Beyond Brawn - The Insider's Encyclopedia on How to Build Muscle && Might

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possible alternatives but being way below your potential development, or,

knowing much less but being far bigger and stronger?

. Especially in the beginning and intermediate stages of training, a dislike

of change, and being old-fashioned and stubborn, are desirable character-

istics. Only once you are already big and strong should you explore “new”

options, if you have got the time to risk wasting. But even then, once you are

advanced, if you venture too far into the myriad opinions about training you

risk losing sight of what matters for most typical people. But at least by then

you should be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

. Personal achievement is where it is at for those who lift weights, but most

trainees get so little out of their own training largely because they are preoc-

cupied with the achievements of others.

. e bodybuilding and strength-world elite almost all had incredibly respon-

sive bodies while they were building themselves up. ey applied a very

simple formula: train and grow. Almost no matter how they trained, they

grew. It was never a case of whether or not they would grow; it was just a

case of at what rate. at easy-gaining minority have absolutely no personal

understanding of how the “train and grow” formula can be applied but not

produce. But this lack of productivity is the outcome when conventional

Ever-increasing weight on the bar in good form is not the only

type of progression. For pure strength training, poundage increase

is far and away the most important form of progression. For

building muscular size, however, there is more to consider than

just poundage progression—as will be made clear much later on

in this book—but still, poundage progression is very important.

After all, how many well-developed men struggle to squat with

just bodyweight on the bar?

ough the biggest muscles are not the strongest, and the stron-

gest are not the biggest, for the great majority of people there is

a very strong relationship between strength and muscular size,

providing that strength is not built using specific strength-focus

techniques like very low reps, partial reps and low-rep rest-pause

work.

 