If any of you read skilled bodybuilding magazines back within the late ’90s, you almost certainly saw ads for the “Serious Growth” books. These books were by Leo Costa, Jr., Dr. R.L. Horine, and later Tom Platz. There ended up being some 4+ books in all, and were (supposedly) based on methods that they’d learned from Bulgarian Olympic lifting coaches, and had applied to bodybuilding.
Now, I’m undecided how accurate the concept they were inspired by Bulgarian principles is, but there have been some good ideas in these books, nonetheless.
One in all the principles that they (again, supposedly) learned from the Bulgarian coaches was that the “Body Becomes Its Function.” They felt that if the body was trained enough to perform a certain function, that it could almost “turn out to be” that function.
In additional easy terms, what it means is that whatever you train, you will turn out to be higher at.
Easy concept, right? It must be, though again and again it is not viewed that way.
You may’t get larger unless you train to get larger. You may get faster unless you train fast. In a more specific sense, you will not improve at one thing by doing one other (need to improve at pullups – then do pullups…not rows, pulldowns, shrugs, or anything!).
This must be the thought behind your training. It’s best to train in a way that can mean you can accomplish your goals. In case you’re an MMAist, then you have to be training maximal strength, power, and for muscular and cardiovascular endurance. All features of your training must be oriented toward making you a greater fighter.
Extraneous things (larger biceps, performing an Iron Cross on the rings, having a bench press of XXX lbs., etc.) are effective to do and OK to have as goals. But you mostly should make sure that that these little “side-goals” aren’t prohibiting you from making progress in your most important goal. In other words, keep your concentrate on the massive picture.
A man I’m helping along with his training (he’s training to turn out to be a pro-wrestler) recently emailed me a couple of bodybuilding protocol he used to love and use. He wanted my opinion.
I gave him a transient opinion of it. It’s an honest program – good for getting big and robust (being a “meathead” in case you will), but lacked so much from an athletic viewpoint. This system was good for what it was intended (bodybuilding), but I might make some major changes to it if I were to need to use something just like it for anybody that was trying to do greater than have big muscles and put up big numbers in some basic gym exercises.
He responded by telling me he knew exactly what I meant. When he had been using this system, he gained good size, and even got strong, but was very slow, wasn’t explosive, and customarily felt sluggish. Now that he’s using considered one of my training programs (based on power production and strength/power-endurance) he’s stronger than ever, feels light on his toes, moves higher, and has significantly better control over his body.
And this was all since the “body became its function.” When he trained like a bodybuilder, his body became a bodybuilder’s body. Now that he’s training like an athlete, he has an athlete’s body, with the performance to match.
Whatever your goal is, make sure that your training is suited to accomplishing that goal, and that you simply’re making your “body turn out to be its function.”
Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard.
