2. The method I'm going to reveal to you is both powerful
and effective, and truly requires very little of your time
and not much effort but you need to understand its
purpose and that is to increase either maximum strength
or muscle endurance. Though you will likely experience
some cosmetic muscle changes, this is not a program
designed for weight loss or muscle gain. Its intent is to
increase functional strength and work capacity. Losing fat
and gaining muscle along the way is a nice side benefit but
the goal is to get strong. If you are already in decent
shape, you will get stronger without having to spend an
hour or more at the gym. If you're completely out of shape
- don't worry - this will get you going on the road to
success.
3. I also want to add that I did not come up with this on my
own but it's based on principles I learned from some of
the great strength coaches of our time. I want to give
credit where credit is due and also be as transparent as
possible. The strategy I'm about to share with you is based
on the "Grease the Groove" method as first described to
me by Pavel Tsatsouline. In case you don't know who Pavel
is, he's the guy that's generally credited with introducing
kettlebells to Americans.
4. His method is really geared toward elite powerlifters and
strength athletes, but I'm going to show you how the same
exact concept can be applied to the average guy/gal who
works out or even the couch potato who's struggling to
get that motivation to start an exercise routine. With that
out of the way, let's get down to business.
5. First, let me describe to you Pavel's "Grease the Groove"
method - I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous so we'll refer
to it as GtG from now on. GtG can be summed up as:
7. The technical name Pavel gives this is "Synaptic
Facilitation". It means you pick an exercise (or two) and
you do it often. Yes it's that simple. Before you get angry
that you read this far only for me to tell you that, let me
explain it a little bit more.
8. I'll use myself as an example because I am proof that GtG
works. I've personally used my own variation of GtG to get
my push up, pull up and sit up numbers high enough to
gain admittance to the Navy Special Warfare recruiting
group in my local area and I can tell you it's very effective.
I achieved maximum results with minimum effort and you
can too - even if you're a couch potato.
9. So for those of you who don't know, candidates who wish
to try out for Navy Special Warfare have to successfully
pass a series of physical fitness tests. I won't get into all of
them here but for the sake of our example, I will tell you
that push ups is one of them. I was required to perform as
many push ups as I could in 2 minutes. A competitive score
is considered 80 or higher and if you really want to stand
out you need to get a 100.
10. Now the traditional advice to reach this goal would be
something along the lines of doing some push ups, bench
pressing, tricep exercises and maybe some shoulder stuff. I
didn't do any of that and instead I employed my own
version of the GtG method. It was much simpler and in my
opinion, much MORE effective. Not only that, but it didn't
require me to spend hours in the gym. Heck, I didn't even
break a sweat doing it and I didn't get sore either.
11. In fact, soreness is actually a sign that you're doing it
wrong. The exception to that statement is if you're
someone who has either never exercised or hasn't
exercised in a long time. In either case, don't worry
because you still won't be as sore as you would from
putting in hours at the gym, and eventually the "getting
sore" will go away.
13. Step 1 - I knew I needed to perform 100 reps so I divided
them up into small sets that I performed throughout the
day. I determined the number of sets and reps per set
using a VERY important rule.That rule is that you NEVER
want to go to failure or even close to failure. Working the
muscle to failure will not only leave you sore and unable
to continue "greasing the groove" so to speak, but it will
also exhaust your nervous system.
14. Step 2 - To prevent going to failure I needed to see what
my failing point was, so I tested my max set of push ups
without stopping. At the time it was 40. I then took half of
that number - 20 - and divided it into my total reps goal -
100. In case you're bad at math, 100 divided by 20 is 5.
15. Step 3 - I then began by doing 5 sets of 20 reps (again, that
20 was half of my max set) throughout the day. I made
sure that I took at least an hour between sets and
sometimes more. By the end of the day I had done a total
of 100 but I was neither tired, nor sore and I didn't even
break a sweat. In terms of time, just put it in perspective -
how long does it really take to do a set of push ups? For
most people less than a minute.
16. The best part is that the next day, I was able to do it again
because I wasn't sore. My strength went up pretty quickly
and so I increased my total daily volume to 200 reps and
added 5 reps to each set for a total of 25 reps per set.
Divide 25 into 200 and I was doing 8 sets a day - roughly
one per hour. Some days when I wanted to take it easy I
would only do half of that, but it didn't matter. My
strength kept going up and I was eventually doing sets of
50 push ups 8 times a day for a total of 400 push ups a
day! Let me re-state that this was all without breaking a
sweat or getting sore. On top of that, there were actually
some days where I allowed myself to be lazy and not finish
my daily goal - and it still worked. Keep in mind that I was
also training for a very elite test, so if being lazy
sometimes and still achieving my goal worked for me,
17. If you're just an average guy, you can be even more lazy
than I was and still get amazing results. If you're a couch
potato who can't get the motivation to exercise, you can't
use the excuse that it's too much effort or that it takes too
much time because as I just described to you, none of that
is true with this. If I could use it to pass the Navy Special
Warfare Physical Fitness Test, there is no reason why you
can't use it to get stronger and get in shape. Again, how
long does it take to do one set of push ups? Less than a
minute. You will not be sweating. You will not be in pain.
Just do it a few times a day. Pick a goal. Do the math I
described above with your own numbers and just do it.
Even if you do only one set every day. You will eventually
start doing two. The important part is that you are doing
something instead of just sitting on your couch getting
18. I realize I was mostly speaking to out of shape folks in the
above paragraph and some of you more fit guys and gals
might be wondering how you can apply this method to
working with weights. It's actually completely do-able,
because with weights you're not going to be banging out
100's of reps. In fact, even though I used push ups as an
example, the GtG method is actually most commonly used
by Olympic weightlifters. If you have a bench or dumbbells
at home you can just do one heavy set of your chosen
exercise (up to 6 reps) when you wake up in the morning,
one when you get home from work and one later in the
evening. That's 3 sets a day. Do this 5 days a week and
your strength levels will quickly rise.
20. Step 1. Pick an exercise or two that you want to get better
at (bodyweight exercises are best for beginners since you
can do them almost anywhere).
21. Step 2. Pick a goal and figure out your set and rep scheme
based on the "don't go to failure" math concept described
above. In case you forgot it, it's:
22. a. Pick a Total Daily Rep Goal (ex. 100 push ups)
23. b. Test your Max Reps (ex. 40) and Divide that Number by
Half (20). Take the Result (20) and Divide it into your Total
Daily Rep Goal (100). The answer is how many sets you'll
be doing throughout the day (ex. 5). With weight training
this is slightly more complicated because you have to take
the amount of weight you are using into consideration as
well. A general rule of thumb is that you want to se 80% of
your 1RM (one rep max) for 1-6 reps.
24. Step 3. Just Do It! Even if you don't do all the sets you
want to in a given day, just do some. Even one. It doesn't
matter. You just need to be doing something and don't
forget to take at least an hour between each set.
25. One last note I want to re-emphasize is that this strategy is
very effective for increasing either muscular endurance or
maximum strength but won't really work that well if you
are in a growth stage of a bodybuilding program. If you are
a beginner-level bodybuilder you will experience muscle
growth simply from using your muscles where you hadn't
before, but for an intermediate or advanced level
bodybuilder this program will not result in hypertrophy.
That's not to say they shouldn't use it, but use it during a
strength cycle or a muscle endurance cycle, not when
trying to add mass to your frame. Also, if you're always
trying to add mass to your frame, then you need to either
speak to a professional like me or read up on program
periodization because training for hypertrophy only, will
actually result in less hypertrophy in the end. Interesting