i highly recommend you Watch this video of Dorian Yates training with Leroy Davis, Blood and Guts.
There’s no such thing as “I can’t” when it comes to building muscle and strength. No matter what area you choose to excel in, progress is driven by one thing and one thing only – the catalyst that triggers a set of metabolic events that results in the desired outcome you can’t:
What is training for failure?
To improve, the aim should be to get to the point where you physically can’t do any more. In other words, you have to fail. Failure – true failure (more on that in a minute) – is the only message your brain understands to launch a cascade of exceptionally complex, nutrient-dependent metabolic events that result in muscle hypertrophy – the expansion of existing muscle fibers – and, potentially, hyperplasia, the activation of satellite cells that form new muscle tissue. The end result is increased strength to resist the imposed stress. Your workout.
So, established fact number 1: Muscle growth is stimulated by repeated progressive stress. An adaptive response. That adaptive response exists under the auspices of survival. Which means that the stress being applied must seek the limits of the existing structure to force adaptation. In plain English, you have to give the muscles a reason to grow.
Why do most lifters quit before they start growing?
And as much as that’s true, it couldn’t exist without established fact No. 2: Intensity craves failure. And herein lies the problem. Failure has a distant cousin – fatigue. We often mistake fatigue for failure because the pain you are imposing is too excruciating to endure to reach true failure. I’m talking about the point where you’re practically requesting God himself to intervene. It’s so sad that every instinct of yours is telling you to stop. But as long as you can produce contractions despite pain, you haven’t failed.
You fail the moment the electrical impulse from your brain to your muscles is disrupted. Your brain says contract… and the muscle says fuck.
Now, most people would decry genetics as a limiting factor in muscle growth. To an extent this is true – but only in the sense that you must have the psychological wiring capable of generating extreme intensity. Because history has shown time and again that intensity can overcome less-than-ideal genetics.
Check out Rich Gaspari’s run by genetically superior Lee Haney. The same thing happened when Dorian Yates began to threaten Haney’s rule. Dorian beats him plain and simple. The same is true for Mike Mentzer and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold clearly had better genetics. But no human being on Earth could produce the intensity that Mike Mentzer could.
The mental side of high intensity training
So how do you take the path to hypertrophic enlightenment? Frankly, I would like to explain the meaning of life. Because the quest for true failure exists inside a very small niche, occupied by elite athletes who are willing to go further than everyone else regardless of stress, pain, emotion or their will to live.
It is not human nature to hurt oneself, although some cultures insist otherwise. They also include elite athletes. In the early 1980s, sports physician Dr. Bob Goldman asked elite athletes a famous question: If a drug guaranteed an Olympic gold medal but would take your life five years later, would you take it? Nearly half reportedly said they would do so. This is the mentality we are dealing with.
How elite bodybuilders push beyond pain
So on a level far beyond simple self-flagellation, the elite athlete—especially the Olympian—must train toward legitimate failure. Understand this: At that level, lifting involves far more mental strength than physical strength. Your goal is to increase the effort to the point where failure is complete. Imagine you are hanging by your hands from a steel bar 500 feet above a pile of rocks. Your grip starts to fail. I can promise you this – you are not letting go willingly. You’ll be able to hold on until your muscles legitimately fail.
Now grab a fixed camber bar, walk over to the preacher bench and begin to curl. If you fall off that bar a 500-foot freefall results in a pile of rocks. That would be a failure.
Sounds extreme, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. Nature does not want you to have excess muscles in your body. Muscle tissue is metabolically expensive. To maintain it your body must constantly nourish it, support it and release valuable nutrient stores. Your body will only grow muscle and increase strength when it senses a progressive need for it, this need must be persistent and this need must be intense enough for the body to adapt. The more intensity you can generate, the greater your potential for size and strength.
So the question becomes how bad do you want it?
