Welcome to the High Intensity Interview of the Month!

This month, to celebrate “March Madness”, we present my interview with High Intensity Training expert and Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Florida State University Men’s Basketball Team, Mike Bradley.

Mike has had a long, accomplished career as a Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coach, working with many, many elite athletes over the years, many of whom have gone on to have successful careers in the NBA, including Al Thornton of the Washington Wizards (pictured on the leg press), and Toney Douglas of the New York Knicks (pictured on the incline press). Mike is a firm believer in High Intensity Training, and uses the principles in all of his training programs. He’s also one of the smartest guys I know (dude has a Master’s degree in chemistry-if you think that’s easy to get, try it sometime).

In this enlightening interview, Mike shares with us:

• His professional and personal training experiences
• How he discovered High Intensity Training, and why he believes in it
• Who has influenced him in his developing his training philosophy (great learning references!)
• The goals and structure of his training program
• Examples of actual workouts his players go through
• His advice for non-athletes who want to build muscle
• The craziest thing he’s ever done as a Strength Coach
• And much, much more!
  

To hear the Mike Bradley interview, just click on the play arrow (the little triangle on the left) below:

**Special Bonus** At the end of the interview, Mike reveals a special offer on how to get behind-the-scenes access to the Florida State Strength and Conditioning program, or how to be personally trained by Mike himself! Check it out now, and leave your comments below!

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Being negative isn’t always a bad thing.

Of course, I’m not talking here about a negative attitude–you already know how I feel about the damaging effects of that from my previous post on “Negativity“.

Negative, or Negative-only, training, means performing only the lowering of the weight. You avoid the lifting of the weight under your own power altogether, by either having someone else lift it for you, or getting yourself into position to do the lowering only.

To perform a strength training exercise in negative-only fashion, you start out in the contracted, or finish, position of the exercise, then slowly lower yourself under control to the extended, or start, position. We shoot for 8 seconds per repetition, 6-10 reps, and terminate the exercise when the rep speed can no longer be controlled.

For example, to do negative-only chinups, you could either have your training partner push you up until your chin is over the bar, or you could climb up there yourself by stepping on a small step ladder or chair. Once in that position, you carefully get yourself into a hanging position, then slowly lower yourself to the bottom (in about 8 seconds). Once at the bottom, you once again use your method of assistance to get to the top again and repeat the lowering. You only count and record the reps where you can lower yourself under full control; once you can’t control the speed of your descent any more, you terminate the exercise.

Why do negative only training?

During the negative, or lowering, phase of a repetition, the muscle fibers involved are lengthening under tension. Your muscles are much stronger during this phase than during the positive, or lifting phase. Even when you reach positive failure during an exercise, and can no longer lift a certain weight with good form, the truth is there is still a lot of strength left in that muscle. Negative training allows you to tap into that unused strength, overloading the muscle at a much deeper level, and stimulating it to respond by growing bigger and stronger.

This type of overload has tremendous strength and muscle building properties. It is possible to get VERY big and strong VERY quickly with negative only training.

In the early days of Nautilus and High Intensity Training, Arthur Jones himself reported outstanding results from negative-only training in an article in Ironman Magazine entitled “The Best Kind of Exercise”:

“For the last several months, we have had all of our trainees on a program of exercises strictly limited to NEGATIVE ONLY resistance – and the results have been by far the best that we have ever produced. Casey Viator is now bigger than he has ever been before at the same bodyweight – his muscular measurements and strength are at a level equal to the best in his life, but at a 15 pound lower bodyweight. When we get him back to his highest previous bodyweight, I almost shudder to think what his measurements will then be – but it is already obvious that they will be far larger than ever before.

During a phone conversation with Boyer Coe last night, he told me that he has gained 5 pounds of muscular bodyweight from two weeks of negative only training, using a very brief program that I suggested to him. He also said that his training partner has gained 12 pounds of muscular weight from the same negative only workouts – in two weeks.

Our office manager, Tim Cook, has gained more than two inches on his arms from less than two months of negative only workouts – workouts so brief that they are almost ridiculous.”

How do you utilize negative-only training in a workout?

One way is to perform the whole set in negative-only fashion, where you avoid lifting the weight yourself all together. The 2 exercises that lend themselves well to this method are chinups and dips.

