Not all of the bodybuilding champions featured in the opening credits appear on every tape
of the Weeder System. Watch the complete set of 10 tapes to see all your favorite Weeder Physique stars.
All of the bodybuilding champions featured on every tape of the Weeder System. Watch the complete set of 10 tapes to see all your favorite Weeder Physique stars.
The Weeder Principle of the Split System is the most important principle in your bodybuilding program because without an understanding in the application of the Weeder Split System, you'll never be able to achieve a symmetrical and well proportioned body.
There are hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, men and women, working out in gyms around the world. But very few of them look like bodybuilders. Why? Well, certainly genetics has something to do with it. Some people are just more physically talented than others when it comes to building muscle.
But another reason is simply this. To look like a bodybuilder, you need to train like a bodybuilder. Simply lifting weights without an understanding of what kind of program you need to achieve your goals just doesn't work.
If just lifting heavy and working hard were all it took, then a ditch digger or construction worker would end up winning the Mr. Olympia contest.
Hi, I'm Bob Paris. Now when you're in the gym, intensity and hard work are very important, but it's not enough just to work hard. You need to learn to work smart also. You should be going for an intensity of effort in the gym and also an intensity of effect.
The exercises that you're doing should have the most maximized effect on the muscles themselves. It's not just enough to push the weight. You have to know how the body part is actually working to have the most effective outcome of the exercise.
When we look at the sport of bodybuilding, it's very similar to other sports. If you want to become a great runner, you run. If you want to become a great cyclist, you ride a bicycle. If you want to look like a bodybuilder, you need to train like a bodybuilder. You need to train in a sport-specific manner.
The specificity of training means that the body responds and adapts very specifically to the kind of workout you put it through, much more specifically than you think. That's why different sports, from sprinting to marathon running to gymnastics to shot footing, all require very different kinds of training and physical preparation.
And that's why it's so difficult to do well in multi-event sports like the decathlon or heptathlon, and why there are so few great athletes who compete successfully in more than one sport at the highest levels.
In this sense, your body reacts to training like a computer. When you're training, you're sending a specific program to the central nervous system, and anybody that's worked with a computer can tell you that a computer will respond only to specific instructions.
Your body is the same way. It doesn't care what you're trying to do. It only reacts to exercises specifically as they are applied.
Over the past 50 years or so, bodybuilders have learned, largely by trial and error, what kind of workout the muscles of the body best respond to, and the proof that they've discovered something really new is the way they look. No human beings in all of history, male or female, have developed the kind of physique you see on stage at a top professional bodybuilding contest.
Critics of the sport sometimes claim that this incredible advancement in the ability of human beings to develop their lean body structure is the result of improved nutrition, anabolic drugs, or simply the fact that there are more bodybuilders working out more seriously than ever before.
But it's really the type of training that you'll learn from the Weeder system that has made the difference. The modern bodybuilding workout was developed to address the natural, genetically determined capacity of the body to respond to the muscle training, the physiological programming that is inherent in the neuromuscular system itself. It's the most effective and efficient form of muscle training ever conceived.
So if you're going in the gym to develop your lean body structure, being a competitor or not, why do it any other way? After all, the body is a homeostatic organism. That means that it tends to resist change, whether the change is good or bad. That's why people can abuse their bodies for such a long period of time before they actually see serious damage.
So it follows that to make dramatic improvements in your physical structure, you have to find some way to force your body to change. You have to subject it to a program that's so intense and effective that it has no choice but to respond. And that's what bodybuilding type weight training is all about.
The basis of any kind of weight training is the principle of progressive resistance. That is, when you take a significant amount of resistance and work your muscles against it. While using this resistance, your muscles will tend to get stronger and bigger. As your muscles get bigger and stronger, you have to start slapping on more weight to build more muscle size. This is the Weeder principle of progressive resistance. It's a good principle. It's a smart principle. Use it.
