Old School Bodybuilding Principles
One can easily get confused between the well-known Joe Weider principals and the accepted principals of old school bodybuilding. Joe Weider pushed through a time when the pursuit of increasing muscle size belonged to a crazy sub-culture to the life-saving activity for millions of weight trainers all over the world.
Old school bodybuilding was born out of trial and error not million dollar field studies trying to prove our muscles use more carbs during activity. These bodybuilding principles can and should directly affect the life of any bodybuilder wanting to increase muscle mass.
No bodybuilder will use all the principals in one workout however for continued growth in muscle at least some of these old school bodybuilding principles would be used over a few years of continued muscle growth. Below is just a brief list of some of the basic principles which bodybuilders used decades ago and today, in order to gain muscle.
The Forced Reps Principle
Simply means reaching the point of failure with the deliberate intension of going beyond it using a spotter or training partner.
The Pre-Exhaustion Principle
The pre-exhaustion principal is to deliberately train single joint movements like biceps before hitting the back, or doing calf raises before squats.
The Muscle Confusion Principle
This means changing the sets, reps and weight you would normally train. Includes other factors that can be manipulated like rest time between reps and sets or momentum adjustments, the selection is endless, this principal is required to ensure continued muscle growth.
The Muscle Priority Principle
The key focus for any bodybuilder is balance and symmetry. The muscle priority principal always ensures that weaker or lagging body-parts get attended to with extra time and focus. The muscle priority principal is to train the weak first and the strong body-parts only when fatigued.
The Super-Speed Principle
Simply means going through the concentric contraction as explosively or as quickly as possible, like doing bench-press. The concentric movement would be pushing the bar off your chest, the more explosive force you can put into this movement the bigger your muscles will get.
Descending Sets Principle
This principal is called drop-sets by most bodybuilders where they work a muscle or muscle group to failure lifting a weight for reps, then reducing the load and immediately continue until failure is reached again.
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