Progressive overload: more thoughts...

When I was younger the only way to train was to train heavy. Heavy was the key word and experience driven "pedal-to-the-metal" by overinflated young egos. When I stepped into the gym I would see my peers loading up the bar - which was an experience in itself - to the very limit of their abilities. And often times beyond. "Cheating" (which translates swinging and jerking up the weight to complete the set when you can't simply admit that the weight is too heavy) was a common thing to do. Of course it would be - it was promoted by the Trainer of Champions himself as a way to break through a plateau - how could he be wrong?! The correct form was more of an "old fart's" advice than a necessity. Plateau was also a mysterious thing - kinda like flu - everyone experienced it but no one really knew what caused it.

But I digress. Ok, maybe not. Back to the principle of progressive overload. One thing that I think was forgotten back in those days (and even more so today) is the fact that it is not the heavier poundage itself that causes the growth - not directly anyways - it's the growth that results in increased ability to lift heavier poundage! Again, let me rephrase it, because I think it's important. It is widely believed that constantly adding weight to your lifts is what causes body to grow (I mean growing muscle, of course). It's not. It may appear this way, yes, but it's not. Not directly anyway. It's a very simplistic way of looking at it whereas the process is more complex. The problem is, it shifts the emphasis from growth to weights whereas in fact it should be the other way around!

Here's what I think happens. Weight simply exemplifies resistance, a stimulus, which - when applied against the muscle triggers certain metabolic processes in the body, which are mostly of catabolic nature - including breakdown of muscle cells and release of certain hormones. That's where the role of the weight is pretty much complete! The nature and mode of the lift and amount of weight only affect the intensity of the breakdown and a relative combination of hormones released into the blood - that's it! The rest has nothing to do with the amount of weight you lifted in the last session - outside, like I said, the intensity of "damage" sustained by the body from working to overcome resistance.

What happens next is quite simple (without going into much detail). The hormones flooding the body trigger a set of chemical and physiological reactions that aim to repair the damage. This is where nutrition comes into play. Just like with a construction team materials (concrete, cement, limestone, bituminous mix, paint, etc.) are required to do the job certain nutrients are needed to provide the body with proper elements to do the repair. No matter how skilled and efficient your building team is insufficient or poor quality materials can hinder the process and adversely affect the outcome. Usually a certain combination of protein, carbohydrates and fats is needed to make repair efforts more efficient.

Now that your building team is engaged all you need to do is to provide sufficient supply of materials and allow enough time for the team to complete their job. If you don't supply materials - it will affect the team's dedication; they are going to get frustrated, lazy and eventually have people transfered to other projects. If you don't allow enough time - team will become overwhelmed, overstressed and will not be able to deliver at full capacity. In terms of physical training it means rest and recuperation. Eat well, sleep well and let the body take care of itself. Simple, huh? Well, from my own experience, it's much easier said than done.

So why is that? Why is it so difficult to simply rest and eat and let your "building team" take care of the repair? Well, the biggest challenge - as surprising as it is logical - is our mind. Our mind functions within the paradigm of rules. Statements and beliefs that we grew up with, learned at school, read in the books, heard in the media, etc., become rules by which we choose to live by. Often self-imposed (actually always self-imposed), although usually those are notions adopted from external sources (media, parents, friends, internet, religion).

Let's say, you come to the gym for the first time and a big guy on a bench next to you shows you a biceps curl. He also says that it's the best way ever to build big guns. Hmm, this guy is so big - he could be on to something. You take a mental note. But so far it's simply an opinion. Then you hear it again from someone else and you say "yeah! that's the way to train!"; now two people said the same thing. Then again. And again. Then you read a book or an article in a popular muscle building magazine that says that you should be training every other day and sometimes two out of three days your - and this is when your mind makes a conclusion that this is the way it should be. It's written in a book, after all, isn't it? And what if it comes from, say, Arnold the Governor or Joe the Trainer of Champions since 1936! People who made bodybuilding the sport it is today. And if the statement is souped up by a glossy image of a model with ripped abs? Chances are you not only will take it as an opinion - it may well become your truth, i.e. the rule you decide to live by without questioning its validity. It becomes one of the ten commandments to you. That's why advertising is such a powerful tool...

