Do you really believe that a special low-density muscle tissue exists that will grow on your body if it only depended on the right training program? Well the answer is no. Muscle gains are only down to food intake and muscle gains mean gaining weight. The weight you lift is irrelevant, but if you are gaining weight then you are performing well and eating well too.
Intensity Intensity- Bodybuilders love to train hard, boast of training hard, and do the impossible, triple drop sets and forced reps, and all sorts of other extremely tiring techniques. The difficulty with this is that although their musculature can recover from this beating in a couple of days their central nervous systems are absolutely poached. The CNS can take over a week or more to recover from this type of repeated attempts to failure training, which makes repeating the workouts with a similar or greater weight just impossible for several weeks or more.
Why oh why oh why would anyone want to do this? Your muscles recover from almost any stimulus within 72 hours but if you have stressed the CNS so greatly that it can no longer apply any force then you will become de-trained as the CNS recovers. By the time your preparedness is back up to a high level the fitness gain from training has almost completely gone.
This is OK in the short term but to train like this week in week out whilst attempting to increase poundage's or total load in a linear manner is a lunacy that literally forces you to reduce training frequency and total load to a minimal level. Frequency and total load are the key determinants of successful training for size and strength! Why would anyone deliberately minimize both of them?
Single factor training- Almost everybody in the gym currently train according to single factor training theory, or the principle of super compensation, where as only about 5% of strength athletes train like this and they all happen to all be bodybuilders. I realize that the majority of people don't even know what dual factor theory is, so let me try and explain what it is. Firstly single factor theory deals with fitness and fatigue as existing to the exclusion of each other.
For example if you are tired and have sore muscles following a training session you should wait until you feel better and have fully recovered before training again. This fits in with super compensation theory, which dictates that after training your fitness decreases slightly (because you are tired) and then rises back up again to a point just above where it was prior to the workout. At this point you train again with a slightly greater load and push up your fitness a little further and so on.
Dual factor theory views fatigue, fitness and preparedness as being different factors but not exclusive to one another. Your long-term ability is fitness and it changes on a gentle curve and does not relate to fatigue. Your immediate ability is preparedness being what you can do in the present although not influenced by fatigue.
According to dual factor theory you can train to the point of extreme fatigue, and have a terrible state of preparedness but still be making improvements in long-term fitness. In other words you DO NOT have to fully recover between workouts all the time and nor should you.
Macro nutrient fascism- "Carbs just suck", "You get fat by eating fats" and "Just eat protein to get more muscle". No and a big NO. We need all of then in some form or other. Each person might be different in personal needs depending on personal objectives, but to actually cut one of the macro nutrients out of our diet is plain dumb.
Certain macro nutrient combinations have certain effects and to completely remove one from the equation (e.g. no carbs or no fats) just isn't going to cut it. Personally I would take an isocaloric diet as being a good starting point for health and strength.
Lifestyle what lifestyle?- Now then, if you're the sort of bodybuilder who just does biceps on a Friday night in order get that pumped up sort of look so you can go out clubbing and pull, then you really do need a good kicking. If your goal is to achieve a bigger and stronger physique then you will have to make some difficult decisions in your like, otherwise all that good hard training of yours will just go right out of the window.
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