John Parrillo's Performance Press » ron harris bodybuilding

Episode 38: Where the mind goes, the body follows

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:40:36 +0000

Ron Harris

I hadn’t seen much of my client Jared’s father, Jeff, in a long time. Aside from passing him driving around town and waving hello, we hadn’t had a conversation since he witnessed in horror as I inhaled several large cups of ice cream smothered in sugary toppings following my last contest over six months ago. Jeff was 53 years old and had competed a couple times in 1978 and 1979, right around the time the movie Pumping Iron had inspired a whole generation of Arnold wannabes to take up bodybuilding. Until that landmark movie, the sport was literally so underground that men were about as ashamed to buy a bodybuilding magazine as they were a porno mag.

Actually, they were probably even more likely to have the clerk put it in a paper bag – what would people think if they saw a dude walking out of the store carrying a magazine with another dude all oiled up in little posing trunks on the cover? He would be judged less harshly by most had he been seen purchasing Hustler’s ‘Golden Shower Special Issue.’ And no, I don’t have that one. Lost it in a move.

I actually envied Jeff for having the opportunity to be part of the sport and compete back when it was so much smaller and more exclusive. At some of the bigger amateur shows these days where a pro card was at stake, there were often well over three hundred bodybuilders competing. Certainly there are far more men these days with physiques good enough to compete who merely train to look good walking around. Go to a night club, a beach, or any place where masses are gathered and you will be sure to spot at least a couple bodybuilders. When Jeff was competing, bodybuilders were almost as rare as unicorns. We all like to feel special, unique, and appreciated. Now, a guy with muscles is about as special as a woman with fake boobs. Which I personally have nothing against, of course.

We now happened to be doing cardio together on the only two StepMills our gym had, surveying the landscape of the new facility before us and catching up on recent events. Jeff had talked a couple times about making a return to the stage, and had even picked out a show last year until I bluntly informed him he was carrying too much bodyfat to be in shape in the amount of time he would have had left. There were no hard feelings, and from what he was telling me he wasn’t in any rush anyway. “Once you’re over fifty,” he explained, “you tend to have a little more patience.” But he was curious as to what my plans might be. Jeff and Jared had been there to see me take ninth place in the light-heavies at the Team Universe, the worst I had placed in a contest since my first show just over twenty years prior. Don’t quote me, but I am pretty sure that on the score sheet for it, rather than a numerical placing in the box to the far right, the judge had scribbled, “Who cares?”

“I’m doing the show again next year, but as a Heavyweight,” I began, noting the single arched eyebrow that gave away Jeff’s initial reaction and allowed me to read his mind: ‘Ron must be high on crack.’

“Looking at the photos from my class, I came to realize that the other light-heavies may have mostly been the same height and weight as me, but all the ones that beat me had much better shape – that round look to the muscles and tiny joints. They also had better arms, all of them.” Jeff nodded. He wasn’t going to blow smoke up my butt by arguing that factual point. “So with that in mind, I believe I need to come in next time at about 210, twelve pounds heavier, with most of that in my arms, back, and shoulders. If I do that and show up a bit sharper than last time, I can at least make the top five and get to do my posing routine.”

Jeff nodded and was quiet for a minute before asking what any guy with a ring on his finger would be curious about.

“What’s your wife think about this?”

I explained that Janet thought I was totally delusional and stupid. Before making her come across as negative and unsupportive of my goals, I had to explain where she was coming from. My wife has been with me just over twenty years now – twenty long years of training, dieting, and competing. More importantly, she has been with me while I have suffered many serious injuries from training and had to live with me while I dealt – not always nobly – with the painful and frustrating consequences. Most of the injuries were to my lower back, but I have also hurt my shoulders badly, torn a hamstring one time and the soleus muscle of my calf on another occasion, plus have chronically inflamed elbows. You can imagine the frustration of being this ‘big strong guy’ who can’t even use the empty bar for skull-crushers, or at times even put on his own socks, without excruciating pain.

So Janet has been along for the ride as I have bitched, moaned, complained, and wallowed in self-pity in the wake of these countless injuries over two decades. I can completely understand why she would not be overly supportive when I announce that I am planning to add twelve pounds of lean muscle mass. At age forty, and with now over a quarter-century invested in consistent heavy training, it does seem like a fool’s quest. Add in the history of injuries, the current bone spur and arthritis in the shoulders plus the bum elbows, and a strong case could be made that I am living in fantasy land with dragons and magical fairies.

“But you know you can do it, don’t you?” Jeff asked once I had laid it all out. “There’s no doubt in your mind.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “I know that if I can see it in my mind as already being done, all I need to do over the next year is follow the steps to make it happen. I’m changing my training up to include more warming up, less stupid-heavy weight, and better pumps. Granted, if I changed nothing about my workouts, my wife’s injury prophecy would be a foregone conclusion, I recognize that my body, more specifically my joints and tendons, can’t take the constant pounding of heavy weights all the time anymore. Besides which, my muscles seem to have adapted so well to that type of training that they don’t see any reason to grow. But I know that my new strategy will succeed.”

