In my early years of weight training, there were a few things that really got my attention. One of those things was Arnold’s
biceps, another was Robby Robinson’s arms, and another was Bill Kazmaier’s strength and size. I was impressed with how hard everyone said these guys trained and thought it must be the key to their greatness. When I tried imitating the kill yourself training that was often associated with their success, I was still impressed with them, but I wasn’t impressed with the lack of results I achieved. Later on, there were times when I ran into a powerlifter or bodybuilder who really got my attention, but it wasn’t a picture, or the amount of weight lifted that got my attention, it was a process that got my attention. It dawned on me that the right training process equals productive training.
I was once listening to Mark Riptoe interviewing Ed Coan along with Marty Gallagher. During the course of the interview, Marty mentioned that Ed Coan never missed a lift while training. Ed was always able to complete the number of reps that he was aiming for when using a given weight during a workout. A little later in the interview, Marty repeated again that Ed never missed a lift in training, but always competed the designated number or reps for a workout. After saying that Ed never missed, he caught himself and said, “Well almost never….” (pausing and looking somewhat unsure of himself). Ed jumped in at that point and affirmed, “I never missed.” I can only say that this got my attention. Marty also has said of Ed that in spite of the fact that he kept using more and more weight over the years, that he made his lifts look easy. How could this be true? It seems everyone gets stuck and starts missing their lifts sooner or later. Could Ed Coan really plan his training out year after year and never miss a lift? In light of the norm of how people normally make initial progress and then get stuck, this astounded to me. It got my attention.
Another person who believed in always completing the designated number of reps was Bill Pearl. He would say something to the effect, “Always complete what you’ve started and have a little left over in the tank at the end of each set and the end of your workout.” In other words, don’t use a weight that is too heavy so that you can’t complete the number of reps your aiming for, and don’t use a weight that is so heavy that it takes everything that you have to lift it the designated number of times, but have some reps left over.
Both Ed Coan and Bill Pearl have one thing in common; they got better year after year for many years. Admittedly, Ed made very quick progress and was very strong early in his career, but as his career progressed, he was also able to able to continue gaining little by little, year after year to become even stronger. Bill Pearl was able to win the Mr. America in his early twenties at about 180 pounds, but this was before the super-sized bodybuilders came on the scene in the mid-sixties and the early seventies. Bill was able to stay at the top of the competition by slowly gaining year after year until he was in his early 40’s, by which time he was huge and had become very strong. He achieved his steady ongoing long term gains without steroids.
When I began training with weights in 1979, I had heard of Bill Pearl and was impressed with him, but there were others during that era that I admired even more. This changed when I finally saw how much Bill Pearl progressed throughout his career. Back in the late seventies, there was no internet for me to look at. Later on in about the year 2000, I was surfing the internet and came across a series of pictures that featured a progression Bill Pearl’s physique over a period of about twenty years. The pictures started with Bill in his early twenties and showed his progress every year or two until his last competition about twenty years later. I was blown away that Bill Pearl made little bits of steady progress year after year as most people including most of the top level highly gifted guys on steroids don’t make progress year after year. I was also amazed at how those little gains added up to a huge body by the time he was in his mid-thirties and early forties. He was able to put on an additional 60 pounds of lean muscle after winning his first Mr. America. I know that everyone seems to be advertising the magic way to workout that will give you a huge, strong body in no time flat, and there are plenty of stories of guys who get bigger and stronger in a hurry, but in the end, Bill has most of them beat. Seeing Bill’s continuous progress year after year majorly got my attention.
I believe both Bill Pearl and Ed Coan had tremendous training sense. Neither of them ever maxed out on their lifts and neither of them ever trained to failure. They would say that they trained for success, not failure. Some people thought that Bill and Ed made their training look easy, but they simply understood that in the long run, you have to train hard, but not too hard as it is not productive. Training at the right level of difficulty is better than training too hard or too easy. This is why I believe in using what I refer to as the marker rep, the marker set, and experimenting with training frequency until the right training frequency is found (see the basics of PPT on this website if more explanation is needed). While the amount weight and the amount of reps can vary from one workout to the next, any time you are using a given weight for a given exercise, you can use the same amount of reps that you used the last time that the same weight and exercise were used. There is a time period of several weeks where your body can get stronger without having to make your workouts harder. This is especially true if you stop at your marker rep until your strength increases enough for the marker rep to transition into a limit rep. Training in this manner will help you to gain and keep on gaining. The gains you make may not catch everyone’s attention right away, but if you keep on gaining, your improvement will eventually catch people’s attention.