Good Old Fashioned Weight Training

I've been incredibly sore all week. Part of this is from doing a race as my first run of the year. The other part is from picking up the intensity of my weight training workouts. In the intro to Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps Tony says, "(sic)It's just good old fashioned weight training 101 that's been lost today with a lot of gidgits and gadgets that don't work." It's not the other training doesn't work, exactly, but he's right in that many new age trainers subscribe to the "we used to do it all wrong so we must do things completely differently" mentality. This, of course, is nonesense. Sure, we've refined how to train over the years but some things are just as simple as ever. For examaple, if you get after it and pump a bit of iron you will get stronger.

To explain why in more depth, here's an article I just wrote.

Back & Biceps and C,S,& Ts are not exactly "weight training 101". These are kick-ass workouts that will have a deconditioned athlete begging for mercy by the second (of many many) rounds. The other day after Back & Bis my biceps were so pumped that I could barely wash my hair. Reed had a comment that explains just how sadistic these workouts are.

"You begin Chest, Shoulder, and Tris with those slow motion push-ups and get so pumped that you're dying on every set during the rest of the workout."

Certainly, one-arm push-ups or plyo push-ups, which follow each other near the end of this workout, take the cake for the cruelest single exercise in the P90X series. At this stage of this workout both of these sets are absolutely brutal. You even see Phil--who is generally just as strong as Tony--using about a quarter of Tony's weight on one of the latter exercises in this program and he's just dying. This shows the difference between doing this workout in its entirety and doing it in parts as Tony is.

pics: Arnold and Franco back in the day. Pumping iron did okay at sculpting these guys and, as Franco shows below, this muscle wasn't all just for show.