THE BIG SQUEE-E-ZE BY FRANK ROBERSON 2003 NPC NATIONAL HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION Use this training technique and you’ll scream like a demon from pain and gains A workout, for me, is a terrible thought.When I know that one is coming up, my palms sweat, my skin crawls and my heart pounds. When I walk into the gym, I’m heading into the belly of the beast. Nothing short of physical torture and mental agony awaits, and it’s all self-inflicted. My workouts aren’t limited by gutless rationality. When it comes to bio-mechanical research and studies proving that this angle or this proper movement is the best way to stimulate certain muscle fibres, you can put them where the sun don’t shine. They sure won’t be used by me. I want to see how far beyond sanity I can take myself. I want to reach the dark side. I want to see the demons. My fiancee and training partner, Mary Alcorn, and I have had to invent some pretty nutty rep schemes to make that journey, but I love it when I get there. Through five-second squeeze reps, my muscles are fried, my whole body is pressurised skintight from the pump, and my vascularity threatens to burst its pipes. In fact, during precontest, beginning four weeks out, I use five-second squeeze reps for every muscle group. When doing pulley rows for back, I do a full lat spread during the forward movement, as if I’m rowing a boat. At the ultimate extension, I stop, then pull all the way back, deep into my abs, and squeeze that contraction as hard as I can for five seconds. I do this during every rep — and it’s a full five-second squeeze, not four and a half — and I squeeze harder every second. There’s no way around it; I’m not doing the counting — Alcorn is. Normally, when I build a burn, I can at least keep moving, but with these, I’m squeezing every muscle fibre way past its firing limits. They have no chance to relax and contract again. Instead, the muscle freezes in one position by cramping up solid. It’s unbearable. I can’t catch my breath and I only feel fire, but I don’t dare release, or Alcorn will make me start again. Every second is an eternity. In the middle of a set, I find myself counting backwards, hoping it will make the pain finite. My breathing comes in desperate gasps, and I hear myself wheezing, “Only three more to go . . . two more . . . one . . . ,” but Alcorn is right there, stretching out each second. She doesn’t yell; she just quietly says, “You can do it, you can do it. Hold it . . . hold it . . . ho-o-o-ld it . . . squee-e-e-e-ze.” That’s when the lion comes out, and I growl — loud. If I don’t growl, she says, “You owe me five more next time.” When I know those five are coming — oh, my goodness — I’m shaking. During every exercise, for every bodypart, I use the five-second squeezes. For example, for back, I use them for bent rows, T-bar rows and lat pulldowns. However, I alternate sets, using a very narrow grip with thumbs touching for one set and a close underhand reverse grip for the next set, for a total of four sets (two sets with each grip) per exercise. For bent rows, I lower the bar to arms’ length, so my lats are fully extended. When I pull, I blow out all my air and pull with my lower back muscles, bringing my elbows to the rear. I try to bury the bar as far up into my abdominals as possible, in order to pop out my Christmas tree. That’s the position at which the lower back muscles optimally pull the rhomboid muscle, which is connected to the lats. That’s the point when I start the five-second squeeze and everything is tightened. It makes me roar so loud the walls shake, but it shreds everything: my glutes, my lats, my entire back, my Christmas tree . . . and my larynx. For my quad workout, I use a 20-rep pulse-set variation of the five-second squeeze. For squats, I lower myself until my thighs are parallel to the floor and then start pulsing my reps: five quick bursts of power. I then shoot upward as hard as I can. I do five full reps, then go down and do five more pulses, shoot up and do five more full reps — and that equals 20 reps. I do four sets of those. While I pulse, I keep constant tension on all the muscle fibres. For leg presses and hack squats, I do the same thing: pulse five times at the bottom, then explode up for five full reps, for a total of four sets. During leg presses, I shoot up so hard that the platform is thrown above my toes at the top. For hack squats, I explode up so hard that I lift up onto my toes. I’ve incorporated techniques from my experiences as a football player and a boxer into my bodybuilding workouts. At the bottom of these movements, when maximum tension is on my quads, they’re so tight that you can see the muscle fibres twitching. They’re screaming, “Hey, what are we doing down here for so long?” What I’m doing is frying those small quad fibres to a crisp, and it works. My front quads are more striated than ever, and I’m roaring so loud from the ripping pain that everyone in the gym cowers in the corner. FLEX