If for years and years you have been hearing that unless you train every other day - 3-4 times a week - you are not doing it right - even if your body is screaming "I'm tired! Give me a break!" what are the chances that you will listen to its plea? That's right: next to nothing! Why? Because your mind is conditioned to stick to the rules. Rules are the framework within which it operates.

Now back to training. I'll talk about the philosophy of rules in one of my other posts.

So we have established that rest and recuperation are a step critical to ensure that muscle is not only repaired but repaired exceedingly. In exercise physiology this is called supercompensation. Not only the body repairs the damage caused by stress in the form of resistance but it strengthens existing fibers and builds some extra ones in "anticipation" of an increased demand. This results in increased ability of the body to overcome resistance. This is a temporary condition, in a sense that unless this increased demand is imposed to the body the recruited fibers will gradually lose their ability to work against load. And it makes sense, the construction manager is not going to keep his entire team on the job unless there's enough work for them simply because the costs of keeping them there will not be justified. However, if the higher demand is applied again within that timeframe it will trigger the same processes and the body's ability to withstand higher resistance will increase yet again. There you have it. It's the theory of training.

To sum it up:

Step 1. Resistance is applied to the muscle (stress phase).

Step 2. Muscle is forced to work against resistance it is not accustomed to (overload), which results in temporary disruption of normal muscle cell metabolism and causes certain damage to the fibers (catabolic phase).

Step 3. A chain of chemical and physiological reactions is triggered and certain hormones are released into the blood to repair the damage and promote the healing process (anabolic phase).

Step 4. Damaged fibers are repaired with excess which means they attain a temporary state of higher capacity that allows them to handle higher levels of stress (adaptation and supercompensation).

Or put it simply:

Train well.

Eat well, sleep well and rest well until supercompensation occurs and you feel stronger than before.

Increase your working resistance a little.

Repeat steps 1 to 3 over and over again until you grow as strong and muscular as you want.

Of course there's more to it, but that's it in a nutshell.

So the key to progressive overload is to apply increased resistance (stress) but ONLY when the body has recovered enough to be able to handle it! Not until then. Consistently pushing yourself harder before your body is fully recovered from the previous session is the reason why there's much less muscle in the world than it is called for! So if everyone had focused more on growth than on the amount of weight lifted the world would have been a more muscular place in just a few short months.

Now, having said that, the question still remains: how long does it take for the body to repair the damage and supercompensate? And that's a million dollar question.

(...to be continued)

Stuart McRobert: bodybuilding for hardgainers

Those who know my philosophy about fitness, diet and bodybuilding (in a large sense - not just building muscle) know that I've been on a "mission" - my quest for a healthier body, search for an approach that would be based not on violence, but on "invitation". To coax, not coerce. Which means methods and practices designed to invite the body to change in the direction we want, rather than trying to violently force it to. Years of studying and practicing bodybuilding (mostly unsuccessfully - in a sense that I did not succeed in or even get close enough to building the body I wanted - even though I have always been in a fairly decent shape compared to many of my peers) and nutritional approaches made me realize that most conventional methods and techniques of altering your body are based on an ongoing fight against our bodies - usually by subjecting it to various forms of deprivation, over-exertion, extreme stress, etc.

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 :)))

Strength-For-Life by Shawn Phillips: my thoughts (part 2)

Ok, as I was reading on - more thoughts popped up...

Some other concepts and notions that I liked:

• I like the emphasis on focus and mental concentration - that rings truth to me. I think it's one of the best characteristics of the book.
• Goal setting is one other part that I found extremely powerful.
• The training program is sound, in general and nutrition plan makes sense and is easy to follow.
• The program is laid out with great degree of detail, which should make it easy to digest for a beginner.
• I liked that the author's ego doesn't seem to be running the show (he also doesn't refer to himself as an expert or "Trainer of Champions" or "Coach Ilg" or anything like that). The material is served in a clear systematic way.
• The book covers pretty much all bases. Some of them may be arguable but I think for a beginner it can provide a pretty good structure and a lot of guidance.