There's a Greek myth that goes back thousands of years which describes the process exactly. Milos of Crotona is said to have begun picking up and lifting a young calf every day. As the calf grew larger and heavier, he continued this practice and therefore grew progressively stronger to the point where he was still able to lift the animal when it became a full grown bull. This is exactly what you do with bodybuilding type weight training. Only instead of hefting farm animals, you use barbells, dumbbells and various types of machines to provide the necessary resistance.
The idea of progressive resistance is that the muscle adapts as a greater load is put on that muscle during the time of doing resistance training. Progressive resistance means either increasing the intensity in one of two ways. Either a greater workload by the number of repetitions or greater workload by the number of pounds that are placed on a bar or on the piece of equipment.
We have muscles because we live in a gravity well. Our muscles allow us to overcome the force of gravity and move around the surface of the planet. In addition to gravity, muscles also adapt to the kinds of loads we subject them to.
For example, if you have a 10 horsepower motor and you subject it to a 12 horsepower load, it'll burn out. However, subject the equivalent 10 horsepower muscle to a 12 horsepower load and you eventually get a 12 horsepower muscle.
The key to progress in bodybuilding is to overload the muscle just enough to cause it to grow but not enough to cause injury and to continue to increase the amount of load on a regular basis as the muscle gets bigger and stronger.
There are basically two types of muscle fiber. Red, aerobic fiber, is long distance endurance fiber capable of contracting over and over for long periods of time.
White anaerobic fiber, on the other hand, is short duration sprint fiber lacking in endurance but is 22% larger than red fiber and capable of generating much more power.
Everybody has some of both types of fiber in their bodies, although the amount of fibers and the distribution of fiber types in various muscles of the body varies tremendously from individual to individual.
And it's the kind of fiber that predominates in the body that largely determines what kind of performance that body is best suited for.
Just think of the difference between a muscular sprinter and a lean endurance runner. Both types of fiber can be made bigger and stronger or hypertrophied by weight training and top bodybuilders seem to need a mixture of both fiber types in order to be successful.
If a bodybuilder is too mesomorphic, has too much thick white fiber, he or she may be too blocky and lack aesthetics to win bodybuilding contests. They may be better suited perhaps to something like weightlifting.
If a bodybuilder is too ectomorphic, has too much lean red fiber, he or she may excel in aesthetics but have trouble building sufficient mass.
Incidentally, there is more to muscle size, shape, and volume than muscle fibers. Muscle cells are complex and the bodybuilding look also involves things like mitochondrial mass, the size of the internal organs of the cells that produce energy, glycogenation, the amount of carbohydrate energy stored within the cell, the blood supply to the muscle, and water.
Did you know that muscles are about 75% water?
The basic unit in bodybuilding training is the repetition. Now a repetition is made up of two key points. It's basically going to be the full extension of the muscle when the muscle is fully stretched out and the full contraction of the muscle when the muscle is bunched up and is pulled together and shortened.
So a repetition is going to be going back and forth between that extension and that contraction on every single body part. Now repetitions combined together constitute a set.
So a set, let's say in your workout, you are supposed to do a set of 12 repetitions. What you would be doing is 12 times in a row be going from this contraction position to the extension position back and forth until you get to 12 and that would constitute a set of the exercise.
A basic set in bodybuilding usually consists of 8 to 12 repetitions. Why this number? Trial and error experience in some independent scientific research has shown that the muscle tends to grow best when subjected to about 70 to 75% of its one rep maximum strength.
The maximum amount of weight the muscles can lift in that exercise one time and when you do as many sets as you can with this amount of weight you end up doing somewhere from 8 to 12 reps.
Therefore, as you begin bodybuilding training with the Weeder system, pick a weight for any exercise that lets you do at least 8 repetitions but not so light you can do more than 12.
An exercise consists of a group of sets. This too can vary but generally the Weeder system recommends from 3 to 5 sets of any exercise and from 12 to 16 sets for any body part with a few less for some body parts and certain kinds of training and a few more for others.