Jeff smirked. “It’s funny. A few years before Jared was born, I had been working as a general contractor for years. The money was okay, but my wife and I weren’t living too large and I felt like I wasn’t doing as much as I could in life. One night I had a dream that I had built a ton of houses, whole developments, and we were wealthy – very nice home, cars, exotic vacations, all that good stuff. I woke up the next morning and told my wife I was going to put everything into a new business building houses.”

“She freaked?” I inquired.

“Of course she did. She thought we would be on welfare within a year. But in my head I kept seeing that dream, and to me it was more like a premonition. As long as I put the work in, I knew it would come true. It was tough at first. I was in debt to my eyeballs and I was working a hundred hours a week. But not long after that, the real estate market went through the roof, especially around here. You know the rest of the story.”

I did. I had no idea how much Jeff was worth in total, but it was substantial. I thanked him for the story, because it had reinforced what I already knew to be true. As the Adidas ad slogan used to say “Impossible is nothing.” Our minds are what dictate what we can and can’t achieve, and only we control our minds. If you convince yourself that you’ll always be fat, weak and skinny, or poor, or never have a loving relationship, guess what? You’ll get just what your mind told you you’ll get. But if you decide instead to master your thoughts and emotions and harness them toward doing and being what it is you really want, the opposite happens – you attract that reality.

When it comes to the body, it won’t go anywhere the mind hasn’t been before. You don’t run the fastest race of your life or build the physique you crave without seeing it first in your mind. People ask me all the time what the most important part of bodybuilding is, and they are usually puzzled when I reply that it’s the mind. Unless you believe in what you are doing and that it will pay off for you with the results you desire, you’ll never consistently train and eat the way you need to. So the next time you doubt yourself or what you are capable of, realize that you are writing a script for your future. You can choose to write an ending that stinks, or you can write an ending that would make any audience stand up and cheer for.

Episode 34: Loosen up, or keep it tight?

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:16:04 +0000

Ron Harris

It was arm day. This was a very recent change to my training program. My arms, as any of my longtime readers are sick of hearing about at this point, have always been a source of immense frustration and disappointment to me. With any other muscle group, my hard work has always eventually translated into growth, sooner or later.

In the case of my arms, ‘stubborn’ does not begin to describe their resistance to growing into the big guns I have always coveted. In fact, more than one Internet critic snidely noted that at the last Team Universe, I had the legs of a Heavyweight and the arms of a Lightweight. Ouch! The truth hurts, and that remark stung me like dumping hot sauce on an open wound. Sadly, I have seen lightweights with better arms than mine.

I could lie and say I had tried everything over the course of twenty-five years of consistent training to bring up my arms, but it wouldn’t be accurate. Ironically enough, I had ignored the very advice I had doled out on many occasions to others supplicating me for help with their lagging biceps and triceps. I would tell them to train arms on their very own training day, rather than after a larger torso muscle group like back, chest, or shoulders. This would allow for greater energy and focus to be devoted to the arms, which very often resulted in new gains even after extensive periods of stagnation and zero growth. But until very recently, I had only done it myself on sporadic occasions. No time, I figured. Four days of weight training was all I could squeeze into my busy schedule, and I liked to arrange that as chest and triceps, back, shoulders and biceps, and legs. But shortly after Team Universe I decided that my arms had to be bigger. The humiliation of walking around at 225 pounds in the off-season and seeing 150-pound dweebs with arms bigger than me was intolerable. So I found the time. Late Saturday mornings when my son was in karate class, I zipped over to the gym to blast arms for a second time in the week. I only had about forty-five minutes to work with, so I kept my headphones on and was all business while I pumped up my biceps and triceps. Six weeks into my experiment had budged the tape measure a quarter-inch. Big deal, say the young bucks out there still growing like weeds. It was a big deal to me, since that was a quarter-inch more than my arms had grown in close to ten years!

Tri’s were toast, and I was finishing up biceps with some EZ-bar curls, doing several sets with very little rest in between to force as much blood as possible in there and get a skintight, swollen pump. I kept the same 25 pounds on each side of the bar for all five sets, and by the end I had to use a generous amount of swing to heave the bar up, which by then felt like 300 pounds. Over the jarring strains of Rob Zombie on my headphones I heard someone behind me yell, “A ha!” Arms on fire with lactic acid, I eked out one last rep, which was not a pretty one, and set the bar down with a clang before flinging off my headphones and turning to see who dared disturb my sacred quest for respectable guns. Wouldn’t you know, it was sixteen-year-old Jared. I don’t know what he was even doing in the gym. Our high school football team had suffered yet another humiliating defeat the night before, making their record 1-8 as their worst season in recent memory neared its end. We had agreed it was best for him to take a day of complete rest after games, yet here he was, actually pointing an accusatory finger in my face.

“You’re always telling me I have to use good form, and look at you! Those curls are as bad as ones you talk crap about in here whenever anyone else does them. Do as you say, not as you do, is that it?”

He was genuinely upset, and I was also starting to get agitated by his tone. It was time to set him straight before this got really ugly.

“First of all Junior, you saw the very end of the last of five sets of that exercise. The first three sets were all done with excellent form, I assure you. Near the end, I had to loosen up my form to get the reps I wanted.”