At the same time I ran into some things I do not agree with:

• some concepts are served as facts whereas they often are opinions at best and unsubstantiated claims at worst.
• some notions are presented in an overly simplistic, sometimes somewhat dogmatic, way.
• the part explaining why three meals per day are inferior to 5-6 meals per day and especially why skipping breakfast is a mortal sin doesn't quite hold the water. There is sufficient evidence that skipped breakfast is not going to bring metabolism down to a screeching halt. The notion of breakfast being a critical meal of the day is a popular belief and in my opinion is nothing but.
• I believe that a program that consists of 18 intensive sets per workout three times a week with at least 4-5 sets going to failure in addition to intensive interval training another three times for a total of 6 times a week can be too much for an average trainee and cannot be maintained without burning out and overtaxing your body's recovery capabilities for longer than a few weeks. Same applies to Body-For-Life program as well, which I believe can be overly intensive and lead to overtraining for many people with average genetics (that's what happened to me).
• In a section for women (p.112) he states that "you won't get big on 15 reps, but you won't get anything else either", which I think is a statement that is not entirely correct and somewhat misleading. You absolutely CAN get big on 15 reps and even 20 (there's even a famous "20 squats" program on which people have been known to grow muscle like crazy), although only if the weight is heavy enough; i.e. intensity and amount of resistance are the key. So women don't get big doing 15 reps not because of some magic number of reps that somehow prevents them from growing muscle but because of low intensity and very light weights that are typically used by them, which simply does not provide enough stimulus for the muscle to grow.

Overall I'd give the book four stars. It is very similar to Body-For-Life (with only a few modifications) and overall is a sound program (although certainly not a miracle pill) based on traditional principles (nothing revolutionary about it) of strength training and cardiovascular fitness and I believe that it can certainly serve as a good headstart to a typical out-of-shape sedentary person with little knowledge of exercise science who decided to finally take control of his body.

P.S. Well, what do you know... Just when I was about to put away the book thinking that I pretty much got the gist of it I suddenly realized there were two more chapters - 14 and 15. After reading those my entire opinion about this book changed dramatically! Let me tell you, the part about Mastering Motivation (chapter 14) is nothing short of brilliant! Stages of motivation described in it didn't simply ring the truth to me - they were tolling a 500 lbs bell from the top tower of the cathedral! That chapter alone made me want to own this book! This chapter alone lifted this book into a completely different category - way above all other fitness books I ever read. A ubiquitous Body-For-Life doesn't even hold a candle to this one in terms of understanding mental and spiritual depth of transformation (physical or otherwise). This guy totally gets it! He is one of a very few who seem to be capable of looking past the weights, sets and reps! Wow! Thanks, Nicole, for recommending this book!

Strength-For-Life by Shawn Phillips: my thoughts

A friend suggested this book. It's brilliant, she said, and it is talking about physical transformation based on principles that are exactly what you seem to be looking for: a holistic, goal oriented approach targeting both mind and body, unlike many other "get fit quick" books.

First thing I did, what I always do in situations like that, I Googled it. Often I find myself looking not just at readers' average rating (like the one you find at Amazon.com) but also critical feedback - usually those will be reviews from readers who gave the book 1 or 2 stars. Not always objective they, nevertheless, often give the gist of what the book is not. I often find that 5-star reviews can be excessively enthusiastic, sometimes to obsession point and therefore even more misleading.

So I googled author's name and the first book that popped up was one of his other ones - something about getting fabulous abs quick. Negative reviews on that one were REALLY negative, blasting the book for excessive narcissism and it being nothing but a re-hashed collection of those same age-old training ideas that have been around for decades glamoured up by photo images of the author sporting his perfect six-pack along with attractive models. There were also comments of the author being a less lucky shadow of his more successful brother Bill - creator of Body-For-Life program (I'll publish my thoughts on it later). Not a good image.

Despite the negative feedback on that other book I still decided to give this one a try. Plus I found it in the library so I figured - what do I have to lose? And I'm glad I did. I found it may be lacking some philosophical depth and scientific backup but it doesn't matter. It has good intentions and honest attitude. I had a feeling that Shawn truly believes in what he preaches. And like with almost any book I've read in the last year or two I discovered certain points that I do not agree with but it also gave me a lot of good hints and plenty of food for my inquisitive mind.

A couple of things that really got me thinking. One thing that really struck me was an excellent metaphor in the goal setting section of the book. He used Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation to illistrate why we sometimes fail to reach the goal. He compared the magnitude (importance, desirability) of the goal to the mass of the object and its remoteness (how far away this goal is) to distance in a physical sense. So, he concedes, if the goal is too far away in the future (distance) the gravitational pull may just not be strong enough to bring the goal to you even if it very desirable and important (mass)! Isn't that brilliant? I think it is.

