrillo-style nutrition comes into play: any athlete seeking to add size and muscle mass wants the lion’s share of his weight gain to be muscle gain. Eating ice cream and pizza, combined with intense weight training will add body weight – but the majority of the weight gain will be body fat. The ticket to lean muscle gain is confining your foods to lean protein, fibrous and starch carbs and minimizing the consumption of saturated fat. Jettison any and all manmade foods and refined foods. Smart nutrition is the foundation. Intense weight training combined with Parrillo-style nutrition is the cornerstone. There are two distinct types of strength all athletes need: absolute strength and sustained strength. Absolute strength is best exemplified by how much weight a man can pick up in a particular lift one time. If two athletes are the same height and weight and if one can bench press 300 pounds and deadlift 500, that athlete has a distinct athletic advantage over the other fellow the same height and weight that has a 150 pound bench press and a 250 pound deadlift. Athletic absolute strength is best expressed in the compound multi-joint exercises: squats, bench presses, deadlifts, power cleans, overhead barbell and dumbbell presses – absolute strength as exemplified by curls, flyes or any of the isolation exercises done on exercise machines are essentially useless on the playing field.

Compound multi-joint exercises require many muscles to work together and this type of coordinated strength carries over to the ball field, basketball court, wrestling mat or swimming pool. The serious athlete needs to eat right in order to ensure weight gain is muscle gain; the serious athlete needs to train right (using multi-joint exercises) to ensure absolute strength is developed, this type of strength carries over into their respective sport. All serious athletes also need to develop sustained strength: sustained strength allows the athlete to exert significant strength output for a protracted period of time. It is one thing to be able to exert maximally for a single rep in a short burst, but it is quite another for the athlete to be able to generate significant strength for a sustained period of time. The mixed martial artists you describe devote most of their training efforts towards acquiring sustained strength. To that end they engage in activities that seem crazy to the outside observer: they might flip over a 600 pound tire for dozens of reps, they might then repeatedly hit the giant tire with a sledgehammer for hundreds of reps. They will push a wheelbarrow loaded with barbell plates up a steep grade, they will perform clean and jerks for 2-5 minutes straight or throw heavy medicine balls for time and distance. The MMA artist seeks to train his body to be able to generate significant strength late into a fight.

Ideally the modern cross-trained athlete eats like a bodybuilder – this ensures maximum muscle gain and minimal body fat gain. Ideally the modern cross-trained athlete trains to acquire absolute strength: this pure power is expressed in his ability to handle massive poundage for low reps in the basic movements. Ideally the modern cross-trained athlete trains to acquire sustained strength. One way to build sustained strength is to make use of the Parrillo 100-rep Extended Set. John has his athletes roll through five, 20-rep sets using five consecutive exercises. The 100-rep set attacks the same body part without any pause or rest in between the five different exercises. Three to five 100-rep cycles done back to back builds incredible amounts of sustained strength. Naturally if you have access to weight-laden wheelbarrows, massive tires or heavy medicine balls put these weighted tools and implements to good use. Finally, remember the old athletic adage: when everything else is equal, a good BIG man beats a good LITTLE man every time. The reason they have weight divisions in boxing, wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts is because when skills are equal, a large muscular athlete will overwhelm a similarly skilled smaller athlete every single time. In athletics, size does matter. Every serious athlete should seek to add muscular size while staying lean; every serious athlete should seek to increase his absolute strength while simultaneously seeking to increase his sustained strength – do not build one type of strength to the exclusion of the other type. Train in such a way that you build both absolute strength and sustained strength. This way you will have the strength to run over or knock the snot out of a football opponent and keep it up for four consecutive quarters! Become that good BIG MAN!

Quality Supplements

Tin Head,

You always talk about how Parrillo products are the best. So what makes Parrillo products any better than any other products? Looking through the muscle magazines, your stuff looks pretty damned dated – with all the new breakthroughs out there in supplements, how come you folks are still championing stuff like beef liver tabs and caseinate protein powder?! That stuff went out of style back in the seventies! Are you the company for aging baby boomers and has-beens?

                      Ross, Atlanta  

Breakthroughs!? Name me a single new supplement that has been introduced and gained widespread traction since the introduction of creatine monohydrate back in 1993? That’s sixteen years and counting….while plenty of ‘breakthrough supplements’ have been introduced, none have changed the supplement landscape one iota. None of the new ‘breakthrough’ products comes within a country mile of producing the results they claim! Meanwhile, as PT Barnum once observed, “there is a new sucker born every minute.”