“But you were cheating, and you told me cheating was bad!” he insisted.

“I should have qualified that statement. Cheating is bad when it robs the muscle of work or when it puts you at risk of injury, but you can also use cheating as a tool to extend a set and actually work the target muscle harder. That’s what you just saw. There is a huge difference between cheating just so you can use more weight and try to look like a macho man and cheating to get more out of a set and break down more muscle fibers.”

Jared pondered this for a moment. I stole a glance at the clock on the wall and saw I had to get my point across pretty soon before it was time to go pick up my boy.

“So why didn’t you tell me that, then? Were you worried my arms would get bigger than yours?”

That was a low blow. And the worst thing was, his genetics for arms, just like his dad Jeff’s, were above average. His arms would most likely eclipse mine in a year or two at most. Biting my tongue before I sounded angry, I took a deep breath and calmly explained why I had withheld the seemingly precious information from my young charge.

“Knowing how and when to cheat is something that takes a good amount of time and experience to master,” I began. “You need to have a very advanced mind-muscle connection. Remember those DVD’s I let you borrow with Jay Cutler, Ronnie Coleman, and Branch Warren training?” He nodded. “You commented on how terrible their form was a lot of the time. I told you that they can use that type of form and still hit the muscle because they have such a powerful connection to their muscles.”

“Yeah, you said that. It didn’t make much sense to me then.”

“That’s why I want you using strict form now and at least for a while longer, until you are able to use loose form the right way. I also want you to understand that certain exercises are not suited to excessive cheating. Dropping down and bouncing out of the bottom of a heavy squat or bench press is a good way to wreck your knees or tear a pec. Terrible form on barbell rows, deadlifts, or standing military presses will destroy your lower back. There’s more to it than that, but I have to get over to pick my son up in five minutes.” Jared nodded to show that he had listened and understood. I didn’t even think to ask him what he was at the gym for. My thoughts were entirely on drinking my big shake of Optimized Whey™ and 50/50 Plus™ powder, changing into a dry shirt, and getting out of there.

As I walked out of the locker room, I spied Jared over at the preacher curl bench. What do you know; the little sucker was sneaking in an unauthorized arm workout. This was like an obese person grabbing an extra snack between visits to the buffet – totally unnecessary. And he had already peeled off his hoodie to reveal a bright blue short-sleeved Under Armour shirt that showcased his arms perfectly. The last thought I had before stepping out into the parking lot was that they looked bigger than the last time I had seen them, which couldn’t have been more than a couple weeks before. No, that couldn’t be possible. My eyes were playing tricks on me. At least that’s what I told myself to take the dual sting of shame and jealousy away!

Episode 25: Contests are won in the off-season

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:07:33 +0000

It had been right around three months since teenage Jared had torn ligaments in his shoulder while being brutally tackled in a high school football game. But as I have said before, the resiliency of youth is a wonderful thing. These kids can bounce back from almost as much physical abuse as Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13^th. Jared had cautiously taken it easy and used volume and hellacious pumps in place of heavy weights for a few weeks, then gradually worked his way back to the point where he was now very close to handling the same resistance on upper body movements as before. Jared’s weight on every single leg exercise had actually gone up fairly dramatically. Being a competitive kid by nature, he took full advantage of the fact that he could hit legs with more energy and intensity while his shoulder healed up. We weren’t in the habit of taking measurements, but I would hazard to guess that he had probably added around an inch in circumference to his thighs. His arms also appeared to have become bigger and fuller, a result of the volume training and the effect that new type of stimulation had on his biceps and triceps. It reminded me of something IFBB Pro Ed Nunn, owner of a pair of legit 23-inch arms, told me about his arm training. Though he was capable of curling some truly heavy weights, he credited ‘21’s’ using a very mortal 25 pounds on each side of the EZ-curl bar with most of his biceps size. This does not compute to the average knucklehead slinging too-heavy

weights around with form that looks more like a seizure than a set of curls, of course. Lightening up the weight is almost never viewed as an option when someone is not growing. Believe me, I have suggested it many times and was usually met with the same reaction as if I had recommended removing an otherwise healthy and perfectly functional testicle.

There had been another amusing development in the life of young Jared. If you recall, he nearly had a conniption fit when he found out there was another football player from a rival high school the next town over who was getting into bodybuilding and considering making his competitive debut later this year. Hunter, as his parents saw fit to name him after randomly flipping through a book of baby names, no doubt – actually joined our gym a few weeks ago. I know how the whole dynamic works. Jared and Hunter never would have had any contact. They would have glared at each other out of the corner of their eyes and would have put on stupid displays of stunt lifting to try and outdo the other from across the gym floor. Rather than sit back and watch them remain bitter strangers, I first introduced myself to Hunter one day. He had a vague idea who I was, which is about right. Even in the small world of bodybuilding, I am after all just a minor celebrity in the scheme of things. I did my best to make him feel welcome at our gym, which he was graduating to after a year at one of those horrible Planet Fitness franchises.

