Mental Acuity: The Ignored Parrillo Principle

Bodybuilding success is often dependant on the athlete’s pain tolerance

By Andre Newcomb

John Parrillo was not fooling around on this particular day. He stood directly behind the young man on the Belt Squat platform. Two beefy spotters stood on either side of the man doing the belt squatting. The muscular squatter was on rep 69 out of 100 and he was starting to fall apart. Parrillo was having none of it. “Let’s GO! We have to hit 100 reps no matter what!” John yelled into the belt squatter’s ear and then addressed the two side spotters. “Alright, we’ve got to give him more help.” The three men each had a handhold on the belt squatter’s apparatus. This allowed them to apply upward pressure on the lifter and the weight. In this way they could make the poundage lighter. The lifter was squatting his own 200+ pound bodyweight along with a 100 pound plate hanging on a belt strapped between his legs. With each succeeding rep the three men had to help the squatter more and more and more…by the 87th rep the belt squatter was completely spent. Parrillo and his boys were now picking up the entire 100 pound payload. By rep 95 John and his spotters had to pick up the entire 100 pound payload plus the squatter’s 215 pound bodyweight! The Belt Squatter’s legs were so shot, so shattered, so spent, that he could no longer stand up under his own power – he had to be picked up.

Our brave belt squatter, a man capable of a 600 pound back squat, was shocked physically and shattered psychologically. He was helpless, like a child being propelled along in some horrible, never-ending carnival ride. On rep 97 he collapsed. He went completely limp and began flopping about like a rag doll: the entirety of his carcass and the poundage had to be hoisted and lowered by the three spotters on those final reps. Done, John and his now-exhausted and huffing spotters gingerly sat the belt squat apparatus down and peeled our half-dead squatter out of the harness: they were like a ground crew helping a wounded pilot out of a World War I bi-plane; the flying ace having been shot up and shot down in a dog fight. “Quick!” Parrillo commanded, “Someone get the puke bucket over here before he barfs all over the gym floor.”  Everyone knew exactly what John was talking about. Every one of them had gone through an identical 100-rep belt squat torture ritual; it was an Iron Rite of Passage in Parrillo World. Quite a few had to make use of the Parrillo Puke Bucket, a moderate-sized tin trashcan with a handy disposable plastic liner. Sure enough, the instant someone shoved the Puke Bucket under the comatose belt squatter’s nose, the instant those limp hands accepted the bucket, the squatter jerked erect and pulled the bucket under his mouth just in time for him to hurl everything he had eaten in the last 24 hours. The squatter, leg dead and bone tired, now felt as if his lungs were now being ripped out. Psychologically the 100-rep Parrillo Belt Squat procedure resets the lifter’s Mind and increases mental acuity.

John Parrillo once described mental acuity as “The ability to push past previous limits.” This belt squat procedure not only builds the body, it builds the Mind. The lifter is forced to redefine what they are capable of in training and in life. Surviving a 100-rep belt squat enduro creates a new yardstick by which to measure all future training efforts.

Muscle growth is not triggered by polite training; muscles need to be blasted past capacity in order to trigger hypertrophy. The belt squat is all about determining what lies past capacity. Mental acuity is a prerequisite for engaging in intense, body-shocking, result-producing training. John Parrillo also describes mental acuity as “The ability to continue to train after pain and discomfort sets in. Some people have a very low pain tolerance and quit at the first sign of discomfort. The inability to continue to crank out those critical, growth-producing reps when discomfort sets in betrays a lack of mental acuity. It is as much a mental as a physical ability to continue to push or pull with all one’s Might after real discomfort sets in.” Mental acuity, to Parrillo’s way of thinking, occurs when the Mind overcomes the body’s exhortations to quit. Champions have an ability to will their body to continue to work when the natural inclination is to stop. To train as hard as Parrillo insists requires lots of determination and mental toughness. To diet with the disciplined exactness Parrillo demands requires determination and mental toughness. To make real, tangible gains we need to continually, routinely and purposefully bump up against training limits. Equaling or exceeding weight room and aerobic limits is what stimulates muscle growth and fat loss – assuming you have your nutrition squared away.

Real gains do not occur as a result of performing an easy set with comfortable poundage. The real gains always lie just beyond our current capacity – continually seeking to exceed limits requires a disciplined and determined mental approach. Training hard and training intense, in both lifting and cardio, on a consistent and continual basis, requires a Mind of steel. The surest way to increase muscle size and muscle mass is to consistently push up against or past current boundaries and limits. To trigger dramatic improvement requires dramatic training: train like a demon; eat with complete discipline; never miss a meal; never binge and never miss a training session. How does one go about improving mental acuity? How do you build up the ability and capacity to work in the pain zone on a consistent basis? One surefire way to improve the ability to operate for long periods of time in the Pain Zone is to go there frequently and stay awhile. The best way to improve the ability to handle the intense discomfort associated with result-producing training is to take frequent and extended trips into the Pain Zone. The more you visit, the longer you linger, the better becomes your ability to endure extended periods of intense discomfort.