At Parrillo Performance we make our own products: 90% of the supplement industry has their products ‘jobbed out.’ At PP we have a supplement factory right in our HQ building. We also have a laboratory and test kitchen; we create our own custom blended powders and bars and a production crew creates Parrillo products from scratch. From conception to inception, every phase of product production is overseen by John or Dominique Parrillo. At Parrillo Performance, the quality goes in before the name goes on. The Parrillo production facility is spotless: the raw ingredients used are the best money can buy. For this reason John Parrillo has created a supplement marquee that is the equivalent Ferrari or Rolls Royce of the supplement industry. His devotion to purity, quality and effectiveness stands in stark contrast to the ‘how can we fool the suckers today?’ mindset of the high-gloss supplement industry. The supplement shysters purchase inferior core ingredients from China, mix anemic nutrients with chemically-drenched filler to create impotent products in foul sweatshop factories that owners have never even visited. The high-gloss supplement industry spends all their time, money and effort on advertizing – they create glossy ads for easily-fooled guys like you. They use steroid monsters (who did NOT build their massiveness using the slick supplements they enthusiastically tout) or scantily clad beach bunnies.  

The supplement hucksters lure in suckers (like you) that fall hook, line and sinker for hyped-up ads. Get a grip man; supplements need potent ingredients to be effective. Insofar as beef liver tabs and caseinate protein, these products are still being made by Parrillo for one reason: they still get results for users! Do you really think that Parrillo makes these products out of some misty-eyed sense of nostalgia? We sell these “antiquated” products to super serious individuals that understand what you obviously don’t: supplements are designed to supplement a solid, scientifically-based nutritional game plan, a game plan based on the expert use and consumption of real food. Guys like you chase one ‘magical’ supplement after another, looking and searching for an over-the-counter supplement that will give you steroid-like effects and allow you to shortcut all the blood, sweat, tears and effort needed to truly transform the human body. It is a waste of my time to tell you the harsh truth – so keep looking for that magic bullet, keep spending money on here-today-gone-tomorrow supplements and keep believing that trash with names like ‘super nitrous turbo X cubed hyper-growth formula # 7 – now with deebol-enhanced crystallized bat turds’ will give you the body you are unwilling to work for. Meanwhile, over at Parrillo, we’ll continue to make our fossilized products for the hardcore professionals and serious amateurs, men and women that actually make gains and actually compete – and win. Meanwhile you can watch the Parrillo athletes onstage as you sit in the audience and tell your seatmates how you’re going to kick everyone’s ass – next year – always next year. 

Vic,

Teddy G here in Atlanta – I know you are down on the ‘average’ personal trainer and their lack of creativity in getting results for their clients – you should make like a restaurant critic and sneak into gyms and write about some of the crazy tactics you’ve seen. I have laughed out loud at some of the antics I’ve seen used by personal trainers at the gym I train at. I am sure you could write a book about the insanity you’ve seen. It would be funny if it wasn’t so ridiculous. I too have a pony-tailed Swiss Ball trainer at my gym and I am quite sure your head would explode if you were to see some of the ridiculous exercises this moron teaches. What a joke!                 

                  Teddy, Georgia   

Restaurant critics surreptitiously sneak into dining establishments, order up a wide variety of dishes, then slip away to write their reviews. This sneaky practice is done for a reason: the critic wants to experience the food exactly as a regular paying client would. Any chef worth his salt can serve up a fabulous dinner when they know they are cooking for a critic – but can the chef and his staff put out great food consistently for regular folks who happen to walk in off the street? I think I have become the PT version of the restaurant critic. I have recently been frequenting fitness establishments in my region to work with a high paying client that uses my very expensive services. While working with my client (he gets fabulous results following my hardcore advice) I have been surreptitiously observing lame personal trainers putting their clients through lame workouts. Unfortunately most of what I secretly observe is uniformly horrific: clients are alternately babied or beaten to a pulp by personal trainers exhibiting what I would term a spaced-out New Age persona, or alternately, the “Fitness Hitler” persona. The former talks goo-goo baby talk and the later screams pompous platitudes. While incredible, result producing personal trainers exist, they are, apparently, as rare as three star Michelin Chefs. 

