This is a three part series to help men & women like you BREAKTHROUGH the barriers and myths of training, nutrition and mindset so you can create a DRAMATIC and LASTING body transformation.

PART ONE: How Training Sessions Should Really Feel…..

Let’s take a trip back through time.

It’s 1975 and you are in Gold’s Gym, Venice Beach, California with Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger. …

You are his training partner charged with the sole mission of getting him in shape for his next Mr Olympia contest.

This is DAY ONE.

Today you are both going to obliterate and stimulate the chest muscles in order to gain some freaky size.

First up, BENCH PRESS…

Arnold hands you the bar as you take your position lying down on the bench.

The game plan is simple; All you have to do is PUSH until you’re on the last couple of reps. Then keep pushing through to absolute muscular failure. Only then, Arnie says, will you stimulate your muscles to GROW!

So you begin…

REP ONE

REP TWO

REP THREE

And on, and on, and on until your muscles finally start to give out around the 11th rep…

But Arnold tells you to push on in his thick Austrian accent…

“Come on! Push it now! Come on!” (…and I challenge you to read that without doing the accent in your head, impossible!)

So you DO push harder and slowly grind through the 11th and 12th reps, sweat is pouring down your head and into your armpits in the heavy, Californian climate…

But Arnold doesn’t give a crap, he just wants you to lift.

Halfway through the 13th rep the bar slows down and starts to stall, hovering above your chest in a frustrating mix of the painful lactic acid burn and the helplessness you now feel as you’re about to be trapped under the bar.

So Arnie grabs the bar and slowly gives you some more pressure to help you through the upper part of the 13th rep.

Then you rack the bar.

Good set!

But it’s not over yet, just as you think you were done Arnie takes one plate off each side of the bar to lighten the load…

“5 more reps! Do it now!”

Shit. You’re tired. You’re sweating. You’re chest and triceps are pumped full of blood to the point of being useless.

But hey, Arnie said to do it, so you’re gonna do it!

5 more painful grinding reps go by in the haze of exhaustion and with a little help from Mr Olympia.

That’s set one complete.

4 more sets to go.

Then repeat the process on 5 more carefully selected exercises to build the chest of a Champion.

* * *

If you’ll forgive the storytelling approach to introduce this article you’ll be able to see what I’m getting at here.

Training should be tough. It should feel as though you can’t go on, yet, somehow you do.

I speak to a lot of men & women who want to get in shape and what I hear is ALWAYS the same.

“I’m not happy with my level of body fat”

“I want my chest to be leaner and stick out more”

“I’m losing deals at work because I don’t have the confidence to look the other guy square in the eye, shake his hand HARD and know I’m a bad ass”

I want you to know that it is SIMPLE to build a great looking body. All you have to do is train the same movements over and over again focusing on getting stronger.

The first thing you need to understand are the main human that need to be improved, strengthened and perfected.

Once you start working on these movements you’ll notice immediate improvements in your body shape, muscle size and see a much leaner stomach & chest staring back at you in the mirror.

THE 5 HUMAN MOVEMENTS:

SQUAT

PUSH

PULL

HINGE

CARRY

The 5 human movements are the only ways that the body can move. What you need to do is take all of your exercises from these categories and progressively improve your performance in each.

So here are a few examples of exercises that come under each category:

SQUAT:

Lunge, front squat, box squat, back squat, safety bar squat, leg press, split-squat, 1-legged squat.

PUSH:

Press-ups, bench press, overhead press, floor press, board press, dips.

PULL:

Pull-ups, inverted row, lat pulldown, 1-arm row, seated row, hand-over-hand rope pulling, tug of war.

HINGE:

Deadlift, kettlebell swing, 1-leg deadlift, Romanian deadlift, jump shrugs.

CARRY:

Farmers walk, yoke carry, keg carry, sled dragging, lorry pulling, sandbag carry.

HOW TO TRAIN THEM…

Now the process of training here is VERY simple.

Just pick ONE exercise from each category and put them into the SAME workout 3 days each week.

For example:

Press-Ups
Pull-ups
Front Squat
Romanian Deadlift
Farmers Walk

Now pair up one lower body movement with one upper body movement:

Press-ups with Romanian Deadlift

Pull-ups with Front Squat

Then perform the carry by itself at the end.

Let’s recap what you’ve learned so far today:

1) You understand just how hard you have to train (like Arnold in 1975)

2) You understand WHY you are training (more confidence, get leaner, look better)

3) You understand WHAT exercises you should train using the 5 human movements

4) You understand that you are going to train all movements on the SAME workout, 3 times each week.

Now finally all you have to do is pick a method of sets/reps and GET ON WITH IT!

Here are a few REALLY EFFECTIVE METHODS to choose from:

5 sets x 5 reps

10sets x 3 reps

5 sets x 10 reps

Or just mix and match your own method.

A NOTE ABOUT CARRYS….

For the carrys you need to move the weight for DISTANCE not for reps. So what I recommend is a minimum of 3 sets of 40m.

You can have some fun with the carries and go balls to the wall with 1-3 sets of maximum distance. Use the carry as the icing on the cake, a bit of conditioning and a little competitiveness with your training partner.

So you’ve learned all about training; the effort required, the movements required, the amount of workouts required, the sets/reps required.

With that we will conclude PART ONE.

Until part two, train hard!

Anthony Shaw

Head Strength and Conditioning Coach

Raw Strength Gym, Birchwood Park, Warrington.

3 Secrets to Dramatic & Lasting Body Transformations: PART ONE