Tried Everything to Build Your Body?

I’ve heard it so many times: ‘No matter what I do or how hard I try, I just can’t seem to grow. Can you help me? I’ve tried everything!’ I understand how frustrating building muscle can be, but you haven’t tried everything. I don’t want to sound harsh. I just want to help you achieve your goals.

My biggest challenge is building my quadriceps. I’ve desperately searched for ways to stimulate more growth. Attaining the amount of quad muscle I want eludes me; nevertheless, I refuse to adopt the disempowering belief that I’ve tried everything.

How many different training methods, philosophies or strategies are there? When you consider the number of exercises available and your options in terms of sets, reps, weight and the different types of machines, you can see there are many possible routes. Add repetition cadence, exercise sequence, your degree of focus and the frequency with which you train, and the number of variables becomes staggering. When you include sound nutrition and supplementation practices, that number becomes astronomical. There must be thousands of different combinations, but the majority of us have tried a maximum of only 15 approaches, and that’s probably an overstatement.

Bodybuilding is about being the best you can be, and you won’t keep striving for that if you feel you’ve tried everything to improve’and failed. Your brain just doesn’t work that way.

Most people give up far too quickly. We’re too ready to compromise or give up on our dreams when the challenge becomes too difficult, and we lack the mental toughness to persevere.

In the bodybuilding world we’re conditioned to believe that it’s impossible to build our bodies to any significant degree without using drugs or being an extremely lucky genetic freak of nature. We hear that over and over again from our friends in the gym and from the self-appointed bodybuilding authorities. What’s a normal, intelligent person supposed to think after hearing all that garbage so often’especially after failing in his or her own efforts?

For years I’ve searched for the secret strategies that would improve my legs. After asking dozens of questions of qualified people and trying dozens of approaches, I finally achieved good separation in my legs when I’d been training for about nine years. Last year I was certain I’d found the magic formula when I was told to make sure I perform a full range of motion during all leg exercises. That technique did make some improvements’but not nearly enough to satisfy me.

I recently reunited with my first training partner, Rich Cunha, after more than a decade. He’s a highly successful personal trainer at an exclusive health club in San Francisco. Although he isn’t a national-caliber bodybuilder any longer, he’s extremely knowledgeable about training and bodybuilding.

I told him that my number-one priority is to build my quadriceps. After our first leg-training day he said, ‘Skip, your feet are awfully far apart when you squat. You’re very strong, but you’re performing your squats like a powerlifter. If you want to build your quads, I suggest you put your feet closer together.’

I tried putting my feet closer together on my next set of squats and immediately felt a major difference. After all the strategies I’d tried over the years, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to my foot position. That night, while surfing the Internet, I noticed a picture of a bodybuilder who had great quads and was squatting with his feet a lot closer than I ever have during my career.

It seems like such an insignificant change, doesn’t it? But isn’t that the way things often work in life? It’s often the little things that make the big difference. Are there a few of those ‘little’ things that you could be doing to get yourself growing? You won’t find them if you stop looking for them. They say Thomas Edison finally invented a working light bulb after 10,000 tries. It’s a good thing for us that he didn’t quit because he thought he’d already tried everything. Hang in there. Keep on trying different strategies. Who knows? Maybe the next one you try will launch you into a new level of massive growth. IM

Editor’s note: Visit Skip La Cour’s Mass Machine Web site at www.skiplacour.com. To get a copy of his free report ‘How To Look Like You Are On Steroids . . . Without Drugs, Excessive Hours in the Gym and Complicated Diets!’ call toll-free 1-800-799-5443.