Do you want to improve your strength and get huge at the same time? Here's a training framework for the most productive workouts of your life.
A common goal of those new to bodybuilding is physical impressiveness in the form of huge slabs of muscle mass. As one continues training progressively, this goal tends to change. Aesthetics, shape, and condition become increasingly important as our physiques become larger and more muscular.

But while pure bodybuilding has always, it is thought, been about: proportion, shape, and adequate muscle size. What first draws most to the gym is the prospect of becoming as large as humanly possible.

If you suddenly require a new wardrobe, you sit in a regular-sized seat and it becomes less comfortable, and you regularly receive confirmation that you are "looking big, dude," then you know that pounding down excessive amounts of food and training all out is beginning to pay off big time.

But is this a worthy initial goal for the bodybuilding aspirant?

A long-running debate in bodybuilding circles has been; is bodybuilding about building the physique as large as possible or shaping it in line with the aesthetic ideals based upon proportionality and overall shape that were often adhered to during bodybuilding's earlier days (the '40s through to the late '70s)?

While "bulking up" and "cutting down" were standard bodybuilding practices in the years leading up to comparatively sophisticated and increasingly cutting edge training methodologies beginning around the late '80s, the criteria for bodybuilding competition during this period and going even further back to the '40s was all about beauty and symmetry over extreme size.

From the '90s to today, bodybuilding has more or less been a race to become huge. Those training purely for shape are as rare as those wanting to be mass monsters were back in '70s.

Of course, it could also be argued that drugs, better training methods, and superior quality nutrition (including supplementation) have made getting larger easier. However, the end result is often the same regardless of what degree of the above is implemented; size over aesthetics.

And this has encouraged more bodybuilders - from the beginning trainer to the advanced competitor - to train for mass, not shape.

The result is often witnessed in those sporting muscle groups randomly slapped together into a shapeless mass. You have seen these guys. In clothing they look like football players, and during summer they struggle to hide their burgeoning waistlines.

Bodybuilders with shape to accompany their size present a different look entirely; small waisted with the kind of proportionate development that creates an illusion of even greater size. Granted, bodybuilding is fundamentally about developing muscle size, but true bodybuilding requires combining this mass with proportionality, symmetry, and conditioning.

So how can we achieve the best of both worlds? For those new to bodybuilding, the goal should be to develop as much balanced muscle size as possible. For those already over-sized bodybuilders? Consider a switch to power lifting or strongman - or redesign your program and pay attention to detail on the finer points of muscle building.

Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights

To get large you must first get strong. But to become a well-proportioned bodybuilder this maxim comes with two important caveats.

First, the exercises you use must fully target all muscle groups.

Second, form and muscle stimulation must not be sacrificed for impressive poundages.

Pro bodybuilding legend and the best ever to compete, Ronnie Coleman, said it best when he coined the ever so eloquent expression, "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights".


What Ronnie might be implying here is that bodybuilders often want it all but are not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, and that their quest for huge muscles is often fruitless in light of the inadequately light weights they choose to lift.

They are pumpers rather than lifters. Bottom line: men like Ronnie are huge primarily because of the huge weights they lift; their training intensity and brute strength is matched only by the impressiveness of their physical development.

When a muscle is subjected to an unaccustomed overload - assuming proper form is followed - it has no choice but to grow. Genetic limitations aside, we are only restricted in our growth by the amount of weight we lift using good technique.

While some people are naturally stronger than others, our muscular systems all respond in the same manner: through adaptation to stress. Once a muscle has adapted to a particular stressor (say 250 pounds on the bench press) it has no need to continue its fight to survive this imposed overload. It adapts and stops growing.

However, by increasing the weight, changing the angle of resistance or some other training variable this muscle then has to change its physiological structure to overcome this new stressor. It has no choice but to get stronger and grow