In bodybuilding training you can end up resting for a shorter or longer period of time depending on what kind of set you are doing.
For mass training for example in tape 7 you rest for several minutes. Using certain intensity techniques in tape 9 you may not rest at all between sets.
But for the purposes of getting started with the Weeder system workouts you should rest from 30 to 60 seconds between sets or if you're training with a workout partner do your set, rest while your partner does their set, then jump back in and do your next set.
You usually want to do somewhere between 8 and 12 or 15 repetitions in a set.
So it is important to increase the weight because that's definitely putting a different type of pressure that the body has to respond to.
In the early days of the sport bodybuilders trained like weightlifters training the whole body three times per week but they soon found out that you can't train the whole body in one workout and still have sufficient intensity for all the body parts.
So eventually they began following a system which Joe Weeder called the split system of training in which only part of the body is trained at any given workout and the entire body is trained over a period of days.
The split system of training takes several forms.
One of the most popular types of training schedule is three days on, one day off.
This is one example.
Day one, chest, shoulders, triceps, calves, abs.
Day two, back, biceps, forearms, calves, abs.
On the third day, thighs, hamstrings, abs.
And on day four, rest.
And this is an example of a workout arranged over a four-day period.
Day one, chest, triceps, abs.
Day two, back, biceps, forearms, calves.
Day three, thighs, hamstrings, abs.
And on day four, shoulders, and calves. And on the fifth day, you rest.
Now of course you're not a machine, so you want to make sure you get plenty of rest.
If you need a day off, don't feel bad about taking that extra day off.
Your recovery time is just as important as going in the gym and training hard.
Overtraining can be devastating to your workout.
It can cause an injury, so it's very important to train hard,
but take that extra day of rest if you need it.
Remember that overtraining, pushing your body too hard, increases your chances of injury.
Therefore, you can add an extra rest day at any point in your workout program.
Or if you're especially tired, try taking two days' rest at the end of your three-day routine or your four-day routine.
The point is, the more you're able to rest and recover,
the stronger you'll be in your workouts and the better your body will respond.
With the double split training system, you train twice a day instead of once.
Training a major body part in the morning and doing detail work or cardiovascular training in the second workout.
Using this system, you're actually doing less rather than more,
because you're doing much of the work you'd normally do in one training session and dividing it into two.
Here's an example.
Day one, AM, chest, shoulders, PM, triceps, calves, abs.
Day two, AM, back, biceps, PM, forearms, calves, abs.
Day three, AM, thighs, hamstrings, PM, abs.
And on the fourth day, rest.
It takes me four days to cover the full body.
I train chest and biceps on day one.
On day two, I train legs.
And if you didn't notice, I train chest and biceps on day one, which is part of, you know, upper body.
So then on day two, I'm covering legs.
So while I'm training legs, my upper body is getting a day of rest.
Day three, I go to shoulders and triceps.
So I'm back to my upper body again.
And day four, I train back.
And day five is my day off.
And then I start over again.
I work with a split system.
I split my body over four days so that after my fourth day, I finished my whole body training.
You know, when I started training, I was 16 years of age.
So obviously, I started on a three times a week schedule.
I would do one exercise per muscle group, probably on a 10, 8, 6 basis.
You know, 10 reps the first, 8 reps the same poundage, and 6 on the principle that manager was diminishing.
Of course, it wasn't, but that's the way I thought, that manager was diminishing.
So I would do 10, 8, and 6.
And as I progressed, then I started to realize that if I wanted to do more work and more overloading,
I would have to work on split routines.
So I would kind of split the body into two parts.
So was this training twice a day or just once?
No, this is once a day.
The only time I trained twice a day was three weeks before my first national contest, Mr. Britain.
I'd just finished my business administration degree, and I had three weeks to train.
And so for three weeks, I trained morning and night.
I trained twice a day.
