How to Prepare for a Bodybuilding Competition for Beginners?

 

Click HERE to Find Out How You Can Build Muscle & Lose Fat By Eating Plants

CO-FOUNDER OF T-NATION SAYS BODYBUILDING IS SUFFERING

“I’d tell me [my 30 year-old self] to give up seeking self-worth and killing your insecurities through lifting weights. To not work so much on the external and more on the internal.”

Not only is TC Luoma a sublime writer who knows bodybuilding well, he is an enlightened man.

I was happy to discover my questions drew out another side of him that’s worth knowing.

This statement may seem arbitrary to those of you exposed to him for the first time.

However, those in the bodybuilding game awhile know him more for his trademark take-no-prisoners disposition and may be as pleased to read this as I was.

In this interview, TC offers a more thoughtful ambiance to accommodate his sharp edge, which is clearly an effective integration in this case.

Some Background on TC

In the early 1990s, he was a bodybuilding journalist traveling to all the major bodybuilding contests, reporting on bodybuilding events and celebrities for virtually all the newsstand magazines.

Through this experience, he interviewed hundreds of competitors and became well-versed in the bodybuilding industry.

Later, TC got connected with George Snyder and Bill Phillips (former owner of EAS), and started writing for their magazine, “Muscle Media 2000.” He climbed quickly to the top and soon became the Editor-in-Chief.

A few years later, TC left that crew and hooked up with Tim Patterson. They founded T-Nation, the second most trafficked bodybuilding website on the planet.

Q: What does the first hour of your day look like?

The usual morning ablutions, plus smearing expensive emollients made from sheep placenta over my face to keep my youthful appearance. Kidding! About the sheep placenta emollient, not the ablutions.

I then go outside to check the grounds for rats, cats, racoons, Presbyterians, you name it, anything that might cause my dogs to bark up the neighborhood when I let them out.

I feed them and walk them and then come home to drink a cup of coffee and compare two newspapers, one conservative and one liberal, to see how they each treated the day’s news, which always pisses me off more than it amuses me.

I then head up to my upstairs office with my Metabolic Drive, Superfood, blueberries, and granola gruel to check my hate mail and start working.

Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Q: What is something most of my friends don’t know about you?

Ha! I’m going to give you a kind of non-answer answer. The thing is, I don’t usually divulge personal information about myself to my friends unless I’m asked specific questions, and I’m almost never asked.

As such, I play this kind of perverse game where I see how long someone who fits the traditional definition of a friend can go without asking me anything about my personal life; can go without truly knowing anything about me.

As an example, a friend of mine just died of pancreatic cancer last Christmas day. I’d known him for 17 years but he never, ever asked me anything personal! The closest he got was, “So, what’s new?”

He never even knew when my birthday was, which, while not important, just seems like something you’d know about somebody who you’d been friends with for 17 years.

He died having pitched a perfect emotional no-hitter.

So if you ask me to name something that most of my friends don’t know about me, the list would be very long, starting with my birthday, which is July 8th. So now you know something my friends don’t know.

You should try it yourself. Just ask questions and don’t offer any info about yourself and see how long, if ever, it takes your friends to reciprocate. And I’m not just talking about superficial stuff, but asking you something personal and significant. If you’re lucky, some of them will, but most won’t.

“Maybe my game is a fool’s errand, but I want friends who are really interested in what I have to say, and friends who say things I’m really interested in. I don’t want to be just a sounding board so someone can hear himself talk.”

Q: Who most influenced your trajectory at a young age?

My older brother, not necessarily by anything he said or did, but quite by accident. He left things lying around for me to pick up and read. My first book, at the age of five, wasn’t Winnie the Pooh or something like that, but Tarzan and the Ant Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I started reading all the fantasy fiction and science fiction in the house and in the library, but I also started reading the books on the shelf about astronomy, botany, and biology, along with fiction by Salinger and Nabokov and Philip Roth and even nutty Ayn Rand. And I can’t forget the comic books. He got me started on Marvel Comics and that’s what got me interested in muscle and heroism and the concept of masculinity.

