Build Muscle and Lose Fat Fast — the Old School Way
According to Dr. Ellington Darden
Old school bodybuilders look better
Compare bodybuilders from the last twenty years to those from the 70s and 80s. Who looks better?
Look up Frank Zane, Mike & Ray Mentzer, Casey Viator and Dorian Yates. Compare their physiques with the pot-bellied monsters winning competitions now.
I’m glad you agree — the ones from decades ago look way better — they look happier, healthier, have flatter midsections and better symmetry. These days at bodybuilding competitions, instead of the judges focusing their scoring on good proportions and symmetry like they did in the 70s and 80s, they now go for size even if it means ugliness creeps in.
Having spent thousands of hours studying the works of Dr. Ellington Darden, allow me to summarise for you how to get bigger muscles fast the old school way.
It worked then and it’ll work now. In the decades since, and in spite of the ‘latest’ science, most of which repeats variations of old and forgotten experiments to rediscover what’s already known, muscles are still built the same way: lift a heavy weight and keep pushing it until you can’t push no more will stimulate muscles to grow for most people. In spite of all the literature on the subject, there’s not much more to it than that besides good genetics, adequate rest and progressively eating more as your muscles grow (this last point being the most important for many).
The basic method
- Train your whole body. Do the upper and lower body in every workout.
- Train three to four times a week. 30–50 minutes per workout.
- Forget cardio — contrary to popular belief, it’s not necessary for burning fat.
- Lift weights. They should be heavy enough that you can only do one set of 8–12 repetitions. That’s right, research proves one set in proper form taken to momentary muscular failure is enough for maximal gains. That’s right — no extra sets. You shouldn’t be able to move the weight beyond the eighth to twelfth repetition.
- Lift slow to prevent injuries and to make the exercise harder.
- Eat less, eat healthy and don’t skip meals. Extra protein doesn’t matter as much as the fitness companies would have you believe. Dr Darden often recommends a nutritious diet (whole foods) with a 60:20:20 ratio of carbs:proteins:fats. That’s right, 60% carbs means they are not the enemy (and there’s so much evidence for this it beggars belief anyone thinks otherwise).
- Too much protein may make you fat. There’s an interview of Dr. Tim Spector on this very topic on the YouTube channel ‘Diary of a CEO’.
- Rest adequately: You’re training really hard, so rest often throughout the day to aid with the recovery process. One of Dr. Darden’s clients, a middle-aged woman, was doing everything right but wasn’t losing weight. After much questioning, he discovered she was getting very little sleep. He prescribed 9 hours a night, and only then did she start dropping the pounds like everybody else.
I understand this advice flies in the face of popular convention. If you still need to be convinced, then I recommend you read about the Colorado Experiment, Arthur Jones’s Nautilus Bulletins (https://highintensitystrength.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/nautilus-bulletin-2.pdf) or Ellington Darden’s books. Trust me, after reading any of those, you will come away more motivated to hit the gym than ever before!
Good luck!
