Big Muscles Forever

A nice article by Armand Tanny. For more on Armand and a photo check my blog from June 6th, 2009. Armand discusses cheating in order to bypass the weak links in a movement. Armand list most of the Weider Muscle Building Principles in the article which include: The Cheating Principle, Super Sets, Tri-Sets, Forced Reps, Peak Contraction, Quality Training, Mass-Density concept, Power Principle, Split Routine, Inter-Set Relaxation, Super Speed Principle, Reverse-Lift Anti-Gravity Principle, Mental Awareness Principle, Stop-And-Start Principle, Concentration, Single Exercise, Full flexibility, Sustained Peak Contraction, Warm Up, and Tapering Off.

Armand sums up the article with the following, “Cheating allows you to handle heavy weights to make your muscles work harder without let-up. Weak links in exercise motions are bypassed. heavy loads are quickly shifted to major muscles more able to do the work.”

This was a heavy leg routine by successful newcomer Bob Birdsong. He switched to a double split routine where he would do the following routine three times a week in the afternoon. Here is Bob’s routine. Start off with 2 sets of leg extensions with 50 pounds for 15-20 reps. Then do a third set with 75 pounds for fifteen reps. This is then followed by 100 pounds X 15 and then 150 pounds X 12-15 for a total of five sets.

The  second exercise is the squat starting out with 2 sets of 10 reps with 225 pounds. Next you do 1 set with 275 pounds for 10 reps. The 4th set is done with 325 pounds for 8-10 reps. Set 5 is performed with 375 pounds for 8-10 reps. Five sets total for the squat.

Next up is the leg press. The first set is performed with 250 pounds for 15 reps. Then perform the 2nd set with 300 pounds for 15 reps. The 3rd set is 350X15 and 450X15 for the fourth set. The fifth and final set is done with between 550-650 pounds for 12-15 reps.

The final exercise is the leg curl. do 5 sets of 15 reps with the following poundage; 50 ,50, 75, 95, 95.

Twenty sets of intense exercise with the basics make for a champion routine.

Part of the problem with my blog’s format is that a series like this one will be out of order or incomplete. All you really need to know is that Joe Weider did not approve of Nautilus Machines. He felt that some wrong information was being put out there and that not even one champion was the result of Nautilus training.

Joe Weider stated that Arthur Jones had too much of a my way or the highway attitude when discussing exercise. Arthur Jones on the other side, through his writings, thought that unless something was controlled by Weider he wasn’t going to get a good recommendation.

For more information on Joe Weider stay tuned to this blog. For more information on Arthur Jones visit the following website:http://arthurjonesexercise.com. I like Arthur Jones but his reading is not for the faint of heart .

This is another hot edition with Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover. The issue starts out with an interesting article by Joe Weider explaining why the publishing of Muscle Builder/Power has been sporadic. If you are an old time Weider fan this might be interesting, if not you might want to compare the information written in 1975 with the current state of affairs in print publishing.

Joe Weider starts the article by stating Muscle Builder has come out faithfully since 1975 while famous magazines like Life, Look, Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post have gone out of business. An energy crisis (remember that, I do) lead to a paper shortage. Then to top that off Weider and Company moved to California. To top things off key people such as Bill Starr and Ricky Wayne got opportunities they could not refuse elsewhere. But Weider retooled.

Joe Weider’s retooling led to the hiring of George Kaye, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, Frank Zane and Ken Waller. Not a bad crew! All this meant that in the next 24 months we were going to get 24 editions of Muscle Builder/Power, according to Joe Weider. This did not happen. However………

Things did better. The rest of 1975 showed a total of 7 issues, which was an improvement. 1976 was better yet and it got better from there. I don’t know about you but part of the excitement in those days was finally getting the darn magazine in the mail like a long lost friend or seeing it for a moment on the news stand.

A big thank you to John Balik for taking me down memory lane again with his nice article on Zabo Koszewski and Armand Tanny.

I can remember the first time I saw Zabo. It was in either a 1970 or 1971 issue of Muscle Builder/Power. He had competed in a contest at the age of either 46 or 48 and won best abs while looking great overall. I thought that was an ancient age to be competing. Since I am now 56 I guess it wasn’t so ancient :). After that initial exsposure to Zabo I would usually see him photographed with dark shades and a shirt on. He looked like the coolest cat in California. During this same time period I had the good fortune to also meet through either Muscle Builder/Power or Mr. America, Armand Tanny.

As I was getting hooked on bodybuilding I remember reading an article about Armand Tanny. He was in Hawaii, I believe, scuba diving. The guy at this time was fifty something and looked great. As a new bodybuilder this was great seeing Zabo and Tanny training into their later years. Armand had some great stories and to me was another bodybuilding celebrity. Armand wrote about Zabo Koszewski, Dave Draper, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Zane and others of that era with style

John Balik’s article ends by saying that Zabo visited his old friend Armand in a nursing home and both wound up in the big gym in the sky ten days apart. Zabo was 84 and Armand was 90. That’s what I call big muscles forever.

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