A few decades ago,  a strong grip was very important. Just like real manpower. You should give a strong handshake. Strongmen bended bikes, and could. tear a phonebook or a deck of cards. If you would ask them to show their arm they would flex their complete arm that also involved the forearm.

Everything in life goes  cyclic. The length of these cycles change. This blog-post is about your bodybuildingcycle.  When you start to build your body and you get hooked, you decide to “lift forever”.  But will you? I don’t know.  The idea for this post came when I visited the FIBO and saw an old, once famous bodybuilder in one of the nutritional supplement stands. He was so in contradiction with the new generation in their posing slips, flexing, laughing when visitors made pictures of them with their friends.

It made me think. I wrote about elite professional bodybuilders and knew many had to break of their career, because their joints, organs or their head could no longer cope with the pressure of dieting, training and especially chemicals such a career needs.

I posted about “Palubism” here: //www.juicedmuscle.com/jmblog/content/distended-bellies-0

The new term is “Detransformation” , some (hopefully angry young guys) use to compare photos of famous bodybuilders in their prime with pictures of their deterioration. Later in this blogpost I will try to explain how this is possible.

About the photo-comparison above from Mustafa Mohammad, on the boards kids say he looks like an ordinary truckdriver. When he would have continued to compete, and do all the things you need to do to compete at that level, he would most probably ruined his health (Mustafa had to be hospitalized from stage twice with so many diuretics that he almost died). Then others would call him an idiot for doing so. Or if he would have a healthy body that can take a lot, he would have ended like Dave Palumbo and Greg Kovacs, and then everybody would say he looks ridiculous. If you sit behind your computer being a keybord-warrior, it is easy to bash these guys and disrespect them. Mustafa also got screwed by the judges many times something that happens a lot, placing is often done for economical reasons. Mostly the financial benefit of one of the sponsors or organisator.

Mike Matarazzo was a truckdriver, in an interview after his heart attack he said: “If I could go back in time, those things never would have happened. I would have gone back to driving a truck. I have no doubt in my mind that the primary cause of my problem--the biggest thing--was the chemicals. It was the steroids, the growth hormones, the diuretics. We take Cytomel to lose fat, knowing it's an incredibly powerful thyroid drug, and that's only one of the many, many drugs out there taken by everyone, from amateurs to the highest level in the world.”

Somebody on GetBig (where else?) posted: “Mike, your selfish and egotistical bodybuilding obsession now sees your family, once again, placed in the unenviable position as carers for your ailing body.

You chose to use chemicals because you could never accept your body.  You wanted to be big and intimidating...Why couldn't you just be happy, being YOU ?”

Here you have the training schedule of J.P. Patches in the picture combined with Arnold. I want to post some pics of big arms and some training “secrets” of the Old School” bodybuilders. I.m.o.  Arnolds arms were the best ! Flexed ,relaxed all angles. In his side chest pose his arms are unbelievable. Dense, proportionate and symmetrical . Thank God the word “Synthol” wasn’t known then.

Most bodybuilders want impressive arms, but wanting and getting are two different things. Some of you will not be able to reach the mark you desire, and some of you will. If you’re looking for some magical shortcut to this goal I have no secret formula, but will be glad to tell you what type of training proved satisfactory for me.

To those of you who are having trouble at this time with developing the arms, maybe the way I trained will help. You won’t know until you have tried it for yourself, and don’t let anyone tell you one way works for everyone. It simply isn’t true. Once you have learned, studied and practiced the basic movements it is up to you to determine what works best for your individual set of circumstances, what will keep you engaged in training and what will prove fruitless and tiresome over time. Above all, never allow a training schedule to take all the joy out of your lifting. Train hard, when applicable, but don’t imagine for a moment that you will gain faster by denying your basic temperament. Construct your lifting plans around this temperament, and make a conscious effort to create inspiration and excitement while avoiding the tendency to turn your workouts into drudgery. Monotony has no place in the gym. Respect your fellow lifters at least enough to add some small spark of incentive when possible.

Enough of my philosophy of lifting. The object of training is not overwork, but to bring the muscles into play. Play. Heavy, lower-rep curls are best placed first in your biceps routine, followed by lighter movements done in higher reps intended to flush the area with blood. Don’t overdo the “pumping” exercises. These can drain more energy from your body and mind than most lifters take the time to realize. Always remember, the training is only part of a successful equation. You must also recover from your lifting sessions.

My biceps routine, although quite simple, has proven to give me results.

Barbell Curl, heavy – 3 sets, 3-6 reps.
Dumbell Curl, heavy – 2 sets, 5-8 reps.
Dumbell Curl, light – 2 sets, 15-20 reps.

By heavy, I mean as heavy as you can handle while maintaining quite strict form until the last few reps. At this point, I like to lighten up on my form, loosening up enough to get those last reps. The same goes for the heavy dumbell curls. Four or five strict reps followed by two or three cheated reps. The light dumbell curls are done unilaterally (one arm at a time) in very strict style, trying to make the biceps do as much of the work as possible. On one workout, usually about every two weeks, I keep curling until my arms ache, going down the rack doing one set right after another, and doing as many sets as my arms will allow until I have a puny 10-pound dumbell and it feels like 50 pounds.

A word of caution: I only do this once or twice a month, and would strongly caution against doing it any more frequently. Put more of your energy into increasing the poundage on your heavy curls instead.

So much for the biceps. For the triceps I prefer “unrestricted” movements.

