Monitoring and results

Because the purpose of the pro- gram is to recruit as many fibers as possible, the exercises you use should be the big, multijoint ones. You’re looking at bench presses for chest, bent-over rows and pullups for back, squats for quads, stiff- legged deadlifts for hamstrings, and so on.

Do only one round of the three sets for each exercise. Performing

a second round will defeat the purpose. In other words, the fibers should be exhausted, and it would be impossible to develop levels of force that would recruit the high- threshold fibers again. Perform two workouts for a given muscle group within a week, using two different motor patterns—for example, bench presses at your first chest work- out and incline presses at your second. The clavicular heads of the pectorals are recruited during move- ments in which you raise your arms toward your head, like incline presses, as op- posed to raising

The purpose

of the program

is to recruit as

many muscle

fibers as possible.

The exercises

you use should be

multijoint ones

such as bench

press, bent-over

rows, pullups,

squats, stiff-legged

deadlifts, etc.

(continued from page 231)

Model: Daryl Gee

Presents

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www.ironmanmagazine.com \ APRIL 2008 235 them straight out in front of your body, as in bench presses. A similar example would be bent-over rows and pullups for the back.

Remember, this style of training is aimed at developing maximal hypertrophy in a short period of time. If your goal is pure strength, then a strength-training program will be more suitable. As long as you address the underlying principles of progressive overload and adequate nutrition, holis- tic-hypertrophy training should create exceptional mass gains over a 12-week period.

Editor’s note: Glen Danbury has an honors degree in sports science and human nutrition and is currently working to- ward his master’s degree in sports nutrition. For more of his articles, visit www. Bodybuilding.com. IM

Model: Derik Farnsworth

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Until two years ago bodybuilders who wanted to in- crease testosterone levels without using anabolic steroids could purchase pro-hormone supplements. The original forms of those supplements weren’t effective. For example, DHEA, an adrenal steroid produced in the human body, is used in the synthesis of other hormones, including testos- terone and estrogen. Based on that, DHEA supplements were touted for increasing testosterone in bodybuilders. DHEA did do that—but only in women. In men under age 40 it was converted into either estrogen or dihydrotestos- terone, a testosterone metabolite associated with acne, male-pattern baldness and prostate enlargement.

Noting the problems, several entrepreneurs scoured the

scientific literature and came up with compounds that, on paper, provided more direct routes to testosterone con- version. The most popular was androstenedione, which was said to be more effective than DHEA because it was a step closer in the synthesis process: In the body DHEA converted into andro, which then converted directly into testosterone.

Andro peaked in popularity after being linked to pro baseball player Mark McGwire. During his 1998 home-run spree, which broke a Major League record, a reporter no- ticed a bottle of andro in his locker. McGwire didn’t deny using the supplement, noting that it was perfectly legal in baseball. He’s been evasive in denying his use of anabolic steroids.

While it would be wrong to overlook the natural ability of players such as McGwire or Barry Bonds, consider the findings of American physicist Roger Tobin of Tufts Univer- sity. Tobin estimated that using anabolic steroids can help batters hit 50 percent more home runs by boosting muscle 10 percent. With 10 percent more muscle, a batter can swing about 5 percent faster, which increases the speed of the ball 4 percent as it leaves the bat. Added speed can lead to home runs 50 percent more often—up to 100 percent according to Tobin. Then again, muscle and steroids are only part of the home-run equation; there’s no shortage of muscular ball players who come nowhere near the home-

run record.

But I digress. Andro was wildly popular for a while among body- builders. Shortly after it hit the market, I looked at the testosterone pathway and noticed that it could easily be converted into estrogen. When I said so on an Internet forum, I was accused of being “jeal- ous” of andro’s success, but medical studies proved me right. Rather than being converted into testos- terone, andro tended to take the estrogen route in men. In women, however, as with DHEA, andro did raise testosterone levels.

So it was back to the drawing board for pro-hormone purveyors. They came up with a few esoteric androgens that flew under the FDA radar for a while. None were ever definitively shown to build muscle, but some produced such side ef- fects as acne and liver enzyme elevations.

It was left for more technically oriented supplement gurus to turn to the musty old steroid textbooks of the late 1960s and search for more effective compounds. Thou- sands of potential drugs were origi- nally researched from the 1950s to the late 1960s, but most never reached the market. They were

Estrogen-