The second point has nothing to do with the book per se but, like I said, it fed my mind with some valuable pointers. For instance, he suggests that goals should be ambitious but realistic. For a long time - since I was first exposed to ideas of the Law of Attraction - I was developing a tendency to scorn this whole "setting a realistic goal" thingy. Ha! - I was thinking - "realistic goals" are for those unenlightened souls who do not dare to dream big, aim high enough. It's simply selling themselves cheap - my Ego was arrogant and quick to judge. And when I was just reading that section of the book all of a sudden I heard this voice in my head. It quietly said literally this: "Vlad, it's all a matter of interpetation. Setting realistic goals doesn't have to mean short-changing yourself. It may simply mean making sure that the goals you are setting are deemed achievable by you! What good would it do you if you set a goal you don't believe you could achieve?" This is where the light flashed in my head. But of course!! It's so simple. It's not about how big the goal is it's about what YOU believe you can or cannot achieve within a certain timeframe!! It's about FAITH! So limitations are in what you believe is and isn't possible - not in the magnitude of the goal! If you - in full conviction and unshakeable faith - can concieve that 10 pounds of fat can be lost overnight - you will be able to wake up 10 pounds lighter the very next morning! The thing is not that it's impossible - it's that you believe it is!! A typical self-talk would probably go like this: "10 pounds overnight? No way! Totally impossible! How about - in a week? Nahh, I don't think so! Ok, do you think you could do it in three months? Well, I guess I could; I think it's possible." That's it!!!

(...to be continued... haven't finished the book yet)

Thoughts on training frequency

Reading through some articles on HST (hypertrophy specific training) website got me thinking about training frequency. That is, how many times per week is it optimal to have resistance training sessions. Of course, "optimal" assumes certain criteria. In other words, optimal in what sense.

So I went on a quest to find out how often is too often and where the golden optimum lies. I ran into a couple of articles on that very topic. The first one suggests that 3 times a week sessions produce more strength and lean mass gains than 1 time a week in trained subjects - with the SAME total volume of exercise! In other words, they claim that if you split the same training volume (# sets X reps X weight) into 3 separate sessions you will get better gains than if you do them all in a single weekly session. It makes sense to me although the key here appears to be the same weekly volume, which I think is extremely important and adds a lot of value to the study.

At the same time there was another article I stumbled onto with a similar setup. The only difference was they used two groups of untrained individuals (both men and women) and had 2 sessions per week vs 3 sessions. The volume (sets * reps * weight) was the same, again. At the end of 6 week training period no distinct differences were observed between the two groups. I.e. the results appeared very similar in terms of strength and lean mass gains. They suggested that it's the total weekly volume that matters - not so much the frequency per week.

Now, of course there were differences in the initial setup - trained vs untrained so that could be a factor as well. Plus no two environments are absolutely identical. However, those results still carry some value and may contain important clues.

Namely, it seems natural to conclude that there indeed is such a thing as optimal frequency given the same total weekly volume under certain criteria (for instance, maximum lean mass gains or strength with minimum sessions per week, etc.) and of course it would vary from person to person.

Let's compare three programs: P1, where weekly volume is done in one session; P2 (where it's split into two sessions) and P3 (when it's split into three smaller sessions - 1/3 volume each). Now if we assume that for a given person P1 turns out to be less efficient than P3 and there's no apparent difference between the results produced by P2 and P3, then we will have to conclude that P2 is the optimal program based on our set criteria simply because it produces higher gains with fewer sessions per week.

So does it mean that 2 sessions a week is a magic number? Well, not necessarily. First, everyone is different. I am sure that among the tested individuals there were fast gainers (those who gained more on P1 than most on P3) and slow gainers (those who had low or no gains regardless of the program). Secondly, it would be nice to see if an even higher frequency (say, 4 or 5 smaller sessions a week) would produce higher or lower gains - again, under the same volume. Also, it would be really interesting to see if higher volume would produce even greater gains and to what degree (clearly there would be a limit to the volume after which overtraining will set in and hinder the progress).

