"Bigger Made Easier"

I'm posting exerpts from an article that caught my eye this week. I've recently been hearing frustrations from guys on the weight floor who feel like they're lifting impressive amounts of weight but not getting the results they want-they're not gaining the mass they want, and/or they aren't getting the body-fat reductions that they'd like.

The article describes the training regimen that Indiana Pacers players Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy Jr followed after the team finished a disapointing fourth place in the Central Division. They sought out the expert guidance of Joe Dowdell, owener and co-founder of Peak Performance Strength & Conditioning Center, a premier private training facility in Lower Manhattan which caters to such clients as Saturday Night Live's Jimmy Fallon and Sin City's Devon Aoki, to name a few.

Joe Dowdell's training regimen involved a sensible balance of functional training, free weights, elastic bands, kettlebell training and plyometrics. The two Pacers players not only gained mass-(Dunleavy put on 12 pounds during the summer of 2007), but also made significant gains in athleticism, agility and strength. Here are the main points outlined in the article that can serve as a guide to attaining your training goals.-Christine

From " Bigger Made Easier " by Jeff O'Connell. Men's Health January/February 2008 issue.

•Pick up the correct weights.

Most men equate mass building with grabbing the heaviest weight they can lift from the dumbbell rack and then squeezing out several shaky reps before that hunk of iron comes crashing to the floor. Dowdell recommends finding the heaviest wieght you can lift cleanly for one and only one repetition, a weight referred to by exercise scientists as your one-rep max (1RM ). * This will require trial and error, but once you find this weight, rack it. You don't need it anymmore. Instead, find the weights that represent 75 to 85 percent of that superheavy 1RM.

So to calculate your best weight to lift in any exercise, multiply your one-rep max by 0.75 (to 0.85).

• Use more than one set of joints at a time.

Dowdell hates leg extension, because movement occurs only at the knee joints. * * He loves squate, because the hips and knees bend simultaneously to execute the lift. "Bigger moves like the squat release more of the key hormones that increase strength and muscle and decrease body fat, " says Dowdell.

Here's and even more fundamental reason to base your mass-gaining workouts around these moves. "Muscle strength and power imporve more when you use multijoint lifts, because those lifts involve larger muscle masses than single-joint lifts do, " says David Pearson, PH.D., a professor of exercise physiology and director of the strength research lab at Ball State University.

•Rest for 60 seconds between sets.

"Research suggests that rest periods of 45 to 90 seconds should be used when lifting for hypertrophy, or building muscle, " says Pearson. Dowdell achieved his best results with the Pacers last summer by using 1 minute.

•Fuel your body for growth.

No matter what you do in the gym, your body must have the building blocks it needs to grow. Never is this more true than before and after you train, because muscle fibers break down during the workout. It's only during recovery that regeneration and growth take place.

Here are examples of good pre- and postworkout meals, given to Dunleavy by the Pacers strength team.

• 1 protein shake
• 1 scoop whey-protein powder mixed with 16 ounces Gatorade®
• 1 container Boost® or Carnation Instant Breakfast®
• 1 peanut butter or turkey sandwich on whole-wheat bread.
• 12 ounces low-fat chocolate milk

• Increase your body's capacity to do work.

There was a reason Dowdell had the players dragging sleds and doing Farmer's walks. Actually, several reasons. Murphy needs to muscle around bodies on the opposing team. Dunleavy needs to have his legs remain under him after three grueling quarters so that he can still drain 3-pointers. But these exercises were also instrumental when it came to building muscle. "I was training their bodies to be able to do more work, which is a key factor for gaining mass, "says Dowdell. "These moves also increased their ability to recover during workouts."

"Pushing the sled and doing similar drills have noticeably increased my strength on some of the other exercises I normally do, " says Murphy. "I definitely see a correlation. My squats have gone up, my bench has gone up-everything has gone up, everything has gone up faster-and I think it's because of this. That's what I did differently this year."

•Improve other aspects of your game while upsizing your body.

He can't jump through the roof, but Murphy can now leap up and slap his palm against the 11'6" ceiling in Dowdell's office, thanks to the 5 inches he added to his verticle jump over the last summer. And remember, there are now 22 additional pounds of baggage at liftoff. "Improving lean body mass while simultaneously decreasing body fat allows for significant improvements in athleticism, " says Dowdell.

•Sleep for 8 hours a night.

The excretion of human growth hormone, the most powerful anabolic substance in your body, peaks at night. The off-season manual given to Pacers players includes guidelines on effective slumber. Our favorite: "Get out of bed if you can't sleep. Don't just lie awake for long periods of time." Why? The longer you think about falling asleep, the harder it is to do so.

* For safety, Sports West urges you to make sure that you have a spotter when you're testing for your 1-rep max!
* *On this note, I disagree that the leg extension is not a valuable exercise. Even though it is a single-joint exercise, I have found that it is indispensable in keeping the quadriceps, esp. the Vastus Medialis, balanced in thier strength and thus helping many to overcome a variety of knee problems that can result from an inbalance between the lateral and medial quad muscles.-Christine