Bulking Up Teleseminar. Part II

Transcription

1 Bulking Up Teleseminar Part II Konstantin: So there is hope for vegetarians. Absolutely. My friend, Jon Hinds, he s a strong dude. He s not the kind of guy you d want to tangle with on the street. He looks and is strong. Not only that, performance-wise this guy could dunk a basketball and get his elbow to touch the rim. His vertical jump is insane. Konstantin: Next question. Hello. My first question is as a beginner with a home gym which includes dumbbells, etc. but no power rack. I am scared of doing squats without the rack. Do you have any substitutions for squats which would target the legs as powerful as a squat? If he has a barbell I would do dead lifts. Then as your dead lifts get strong you would elevate your feet. You d stand on maybe a 45 pound plate or a couple of rubber mats or a box. What happens is the greater range of motion starts targeting your butt and your hamstrings. Here s another possibility that is so underrated. If you can t do that, a great way would be heave dumbbell lunges and probably walking lunges. Could be dumbbell split squats or what we call Bulgarian split squats. These are all in the Lazy Muscle Gain that you were talking about. They add so much muscle to the quads, hamstrings and butt. It s basically doing one legged squats.

2 We used to not even have our guys do squats with a barbell. One guy would be 6 4 and another 5 3, so we never used the power rack. They would do heavy lunges with dumbbells and then squat with a heavy sandbag. That way you don t even need a barbell. I love the barbell and it allows you to go extremely heavy. Do you need it? Is it a must? Absolutely not. Konstantin: If there s one thing you can say about Zach, it s that there s no shortage of any alternative exercises. The possibilities are limitless. I can t emphasize enough the need to go back and stick to the basics. There s no fancy anything. Konstantin: Okay. His second question was about nutrition once more. opinion? What is the best nutrition plan to follow in your Number one, I would never tell someone they need to follow like such and such protein only, because what if somebody s a vegetarian? One thing I have found to work is eating regularly, five meals a day. I ll give my own personal nutrition program here. My body tends to respond best to eating carbohydrates only after a workout. Other than that it s a lot of meats, fruits and vegetables throughout the day. Also maybe some nuts and seeds to get some healthy fats in the body. If I m extremely active, say playing sports all the time which I m not like I used to be six days a week and wrestling then it would be protein and carb at each meal. Now I train short workouts four to five days a week and my meals, I like them to be protein and veggies and fruit scattered throughout the day. I feel great doing that. Some people feel good following that Warrior Diet which is basically one controlled over eating. Some people are vegans. So it s really finding what your body responds to best.

3 Here s one thing nobody can escape. Everybody knows if they re eating something healthy or really bad. If you cut out the junk food and stuff you re going to make changes. Nobody could mistake the choice of chicken and broccoli or eating pizza. You know what s the better alternative. It s like the workout. Are you working hard? The same thing is true with the diet. Are you really sticking with quality food? There s really no secret to it. Konstantin: Quality food is a must. It s absolutely a must. One of my wrestlers said this, Ah, I haven t been eating that good. Because of that, towards the end of every wrestling match he s tired and not as energetic. I said, There you go. It s so simple to explain. It s like a car. If you re a race car you cannot put crappy gas and oil into the car. It has to be top quality fuel. It s the same thing with the human body. You want to look good, be strong and fast, perform like a true athlete then you have to fill yourself with great quality food. Konstantin: What I d like to add to that is from my own experience. It s the old listen to your body advice. I listen to my body and it tells me exactly what I need to eat. It s been good up until now. If you eat quality food you also notice the difference. I do the same with the training for myself. I don t plan when to train hard this day or that day. If I feel energetic I train very hard. If I m tired I go lighter. I listen to my body. When you don t listen you get hurt. It s just a matter of time. You must listen to your body. Konstantin: Onward to the next question. I want to put on pounds of muscle using sandbags. What s the best way? Would it be two days a week and how long would it take?

