You'll hear a lot of people saying "you don't need to go to the gym, you want a 'natural physique' like people that do manual labour or farmers" or something along those lines. For some reason, people think that if you farm or work on a construction site, you're going to get huge pecs and ripped abs. Unfortunately this is not true, if you look at the majority of people that work in manual labour are not in shape, not knocking that. But what I have seen from my experience from working with manual labour occasionally is that the people that have been doing it for a while have thick forearms and rough, wide hands. You will also find that they can be lifting and moving things around consistently for up to 8 hours without it killing them, when a lot of gym rats will not. Their job has built up their work capacity.
Some one i know, told me that when he was a child, he had to move hay bales. He told me that him and his friends worked out that they walked the equivalent of going from England to Scotland and back carrying hay bales throughout the summer.
To put this in other words, if you get a farmer, who works 8 hours a day carrying things into a gym, he will be able to lift harder, at higher % for a longer period of time than the average person.
Why is this important for the average gym rat? If you can workout with relatively heavier weights for a higher volume, it means that you will be able to practice the move more often, get stronger, and therefore get bigger. Louis Simmons explains why GPP is important for athletes in a much better way i ever could in his barbell shrugged podcast.
Sergio Oliva would do 10 sets of 20 pull ups before every workout. What does this mean? His lats where supercharged and could do pretty much anything he could throw at it, he could train harder, and not be as affected by it.
Sergio Oliva How can you improve your work capacity in an ordinary gym? One idea is to have a pre-workout routine. For an example, before every work out, do 100 push ups and 100 pull ups in 10 minutes. For a while your work out will not improve, while your body adapts to the pre-workout routine. But as you adapt, you will have up to 1400 reps on your upper body per week. That has to make a difference, doesn't it?
Currently I am trying to increase the work capacity in my arms by doing an arm routine in the morning and the evening, to make sure that they don't burn out when going into the higher rep ranges of my one arm chins and planche push ups. It is simply 1 set of 25 tricep blasters and curls with bands, I will increase the intensity and reps as my training cycles progress.
When Jay 'ursus' Pateman was a child, he would do 500 push ups in the morning and the evening, and says that it is probably a contributor to why he is such a good bencher today.
Guys out in New York, who work out in parks, do 40+ sets of 10 on the pull ups, push ups and dips, and seen DOC of Wingate warriors do pull ups with an extra 100lbs!!! I have also heard of Lord Vital, a monster in the calisthenics game being able to bench 400 lbs without ever benching.
DOC (right)
Lord Vital (right)To conclude Improve your work capacity and you'll get bigger.
Enjoy the gains
Alex
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