When I first heard about Stuart McRobert I was in the process of arriving to a simple but painful realization that years of battering my body and following conventional and some less than routines (nutrition and training) in an attempt to make it change the way I wanted did not produce the results I wanted - no matter how hard I tried. I would always end up pretty much at the same weight (give or take), percentage of fat (give or take) and not any closer to where I wanted to be.
Stuart appears to be one of the pioneers who - through his own painful experience - first came to conclusion that a rate in which our body can grow muscle depends primarily on its ability to recuperate, when subjected to physical training. Second, he concluded that routines presented in most muscle-building magazines and books only apply to a relative minority of people blessed with favourable genetics - in terms of their ability to respond to exercise and speed of recovery. The rest of the population (which is most of us), he contended, are those whose bodies are less genetically blessed therefore take longer to recover and grow and can only handle a much smaller amount of training that they can respond to without becoming overtrained than is widely believed. He's the one who coined a term "hardgainer" and ran Hardgainer magazine for several years. I read four of his books. The one I liked best is "Beyond Brawn" simply because it - in my opinion - is more suited to a more experienced lifter. I found more answers to my questions in this book than in the other three combined.
His main philosophy revolves around several key points:
- A genetically average trainee should not copy training routines of more genetically blessed. Ironically those are the ones most magazines and books present to the public as the way to train. He believes that many trainees overtrain themselves badly when they try following those. In that sense I absolutely agree that, in a way, Joe Weider - although played a major role in popularization of bodybuilding in the last 40 years - may have caused a lot of damage to the training population by promoting champions' routines as the only way to train.
- Training frequency. He believes that 3 and 4 times of hard training a week is a definite overkill for an average trainee simply because it stretches their bodies' recuperative abilities too far.
- Correct form of exercise. Stuart preaches it with passion putting quite a heavy emphasis on it. Although I understand that it, in itself, is not going to grow more muscle but it goes a long way in terms of preventing injuries.
- Progressive overload. A principle of progressive load - which seems to have been a cornerstone of training since the beginning of times - surprisingly is not given enough justice in popular magazines. It often comes almost as a side-note as does "recuperation" by the way.
Although I certainly agree with Stuart on many accounts, some things still don't ring the truth to me. Too much emphasis is on genetic limitations, in my opinion - almost to a point where it becomes a negative mantra ("I can't grow as much muscle as I want because chances are I'm genetically challenged"). Thing is - you don't know until you try...
(...to be continued... possibly :)))
.jpg)