Ask Rocco: I Want to Maximize My Time and Results
A local woman wants to get more bang for her bodybuilding time. Rocco gives her a few tips to pump up her bod by pumping up the little time she can devote to workouts.

Question: For someone who's considering bodybuilding, or at least training like it, what are good resources or tips? I already devote a lot of time to working out, weights and cardio, but would like to maximize my time and results.
— Sarah

Answer: This is a tough question to answer because I believe that bodybuilders spend way too much time in the gym. On the other hand, I do admire their commitment to their craft.

I prefer to train more like an athlete and, in turn, create more of an athletic body. Body builder’s bodies tend to be more exaggerated and almost cartoonish in nature, therefore I try to stay out of that realm because it takes a totally different mindset to stay in a gym for hours at a time and perform a million repetitions for a million sets. I have too much other s**t to do than spend half my life in the gym.

If you perform some of the same movements that many of my bodybuilding peers advocate, but at a higher intensity - and by that I mean shortening of the sets to one or two sets and increase your repetition range - you will get out of the gym much quicker and get the same results. An example of this would be: instead of 4 sets of 12, 10, 8, 6, perform two sets of 15-20 to almost failure*) In the book Designing Resistance Training Programs, author William J. Kraemer found that 1-2 sets to failure and multiple sets provided the same benefit for strength training and muscle hypertrophy (muscle building). This coming from a "huge" multiple set and explosive training advocate tells us that it is possible to get positive muscle building benefits without spending most of your life in the gym.

*Almost failure pertains to needing help on the last five repetitions to finish the movement with correct form and technique.

Click here to get your "One Day Free Pass" for Rocco's boot camp.

Rocco Castellano
		About the author:
		Rocco Castellano is a contributor for Cincy Chic as well as the co-founder of askROCCO Media, which provides boot camps, seminars, media content and online fitness services at askROCCO.com . He is certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine and has written askROCCO Uncensored v1 available at bookstores everywhere. To submit your fitness question click here.

Last update: 03-07-2007 07:18

Published in : Magazine Items, Health