For other exercises, you will most likely need a spotter or two to help you get the weight into the finish position for you, so that you can then lower it yourself back to the start position.

For arm exercises, you can use your free arm to lift the weight for you, then lower the weight with the arm that is holding the weight.

You can also add a negative-only rep or two at the end of a normal set to totally wipe out that muscle group. Usually you will need a spotter to help you get the weight into the finish position of the exercise so you can lower it. (This is demonstrated in the FREE advanced training video offered on this blog, on the preacher curl exercise-if you didn’t see it grab your copy now.)

For negative-only training to be most effective, you need to realize that your muscles are at least 40 to 50% stronger on the lowering of a weight than they are on the lifting. So, if you can do 10 or more regular chinups with your bodyweight, you will need to add extra weight to yourself (there are harnesses available for this purpose, pictured below).

Negative only training can be a great high intensity training technique you can use in your strength training program to build muscle fast.

This video features Java Jon performing negative-only chinups as part of his High Intensity Muscle Building workout.

Negatives are really positive,

Dave Durell
Author of High Intensity Muscle Building

Let me know what you think about negative-only training by leaving a comment.

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Here’s an interview I did recently with Jim Kielbaso of UltimateChallengeTraining.com (which is a great website you should check out).

In the interview, I discuss:

• My training and professional background
• How I discovered High Intensity Training
• Who my mentors were in the field of strength training
• The lessons I learned as a Strength and Conditioning Assistant in the NFL
• The adversity I have faced in my life, and how I overcame it
• My mental attitude toward life
• And much more.

I hope you find the interview informative and entertaining!

To hear the interview, just click on the play arrow (the little triangle on the left) below:

Leave a comment below to let me know your thoughts on the interview-

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Welcome to the first installment of our newest feature, the High Intensity Interview of the Month.

We will be starting things off this month with a bang by interviewing none other than Mr. High Intensity himself, Markus Reinhardt.

 
Markus Reinhardt is an accomplished bodybuilder, now operating a Personal Training business in Las Vegas. He is probably best known as the star of the Mike Mentzer Training DVD’s. In this nothing-held-back interview, Markus shares with us:

• His training ideas and experiences
• His memories of his friend and trainer, Mike Mentzer
• His opinion on steroids, nutrition, and philosophy
• The unusual way he progressed his deadlift from 405 lbs. for 5 reps to 405 lbs. for 17 reps
• And much much more.

To hear the Markus Reinhardt interview, just click on the play arrow (the little triangle on the left) below:

*IMPORTANT*–Markus was gracious enough to do this interview with me very late at night after a very long work day. If you enjoy the interview, Please show Markus your appreciation and respect by posting a comment below where it says “Leave A Comment”-I know he will really appreciate it!

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Imagine yourself sitting in a closed room, alone. Maybe you are on your computer, reading a book, or writing a letter. Next thing you know, somebody enters the room, closes the door, sits down right across from you and lights up a cigarette. Since you are a non-smoker, this bothers you. Pretty soon the smoke starts to fill the room, and to make matters worse that person is blowing the smoke right in your face! Eventually you feel like you can’t breathe, like this environment is very unhealthy, so you decide to pack your things and leave.

As soon as you are outside the room, you instantly take in a nice, big, deep breath of fresh air, and you immediately feel better. You are glad to be away from that nasty, unhealthy smoke, and you resolve to avoid being around it in the future.

How did you feel reading the preceding paragraph? Could you feel the urge to get out of that smoky room, and take in that big breath of clean, fresh air? Did you fell like the other person was being rude-even disrespectful-for blowing smoke in your face? Would you probably be likely to avoid being around that person in the future, or at least limit your exposure to them.

Read the rest of Negativity: Second-Hand Smoke For The Mind

Killer grip strength is a nice thing to have.

Grip strength can be a limiting factor when performing any pulling exercise where you are holding a bar or machine handles, such as deadlifts, pulldowns, rows, shrugs, etc.

If your grip gives out too soon, you will not fully stimulate the target muscles. A little specialized grip strengthening can help solve that problem.

Superior grip strength is also a big advantage in many sports, such as football, wrestling, judo, baseball and lacrosse. Many occupations also require good grip strength, such as carpentry and construction. In addition to being able to hold on to things better, it may also reduce the risk or severity of wrist and hand injuries.