Now the question remains: why is it that 3 smaller sessions a week turn out to be more effective than a single big session in terms of muscle gains and strength even if total volume stays the same? The mechanism is not quite clear to me, however, I could see a couple of possible reasons. First, possibly because of the body's limited ability to recover and supercompensate for damaged fibers after a single higher volume session. Second, possibly because of some muscle loss due to several days of deconditioning, although I doubt that 7 days of relative inactivity is a period long enough to cause any significant loss in lean mass. One other thing, we don't know if nutrition and rest pattern could be a factor. Hypothetically, it is easy to imagine that a higher nutritional and caloric intake might be required for the body to promote optimal post-exercise recovery and ensure growth after a very intense single session compared to a smaller session, especially in the first 24-48 hours, so I wonder if that was taken into consideration or not.

The take-away message... Frequency is great but let's not forget that the most critical part here was, again, the controlled overall volume, which was kept constant for both tested groups! It's just that the post on the HST blog (written by the HST founder Bryan Haycock, who I deeply respect) that quoted the first article made it sound as if working out 3 times a week is better than once a week, period. But it may create a false impression that frequency is the single critical factor without much regard for overall volume, which can be a dangerous conclusion. Yes, the study suggests that working out 3 times proved to be more efficient than 1 single session, but each of those 3 sessions was only 1/3 of the volume of that single session!! I'm sure that's what Brian had in mind but somehow it wasn't made very clear in the post - well, not to me anyway. So if I were to summarize the main idea of the study it would sound something like: Weekly training volume (# of sets X reps X exercises) split into several smaller sessions (2 or 3) proves to be more effective than when done in one single session a week. Now that goes well along with the idea of HST, which makes a lot of sense to me.

The trick is, in my opinion, to find such weekly volume that doesn't lead to overtraining and yet provides enough stimuli to make body grow. Once we found it - then we can tweak the frequency till our heart's content - for instance, split the volume in two, three or even four smaller sessions a week. And then see what works best for you.

P.S. Btw, training volumes in both studies were different. In study 1 (1 vs 3) they used 3 sets to failure for each exercise - either done in one session or split into three. In the second study the weekly volume was 6 sets to fatigue for 9 exercises, split into two or three sessions respectively...

Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat (cycles). Continued

So... cycles. From what I understand building tissue (muscle) and burning fat are two separate processes - opposite to each other in a way. I am not totally sure why but apparently because they require completely diffirent hormonal environments; backgrounds, if you will. Insulin plays a key role in creating/promoting anabolic environment for the new tissue to be built, however at the same time it effectively shuts down fat burning cycle as it inhibits lypolisis. Additionally, it seems that lypolisis runs most efficiently when the glycogene pool is depleted, which makes sense because it forces the body to switch from carbs to fats as the main fuel. At the same time, lack of carbs appears to slow down protein synthesis. So in theory even if it is possible for synthesis and glycolisis to run in parallel it will definitely be far from optimal.

That logically brings us to the cycling concept. Namely, that processes of building new tissue and breaking down fats for energy take place - at most optimal level - at different times.

Now I don't really believe that the only way to do that (or most efficient way for that matter) is to phase it like professional bodybuilders have been doing for years. I.e. you go muscle building in the off-season for months on end and then cut your calories drastically to trim down in pre-season for another 2 or 3 months (and those seem to be months from hell). I do believe that there is a way to utilize much smaller cycles - like 48-72 hour cycles, for example. The rates of muscle gain (as well as fat loss) will probably be smaller as you won't be able to exercise 5-6 times a week with high intensity but I feel that this can be a milder alternative which will also allow you to stay lean and still build muscle throughout the year.

For example I could imagine a cycle consisting of a 48 hour muscle building phase following an intensive resistance training session with muscle building type of diet/nutrition (proper combination of carbs, protein and calories); then switching to fat loss phase for the next 48-72 hours and so on.

...to be continued

Thoughts on Frank's MBB

Thoughts evoked by Frank Zane's "Mind In bodybuilding".

I was thinking about the power of synchronicity.

One of the things I have always had in my dream map that I want to be doing do in the next few years of my life is becoming involved in creation of what I called DreamBits: little multimedia projects of inspirational and motivational nature (including visualizations, affirmations, specially created mantras, guided meditations, generic or personalized, etc. in the form of jingles, music, slide shows, recorded narratives, animations, videos or any combination of those).

