28-Days-to-Lean Meal Plan
With the right plan and the right discipline, you can get seriously shredded in just 28 days.
Read articleHALF SCIENTIST AND HALF MONSTER, Ben Pakulski IS THE DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE OF BODYBUILDING. No one in the IFBB Pro League today applies greater scientific rigor to their workouts than Pak- Man. Armed with a degree in kinesiology, he is forever seeking the latest training research, and if you’re lucky enough to converse with him, he can explain the proven logic behind the technique of his every exercise. So he’s Jekyll, the scientist. But he’s also Hyde, the monster (in a good way).
Hyde-like, he’s capable of conquering bar-bending weights, and he brings a ferocious intensity to the gym. At first glance, some of his methods seem bat-crap crazy, but they’re only mad in relation to the norm—plodding through the same routine workout afer workout and expecting to magically expand muscles without asking anything extra of them. Now what sounds crazy? Pak-Man is rare among bodybuilders for applying his brain to his workouts at least as much as his body. And as the following 10 factors illustrate, he has some unique and uniquely efective ideas about training.
1) GET TENSE, STAY TENSE Let’s start with the fundamental concept behind all of Pakulski’s workouts. As he says, “This is the most important thing to understand when it comes to building muscle.” Weights don’t build muscle. Intensity doesn’t build muscle. Volume doesn’t build muscle. Those are all just tools. How you use them is the key. What builds muscle—or, more precisely, what stimulates muscles to grow larger when they recover— is increased tension. “If you want to carry more muscle tissue, you must subject your body to increased tension on a regular basis and allow it to recognize a long-term need for building muscle,” Pak-Man explains. This is why proper form is so important to him. You have to know how to maximize tension on the targeted area in order to fully stimulate the muscle.
Time under tension (TUT) is crucial. This is the total duration during which a muscle is stressed. Pakulski recommends sets last 40 seconds, and his favorite tempo for achieving this is an eight-rep set with each rep lasting five seconds with slow eccentrics (lowering the weight) but explosive concentrics (rais- ing the weight). “Getting up to 60 seconds is also very efective,” he says. “This doesn’t mean you stop a set that you could easily extend well beyond 60 seconds just because the time range is up. Go until you reach failure, and increase the weight for the next set.” Also, don’t, for example, squat 10 reps that are essentially 10 singles, pausing for several seconds between each rep. Keep working, extending the TUT until the set is complete.
Click "Next Page" for Pak-Man's training tips & techniques #2 – #10 >>
2) OVERTRAINING IS OVERRATED “New research shows that over- training is about as likely as winning the lottery,” Pakulski contends. “Overtraining is a state that exists systematically throughout your entire body, not within one muscle. It’s a chronic condition that afects your central nervous, endocrine, and muscular systems. As long as you’re giving your body adequate rest and time to recover, overtraining isn’t even a thought.” You’re not going to overtrain because of what you do in the gym. You’re going to overtrain because of what you don’t do out of the gym—nourish and rest your body sufficiently.
[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”wysiwyg”,”fid”:”429166″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image media-image-left”,”style”:”width: 125px; height: 468px; border-width: 4px; border-style: solid; margin: 4px; float: left; “,”title”:””,”typeof”:”foaf:Image”}}]]3) DOUBLE TROUBLE As with everything in Pak-Man’s program, the practice of doubling up daily workouts for the same body part is based in science. He wants to keep his workouts short (less than 50 minutes) to maximize the hormonal environment for growth. His first daily workout focuses on fast-twitch muscle fibers with heavy weights and explosive concentrics. Necessarily, his rest periods between sets are lengthy (two to four minutes), so he can’t get in many sets in 50 minutes. Therefore, he returns to the gym 4–5 hours later (after two meals and a nap), and he does a second workout for the same body part, focused on exhausting the muscles with lighter weights, shorter rests (40–60 seconds), more isolation exercises, and techniques like supersets and dropsets. To over-reach a weak area, he recommends training the same body part twice daily every other day over five days (six workouts total for that body part). Then take three days of from the gym to foster recovery and growth.
Click "Next Page" for Pak-Man's training tips & techniques #4 – #10 >>
Click "Next Page" for Pak-Man's training tips & techniques #6 – #10 >>
ONE-LEG PRESS Working one side at a time lets you focus more on the muscles of each individual leg. You may also find you can comfortably go deeper by toiling unilaterally. Pak-Man keeps his foot low on the sled and doesn’t rest between taxing his left and right wheels.
REVERSE HYPEREXTENSION Whereas when you do a back extension (popularly called a hyperextension) your legs are locked and only your torso moves, this lif reverses that. Your torso is held steady on a high bench while you’re facedown, and you lif your straight legs up behind you, from down to at least parallel with your torso. This targets the glutes and hamstrings.
SAFETY-BAR SQUAT The owner of arguably bodybuilding’s best legs does a variety of free-weight squats—back, front, dumbbell, and safety bar. The latter differs from a normal back squat because the (padded) bar rests higher on your traps, the resistance is set more forward (sort of halfway between a front and back squat), and you can free up your hands to avoid tumbling over if you fail on a rep without a spotter.
SISSY SQUAT We told you he does a lot of squats. He even sometimes does bodybuilding’s worst-named exercise. The sissy squat is performed by holding a support bar with one hand, standing on your toes and letting your knees go far forward and torso backward as you squat down.
Click "Next Page" for Ben Pak-Man's training tips & techniques #7 – #10 >>
7) BE A CYCLIST The use of cycling periods of different training styles is called periodization. It’s common in powerlifting, but less so in bodybuilding. Pakulski is a big believer in it for continuously stimulating growth. “Bodybuilding is unique because in order to grow you have to constantly shock your muscles with new training,” he states. “Charles Poliquin was a huge help for me in learning how to periodize my own training. There are so many different hypertrophy variables—just a lot of different things people can manipulate.” Pakulski recommends you cycle on and of periods, changing such components as the exercise weight-load (in relation to your one-rep max), workout volume, and length of rest periods. He details how to periodize in his online programs MI40 and Hypertrophy Max.
Click "Next Page" for Pak-Man's training tips & techniques #9 & #10 >>
For example, on dumbbell flyes, he instructs that you bend your arms on the way down to get a maximum stretch and then straighten your arms as you bring them closer together on the way up. Never let the dumbbells come inside of your shoulders because this lessens tension on the pecs at the same time it eases your struggle against gravity. His flyes are more like flye presses. On the other hand, you can do a more traditional flye movement with a machine or two cables because, with the weight stack(s) always fighting gravity, you can maintain tension throughout. Similarly, the tug of gravity is lessened on the upper half of a free-weight preacher curl. At the contraction, gravity is actually pulling your hand toward your shoulder. This is not true if you do those same preacher curls with a cable because you’re pulling the weight stack up even higher against gravity from stretch to contraction.