So, thank you, Tim. I think.

Q: What advice would you give your 30-year-old self?

I’d tell me to give up seeking self-worth and killing your insecurities through lifting weights. To not work so much on the external and more on the internal.

Hell, boy, if you worked as much on your inner self as you do your outer self, you’d be a modern day Lao Tse or Buddha by the time you’re 40.

Unfortunately, my older self didn’t appear to me when I was 30 so it took me a bit longer to learn that particular truth.

Q: What was the most fulfilling goal that you’ve accomplished?

I haven’t accomplished it yet, but I’m in the process of accomplishing it. For seven years, I’ve been taking classes in a new type of psychology.

Instead of defining mental health as the absence of disease – which is the same definition modern medicine uses in defining physical health – this type of psychology focuses on what it takes to ensure mental and emotional health before problems (neuroticism, lack of self-worth, lack of innocence, etc.) arise.

In my classes, we look at historical figures and learn from “good” people and “bad” people and we see what they did or didn’t do to live a fulfilling, meaningful life. We use a scientific attitude – using observation and reason to come up with a hypothesis about life and then experiment with it to see if it’s true – to realize universal, experience-based facts about what defines happiness and makes life worth living.

“Eventually, you see that traditional goals or definitions of success, competition, distraction via mindless entertainment, security – the stuff that 99% of us obsess over — are kind of hollow and don’t make anybody happy.”

It takes a lot of work to see things differently, but I’m getting there, and if I get there, that’ll be the most fulfilling thing I’ve done. Oh snail, climb Mt. Fuji, but slowly, slowly.

Q: Given that your writing is very bold and challenges many prevailing paradigms, what are your thoughts on “The 4-Hour Body”?

Well, one of things I’ve observed is that motivation determines outcome in just about everything, and when I use the word “motivation,” I mean purpose for doing something.

It seems that Ferriss’s motivation for writing the book was to write a book to make lots of money and hopefully outsell his first book, “The 4-Hour Workweek.”

To do that, he had to come up with some seemingly magical and highly marketable answers to a whole host of health-related questions, which he succeeded in doing.

“I’m doubtful that he believes half the stuff he wrote about, but I did like the book’s common-sense diet approach and his practice of keeping track of all his blood chemistries.”

Q: Which of your books is your favorite and why?

I thought both of my books were pretty funny and both contained a few grains of truth about different aspects of manhood, but I’d do both of them differently if I were writing them today because my understanding of the subject has evolved considerably.

That being said, I suppose I like the second one, The Testosterone Principles 2: Manhood and Other Stuff a little better because I think it’s a bit more thoughtful and better written.

Q: I sympathize completely with your sentiments that “real” men are a dying breed. Please walk us through the nuances of your observation.

Okay, but we gotta’ go back to the 50’s or so first. Back then, Gary Cooper, or the Gary Cooper type strong-but-silent male defined manhood. He, and all men in fact, were dominant. Hell, women didn’t even get to vote until the 1920’s, and it took until the latter half of the century for women to gain an unprecedented degree of equality.

As a result, the old definitions of manhood became obsolete because women no longer needed the protection of males. Men no longer knew how to be men and they lost confidence.

“But here’s what’s true of even the Gary Cooper type male and the modern male: neither were/are had/have any degree of competence in the internal side, i.e., the emotional aspect of existence.”

A true man would be fearless in the face of emotional pain, but that’s not true of men at all. In that regard, they are HUGE pussies.

“Can you think of any guy that doesn’t worry about his image, who can accept the truth about himself, who doesn’t equate his job with his worth as a human being, who can accept criticism, can accept being wrong, who learns by experience and not imitation, who does things without self aggrandizement or need of applause or recognition, who doesn’t wilt at the very thought of having some painful truth pointed out to him, who doesn’t desperately seek the approval of others despite believing he’s independent and marches to the beat of a different drummer, and who by and large equates manhood with such silly notions as not showing pain when he accidentally hits his thumb with a hammer?”

