The Real Secret to Packing On Muscle Mass

We’re not going to beat around the bush and try to make you guess the real secret to adding loads of muscle. The answer is simple to say, not so simple to apply: intensity. Yep, gut-busting, all-out hard work in the gym—and that requires a constant infusion of motivation.

You’ve probably heard the stories of Arnold visualizing his biceps as jagged mountain peaks as he trained them. He pictured other bodyparts as bigger than life, exploding with extreme growth during his workouts as well. He was a true master at dialed-in mind-to-muscle effort.

John Balik, IRON MAN publisher and a man who lived and trained with Arnold back in the ’70s, describes those sessions: “I’ve seen others use more weight or do more reps than Arnold, but I’ve never seen anyone train with such all-out ferocious, focused intensity.”

As Balik says, you have to have the will and the want, and you must be able to channel it into every set of every workout. A psyched training partner can help. Arthur Jones, the creator of Nautilus machines, was a taskmaster who could drive trainees to extraordinary gains. As he put it, “If you do 10 repetitions of an exercise when you could’ve done 12, you may as well stay in the parking lot!” That’s why he drove his trainees to 100 percent effort on every set.

For example, back in 1970 Jones trained Casey Viator using quick-but-brutal full-body Nautilus workouts. Viator was gunning for the coveted Mr. America title. With Jones supervising and driving him at every workout, Casey, at 19, became the youngest winner of that prestigious contest. That was after only five months of all-out Jones-inspired muscle assaults.

As we discuss in Chapter 3 of The X-traordinary Size Surge Workout, Jones was also the one who trained with Casey during the Colorado Experiment, in which Casey gained 60 pounds of muscle in four weeks. Much of those results can be attributed to Jones’ relentless “motivation”—rumor has it he carried a loaded pistol to ensure that Casey cranked out as many reps as possible. Obviously, working with all-out, take-no-prisoners intensity during every session was the key. They trained only three days a week for one month to build the muscle.

In our camp, Jonathan is a prime example of intensity for immensity. His becoming reinspired to train is a big reason he was able to pack on 20 pounds of muscle in 10 weeks with the Size Surge program in the 1990s. As he explains in Chapter 1, Revving Up for Radical Results, he had all but given up on building muscle and was “going through the motions” on a three-days-per-week program. He wasn’t making any gains and was just coasting until…

“I got a job in the product division at IRON MAN magazine and met Steve Holman, editor in chief. He told me he was developing a program that could add pounds of muscle to just about anyone’s frame in 10 weeks. That got me curious and excited! I convinced Steve to let me be the guinea pig for the Size Surge program. When he agreed, I felt a wave of motivation unlike any I’d ever felt before.”

Jonathan rode that wave of motivation through five weeks, pulled back for one week to recharge, then went all out again with an altered full-range workout program for four more weeks. By week 10 he’d achieved results that many would deem impossible without steroids. He did it drug-free and with very few supplements. For more info and his strength stats and before and after photos, visit www.SizeSurgeWorkout.com.

Interesting that Jonathan’s workload in the gym wasn’t that different before he started the Size Surge program—he was training three days a week for about an hour per workout. What changed was his mind-set. Before his brain told his body that he was coasting, there was no fire. Once he got motivated and tore into the Size Surge workouts, his mind shifted to mega muscle—and his intensity skyrocketed!

The point is, you must do everything possible to keep your motivation running red hot. Get an inspired training partner. If that’s out of the question, at least continue to explore the best ways to build muscle. So read up, get excited, and continually tweak your workouts with new ideas and techniques to keep your mind and muscles peaked.

—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com