4 If you re going to try to put on muscle just using a sandbag? First of all, never treat any one training tool like the end all training tool or the best tool. You can only use a kettlebell or a barbell. If you re only going to use a sandbag you re going to need to get a very heavy one if you want to try to pack on just pounds of muscle. You also better be ready to eat tons of quality food. Muscle gain of pounds is very tough to gain unless you re a new lifter who s going to respond to really anything. I would be doing sandbag squats, carries, lunges, clean and press Konstantin: Sounds like doing all the basics, but if you have to use sandbags then do it with the sandbags. Do the basics. It s so funny. If I m going to train with a stone, a sandbag or a barbell, you re going to find me squatting, dead lifting, clean and press and row and lunge. You re going to find me attacking those basics. I love those basics. That s what my workouts revolve around. That s what our athletes workouts revolve around because it always works. If you want to get stronger and bigger you re going to need to follow those basics and go heavy. Like I said before, progression, helping you get stronger adding more weight or more reps. Konstantin: The next question is here. I m a soccer player and I would like to gain more muscle mass, especially in my legs and calves. How would you suggest for me to achieve such a goal? Number one, when you play soccer this is kind of like my wrestler they re so active and they burn so many calories it makes it so hard to keep putting on muscle. One thing that I would definitely recommend is increase calories in quality food.

5 Number two, you know what I m going to say about getting the legs bigger and stronger. You re going to want to do squats, dead lifts, lunges, kettlebell swings. If you have access to doing the glute ham raises do it. If not do weighted back extensions. These are going to target the butt, the hamstrings which are huge muscles so when you add muscle to those areas it helps with weight gain, which is important. If it s off season try to lower the amount soccer playing you do. Otherwise you re still going to be burning so many calories and exhausting the legs and won t be able to train heavy in movements like the squat and the dead lift. The dead lift might be a little bit better for a soccer player. If they re always playing soccer their quads are going to be exhausted from sprinting. So the dead lifts might be more helpful in that area. Squats, dead lifts, kettlebell swings, glute ham raises and back extensions with weights. Those are going to be critical. One thing I d like to throw in there is a real simple way and I show this in the Lazy Man Muscle Building is how to use a tire for a sled. It s a great way for athletes to add muscle to the legs but it doesn t create soreness. Since you re not squatting up and down it doesn t tear down the muscles. The tire sled is a very powerful way to use for adding muscle and adding strength. Use a light one for recovery purposes. Konstantin: So go to and check it out. Next question. How often should I go heavy in my workouts? Should I be maxing out all the time or go high reps lower weight part of the time? Remember what I said a few minutes ago? I do this with my own athletes. If you feel very energetic then what you should do is train heavy that day. If you come in and you re beat up and exhausted then do a light workout and cut the volume in half and intensity down or just go home.

6 That is the best way to train. The difference is are you being lazy or is your body truly beat up? If you re body s beat up then you have to go lighter. That s the way to get strong. You get strong when you re recovering. If you re always beat up and you never recover then you can t get big and you can t put on muscle. Konstantin: That is a very common misconception that s going around these days. People always go harder and harder, stronger workouts, higher reps and they miss the part on resting. Listening to the body. This is a big reason why I have the injuries I have. When I was a body builder it was forced reps and no matter how tired I was I believed I had to outwork everybody. This is why I had back problems when I was younger. Even if I was tired I squatted and dead lifted heavy. Even when my shoulders were hurting I was doing forced reps on the bench press. Now I never do forced reps. Now I train hard when my body feels good. If I m tired I go lighter. Such a simple way to organize your workout and in my opinion and experience it s the most effective. Konstantin: Very good. Zach, when the goal is to increase both size and strength and each one affects the other, which one should you put the most emphasis on in your training? Some people will argue and say if you want to get strong focus only on strength. If you want to put on muscle, focus only on that one thing. However, here s something I ve found in my experience as a body builder. 1. When I was gaining muscle I had to get stronger to put on muscle. 2. It was a combination of heavy lifting for low reps and followed up by moderate weight for moderate reps.