I’ll give you an example of “manly” men living for the approval of others. I wrote some article, just a riff, really, about gym etiquette, and I busted the balls of men who wear cut-off sleeves to expose their guns, writing that it’s pretty much the same thing as a woman with big breasts always wearing a tight, low-cut blouse.

Some guy on Facebook responded, “I don’t give a shit what you think, I like wearing cut-off sleeves to show off my guns.” The sad thing was that his statement showed that he clearly did care what I, and for that matter, everybody thought. He done dropped his emotional pants and didn’t know it! In fact, he showed the world that all he cares about is approval, hence the desire to show off his guns.

Poor dumb bastard.

Anyhow, I can’t personally think of anybody who has the virtues I listed above, but I hope you can. Anyhow, that’s why most men, despite sometimes being warriors on the outside, are complete pussies on the inside.

“Oh, and speaking of being warriors on the outside, half of that is usually bullshit, too. Most men do ‘heroic’ things for the approval of others and to fit in and the half-baked idea that there’s some meaning behind it.”

What’s needed is a new definition of manhood. I might not be the one who popularizes it, but I’m certainly going to give it a try in the future.

Q: If you had to choose only three exercises, what would they be?

Deadlifts. Trap bar squats. Pull ups. You could probably do very well if that’s all you did.

Q: If you only had to choose three supplements, what would they be?

Biotest’s Indigo-3G for the insulin modulating and health-promoting effects in general, Biotest’s MAG-10 for superior fast-acting protein peptides, and Biotest’s Plazma for work endurance and recovery.

But I gotta’ tell you, selecting only three would be painful. I take a lot of good stuff.

Q: Thoughts on kettlebell training?

They don’t arouse any particular passions in me, positive or negative. They’re nice tools. I think doing heavy hip hinges is a great idea. However, the people who latch onto these different training modalities to the exclusion of all training modalities freak me out.

Why are there kettlebell specialists? Why are there kettlebell certifications? It seems odd.

It probably belies a strong urge to belong to some school of thought without having to question the methodologies or think for themselves. Hey, I think I just defined religion, too.

Q: You once wrote in an article “As far as what catches my eye, I usually defer to one thing, and that’s if the article makes me want to try whatever it is they’re writing about. If I’m interested in it, chances are the readers will be, too.” What three things would you encourage people to try?

I’d probably give you a different answer next week, or even tomorrow, but right now I’d suggest Ben Bruno’s 100-rep trap bar workout. Week 1, you start out with 6 sets of 8, and then the next week you progress to 6 sets of 10, using the same weight you did for week 1. The third week, you do 7 sets of 8, but adding 10-20 pounds to your week 2 weight.

You progress in this manner week by week, adding sets and weight until you’re doing 10 sets of 10. I’m not sure how smart it is for everybody to do, but damn it’s brutal, and I kinda’ like brutal.

I’d also recommend Jim Wendler’s 5-3-1 training, because it’s something everybody should try at least once. You think to yourself, week after week, that you’re just not doing all that much work, but damn if you don’t get stronger every week.

“Even if strength isn’t your whole reason for existence, it gives you a different perspective and teaches you some truths about your body and training in general.”

And just off the top of my head, the third thing I’d recommend is John Rusin’s vertical plate press exercise because it’s one of the few core exercises that isn’t bullshit.

You position the hips and knees at a 90-degree flexed position while holding a weight plate directly in front of your chest with your arms extended and then “press” the weight vertically by contracting your core.

You can check it out here if you like. I like to do it on the Smith Machine and instead of holding the bar out at arm’s length, I clutch it to my chest. It’s brutal.

Q: Where do you see bodybuilding heading currently, in what ways is this good or bad? What old, unhealthy bodybuilding habits/trends would you like to see changed and why?

Weightlifting for health, functionality, sport, and “buffitudiness,” is alive and well and will likely keep on growing, at least until we all live in a virtual reality world and are tended to and fed intravenously by old crones, who, thanks to virtual reality, appear to be luxurious Amazonian super models.

“Competitive bodybuilding, however, is suffering the same problems it always had, except for the Arnold years and the subsequent period (brief) afterwards in the 90’s. It just represents wretched excess to most people.”