Discrimination against others due to their race, religion, gender, or sexual preference is not tolerated in the USA. Yet Planet Fitness seems to have free rein to discriminate against bodybuilders. I walked into the one Hunter had been a member of shortly after it opened, just to check it out. The first thing I noticed was a sign prominently displayed at the front desk. It was a caricature of stereotypical bodybuilder, with bulging muscles, a string tank top, sunglasses, spandex shorts, and boots. Instantly I was offended. I don’t dress like that! Not anymore, at least. This caricature was inside a big circle and had a slash running diagonally across it. Without words, it was saying “no bodybuilders.” Wow. Can you imagine if they had a similar sign with crude stereotypical depictions of an African-American, a Hasidic Jew, or a flamboyant gay man? There would be an outcry, protests, and a big apology would be in order. But we bodybuilders aren’t known for being political. Usually we simply do what I did, which was to take a look around at the place (dumbbells only go up to 80 pounds, leg press has been modified to only hold a few plates, and something called a “Lunk alarm” is activated if anyone dares to grunt while training), walk out the door, and declare that the place sucks ass big-time and they will never get a nickel of our money.

Anyway, much to Jared’s alarm, I motioned Hunter over to meet him one day while I was putting Jared through a back workout. Jared stared daggers at me, his back to the approaching Hunter, but submitted to the introduction. And what do you know – they hit it off and became fast friends. I had a feeling they would, as they have so much in common.

Over February school vacation, they had actually trained together, and I suspected they would probably become regular training partners. One day I happened to be training while they were pushing each other through an epic leg workout that featured such treats as strip sets on squats, super-setting leg extensions and walking lunges, and trading sets back and forth on leg curls without rest until neither could budge the lowest amount of weight you could set the pin at. Luckily for Jared, I had advised him to make his post-workout shakes more substantial on days he trained legs, due to the higher demands placed on the body. I moseyed on over to him as he attempted to finish the shake – which consisted of 4 scoops of 50/50 Plus™ powder, two scoops of Optimized Whey™, and 5 grams of creatine monohydrate. He wasn’t having an easy time. For one thing, he had only used 16 ounces of water, so the shake had the consistency of mud. After every few sips, he would upend his water bottle and squirt more liquid in, then shake it up again. The real issue was the nausea he was feeling after thrashing his legs so intensely. The poor kid’s hands were trembling. Hopefully he was headed right home for a nap after this.

“Helluva job today you and Hunter-Gatherer did on legs,” I told him.

“Why do you keep calling him that?” he asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know,” I said, “just my own little private joke.” The real reason I called his new friend by that name was that his thick brow and enormous lantern jaw, coupled with his bulky, big-boned frame, made him look like a Neanderthal teen that had managed to un-thaw from a glacier somewhere and was now living amongst us. I would never repeat that to anyone, as Hunter seemed to be a pretty decent kid.

“That’s how we need to train closer to the show,” Jared pronounced. Immediately I realized that he had the typical way of thinking about contests, which is that it’s what you do in the final weeks that spells victory or defeat. As a raw novice, Jared could be forgiven for that assumption. I also have known many bodybuilders with years of competing under their belts that thought the same thing.

“You know who Ronnie Coleman and Dorian Yates are, right?” I asked him. He nodded.

“Of course I do – eight-time Mr. Olympia, six-time Mr. Olympia, both were almost unbeatable for a long time.”

“That’s right. And they also both knew that contests weren’t won or lost in the final few weeks of dieting and cardio. All of their toughest rivals knew how to get in shape. The contest was really won in the off-season,” I declared.

“How’s that?” Jared demanded. “Six or eight months away from a contest? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. The off-season is when you are able to train the heaviest and eat the most. It’s when you make your real improvements: bringing up lagging bodyparts and making good bodyparts great. Dorian and Ronnie were both legendary for their unmatched training intensity. The ferocious workouts they put themselves through earlier in the year is what always made it so easy for them to dominate the best bodybuilders in the world every fall at the Mr. Olympia contest.”

“Yeah, but don’t you need to train even harder as you get close to a show?”

“Not exactly. Once you are really into your contest diet, you aren’t eating enough to support muscle growth anymore. The name of the game is to maintain all the great mass you built in the off-season while stripping away every last ounce of bodyfat. What you show on contest day is really the finished product of a project you did the hardest work on many months before. So the reality for anyone that competes or is planning to compete is that you aren’t just training for a contest twelve or sixteen weeks out from the date of the show – you’re always training for it. And really, the off-season, right now, is when you do the most important part.”

Jared paused to mentally digest this, as he continued working on his shake. Suddenly he hiccupped, and his face took on a

Low Calorie, High Protein Taffy!

panicked expression as he shut his mouth tightly. Clearly his post-workout shake was attempting to come back up. I slid the shake bottle away from him on the counter and motioned toward the door. “Go get some air and leave that alone for a few minutes,” I advised. Without a word, he slid off the barstool and marched over to suck in some invigorating February air. I had to smile. The kid was not afraid to work hard and push through the pain barrier. Though his contest was still a long time away, these great workouts now were setting the stage for the winning package he would unveil then.

Hunter came out of the locker room and headed for the door. He almost asked me where Jared was, but caught a glimpse of him pacing outside in the twenty-degree weather.