I'll do a heavy and a light system, like three days on, one day off.
And I'll go heavy on the first cycle, and then I'll go light for the next body part,
and vice versa. It goes like that, the fourth day being my off day.
I think all bodybuilders in general know that rule, and they use that.
You hear all sorts of theories about how to train for cuts and definition,
or train for tone rather than building.
Most of these ideas don't really conform to how the body actually works.
However, you can get different responses from the body depending on which muscles you're training,
how many muscles you're training in one exercise,
what kind of exercises you do,
what kind of equipment you use,
and what kind of intensity techniques you employ.
In general, you build mass most effectively by doing two-joint exercises,
exercises that involve the movement of two joints rather than one,
doing exercises that use two joints rather than one,
doing exercises that use a lot of muscles rather than working smaller areas in isolation,
training with three weights, barbells and dumbbells, rather than machines or cables,
and using the kind of mass-building techniques that are described in detail in Tape 7.
Quality training for things like definition, separation between muscles,
and the development of the small muscles generally results from doing one-joint exercises,
training smaller muscles or muscle groups in isolation,
using a variety of free weights, machines and cables,
and using as many of the Weider intensity principles such as full range of motion,
peak contraction,
traction, supersetting, and others detailed in Tape 9.
And when you combine effective mass training with quality training based on the Weider intensity principles,
the result is a complete and balanced body-building physique.
You generally build muscle more easily with free weights than with machines
because the body responds to something that is heavy more fully than resistance, which is merely hard.
In fact, our bodies have evolved over millions of years to recognize and deal with weight.
But little in our evolutionary history has prepared the body
for pre-existing and pre-experimental training.
When you lift a free weight against the force of gravity,
not only do you use the specific muscles involved in the lift,
but the rest of the body gets involved as well.
The joints have to work to balance and control the weight,
and the very strength of the muscles that are involved in the lift
is what makes the body so powerful.
The rest of the body gets involved as well. The joints have to work to balance and control the weight,
and the various stabilizer muscles associated with the joint come under stress as well.
When you exercise with many machines, there's no need to stabilize,
no need for the ligaments of the joints to adapt,
and you tend to work only the muscle involved in that specific movement,
not the associated stabilizer muscles.
This results in much less adaptation and, in fact, can be dangerous
because you've developed certain muscles in a group out of proportion to the others.
So when it comes to basic mass and strength development, free weights are far superior.
I myself am a firm believer of free weights, heavy free weights for building mass,
lower repetitions, not too low where you're just going to pump out four or five and then just drop the weight.
You want heavy weights and good repetitions, good muscle control, and plenty of protein to build that mass with.
Free weights, you know, I mean, free weights are basic heavy movements is the way I consider it.
That's what I've always used, basic heavy movements to build size, not to get into content shape per se,
but you have to have the frame there to carve it out.
In my opinion, it's a lot better to use a free weight than using a machine in general
because the free weights, your body responds a lot better to your free weight
because it's like you can keep your natural movements in and the body is built to use free weights, not to use machines.
So your body responds a lot better, plus your nervous system and everything is very much in action.
So your body's growth is much more stimulated than using a machine.
But machines and cables can also be valuable.
They work well when you want to isolate specific areas of the body.
They are also effective when you're doing higher rep training,
in which the stress of an individual repetition is not as important as the cumulative effect of a number of repetitions.
For example, supersets, trisets, and giantsets, as described in Tape 9.
Exercise machines are also essential when resistance training is being used to rehabilitate injuries, as described in Tape 10.
When you're recovering from an injury, having the injured area securely stabilized as you build up its strength
is one of the keys to successful rehabilitation.
You still should use machines maybe to isolate some muscle groups and altogether makes the whole package, so you need it both.
But it's not the hardware development that's created the tremendous progress in our ability to develop the body.
It's the software, the training principles and techniques, which you'll learn about as part of the Weeder system.