It’s not attractive to them and without another charismatic cheerleader like Arnold, it’s not likely to experience any kind of resurgence.

As such, it’ll likely sputter along, practiced and patronized by only a few die hards.

So yeah, I’d like to see wretched excess go bye-bye. I’d like for people to stop jeopardizing their health for a few moments (or a few photographs) of perceived glory. I’d like everybody to “body build,” but for the reasons I listed above (health, functionality, etc.).

For more ideas on how to prepare for a bodybuilding competition for beginners, watch this video – Bodybuilding Meal Prep 101 | IFBB Pro Romane Lanceford

Author Bio:

Chris Willitts (creator of V3), is the founder and owner of Vegetarian Bodybuilding.

V3 Vegetarian Bodybuilding System is a mixture of science and author’s advice, providing users with optimal diet and exercise. This system is designed for vegans and vegetarians only.

A lot of research has been put in this program. Furthermore, a lot of professional bodybuilders and athletes tried and tested the program, praising its progressiveness and efficiency.

The program is about taking control of your own body and health according to your potential and needs. And worry not; you’ll get plenty of proteins with this system. It will boost you with energy, and you’ll feel just a strong as any carnivore would (perhaps even stronger, depending on how much you invest in your exercise). It avoids vitamins deficiency and provides you with a lot of proteins, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. 

Instead of saying things like “I think a plant-based diet is good for athletes and bodybuilders,” the V3 Vegetarian Bodybuilding System claims “I know a plant-based diet is good for athletes and bodybuilders, and I have results to prove it.”

To find out more, visit the website at V3 Bodybuilding – How to Prepare for a Bodybuilding Competition for Beginners

How to Get Your Muscles More Tone by Compound Exercises?

 

Click HERE to Find Out How You Can Build Muscle & Lose Fat By Eating Plants

MAKE BIG COMPOUND LIFTS A PRIORITY

If you are training for muscle growth, your best shot at success is what’s known as systemic growth.

This means that you don’t isolate your muscle groups while training as much as you focus on compound movements. You attack exercises like squats, deadlifts, and incline bench presses because they engage two or more muscle groups.

My friend TC Luoma at T Nation had this to say on the topic of compound movements:

“For the most part, given sufficient stimulus, muscle growth happens all over your body instead of in one teeny location. As such, doing work that stresses the whole body – putting a big load on the spine that the entire body must support – will cause more growth in your biceps than working the biceps directly.

“To put it another way, doing heavy trap-bar deadlifts will do more to make your arms bigger than doing curls. A popular rule of thumb in the lifting world states that in order to gain an inch of circumference on your arms, you need to gain about 15 pounds of muscle, and that’s pretty much right. Otherwise you’d see guys walking around who trained nothing but biceps and, as a result, were inverse T-Rex types with huge arms and tiny little bodies. But you don’t.”

Should we throw out leg extensions and biceps curls?

Not at all. I’m simply saying muscle-specific exercises should have a lower priority in your training regimen.

Compound movements should be your bread and butter, your foundation.

TC goes on to say that we have been misled in bodybuilding magazines because they tend to give the impression we should be doing curls for days. He makes a valid point about how steroid use changes the game quite a bit here:

“Steroids, however, make your whole body ultra-responsive to any kind of mechanical stress. If you’re using sufficient quantities of steroids, anything works. All those body part-specific routines issued through countless bodybuilding mags “written” by bodybuilders did us all a huge disservice. They convinced many of us to concentrate on curls, kickbacks, shrugs, anterior delt raises, and leg extensions when we should have spent a lot of that time putting big systemic loads on our spine with compound movements.”

I can tell you from personal experience that when I focus more on my squats, my biceps get stronger. Yes, this is true even though I’m not training my biceps with a proper squat movement. This is because our body is a system, and when we stimulate it in certain ways, the entire body gets stronger as a result!