“Not feeling well,” I explained as he passed. Hunter only nodded. I wondered if wintertime made him yearn to hunt wooly mammoths across the frozen tundra with sharpened sticks, but then stopped myself. I was starting to respect him for his dedication to hard training too, so maybe it was time to stop comparing him to Captain Caveman. Well, maybe soon, anyway.

Ron Harris is the author of Real Bodybuilding, available at www.ronharrismuscle.com

Episode 24: Reaching Your Boiling Point

admin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:41:13 +0000

Bodybuilder Is Born: Generations
By Ron Harris

Hundreds of millions of years ago, when the earth’s atmosphere had twice as much carbon dioxide, giant reptiles ruled the world and the seven continents were still one solid land mass called Pangea, there was a 1976 movie called “Network” that won four Academy Awards. The most famous scene was when a deranged news anchor urged the people of the nation to throw open their windows and unleash their frustrations at anything and everything they were upset about with this battle cry:

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Recently I did something similar, though it was too cold to open my window, on top of which there is a screen that prevents me from actually sticking my head, or anything else larger than a fruit fly’s leg, out of it. But still, I was so upset that I did feel like screaming,

“I’m fat as hell, and I’m not gonna look like this anymore!”

I had indeed gotten out of shape. The worst part was that I had seen it coming and still allowed it to happen. I had stayed in pretty decent condition until Halloween so I could pass for a respectable Incredible Hulk at a big costume party using my own body painted green rather than some lame-o lumpy padded muscle suit. My ego is such that I would never allow myself to move shirtless amongst a crowd of people (even drunk people) without at least being able to see my abs clearly. I have my pride. That’s what had been my motivation to steer clear of the bad stuff like pizza, cookies, ice cream, sugary cereal, cake, and Chinese food in the weeks leading up to that event. But before I had even properly scrubbed all the green make-up out of every orifice it had invaded, I had started to stray from my Hulk diet and was well on my way to hefty.

November and December had witnessed my diet’s gradual descent into the depths of depravity. I had gone from resolving to stay lean over the course of my off-season to rationalizing that it made no sense to fight the temptations of the various holiday treats that I was bound to be exposed to. And looming over it all was the impending vacation: a week on a cruise ship. I’ve spoken several times about the sickening abundance of food, particularly fattening items, that is available around the clock on these ships. Let’s just say that trying to eat clean on a cruise ship would be like attempting to remain abstinent in a house of ill repute filled with former Playboy Playmates, strippers, porn starlets, and beauty pageant winners – and you have a fat coupon book entitling you to free services that would simply go to waste if not cashed in. For me, being the innate cheapskate that I am, it’s hard not to be a glutton on a cruise. I’ve paid for ‘all you can eat,’ and by God, I’m gonna eat all I can.

Not that I was remotely lean before the vacation, but once I took a harsh look in the mirror upon my return it was impossible to deny that I was now fat. Forget about what the scale said, because scales never tell much of the story anyway. The mirror and photos, especially in bright, unforgiving light, don’t lie. My abs were gone. Not really, I knew they were in there somewhere. Then again, we know Osama Bin Laden is hiding somewhere too but we can’t seem to locate his terrorist ass. My face was taking on that round moon shape. If I wanted to see any muscle separation or striations, I would have had to draw them with a Sharpie the way Britney Spears airbrushed on fake abs to perform on the MTV Awards. Plain and simple, I was fat.

I am aware that actual obese people often take offense to someone like me referring to myself as being fat. That’s fine – I also take offense to the adjective ‘phat’ used by hip young people as an expression of praise, as in, well – I’m not even sure how to use it correctly, which may be why I frown on it. When a bodybuilder describes himself or another as being ‘fat,’ it should be understood that this is relative to our more demanding standards and according to what we collectively consider to be acceptable levels of bodyfat. Technically, we are not athletes, but rather ‘physique artists.’ At no point should we allow so much fat to accumulate over the work in progress that we can no longer view it properly. Once you do that, it becomes impossible to gauge the effectiveness of your training on the muscles you seek to build. Are my arms getting any bigger? Gee, I think they might be; but with all that fat who can be certain? Many times I have dieted off the obscuring fat to find that the gains I had made were nothing more than blubber.

But unfortunately, even the realization that I had let myself go wasn’t enough to stir me to action. It was winter, with plenty more winter to go before the weather even began to think about warming up. We were all walking around in winter coats and pants. Whether you were ripped or fat, nobody would see regardless. My next contest was still nine months away, long enough to gestate an entire human being. What finally took me to the boiling point and forced me to start shedding fat was an upcoming weekend in early March marked on my calendar for the Arnold Classic.

This annual extravaganza, located in the Buckeye state capitol of Columbus, Ohio, is far more than a major pro bodybuilding contest. It’s also an expo featuring over 500 booths hawking everything fitness-related: from supplements to equipment, workout clothing, and everything in between. Something like a hundred thousand people come from all over the world to attend, and among them are many of the planet’s best-built men and women. This is no place to be out of shape. To go there fat would be akin to being a welfare recipient at a millionaire’s club – completely out of place. Upon my return from the cruise, I had less than eight weeks before this event to whip myself into some kind of shape.