Here’s a video showing a simple, cost-effective tool you can use to develop killer grip strength. This thing is called a “wrist roller”, and it’s easy to make and simple to use, but if you do it right it will have your forearms screaming for mercy very quickly.

Try it out as described in the video–if you can complete the workout shown with full control, add 2 1/2 pounds on your next workout.

When you can use 20 pounds or more, you will have yourself some “killer grip strength”–and anything or anybody you grab will not be getting away from you!

Questions or comments? Post them below–

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I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Fred Fornicola of Premiere Personal Fitness after he reviewed High Intensity Muscle Building. We had a pretty unique discussion on the mental aspects of training, which we agreed was paramount to training success.

By the way, Fred is the co-author (along with Matt Brzycki) of 2 great fitness books: “Dumbell Training for Strength and Fitness”, and “Youth Fitness: An Action Plan for Shaping America’s Kids”. Both are excellent, and can be purchased at a discount on his website, www.PremierePersonalFitness.com.

So without further ado, here is the interview–(let me know what you think of our discussion by adding your comments below)

Read the rest of High Intensity Muscle Building Interview

As you should know if you have been reading this blog for a while, the one factor in your workout responsible for stimulating increased muscular size and strength is intensity.

Intensity is defined as the percentage of possible momentary effort being exerted. The closer to 100% you get, the higher the intensity, and the greater the growth stimulation.

What we’re really talking about is a maximum effort. This is usually characterized by training to failure, until you can’t possibly lift the weight any more, no matter how hard you try.

And once you hit that point, you don’t have to do it again. That’s the nature of High Intensity Training: Brief and infrequent. One set to failure.

If you are a beginner, training like this is a whole new ball game for your muscles, and will provide all the muscle stimulation you need for a long time. When you’re first starting out with this type of training, you should be able to increase the number of reps you do, the amount of weight you use, or both, on every exercise every workout for a long time.

But somewhere along the line, you reach a point where you can’t increase how much you can lift any more. That’s where static holds come in.

Read the rest of Jack Up Your Workout Intensity With “Static Holds”

“If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right”.
My mother in law

With that quote in mind, let’s examine the most effective way to do “lunges”, utilizing the concept of time under tension.

Time under tension refers to how long a muscle is bearing a load of resistance continuously; that is, the amount of sustained time it is forced to work.

If you apply continuous tension to a muscle or muscle group, more muscle fibers will be called into play, and the growth stimulus will be much greater, than if you conducted a series of “starts and stops”, giving the muscle a chance to rest every few seconds.

This concept is very apparent in the lunge video. If you keep your body weight, plus the resistance provided by the dumbells, on one leg continuously, complete all your reps for that leg, then switch to the other leg, that’s better than hopping back and forth on one leg, or alternating legs. More time under tension.

Keep this principle in mind throughout your workouts. The more sustained, continuous tension you can keep on your working muscles the better.

Check out the video to see this principle in action, then do me a favor and post your comments here……

Congratulations to our blog contest co-champions: Java Jon Soto and Dave Erickson! These guys took action, spent the time to think about their goals for this year, and took an additional few minutes to post them here. I have no doubt that the action of commiting to their goals, and having the courage to post them on the internet for the whole world to see, will foster a state of mind in them that will skyrocket them toward their achievement.

These guys have proven that they are action takers. They will be rewarded for the action they take toward their goals, which they have described for us here. And I am about to reward them for taking action and posting their goals here. That’s how life works, folks-take action, get rewarded.

Java Jon wins the complete High Intensity Muscle Building Program, which includes:

• The High Intensity Muscle Building e-book
• The High Intensity Muscle Building Nutrition Guide
• Full Unlimited Access to the Video Vault
• 1 Year Subscription to the High Intensity Nation E-Newsletter

Dave already owns the High Intensity Muscle Building program, and will be utilizing it during his training for a marathon this year (more on this later). Therefore, his prize is:

• Free Personal Training Consultations with me via e-mail from now until his marathon on May 16, 2009
• Free One-on-One training with me when he comes to Florida on vacation next month.

I will still offer chapter one of my book High Intensity Muscle Building to any one who is serious about setting, and committing to, their goals this year. The chapter is titled “The Power of Commitment”, and includes some powerful forms you can use for goal setting. Just post a comment here telling us what goals you are committing to, and I will send it to you free.

Read the rest of And The Winners Are…..