7 Let s say it was chest day. I would start off with the bench press and I d work up to 1or 2 very hard sets in the 3-5 repetition range. Sometimes it would be 2-4 reps on the bench press. Then I would go to an incline dumbbell bench and I would do 2 or 3 very hard sets and that would be more in the 6-12 repetition range. It was the moderate rep range. That moderate rep range tends to be great for adding muscle. They go hand-in-hand. When you add muscle it s like a bigger car engine. If we could add different things to that car engine we could make the car engine stronger and faster. There certainly are guys that don t look big but are strong and vice versa. Usually those guys are not mixing strength and muscle gaining methods together. For strength it s heavy weights, lower reps, really trying to break records and always trying to get stronger. For muscle you have to get stronger and include those moderate rep range with moderate weights, 6-12 or 6-15 reps. Those rep ranges are great for adding muscle. Konstantin: If you want to increase size and strength the best thing is to focus on one thing at a time, right? You can, but in the perfect world it s so hard to say you must focus on one thing. I have found, as you said, they are intertwined. When I add muscle to my body I find I do get stronger. That did come from me adding strength and muscle building work. It s good to have both of them included. Most people respond great to doing only 1-3 reps all the time, heavy singles, doubles and triples. You have to find what works for you, experimenting on yourself. Konstantin: Very good. The next question is from a 65 year old guy. How do I lose fat and gain muscle? How much muscle, in pounds, is possible at this age?

8 To be honest with you, I have no clue for somebody of any age for what would be possible. It always comes down to the select things. The genetics, are you someone who puts on muscle fast or burns fat easily? What is their training experience? If they re new to training they might be able to see results very quickly. How are they training? Is it real quality work and is their food and nutrition quality on a regular basis? We train a guy that s 60 years old and we ve made him much stronger than when he started with us. He s extremely lean but he eats clean and trains hard on a regular basis. His body utilizes the food he takes in. This guy has really made amazing progress. At 60 years old he s really put together. Konstantin: Of course there is no cookie cutter advice for a 65 year old that all 65 years olds can gain so much power and muscle or something? Right. You can t say you could gain 10 pounds because it s different for everybody. That s the hard facts. Konstantin: The next guy who submitted a question is slightly obese and here s his question. Is it possible to gain muscle mass and maintain roughly the same amount of weight? It depends on how your body changes its own composition. Some people change, while others maintain the same weight but their body appearance changes. They lose body fat and gained lean muscle mass. It really depends. If he s slightly obese I d say he definitely needs to be focusing on a mixture of strength and muscle building work,as well as things like sled and tire drags, jump rope and sprint intervals to burn the fat. There are no hard facts. The body will respond according to what you give it and everybody will respond differently.

9 If you and I were on the same program I might make better gains than you or vice versa. These are real world answers from my experience. You just never know how somebody is going to respond to workouts. That s why you have to ready to change on the fly. If something is not working for you, change it. This is guy is saying he s slightly obese and he wants to maintain body weight but add muscle. In this case I wouldn t even worry about how much you weigh. I would go by the mirror and do before and after photos. That s how you know if you re making good, ample progress. Konstantin: That s good, real world, sound advice. Why are the gymnasts not recommended to take salty or sugar foods when it comes to a healthy diet? Why not salty and sugar foods? If you re taking sugar it s just to eat. Sugar is quick energy. If you re an athlete you can have the healthy sugars that come from the fruits and what not. If you re taking the sugars that are coming from the junk foods like in cookies and all the additives from all the processed foods, the body doesn t utilize it well. We have to look back and think about how cavemen ate. I believe they ate a lot of meats because they were hunters. They also ate of things grown from the Earth so it would be a lot of greens, fruits and vegetable, seeds and nuts. I know we don t have hard facts about how they looked but that s how they ate and what sustained them. It allowed them to be active on a daily basis. Even without education or knowledge, if I put two different meals in front of you, you could tell me which one is healthier and which one

