THE TRUTH ABOUT MUSCLE CONFUSION

There is no confusion.

News flash.

Your body has an innate ability to adapt to exercise quicker than we can “trick” our body.

What we should be saying is variation.

The secret is constantly varied exercises mixed with constantly varied intensities to be the most efficient with strength training as well as body building.

We here this a lot with Crossfit.

And some bodybuilders poke fun at the cross fitters because their focus is to become great at exercising.

But, I get the Cross Fit concept. Where they go wrong is anyone who likes to workout and “exercise” regardless of experience level can get certified and open up their own gym or “box” as it is referred to in the CF community.

It’s like “I like to eat cookies, I will open up a bakery” as my good friend and rockstar fitness entrepreneur Tyler English has said. But, that’s for another blog post at a different time.

I want to get into exercise variation and how you can maximize your time when trying to build strength and the physique of a super hero or world class bodybuilder.

After my 25 years dedicated to building my body and competing, I have taken what I like most from powerlifting, olympic lifting and old school bodybuilding principles and mushed them into a nice monthly rotation.

We call it them the P.H.A.T. principles over at bodhi and incorporate this into a nice 4 week block of different workouts everyday with a different focus each week.

It covers:

  • Strength and Power on week 1 (Heavy) where we focus on the 6 main multi joint exercises which are: Deadlifts, Squats, Overhead push press, Bench press, Bent over row, and of course pull ups.
  • Hypertrophy or “muscle building” on week 2 (medium) where we focus on old school principles that have built legends like Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman, Lee Haney etc;
  • Anaerobic / Aerobic conditioning on week 3 (light) where we focus on high intense and high reps to increase oxygen consumption in our muscle and lungs.
  • Transition on week 4 (technique) on week 4 where we focus on taking our time to work on skills that need improvement, resembling a “deload” week. Lighter weights but still applying solid work here. This week is also a great transition into week 1 which is where we can try to increase our poundage.

I will speak more about this in articles to come, but for now lets take a look a little hybrid push pull workout I blasted through with Coach Rocco while Coach Alex supervised.

Reps varied from 100 – 30 – 8. A snap shot of what we did:

  • Scaption pushups – Mobility
  • PVC pass throughs – Mobility
  • Body weight rows
  • Hang Cleans
  • Pull ups
  • Low cable rows
  • Cable chest flyes
  • Push up challenge finisher

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO FROM THIS WORKOUT

Got questions? Ask monetti over at www.anthonymonetti.com

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