Later tapes will deal with all sorts of advanced Weeder intensity principles,
but there are certain basic principles that you should learn and employ right from the beginning.
The first is full range of motion.
During each of your exercises, you need to go from the full extension of the muscle to the full contraction and back.
Don't settle for working in a partial range of motion.
At the top of the movement, try pausing and squeezing the muscle a little harder to obtain a full peak contraction.
Second, control the weight.
Never throw a weight around. Don't get careless.
Just learn to concentrate and keep total control of the weight in every rep of every set.
Third, no cheating.
Cheating in weight training refers to using extra muscles or techniques like swinging the weight up using inertia to help perform the lift.
Instead, lift and lower the weight using the specific muscles involved in that lift with no help from other muscles and no cheating.
I don't cheat. I don't use cheating principles.
Sometimes I will when I'm weaker and I'm dieting and I'm not feeling really energy.
I'll need to cheat a little bit because I don't have a trainer or someone that helps me.
Fourth, continuous tension.
When you lift or lower a weight, you should feel your muscles working smoothly throughout the whole range of motion.
This means not only lifting the weight under control to a position of peak contraction but lowering the weight under control as well rather than letting it drop.
Throughout the movement, you keep the tension on that body part so you never really lock out
because a lot of times when you lock out, you know, you could stay in that position for quite some time. There's no pain there.
So what you want to do is keep the tension on that body part.
Fifth, keeping the mind and the muscle.
Remember, you're training muscles, not lifting weights.
Don't think about the weight. Think about the muscle and what it's doing.
It's very important to mentally prepare yourself before going to a gym for a workout.
If you're going to a gym to fraternize, then I wouldn't worry about mentally preparing yourself.
But when you go to a gym to work out, which is what you should be doing, you have to concentrate especially on the muscle that you're working.
There's a mind-muscle link there where your body is going to react the way your mind feels.
If you feel up for a workout, then you're going to get a great workout.
If you feel a lack of days to go and you don't really want to go to the gym, then there's no way you're going to get a good workout.
So mentally preparing for a workout is just as important as stretching or anything else you would do to get ready.
And finally, training to failure.
Failure in a bodybuilding set is not the same as exhaustion.
It means you've gotten to the point where you can't do one more rep with that particular weight in that set.
It takes more effort to stop and think about each and every repetition than it does to just say,
okay, I'm going to do 12 repetitions with this super heavy weight, and all you're thinking about is moving that weight.
You're not thinking about, let's say, if you're doing squats, thinking about your quadriceps, okay,
the first repetition and thinking about the movement on the way up and the movement going down.
And when you're really thinking about it, then the chances of injury are slim, you know,
and the chances of that muscle responding is even better because you're really concentrating.
So I think that that's what the key is, and that's what's most important.
Bodybuilding, when it's done properly, involves learning a lot of skills.
So it's going to pay for your success to learn those skills properly from the very beginning.
Here is a summation of the basic principles and training methods you've learned about in this tape.
Train smart as well as hard.
Bodybuilding-type weight training is a very specific and intense method of changing the basic muscle structure of the body,
and the key to success in bodybuilding training is utilizing all of the Weider training principles.
Utilize the progressive resistance training principle.
To make your muscles grow bigger and stronger, you have to contract them against the appropriate amount of weight.
But as they adapt and begin to grow, that weight becomes too light to cause continued adaptation,
and the muscles stop responding.
At that point, you add weight to the exercise to challenge the muscles further
and continue to add weight on a progressive basis to keep pace with the continuing development of your muscle structure.
Do from 8 to 12 repetitions in most of your sets.
Bodybuilders aren't weightlifters and shouldn't use the weight that allows them to do too few sets.
They aren't endurance athletes either and shouldn't do very high repetitions in most of their training.
Bodybuilders have learned that a muscle responds best to an amount of resistance equal to about 70 to 75 percent of its one rep maximum strength.
Using this amount of weight generally allows you to do from 8 to 12 reps in any given set.