For more ideas on how to get your muscles more tone by compound exercises, watch these 6 videos below – 

How To Build Muscle At Home: The BEST Full Body Home Workout For Growth

10 Best Compound Exercises with Weights – Build Muscle & Lose Weight

6 Best Compound Exercises for Beginners

The ONLY 7 Exercises You Need for Mass

BUILD REAL MUSCLE AT HOME (NO GYM NEEDED)

Only 4 Exercises to Hit Every Muscle!

Author Bio:

Chris Willitts (creator of V3), is the founder and owner of Vegetarian Bodybuilding.

V3 Vegetarian Bodybuilding System is a mixture of science and author’s advice, providing users with optimal diet and exercise. This system is designed for vegans and vegetarians only.

A lot of research has been put in this program. Furthermore, a lot of professional bodybuilders and athletes tried and tested the program, praising its progressiveness and efficiency.

The program is about taking control of your own body and health according to your potential and needs. And worry not; you’ll get plenty of proteins with this system. It will boost you with energy, and you’ll feel just a strong as any carnivore would (perhaps even stronger, depending on how much you invest in your exercise). It avoids vitamins deficiency and provides you with a lot of proteins, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. 

Instead of saying things like “I think a plant-based diet is good for athletes and bodybuilders,” the V3 Vegetarian Bodybuilding System claims “I know a plant-based diet is good for athletes and bodybuilders, and I have results to prove it.”

To find out more, visit the website at V3 Bodybuilding – How to Get Your Muscles More Tone by Compound Exercises

Revealing here what is the Best Natural Arthritis Treatment

 

Click on Here to Discover How You Can Completely Heal Any Type of Arthritis In 21 Days or Less

This Natural Arthritis Treatment Beats Drugs

Arthritis is so incredibly painful and debilitating that most sufferers reach for the strongest pain-relieving anti-inflammatory drugs the moment their doctors offer them.

But these drugs are extremely harmful, as these drugs increase blood sugar and cholesterol, decrease bone density and muscle tissue, delay wound healing, suppress your immune system, put you in danger of infections, and so forth.

But a new study just appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals a healthy alternative with no side effects.

Best of all, this healthy alternative is more effective at treating arthritis pain and stiffness than drugs.

The researchers recruited their 156 subjects from the U.S. military health system. All of them were arthritis patients, and they had an average age of 56 years.

The patients were split into two evenly sized groups, one of which received physical therapy and the other received glucocorticoid joint injections.

Before and after the treatment program, the researchers obtained their scores on the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC). This is a standard test used in many of these studies. Higher scores signify worse pain, more disability, and more stiffness than lower scores do, with scores ranging from zero to 240.

Before the program, the two groups scored approximately the same, 108.8 in the glucocorticoid group, and 107.1 in the physical therapy group.

After one year, the glucocorticoid group scored 55.8, whereas the physical therapy group scored 37, showing a clear benefit of physical therapy over the injections.

In addition to WOMAC, the researchers also measured their subjects’ performance on three other tests before and after the program. All three of these tests yielded the same result as WOMAC: physical therapy was more effective than glucocorticoids in limiting pain, stiffness, and disability.

But more effective than both drugs and physical therapy is the simple arthritis strategy explained here. Thousands of people have already used this natural arthritis treatment to rid themselves of arthritis in 21 days or less….

Natural Arthritis Treatment – Arthritis Cured with This Dirt Cheap Supermarket Ingredient

New study proves however that eating ONE single ingredient can prevent arthritis even if you’re at high risk.

What’s more it will halt the progression and significantly reduce your pain, even if your arthritis is at very serious, later stages.

Most importantly, you find this ingredient in every supermarket, dirt cheap, it causes no side effects, has no calories and is actually considered extremely healthy.

In the study, published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, researchers examined medical data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative with its 4,796 participants and from the Framingham Offspring Osteoarthritis Study with its 1,268 participants. These studies continued for four and nine years, respectively.

At the beginning of the study, the participant’s average age was 54, and all of them either had osteoarthritis or were considered at high risk of developing it.

The subjects had to complete food intake questionnaires and information on arthritis symptoms and x-ray data were also collected.