And seems like I got Frank's new book at just the right time! It has a few thoughts and ideas that I have been pondering over for quite awhile now. And he was talking about it too! I have also noticed several things in his experience that are similar to what I went through in my life or at least they feel this way.

One of the parts I found especially exciting was a fascinating story about the Muse followed by Frank's thoughts about advertising. I immediately found that those resound very closely to my ideas and experience in that area. Although I have always been an IT guy since I graduated from the University in my home town of Irkutsk, Russia - developing software and managing software projects - I happened to work in advertising for about 6 years between 1992 and 1998 - in both print and broadcasting (FM) media - where I was heavily involved in creative process - including writing jingles, music and narratives to commercials, recording (and sometimes singing) them.

My musical background goes back into my teenage when I learned how to strum a few chords on a guitar at the age of 14. Then I played in a band till I was in my mid-twenties, where I was a lead singer and also learned to play some bass. I wrote about 300 songs over the years, most of which were in Russian, naturally enough. Besides songwriting I also did some creative writing as well - poems, stories, etc.

I have been playing with recording software since mid-90's. The radiostation I used to work for at that time was the first one in the entire region that switched from tapes and CD's into recording, storing and playing their commercials directly to/from a studio PC and I happened to be one of the driving forces behind that initiative.

Now as I look back I realize why it was happening to me throughout these years. Advertising, computers, music... It helped me gather all the skills I might find helpful to do what I know I want to be doing in the future. Amazing! I can perfectly picture myself creating and leading a group of talented creative people towards producing exciting inspirational pieces of powerful "inspirational advertisement" charged with positive energy, powerful imagery through power of visualization to motivate and inspire people instead of trying to sell something to them. My own analysis of conventional advertising reveals that typical messages are based on and cater to several major ego traits (usually four): vanity, greed, envy and fear - all ultimately based on fear. So instead of trying to "force" some product on people and seeing them as "buyers" through fear-based messages I choose the idea of treating them as human souls and offering something their soul seeks. Topics of those "DreamBits" can range from physical perfection to romantic relationships, successful career, wealth and health.

Another part I really enjoyed was the section called Bodhibuilding. Many of its concepts and notions are so in sync with what I feel is true to me that it astonished me deeply and evoked a flurry of happy positive thoughts and ideas in my head. Again I couldn't help but feel inspired by this power of synchronicity. It has been my experience that since I first started to think about synchronicity as being more than mere coincidence (which was the way I had been thinking about it for years) I realized that the more you pay attention to it the more it appears in your life. Again, paying attention feels to be the key as I truly believe that energy flow follows the attention. The notion of synchronicity was first introduced to me in Celestine Prophecy (by James Redwood) in summer 2006, however there were some other thoughts and concepts discovered prior to that that led me to perceiving it as my truth. That book was followed by Conversations With God, Power Of Now, and a few more that have been providing me with more and more food for thought as well as incredible charge of positive and creative energy.

I loved the graphic images and drawings in the book as well - beautiful and very pertinent!

One of the main things I loved about Frank's books (I also read Mind, Body and Spirit before) is this: they radiate calmness and peaceful energy. I find him very positive and non-judgmental. Both qualities are very appealing to me. He's one of those rare few authors who choose not to resort to fear-based strategies, so his books are free of agressive sales pitches like "Unless you do what I say and like I say, it's not gonna work and you'll never become what you want to become" or "Mine's the only way". He's sharing his view and experience without promoting it. When I read them I don't feel pushed, I feel inspired. And that to me is the key.

With that I understand that this book may make your typical gym rat puke with disgust and disappointment and make them feel as if they just wasted their money they'd rather spend on another "Get Big Quick" program or pill. There are different levels of consciousness so peace be with them and hopefully one day they will realize that there's more to exercising and being in shape than trying to figure out which machine to use and which food to eat. One day they will learn to look past "technicality" of human experience. Reminded me of "He That Has Ears To Hear, Let Him Hear..." (Matthew 11:15-30)

This story of the Muse also made me think about Frank's role in bodybuildng. When all said and done it's quite possible that being an incredible source of inspiration to millions of people and showing them that a body like that is possible may well be one of his most significant achievements in this lifetime. Maybe even more significant than him being 3-times Mr. Olympia and a renowned author. The science of physical excellence needed a person who is capable to look past the tools, past the "visible", past the diets, sets and reps. That's what he will be remembered for.