One common and constant comment heard from people that have trained under John Parrillo’s direct supervision was recently summed up by one of his students, “I thought I was a hard trainer; at least I did until I started working out with John Parrillo. He had me going through workouts so hard and so heavy and so long and so intense that I thought I would pass out. Not coincidentally, these were also the best, the most result-producing workouts of my entire life.” A big part of the Parrillo Philosophy is about attitude – not in any street gang sense, but attitude as in getting psyched up for a training session, psyched up for a particular lift or psyched up for an aerobic session. In the Parrillo Philosophy there is an emphasis on intensity-boosting training tactics: forced reps, drop sets, negatives, high-rep sets, belt squats, high rep exercises, the Parrillo 100-rep Extended Set. These intensity-amplifying methods are guaranteed to take any bodybuilder past their current limits and capacities. By exceeding current limits, the body is forced to “adapt.” Unless the adaptation process occurs, no new muscle growth or strength can or will appear.

John is a champion of cardio intensity. Parrillo preaches that the fastest way to burn off body fat is to implement the Parrillo Nutritional System and combine a squared-up metabolism with lots of intense, early morning cardio. John will often recommend a second fat-burning cardio session later that same day. Aerobic effort needs to be intense. Labored breathing is the Parrillo intensity benchmark: the ability to motor along for extended periods, breathing hard all the while, is demanding physically and demanding mentally. Really effective cardio needs to be lung-searing and heart-pounding, with sweat pouring out of every pore. Mental acuity keeps the athlete going when every fiber of his being screams, “STOP!” Intense cardio done consistently causes the human body to reconfigure the fiber profile of a working muscle. Mitochondria (cellular blast furnaces) are constructed in reaction to intense and repeated aerobic exercise. More mitochondria mean more capacity to burn energy: an elite athlete has muscles loaded with mitochondria; a sedentary obese person has a very few mitochondria.

A Parrillo-influenced bodybuilder weight trains four or five times per week and engages in five or more weekly cardio sessions. The Parrillo-style bodybuilder uses intensity-amping techniques on just about every top set of every lifting exercise.  Parrillo-style cardio requires the athlete breathe hard for extended periods. A killer mental attitude allows the elite bodybuilder to push hard in training. Mental acuity embraces the pain associated with forced reps, drop sets and labored cardio. It sounds cliché to say, “No pain, no gain!” So we might rephrase that cliché by saying, “No discomfort, no gain!” It is not “pain” that the bodybuilder experiences as he marches deeper and deeper into a forced rep set; factually he experiences acute discomfort. Real pain occurs when an athlete twists, breaks, rips or tears bone or muscle – or gets knocked out! That’s real pain. Physical discomfort associated with intense weight training or intense cardio exercise is overcome by mental acuity. The Mind can override your body’s intention to quit, assuming you have an intense mental desire to continue. People with a low pain tolerance (discomfort tolerance) never make it far in the world of elite sports and those with a low pain tolerance never progress past a certain point in their bodybuilding efforts.

If you are serious about maximizing muscle mass, if you are serious about burning off as much body fat as possible, get serious about training psyche. Learn how to increase your quotient of mental acuity. If you loaf through training you’ll obtain negligible results. If you learn how to harness mental psyche and continually push deeper and deeper into the pain zone on a regularly reoccurring basis, results will occur very, very quickly. Champion bodybuilders and professional athletes understand that a man’s mind can be his biggest asset or his worst enemy. The first step towards improving and increasing mental acuity is to make a commitment to work in the Pain Zone; the more you visit, the longer you linger, the better tolerance becomes. Mental acuity, as it applies to nutrition-related issues, refers to “disciplined consistency.” It takes a strong mind to overcome taste temptations; it takes a strong mind to get it together to make mountains of nutritious foods ahead of time; it takes willpower and tenacity to never miss a meal and never waver in eating the right foods at the right time in the right amounts. Those that are able to acquire, improve and properly utilize mental acuity have a tremendous opportunity to build that fantastic physique they have always envisioned. Those unwilling, unable or incapable, those that cannot overcome their abhorrence of physical discomfort, those that cannot eat with discipline or consistency – all are doomed to eventual failure, or, at the very best, partial success.

Is your Mind your best friend or your worst enemy?