Do from 3 to 5 sets per exercise, 12 to 16 sets per body part.
Too few sets and the muscles may get big but will lack detail.
Too many sets will limit the amount of size and strength you can achieve
and increase your risk of injury through over training.
Rest about 30 seconds to one minute between sets.
This gives you enough recovery time to allow you to generate sufficient intensity in your next set,
but is not so long that your training pace becomes too sluggish.
Take advantage of the Weeder Split System Principle.
For most bodybuilders, a schedule of three days training followed by one day rest seems to work the best,
although some prefer using a four day on, one day off split instead.
Base your training program on the use of free weights.
The body responds best to the resistance provided by free weights,
but the muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons are forced to cope with the force of gravity,
so the most effective bodybuilding training program utilizes about two-thirds free weights
versus one-third cables and machines.
Train with full range of motion repetitions.
For maximum quality and development, do each repetition through the fullest range of motion you can achieve comfortably,
from a position of full extension to that of full contraction.
Do not, however, overstretch the structures involved or you could increase the risk of training injury.
Train with continuous tension.
You should feel the muscle working continuously against the resistance throughout the range of motion of the exercise.
Lift the weight under full control and lower it under full control.
This helps you to avoid cheating, using inertia to help throw the weight up
and the mistake of letting the weight drop during the negative part of the exercise.
Keep your mind in the muscle.
Learn to feel what muscles are working in any exercise and concentrate on exactly what they are doing at all times.
Technique is of little use without feel and you develop feel in bodybuilding training
by focusing your attention on your muscles rather than on the weight they're lifting.
Remember, you're training muscle, not lifting weights,
so keep your mind in the muscle at all times for the maximum effective workouts.
Train to momentary muscular failure.
Except when you're doing something like power training as described in Tape 7, you should train to failure in each set.
Training to failure actually means training to momentary muscular failure
and is not the same as working to total exhaustion.
It simply means you keep going in that set using that weight until you can't do any more repetitions without stopping to rest.
The split system is one of the most important principles.
Without the utilization of the Weider split system in your workout,
you'll never be able to achieve a symmetrical, proportionate, muscular body.
Learn it, apply it, and you will develop the body that you always wanted.
Now that you know how to use the split system, let's put it to use.
In the next tape, my champions will show you how to apply the back exercises and the bicep exercises
that will broaden your back and give you bigger, more massive, and more muscular arms.
The key to me getting the best workout I possibly can every day is just to be very organized and to have some type of schedule.
You know, I can't go in one morning at 7 o'clock in the morning and the next day at 5 o'clock at night.
I like to train at the same time every day, and I like to eat like two hours before I train,
and my schedule has to be very organized in order for me to get the best workout possible.
I've developed my physique to the point to where I'm happy with it, you know, with the size and everything,
and I don't want to overpower anything.
So just to keep everything in balance, you know, more looking for the shape and balancing everything out now.
What I'd say to a woman just starting out in, let's say, weight training, and she doesn't really want to be a bodybuilder,
is that the key is consistency and basically to come in and learn the basic exercises.
Learn what exercises go for what body parts.
And the benefits that you get from a physical point of view, from a mental point of view, from a strength point of view,
even from an emotional point of view, goes into the full aspect of your life
and makes for better living and a better person and a better society.
Procrastination is the robber of opportunity. It's the great thief of time and opportunity.
You know, I think that there's no better time to do it than to do it right now.
You've got to be motivated. When I started bodybuilding, I weighed 114 pounds.
You know, I'm a diabetic. I'm five foot four and a half inches tall. I won Mr. Universe, Mr. America.
The only way that you can really do it is if you have it inside. You've got to want it.
There's no excuse of being tired or sick or having a cold. You have to do it or get out.
You've got to pay attention to recuperation if you want muscle like this.
Yeah.
I've worked five years, 52 weeks a year, five days a week, three hours a day to build this body.
Thanks, Joe.