My first phone call was to Parrillo headquarters in Cincinnati, where I ordered up some products, including Advanced Lipotopic^™ (to assist in metabolizing bodyfat), Muscle Aminos^™ (branched chain amino acids I take before cardio to preserve lean muscle mass), and most importantly, a box each of the new Protein Chew bars^™ in English Toffee and Hazelnut Expresso flavors. These would satiate my cravings for sweets without compromising my efforts to get leaner and meaner in the short time I had to do so. They tasted just as delicious as a big bowl of Lucky Charms or a brownie sundae, but they provided only clean-burning protein, carbs, and healthy fats.

As I write this, I am almost halfway through to my weekend of reckoning. My abs are finally coming out of hiding, and a few veins are making their way to the surface on my chest and shoulders. I still have a lot of work to do over the next month to look presentable by my standards, but I know I’ll get there. My resolve is strong, because I have too much pride to be seen in that environment of physical perfection looking like a shaved-down tree sloth. The key is that without a goal, and without getting to the point where I knew something had to be done NOW, nothing would have changed. When you’re fine with the way things are going, you’re in a ‘comfort zone.’ Nobody ever does jack when they’re in a comfort zone.

So I urge all of you to strip down to your underwear, get in front of a mirror with the lights glaring, and take a good hard look at what you see. Are you happy with it? Or do you see something you don’t like? Do you see an area that needs to be built up, or something that needs to be trimmed down? Understand that nothing will change until you change it, and you won’t change it until you decide it needs to. So get moving!

Parrillo Product Page

Ron Harris > The Power of Focus

admin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:41:54 +0000

Ron Bicep Curls

Old Man Winter is one miserable S.O.B, I tell ya. On the last weekend before Christmas the bitter New England skies had opened up and dumped well over a foot of snow on us, just when I thought I might be able to escape off to my vacation on a cruise ship without having to deal with backbreaking hours of shoveling. As a kid I used to go ballistic with joy whenever it snowed. That was years before I had to do anything but sled down hills on it and make snowmen. Now my reaction had drastically shifted from “Yippee!” to “Dammit!” whenever the forecast called for large quantities of snow.

As for the cruise, I had sworn an oath to myself that this would be the last time we spent a family vacation trapped on a big ship somewhere in the Caribbean. I desperately wanted to see other parts of the world, mainly Europe. With all due respect to the wonderful Caribbean islands, if you’ve seen a few of them, you’ve seen them all. Each features white sand, sparkling blue water, plenty of places to shop for jewelry and handbags (not my thing, due to that pesky Y chromosome), and nearly identical native residents with that ‘Hey Mon’ accent going on. At times I suspected the ship was just doing a big U-turn and taking us back to the same island over and over again and giving it a different name.

The island visits are pleasant enough, but where you spend most of your time is onboard the ship. If you’re like me, you can’t help but gravitate to the buffets. The way I see it, this is where I get my money back! If only it was all healthy food that I force-fed myself. Again and again I inevitably wander over to the vast display of desserts. Two things I typically return home with are sunburned flesh and ten fresh new pounds of bodyfat.

So here I was in the gym the day before Christmas, madly doing cardio in anticipation of the gluttony I knew I was powerless not to indulge in. If I could just burn a thousand calories today, that would put me in a slightly better position to handle the 300,000 calories of fat and sugar I would soon be eating courtesy of Carnival Cruise lines. It was sort of like setting up a single sandbag to protect your beach house from a tsunami. Billy ambled up to where I was, my favorite elliptical machine on the corner where I could keep an eye on nearly the whole gym. Billy was a tall guy in his early twenties, heavily tattooed and a chain smoker. He had good shoulders, decent arms, and not much else. Billy talked a mile a minute and I never knew exactly if this was due to ADD, some type of recreational drug use (he was always very fidgety), or what. He spent hours every day hanging around the gym socializing, very little time actually training, and was always asking me when we were going to work out together. My stock reply was, “I’m not ready yet – I need to be a lot bigger and stronger to hang with you, Billy.”

This was pure sarcasm, which he never seemed to catch. “You’re friggin’ huge bro, what are you talkin’ about?” Billy thought I was massively insecure, when in fact the whole time I was clowning him right to his face. Still, even if he wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, he wasn’t a bad kid. I wouldn’t waste my time working out with him because I took my own training too seriously, but I didn’t mind answering a question here and there. The only problem with Billy was that he had serious issues with memory, so he tended to ask me the same few questions over and over again. It could get frustrating.

“I need you to write me up a routine or something,” he began. I rolled my eyes as a wave of déjà vu swept over me. I was pretty sure I had been on this exact machine hearing this before. He may have even had the same Affliction shirt on. I sighed and knew I had to play along. The last time I had reminded him that he had already asked me something before, he had gotten a panicked look like he was afraid he had multiple personalities that were going around soliciting training advice without his knowledge. And you know – I wasn’t so sure he didn’t, come to think of it.

“Well, what are you trying to do?” I asked. He knit his brows like this wasn’t a legitimate question.