Researchers found that high-fiber diets significantly reduced the subject’s risk of developing osteoarthritis.

Compared to the 25 percent of subjects that ate the least fiber, the 25 percent who ate the most fiber were 30% to 61% less likely to develop osteoarthritis.

Moreover, a high fiber intake also reduced the amount of pain experienced by people with osteoarthritis and prevented it from worsening.

There are two reasons Fiber is so beneficial for arthritis:

1) It has powerful anti-inflammatory effects.

2) It helps you lose weight and keep it off.

This indicates that a high fiber diet is not just good for osteoarthritis but all types of arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.

Unfortunately, loading up on fiber is probably not going to be enough to completely reverse your arthritis. To cure your arthritis in 28 days, you need this natural arthritis treatment which requires you taking the 3-simple steps found here…

Natural Arthritis Treatment – Arthritis Aggravated and Complicated by This Common Condition

In 2017, the journal Arthritis Care & Research presented a study revealing how another, specific health issue seriously complicated the diagnosis of arthritis.

More specifically, people who have this issue have high levels of the inflammatory markers called C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate.

But so do people with arthritis.

You could, therefore, be misdiagnosed with arthritis just because you’ve this other health issue (which half the world has anyway). Or your treatment options could be very much limited.

The scientists reached this conclusion after examining the medical data of more than 2,000 people previously collected by other studies, finding that the inflammatory markers that obesity shared with arthritis increased along with one’s body mass index.

In other words, the more obese you are, the more likely it is that you will be diagnosed with extremely severe rheumatoid arthritis.

Because rheumatoid arthritis is a progressive disease that gradually destroys the cartilage in your joints, the absence of symptoms won’t prevent doctors from prescribing aggressive treatment if they think you have a severe form.

They will just tell you that the pain and destruction will start shortly and that early aggressive treatment could slow the progression.

You might, thus, find yourself treated for a condition you don’t even have, suffering the psychological trauma of thinking your quality of life is about to deteriorate critically in the next few months.

To get more ideas about natural arthritis treatment, watch these 2 videos –

Cure Arthritis Naturally – Tips and Remedies for Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid Arthritis: How I Cured Myself Naturally (symptoms Gone Within 3 Days!)

But losing weight is no walk in the park, especially if your mobility is limited by arthritis. Here is the easiest way I know to lose weight without diet change or exercises…

And, of course, your first priority should be to reverse your arthritis in 21 days, using the 3-easy steps found in this natural arthritis treatment here …

This post is from the Arthritis Strategy Program. It was created by Shelly Manning, a former arthritis sufferer and a health consultant.

A Brief Background on the Author

Like you, Shelly Manning also suffered from arthritis, particularly osteoarthritis. This was due to her weight and desk job. Her condition eventually took a toll on her relationship with her (former) husband.

It was when she went to Hong Kong that she met Janerdquo, an old woman who owned the restaurant where she ate. Janerdquo supposedly offered her a bowl of a weird-smelling soup, which helped ease her joint pain. She ate there each day for 10 days until she was completely healed from arthritis.

Shelly Manning decided to research this natural remedy and to create a step-by-step treatment plan to others who are suffering from different types of arthritis, such as gout, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and psoriatic arthritis.

That’s why she created “The Arthritis Step By Step Strategy.” According to her claims, this unique strategy will get rid of joint pain and stiffness, repair your damaged joints, and treat the underlying cause of your arthritis.

Shelly teamed up with Christian Goodman, the owner of Blue Heron Health News, a publishing company that aims to help people to take responsibility for their own health by using natural health alternatives for preventing arthritis in fingers and knees naturally.

To find out more about this program, go to Natural Arthritis Treatment

How to Get Big and Strong by Power Bodybuilding?

 

Click HERE to Find Out How You Can Build Muscle & Lose Fat By Eating Plants

POWER BODYBUILDING: HEAVY WEIGHTS, FEW REPS, A LOT OF SETS

Michael O’Hearn Knows Power Bodybuilding

It happens that I work out at the same time of day, at the same gym as legendary Michael O’Hearn. I have had the pleasure of witnessing this man lift incredible amounts of weight first hand. He’s rockin’ a 600 lb. bench press (and a 500×2 incline bench), an 815 lb. squat, and a 775 lb. sumo deadlift. Steroid-free.

