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How I Transformed My Physique In Under A Year To Win Natural Mr Universe!
DREAM BIG TO GET BIG!
Do you want to transform your body in the shortest space of time even though you've been training for years? That can't be done surely? Of course it can!
Training In The Colosseum Gym, Fullerton, California Post Natural Mr Universe Win
I'll tell you what I done back in 2005. After winning the heavyweight world championships I still realised I needed more size, even though I won I could still look at my physique and tell where I needed to improve. I needed more balance with my lower half as my legs were always ahead of my upper body, so that meant more size on the upper body, great! The challenge was set.
So what was my secret? Well, for years I was doing the same type of training, each body part once a week, low sets, low reps and heavy weight, very much along the lines of Heavy Duty training, Dorian Yates style. This type of training is phenomenal to be honest and had got me fantastic results over the years. But after a couple of years my muscle size hadn't changed dramatically. It got to the point where I thought whats the point in carrying on. Maybe all the size I had put on over the years was all that my body could build naturally? Someone wrote on a forum that myself and some others had reached their genetic limit and we couldn't get any bigger, well that was it, just what I needed! That was the motivation that I needed to get bigger, better and not accept the size that I was!
So, back to the drawing board, what was I going to do to get the results that I was after? I knew what would work, go against all what I believed in! Instead of training three to four days a week, each bodypart once a week, heavy duty style, low sets, low reps, a fair bit of rest, I'd do the opposite, surely that will work? My mindset had to change to progress further and get out of my plateau. Three to four days a week training turned into six days a week, each body part trained once a week became each body part twice a week. Training six days a week, each body part twice a week was a recipe for serious overtraining for a lifetime natural competitor surely? Well my train of thought was to shock the body, if I do something radically different my body would surely have to change! Once you increase your frequency and volume of your workouts the body will adapt and recover a lot quicker (as long as your nutrition is spot on too) which means training each body part more often will result in more muscle gain, we all want that right?
Checking Out My Progress In Muscle Limit Gym Leading Up To The 2005 Season
So heres what my plan was. I split my body over three days, the first three days I trained heavy, keeping the rep range in the 6-8 range, rest until my breathing recovered. I then repeated my body split the following three days but training lighter and upping the reps to 15-20 and my rest between sets was 30-60 seconds. I trained on the lighter days just short of failure, really going for a massive pump, gorging the muscles with blood. The training split I used was as follows -
- Monday - Heavy Chest/Shoulders
- Tuesday - Heavy Back/Arms
- Wednesday - Heavy Legs/Abs
- Thursday - Light Chest/Shoulders
- Friday - Light Back/Arms
- Saturday - Light Legs/Abs
- Sunday -REST
The results were shocking to me, I had gained approximately 7lbs of lean muscle from April 2006 to the end of July 2006, I hadn't made that much progress since i first started training! Here I was 17 years into my training and I was making gains like a beginner.
So, if you have reached a plateau in your own training, which a lot of my clients have when they first come to me, then radically change things, do what you wouldn't normally do. If you always train heavy and low reps then change your rep range to 15 reps, or higher, drop your rest down too. Do the opposite of what you would normally do, shock the body, do something different!
Winning The Natural Mr Universe In Los Angeles, California, A Dream Come True.
Good luck and let me know how you get on!
Peter