Last week I saw a ‘head exploding’ example of a reckless, dangerous personal training session that personified everything that is wrong about the current state of the profession. I arrived at 6am to put a client through a high intensity workout. I have a special place in my heart for highly motivated individuals determined to improve. The truly motivated will hire an expensive personal trainer, wake up at 5 am to drive to the gym in order to catch a PT supervised workout before heading to their stress-filled jobs. This particular facility was charging $100 per hour and the client I saw on this particular day was a good looking, 30-something woman. She was 30 pounds overweight and looked like an ex-athlete that had had a few children and was now determined to create a beautiful physique to go with her beautiful face. Her personal trainer was a typical 20-something female PT that likely had a college degree in Physical Education. The “workout” administered was a stone cold disaster on a multitude of levels, veering from inept to dangerous, from ineffectual to inattentive – but allow me to allow you to draw your own conclusions…  

It was a “Back day” and the PT supervised session commenced the back workout with prone hyperextensions. Hyperextensions are a fabulous exercise assuming they are done properly. My secret observations made my skin crawl: the dark haired PT started things off by handing the client a 45 pound plate with which to perform her partial rep hyperextensions. If a hyperextension is done correctly it uses a full and complete range-of-motion. Bodyweight alone will give the average trainee a terrific erector workout. Strong men will use a 45 pound plate on their final set of hypers and only after a few warm-up sets. Handing an untrained woman a 45 pound plate on set one of a workout at 6:05 am is fitness malpractice. Since the client weighed maybe 150 pounds, she was handling 1/3^rd of her bodyweight in an exercise that is tough with NO poundage. Naturally the poor woman could only manage to move her torso a few inches in each direction. But that was A-OK with the incompetent PT. Somehow the client made it through without popping a disk. Onto the second back exercise: seated cable rows using way too much weight and way too short a range-of-motion. The PT lamely demonstrated this exercise with zero poundage then loaded half the stack for the client’s first set. Needles to say the client could only manage to pull the poundage about four inches. The rounded bow in her spinal column made me wince. The PT counted reps. This ridiculous exercise was alternated with dumbbell rows using a way-too-heavy dumbbell that was rowed perhaps six inches. Lat pulldowns to the front were next, and again the poundage was moved about ten inches in either direction. Then onto upright rows on the Smith Machine; these looked like machine reverse curls. This four set sequence was repeated four times.  

Done, the client staggered to the locker-room. Her spinal column received one hell of a beating while her back was muscularly unaffected. This is not atypical: I have seen worse workouts administered by worse personal trainers…partial reps, too much poundage, ineffectual exercises done using crazy techniques all done in long sequences. This may be all the rage on The Biggest Loser and Celebrity Fit Club – but for effective muscle stimulation, for invoking tangible results, for building muscle, nothing trumps compound multi-joint basic barbell and dumbbell exercises pushed or pulled over a full and complete range-of-motion. Fitness facility owners need to understand that the best form of advertising is a renovated client. Partial reps, lame-O exercises administered by zoned-out PTs are ineffectual, dangerous and deliver zero results for customers paying top dollar. Watching all this made me remember why I quit the commercial gym scene and do my own training in my garage. A restaurant critic might have to periodically eat a bad meal – watching incompetent personal trainers ply their incompetency on well-meaning clients puts me in a state of psychological turmoil. I fear for the poor client, oblivious to the danger they are being subjected to. Buyers beware!  

Victor,

I heard a personal trainer tell me the other day that ‘stretching between sets is a terrible idea.’ He had seen me doing my Parrillo fascial stretches between sets and asked me what this was all about. I have a 19” arm and a 34 inch waist – this idiot has a 40 inch chest and a 14 inch arm. He tried to begin lecturing me about the ‘dangers’ of lifting without warming up. When he started the lecture I told him to shut his mouth or I’d beat his ass. He slinked away with his fat tail between his chubby legs. This same trainer insists that his clients ‘stretch out’ before weight training ‘to prevent injury.’ The funny thing is I can get through an entire shoulder workout (15 sets) in less time than it takes his clients to get through their pre-workout ‘safety stretching session.’ Needless to say, none of his clients ever makes any gains. He has a legion of middle-aged women that are gaga over his movie star looks and actually has a waiting list for his services. He spends more time lecturing his clients than training his clients. Comments? 

              Jumbo, California 

First off, the absolute worst time to stretch is when muscles are cold and stiff. The best time to stretch a muscle is when the muscular core temperature is raised through exercise. This old myth, that a weight training session should be preceded by stretching, is ridiculous. I have all my clients use the Parrillo fascia stretching procedure: pump, stretch, flex on each and every set. Not only are they loosening up tight muscle fascia, thereby making muscle growth easier, they are also radically improving their flexibility and making valuable use of the dead times resting between sets. Hell, instead of just sitting around waiting for muscles to recover before hitting the next set – why not use the rest time to engage in some muscle-building, flexibility improving fascia stretching? The results for those that include fascia stretching are dramatic: not only do trainees experience dramatic muscle size increases using this amazing protocol, they also become limber as a contortionist and lay waste to that old muscle-bound myth. Too bad you didn’t kick his ass.