And yes, he is every bit as nice in person as reported in the media.

No, he’s not plant-based (yet), but I wanted to feature O’Hearn in this article because no one does power bodybuilding better — and he’s an all-natural bodybuilder.

Michael did an interview with Muscle & Fitness discussing natural bodybuilding and power bodybuilding:

By the age of 14, he was competing in natural bodybuilding shows. He won the Mr. Teenage Washington at a height of 5’9″ and a stage weight of 172. During the next two years, puberty went full throttle as he grew to 6’2″ and gained an unfathomable, if not entirely lean, 100 pounds. All the while he was learning the basics of what he would later fine-tune and market as power bodybuilding—a system that builds strength and size by satisfying the needs of the strength and physique athlete: Heavy weights done for only a few reps but for a lot more sets. Whereas a classic bodybuilding rep scheme is three sets of 10, a classic power bodybuilding scheme may be seven or eight sets of three—not counting any warmup sets required to get to a heavy weight. He credits this system, more than any of the myriad genetic factors that might be working in his favor, as being the key to his success in bodybuilding.

Michael’s strategy involves not letting up on the training and getting after it pretty much all-year-round:

“Everybody does the same thing when they get ready for a show,” O’Hearn says. “They go from heavy weight and lots of calories to cardio, light weight, lots of reps, and a calorie deficit. It’s common. You get stringy and small. It happened to me, too. But I figured out early on that if I kept pounding the weight, I kept the muscle. When you are dieted down, you have less fluid in your joints and you’re more prone to injury, so I slowed down the reps. It’s harder to do—a loaded bar feels a whole lot heavier when you’re dried out—but I accepted it, and you wind up with a fuller, denser muscle.”

Now back to the topic of steroids, he has passed every blood test thrown at him over the years, including polygraph tests. O’Hearn had this to say about his personal philosophy about steroids:

“Could I have set records with steroids? Yes. Would I be as good as I am now? No. Steroids age you. Your connective tissue breaks down. Over time, something will inevitably tear.”

Temptation was easy to avoid, he says, thanks to quick success.

“When you get discovered by Joe Weider—he walks up to you at the Mr. Olympia and says, ‘I need you on the cover of my magazines,’ and you’re a 20-, 21-year-old kid—I realized whatever I had been doing up to that point was good enough. Would I have been tempted if I didn’t find success? I hope I wouldn’t have, but then again, I never wanted to be a 300-pound Mr. Olympia. I wanted a pleasing physique. I think of my body as an art piece, and it’s my art piece.”

To find out how to get big and strong by power bodybuilding, watch these 2 videos –

Mike O’Hearn’s Back Workout | Power Bodybuilding Training Program

Add Strength & Size With Mike O’Hearn’s Power Bodybuilding Program – Bodybuilding.com

Author Bio:

Chris Willitts (creator of V3), is the founder and owner of Vegetarian Bodybuilding.

V3 Vegetarian Bodybuilding System is a mixture of science and author’s advice, providing users with optimal diet and exercise. This system is designed for vegans and vegetarians only.

A lot of research has been put in this program. Furthermore, a lot of professional bodybuilders and athletes tried and tested the program, praising its progressiveness and efficiency.

The program is about taking control of your own body and health according to your potential and needs. And worry not; you’ll get plenty of proteins with this system. It will boost you with energy, and you’ll feel just a strong as any carnivore would (perhaps even stronger, depending on how much you invest in your exercise). It avoids vitamins deficiency and provides you with a lot of proteins, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. 

Instead of saying things like “I think a plant-based diet is good for athletes and bodybuilders,” the V3 Vegetarian Bodybuilding System claims “I know a plant-based diet is good for athletes and bodybuilders, and I have results to prove it.”

To find out more, visit the website at V3 Bodybuilding – How to Get Big and Strong by Power Bodybuilding