“You know – get huge, get strong, get ripped, all that.” He smiled. “I want to be totally jacked.” Of course, how could I have not assumed as much? Billy was all over the place in every aspect of his life as far as I knew – going from job to job and girlfriend to girlfriend too fast to keep track of. It was no different with his training. He had no focus and no direction. I would see him start training chest, only to change his mind and do back instead. More often, he would quit whatever bodypart he started and work on his shoulders and arms. This easily explained his uneven physique and its missing bodyparts.

“You can’t do all those things at once,” I began. “Have you ever heard the phrase, jack of all trades, master of none?” He shook his head. All the old sayings were quickly vanishing from our society. “The human body doesn’t work like that. There are different ways to train if you’re aiming for more muscle size as opposed to increasing raw power. You eat totally differently if you’re trying to gain mass compared to when you’re trying to shed bodyfat and get super lean. Hell, you even eat different types of Parrillo bars!” That one went over his head, as I think the only bar that ever crossed his mind was the type you drank beers at.

“Tell me what your most important goal is right now, the one that’s more important than the others.” He pondered this for a moment. Billy was twitching and gnawing a fingernail – he had probably missed a cigarette break already in the brief time we had been talking. Even at six and seven bucks a pack, a lot of people out there still craved their smokes.

“Get huge,” he spat out. “Bigger chest, back, legs, get up to around 240.”

“See?” I said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. If you want to add mass in those areas, you need to start working them all with good basic compound movements every week for sets of 8-12 reps. You don’t worry about maxing out your bench or anything else like that, because that’s not helping you add size and bodyweight. You need to start eating a lot more good food a lot more often, too. But the main thing is that you need to stick to one goal and focus completely on it until you’ve made it happen. You can’t get distracted and try to do a bunch of other things at the same time. Do you know what I mean?” He nodded, but his eyes were flitting around. If this kid didn’t genuinely suffer from ADHD, or ADD or whatever it is they have all the children medicated for these days, I would be surprised.

“So will you write me up a routine?” he demanded.

“For what?” I countered, mainly to see if he had really been listening at all.

“For getting bigger, getting huge.” That’s what I had wanted to hear.

“Right now you’re what, about 215?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Give or take a couple pounds.”

“Okay, you need to set a more reasonable short-term goal – let’s say ten pounds of muscle, and give it a specific deadline. Let’s make it tax day, April 15^th, which gives you almost four months to hit it. You’ll probably reach it a few weeks before that, and that’s fine. Better to under-promise and over-deliver.” I could see that phrase went over his head too.

CapTri Cooking

“You can work on strength some other time,” I told him. “As for getting ripped – apparently you never look in the mirror, Billy.” He was puzzled. “I doubt your bodyfat is anything higher than six or seven percent, and I’ve never seen you do cardio once.” I said this with just a hint of bitterness, since at the moment I was practically soaked in sweat.

I got his girlfriend’s email address, at least his girlfriend at the moment, as he did not own a computer. He would have his training and nutrition programs in a few hours. Whether or not he would stick with them remained to be seen. But I wanted to have faith in Billy. I had known a lot of young guys like him with plenty of energy and enthusiasm who only needed some direction to start accomplishing things. Focus can truly be a life-changing force.

Ron Harris is the author of Real Bodybuilding, available at www.ronharrismuscle.com

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admin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:26:54 +0000

Heavy Weights

Jared was hurt. He had taken a bad hit from an odd angle from an opposing teammate in the final three minutes of the fourth quarter in the last game of the regular season (our town’s high school had advanced to playoffs), then landed even worse on his right shoulder. I don’t find it surprising at all that many of the injuries incurred by football players are virtually identical to what happens to people in automobile accidents. It’s true that you may not have two tons of steel smashing into another vehicle (or a tree) at eighty miles an hour, but you do see human bodies colliding as fast as their feet and muscular hips and thighs can propel them across a field. The padding helps, as well as the fact in the case of Jared that these kids normally don’t get much heavier than 200-220 pounds at the high school level. I have never been brutally tackled by a 350-pound NFL lineman and I plan to keep it that way. I’m scatterbrained enough as it is.

An X-ray showed that Jared’s bones were intact, but an MRI detected torn ligaments. He was all done for the season. Luckily, he had the resiliency of youth on his side. At fifteen years old, you could probably get your ass pounded to a pulp by Brock Lesnar and be ready to take your best girl to the school dance a few hours later. I think teens actually have several rows of teeth much like a shark, so that if any should get knocked out another one from the next row back moves forward to take its place. In any case, teenagers definitely heal faster than a dude pushing forty like me. When I get an injury, I know it’s going to be hanging around for a while. Just to be polite, I will ask my injury if I can get it something to drink, or if it wants me to change the channel to watch something different on TV. You can’t ask when it might be moving on or act like it’s being a burden. You have to be nice – the last thing you want to do is aggravate an injury.

Jared was pretty upset about not being able to continue on in the playoffs, even though that could only mean another game or two anyway. We had a few surrounding towns and cities with schools that had both much larger student bodies and much more generous athletic department budgets, which served in tandem to make for better football teams. I know it’s a movie cliché to see the scrappy little underdog team of kids from the trailer parks or housing projects win the big game, but that’s about as common in real life as talking Chihuahuas or surfing penguins.

