After getting big and strong, lean out and set the table for an anabolic burst
25 January 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Zebulon John (sounds like a character out of a Band song, Crazy Chester followed me and he caught me in the fog) is a real pal and a champion powerlifter who took up lifting late in life and has been making up for lost time ever since. Hes won all kinds of AAU titles and can bench press 400 wearing a tee shirt weighing 235. Ive told him many times that based on his genetics and work ethic, had I run into him 15-20 years back hed be a retired multiple time IPF world champion. This isnt some flip comment said to make a friend feel good but a serious conjecture by a guy (me) whose seen a lot of world champions up close and personal and had a hand in constructing or studying under hall-of-fame powerlifters. Anyway, John is thick and stout and I had a conjecture for him that runs as follows: if he were to devote four months concentrating all his efforts on leaning out, really leaning out, getting body fat percentile down into single digits, then, after getting light and lean, were he to add back on 20-pounds in an anabolic burst strategy, hed squat 600, bench press 500 and deadlift 550 weighing 220. Thats a mouthful, but Ive seen this strategy turn really average lifters into really good ones and good lifters into really great ones, time and time again. Kirk Karwoski was a good 275-pound lifter and won the national championship. He was having some stress times with women and work and was having a tough time keeping his bodyweight up, he was stuck at 265 and I said, Rather than fight to add 10-pounds at a time when your body is not cooperating, why not loose 25 and lift at 242?
He was intrigued with the idea: he hadnt lifted as a 242-pounder in five years and the world record squat was Wohlebers 871. That record had stood for a decade. To make a long story short he went with the game plan, lost 25-pounds, squatted 914 for a world record, beat the great Steve Goggins soundly and won both the national and world title. He was so shredded he had cross-striations on his pectorals and veins on his deltoids. After staying at 240 for a year, hed had enough and his body was fighting him: it wanted to grow. All he had to do at that juncture was add back some calories into his strict eating and BANG! His bodyweight jumped to 260 inside a month while actually retaining his single digit body fat percentile. His greatest lifting (1000×2 squat, 825 deadlift, 600-pound bench press) happened as a direct result of his biting the bullet, dropping to 240 then adding back the muscle after his body had been stripped of fat. Ed Coan did the same thing when he pushed his bodyweight from a ripped 180 to a ripped 198. At 180 Ed squatted and deadlifted 785, at 198 he squatted and deadlifted 876. Doug Furnas played four years of football at Tennessee with Willie Gault and Reggie White. A three-year starter as a blocking fullback, Doug weighed a shredded 219 with a 750 squat. He played for Denver for a year on the taxi squad as a result of a hamstring injury. He quit, went back to Oklahoma to study powerlifting full time under hall-of-fame immortal Dennis Wright. He let his bodyweight rise to 240 and squatted 880 within six months of lifting full-time. All these guys experienced the incredible benefit of adding body weight to leaned-out physiques.
A few years back a lot of press was given in the bodybuilding world to something called the anabolic burst which was, a formal title, a sellable handle, to a system that had been known and used in the power world for a decade. Some guy in Sweden went to the trouble to formalize the whole thing, running studies and writing a series of formal procedures that over-formalized a pretty straightforward physiological phenomenon. The Swedes anabolic burst was a short-term strategy that required the burster pretty much take out all carbs, live on protein (fat was okay as were some fiber) and do so for a protracted period. Training was designed to lean out and tighten up the physique. Cardio was upped during the lean-out phase and weight training was high volume and it was all designed to set up the payoff: super compensation bought on by suddenly eating lots and lots of calories derived from all that stuff youve been depriving yourself of. Most any calories were a-okay and this contributed to the burst popularity of course most devotees were not so devoted to the lean-out phase and overly fond of the burst phase. The Swedes studies suggested that if the lean-out was sufficient and proper, the burst could last for 10 days before spillover occurred and the body relearned how to transform food it wasnt used to into body fat. IFBB bodybuilders of years ago, back in the Chris Dickerson shredded-trumps-everything era, discovered that after dieting down for the physique contest, when they went back to regular eating they looked better at least for the first week.
A guy like Zebulon John would benefit greatly from a burst-style program: since hes already strong as hell and possesses significant muscle (hidden a bit, but there nonetheless) mass: by going on a 12-week lean out, followed by a 10-day burst he could end up going down to 205-215, getting his body fat down to single digits, then burst back up to 235/240 AND STILL maintain a 10% or less body fat. His lifts would soar and the babes would swoon.
Ill be out of town Friday at the AAU world championships in Richmond so no column on Friday - if Im not too burned out look for a meet report on Monday or Tuesday at the latest.
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