If you look around in the gym much. You’ll notice that people are training body-parts cq muscle-groups for various reasons.

Most of them where reading articles about reps and sets on the internet or in magazines. Others were told by friends or gymmates.

The different exercises are known to produce different effects. Some are isolation exercises others are known as “basics”.

Everyone is doing them for different reasons. In the past the old school bodybuilders had their reasons to do different exercises and a different amount of reps and sets. Which brings us to the subject of high volume vs low volume and high reps vs low reps. Just GOOGLE around and you will find out.

These subjects are hot just as powerlifters are interested in increasing their strength on the different basic exercises. And bodybuilders want to increase their mass on the trained muscle-groups. And now we didn’t even mention the definition.

Wow, I forgot.. many girls do this exercise because it produces a nicely shaped, firm butt. Just look in our section eyecandy!!

Today everyone, the hard-gainers and genetically blessed or cursed ones are able to develop great legs, because there are many chemical aids, of course I mean  roids and  peptides. If you do a proper cycle, train hard, eat enough and sleep like a dog.  You will not have all the problems “naturals” have.

That doesn’t mean the amount of reps and sets, the kind of exercises, reaching a plateau, genetical thin legs, will not have ANY effect, of course it will, but you can succeed. What was true for the Old School bodybuilders is still needed even if you use roids, the right mindset, you have to be determent to reach your goal.

With so much money involved in sport, many studies are performed about these issues that bodybuilders are discussing about for decades. In this blog article I want to discuss a study about high volume and the right technique. There are many different squat exercises, it involves the width of the feet, the front – back- powerlift squat, the hack-squat, box-squat. How deep you squat, you name it ( I want to another post about that later).. The study from 2014 we will discuss below makes a lot of sense. If you are training high volume with a light weight, and you have a lot of reps ahead of you, you tend to do it quick and sloppy. When you are getting tired you will slow down and start to perform a better technique.

I wrote about Old School protein usage in the blog-post on “GOMAD”. Another superfood very suited as bodybuilding food are EGGS!! Later in this blog-post I’ll explain how these Old School trainers used eggs to gain a lot of extra lean mass and to overcome a plateau. This not only for the ‘natural” bodybuilders, but also true for the juiced one.

Vince Gironda

When we post on eggs we NEED to mention Vice Gironda. Vince Gironda nicked the “Iron Guru” was definitely decades ahead of his time, first as a bodybuilder he never placed higher than second or third in a contest, simply because he was "too ripped." Later as a gym-owner and nutritionist. Vince had some very unique methods with training and nutrition.

In certain circumstances Vince Gironda recommend up to 3 dozen fertile hen-eggs a day, along with raw (unhomogenized, unpasteurized) milk. Large amounts of fertile eggs, he said, is equal to the anabolic steroid Dianabol in effectiveness. He was unable to provide supporting scientific evidence for his theories, only anecdotal, but scientific studies today explain us why. Later in this post more on that.

When somebody dies and the media thinks that person has used steroids, the whole media-circus breaks loose. Look at the deceased professional bodybuilders last year, blunt remarks all over. Actually most steroids where legal not too long ago and their use was meant for treating illnesses.

I did a few posts on the effects of steroid abuse (abuse is something different then use). But let’s put all in perspective. Some people abuse steroids, others alcohol, or (fast) food, are smoking and most important abuse prescription drugs.

In Part 1 of this blog-post, I wrote about the different qualities and effects of hCG. In Part 2 I tried to make clear where to pay attention to.  Part 3 of the blog-posts is meant to be challenging the low carb diet and the very low carb diet (VLC) as well as the use of “keto-sticks”.

A  lot of  people mistakenly believe low carb diets are good for weight loss because they make us lose "water weight".

We store carbohydrate in the body as glycogen, and for every gram we store, 1.6 grams of water is also stored. When you are losing your carb stores from your muscles, you are also losing water weight.

 You hear of people saying, 'I have lost 5kg in one week' but most of that is water weight. That weight can easily be regained when we resume a diet with carbohydrates.

Official authorities and the official medical community are eager to explain that HCG does not perform any function in a diet in maintaining, or even increasing, muscle mass, during a diet low in carbohydrates.


But didn’t the same authorities, before pioneering research of Bhasin et al, claim that anabolic steroids did not have any effect  on muscle mass and muscle strength?

HCG is a very remarkable and very potent hormone. A very underestimated hormone. HCG is officially used for the treatment of infertility.  Now all kinds of new medical uses are found. In a small study, HCG injections provided remarkably effective pain relief for patients with fibromyalgia and others who suffered from severe, intractable pain. For women who suffer from PCOS (Polycystic ovary syndrome) and who have problems with ovulation, taking hCG  could stimulate the body to ovulate.

HCG is commonly used during and after steroid cycles to maintain and restore testicular size as well as normal testosterone production. HCG helps restore and maintain testosterone production in the testes by mimicking LH and triggering the production and release of testosterone.

Designer steroids are anabolic steroids or other steroid-like performance-enhancing drugs designed to be undetectable in drug testing. Although anabolic steroids are banned in most athletic organizations and contests worldwide, some athletes have nevertheless sought ways around the bans. Anabolic steroids mimic the effect of male sex hormones on the body, and whether someone is using them can usually be determined by blood or urine tests. Athletes looking for the performance-enhancing benefits of steroids, without being caught by testing, have created a demand for undetectable steroids. This has led some chemists or scientists to research and produce synthetic designer steroids for sale.