The kid was also not thrilled that the doctor had been very clear about doing no weight training for at least a month. I would even say he was bordering on depression after a week, as physical activity was such a big part of who he was. I had seen him in the midst of a pack of teens on ‘Early Thursday,’ a monthly day where school lets out early so teachers can have conferences and students can terrorize the local fast food joints and parks. The others had been laughing and joking around, but he looked morose and distant. As soon as I got home, I sent him a text message telling him to meet me at the gym at six PM. My wife would have simply texted while driving, but I personally feel that’s about as safe as driving while being stumbling, slurring drunk and doing a Sudoko puzzle at the same time.

“? Can’t train” was his reply.

“Just b there,” I shot back.

I was waiting for him, and the gym was nowhere near as crowded as it would have been earlier in the week. I’ve always found it amusing that the gym traffic is heaviest on Mondays and gradually fades as the week goes on. This is no doubt because a lot of people indulge all weekend long in bad foods and alcohol and feel compelled to get back to the gym out of guilt once the binge is over. Jared hadn’t changed out of his school clothes. He was still in jeans and an enormous T-shirt, as he was not planning to touch a weight. His doctor had been clear on that, and this was a kid that actually listened to what the authority figures in his life told him. Now another authority figure, his trainer, was going to ask him to go against the doc’s wishes, but I knew what I was doing.

“Want to hit some biceps?” I asked him. He looked at me askew, certain that this was some type of test.

“I can’t lift right now, at least not for another three weeks.” He probably had the day circled on his calendar. Oh, who am I kidding? It was noted somehow on his phone/camera/wireless internet/PDA/MP3 player, more likely. The thing probably woke him up in the morning and cooked his breakfast, too.

“I know, just humor me on this one.” I led him over to the rack of pre-loaded straight and cambered barbells and handed him a 20. “Keep your form tight and give me ten reps.” He knit his brows and did as he was told.

“It’s super light, but I don’t want to go any heavier,” he cautioned me.

“You won’t have to,” I assured him as I took it away but held on to it. When I figured about thirty seconds had passed, I handed it back over.

“Ten more reps,” I said. This was repeated for a total of ten sets. It was comical to watch his expression change from bored, to determined, to a grimace as the sets went on. I made sure he wasn’t cheating and involving his shoulders, and grinding out the final few reps of his tenth set was pure torture for his biceps. I replaced the bar on the rack as Jared shook his arms out, attempting to get the blood circulating again as it was currently packed tightly into his biceps. I didn’t have to ask him to roll up a baggy sleeve to know those puppies were pumped to high hell.

“What was that?” he asked.

“That is German Volume Training,” I answered. “And it’s what I have been doing for my chest and shoulders for about a month now while my own messed-up shoulder has made it temporarily impossible for me to handle my usual weights on presses. The first time I tried it, I did ten sets of incline dumbbell presses with 60’s – half the weight I can normally get for a good set of ten. And I was thinking it was a joke too for the first few sets. By the end I had come to the conclusion that it was no joke at all.”

“But does it work? I mean, the weights aren’t that heavy.”

“Heavy weight is one way to stimulate muscle, but volume is definitely another one,” I began. “John Parrillo has preached for years that bodybuilders need to train hard and long for best results. A few sets ain’t gonna do the trick for most people. And even if you’re not necessarily going super heavy, the cumulative effect of fatigue and pumping when you keep your rest periods short is pretty amazing – you get the burn from hell and the muscle pumps up like a freaking balloon.”

Jared tried to straighten his arms and found he still couldn’t. “You can say that again.”

“If you train like this, with a lot of sets and short rest periods, you are going to have a really rough time making it through. You should drink plenty of water and sip a nice big container of 50/50 Plus™ over the course of the workout so you have all the glycogen and amino acids your muscles need when you hit them like this.”

“You mean I can start training again right away?” Jared asked, his eyes growing wide with excitement.

“I would still give your chest and shoulders another couple weeks to let those ligaments heal up a bit, but you should be able to work your back, arms, and legs with a volume approach. We can actually go heavier on the legs as long as we stick to certain things like the leg press and leg curls. I’ll train you if you want.”

“Definitely!” he exclaimed, smiling broadly. I wasn’t even worried about charging his dad for a few sessions. I was still wearing the heavy Tag Heur watch Jeff had given me last Christmas as a token of appreciation for doing a good job training his son.

Hi-Protein Cake

I led Jared through ten sets of very strict cable pushdowns so his triceps could also get in on the good times. After only about fifteen minutes of actual training, his guns were so swollen that they were actually almost tight around the sleeves of his XL T-shirt. And what teenage boy doesn’t feel better when his arms are properly pumped?

Hopefully Jared wouldn’t have to deal with injuries too often as the years went by. But at least now he knew that even though they might keep you out of a rough contact sport like football, bodybuilding was something you can almost always do if you know how to work around various issues. My own recent ‘discovery’ of volume training had been out of necessity. I was beginning to accept that although I could still train very heavy occasionally, attempting to do so all the time was simply not possible. My beleaguered joints and connective tissues simply wouldn’t tolerate it. But luckily, there was more than one way to get the job done when it came to building muscle mass.