10 isn t. You could easily say this meal is loaded with carbohydrates and there are no vegetables or protein there. You could identify a meal with a good balance of protein, carbohydrates and fat right there. It s common sense. People often want to deny what s healthy and what s not. If you re going to eat awful foods you are going to feel, perform and look like crap. Konstantin: So it s going basics in another dimension even. Going back to the roots of mankind. It s so basic. I think what is happening now is people need this information reinforced. There is so much information, especially with the internet. There are a million and one places to get information and it s confusing. Sometimes you need somebody to say, Shut up, train hard, train every other day, use basics and eat clean. That s it. Then it starts to make sense. If you have so many different information sources, it s really confusing. Konstantin: You can also repeat what you ve said throughout the interview one more time because the next question is this. How do I avoid over training? Once again, if you feel tired don t train hard. I would take the day off or train light and do a couple of exercises. Lower the volume, lower the intensity. Or let s say you feel great. Go in and break records. Maybe you could spend a little extra time in the gym that day. Maybe you could get an extra heavy set in. I think this is becoming the optimum way to train. We do this with our athletes. When they come in I m looking at them. When they go through the warm up I m talking with them. I get a good idea of their energy levels through verbal and nonverbal feedback.

11 That always lets me know this one needs to train freaking hard today, while another one is exhausted, has an athletic event tomorrow, and is a little beat up so he ll go light and skip dead lifts and squats. He ll train easy and do a lot of flexibility and recovery work at the end. I tell you what, there is no science behind that. It s just me being smart and listening to them or listening to my own body. That s what it comes down to. Konstantin: I think this is really good as we are getting really close to the end now. It s really what you ve been saying all through the interview. Listen to your body and do the basic workouts. Absolutely. If I open up any of these health and strength magazines from the 1940s, their physiques rival many of today s. It s what a lot of people want to look like. You look at their workouts and they are doing things like floor press with a barbell, clean and press, squats, dead lifts and doing a lot of gymnastic type movements. That helps them create a body building type physique, but also helps them perform. They don t just look strong, they are strong. It s so basic and I think this is a big reason why people aren t getting results any more. Training with a stability ball, a medicine ball, this and that, do it on one leg is just crap. It doesn t deliver results or the results are minimal. Konstantin: There s one more question. Listening to your body isn t really good advice for me because most of the time his body is just too tired. Is this telling me something? Yes, that s a great question and let me answer it from the heart because that s me. I wake up at 6:00 or 7:00 AM and go to work. I run my gym and then it s 8:00 pm when it s time to work out. I ve already worked about 12 to 13 hours, on my feet and physical all day.

12 A lot of times I m exhausted and it s easy for me to say go home. You know what? I get a good quality warm up in, the body starts waking up and kind of like the messages start flowing. Then I know if I can push it hard or not. That s what I spoke about earlier when I said you have to make the difference between being lazy or truly beat up. If I simply left the gym, I think that s me being lazy. I think as a man you need to tough that out. You will be tired, and on the flip side this is why you want to create your own lifestyle. That s a big reason why I m so into my certification program. It s what is giving me my life back and allowing me to stop working for other people. I can do more with my family, sleep more and spend time with them more and be healthy again. The typical people here in the northeast and New York, New Jersey and Connecticut work from 7:00 AM to midnight. That s very typical. They re on the train, this and that, get out of shape and eat horrible junk. They eat pizza and fall asleep on the train. This is where the 15 minute workout comes in. This is where you have to say it s time to suck it up. Time to push hard doing rope climbing and hand stand pushups for 15 minutes, or time to do as many sets of five in the clean and press and the pull-up in 15 minutes. It might be dead lifts for 2 reps every minute for 15 minutes. This is where the Lazy Man Muscle is not so much are you lazy as time crunched. You re so busy that you need to find a way to get it done. This is when it s a mental game. You can quit and leave or you can refuse to lay down and quit and make it happen. Konstantin: That s a perfect closing note. We are out of time now. This was Zach Even-Esh with us on the line. If you want to find out more about Zach go to or for the Underground stuff at

13 It was a pleasure speaking to you, Zach. Thank you, I m honored. Konstantin: I appreciate you and it was very good what you have shared with us. Getting back to the basics, not worrying about it too much, and doing it with a heart. Yes, it comes from the heart. I m really honored that you put this together. I m always more honored that somebody from outside the country even knows about what I do. I think it s great you re awake at 4:00 AM to do something like this and give back to people to help them. I think it s awesome and I can t thank you enough, Konstantin. Konstantin: Thank you. Bye, everyone. Good night everyone and thank you. is the home of hundreds of articles and videos with Zach Even Esh and other fellow hard core Strength Coaches. Check out our store HERE.