Basic Routines for Massive Muscles: Beef-It Training Secrets

by Robert Kennedy

Breakthrough, shock-training strategies to help beef up pecs, calves, thighs, and abs. Get advice on how to build arms, shoulders, legs, and chest faster than ever before; controlling metabolism and ridding excess fat; and the superiority of machines and free weights. More than 200 action photos of the greats pumping and posing.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806977612
• ISBN13: 9780806977614
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Sterling
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.1" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Invaluable expertise, simple and practical presentation

The combination of eloquence and personal expertise makes this book unique in the fact that its author presented raw insight into the practice of bodybuilding without any attempt to insert unnecessary jargon or borrowing irrelevant data from others, as follows, Chapter 1, "Motivation and setting goals", uses nine inspiring photos to address issues such as getting strong, leanness, proportion, ultra-fitness, body types, and level of expertise. Chapter 2, "Somatotyping. Do you need it?", addresses the difficulty of assessing the mix of end-, meso-, and ectomorphy in various body types. It presents seven cases of bodybuilders and attempts to discern a formula of 3-digits to describe that mix. Chapter 3, "The training log. The silent reminder", discusses the importance of documenting nutrition, exercise related issues, injuries, and body measurements. Chapter 4, "Machines or weight. Which are better?", is an eloquent and balanced discussion on the pros and cons of machines and free weights. It displays the importance of balancing the many factors that interplay in making the choice between the two. Chapter 5, "Reps under scrutiny: challenging muscle fiber contraction", discusses many issues related to reps, such as straight-set reps, cheat reps, forced reps, strict reps, rest-pause reps, superset reps, giant reps, and pre-exhaust reps. It does that in concise and balanced manner. Chapter 6, "Injuries: How to avoid them", is a casual discussion of injuries pertaining to bodybuilding. It deals with the importance of warm-up, sequence of exercises, importance of form, importance of stretch, working environment, and common mistakes bodybuilders do. Here, the author displays his own experience with very convincing reasoning. He also shows the troubles with bodybuilding as a sport that deals with limited and imposed number of movements that requires constant awareness before attempting to tackle new movements. Chapter 7, "Cycle training: Pushing to a peak", discusses the concept of periodization and progressive buildup of load in order to peak muscular size and strength through gradual increase of exercise numbers, sets, and amount of weight over time, until contest. Chapter 8, "Power thinking. Mental programming for success", discusses the role of setting goals, visualization, inspiration, and concentration in motivating your mind to work out wisely and aggressively. Chapter 9, "Super structuring your routine", deals with intensity of exercising, progression of load, rep and set relationship, style and speed of exercising, frequency of workout, attitude of workout, and the most important virtue of successful bodybuilders of viewing barbells as tools for gaining muscles not as weights to be heaved up. Chapter 10, "Recuperation. Mending the muscle", deals with overtraining, relaxation, stress, sleep, and the importance of sun exposure and fresh air. Chapter 11, "Body fat percentage", discusses diet, diuretics, thyroxin and vitamin usage