Author Reobert Kennedy
Breathing like a racehorse, Cardillo hurried to the squat rack, and without knee wraps or a lifting belt, positioned his shoulders and upper chest under the Olympic bar to start the fourth exercise of his leg workout. The bar was loaded with 10 plates (45 pounds each), 5 per side for 495 pounds in total. He lifted it off the squat rack, took one step back, took a deep breath and descended in a full squat position — with his back perfectly straight — until his buttocks almost touched the floor. With him stopping in this awkward position, I wasn’t certain he was coming back up. Never had I seen this type of squatting. I started to think that I was here to pick it up.
His two behemoth training partners, who I later learned were not traditional training partners, were there just to push him through every set of the workout. And push, they did!
Each rep was performed in perfect form: his legs looked like two pistons driving up, at a push button. It was constant movement with no cheating of any kind and full body intensity in action. By the time he got to the eighth rep, he was starting to struggle and began taking two breaths between each repetition. He squeaked out what I thought was his last rep, number nine, and then took 3 breaths before descending for 10th rep. Barely completing the rep, the two massive training partners screamed at him, demanding he do two more repetitions. This where I saw Cardillo’s serious look on his face, like he was switching gears. With a deep breath, he sat down, deep in the squat, and came up with the weight as if it was his first repetition! To me, it appeared that the weight moved faster than any repetition so far in the set.
Cardillo’s 12th repetition was pure struggle, barely made it past the halfway point. Then he stopped. The training partners helped him the rest of the way to complete the repetition and put the bar back on the rack.
To my surprise, Cardillo then flipped his head around the bar, pus the bar on his back, took a step backwards and proceeded to do back squats — as if he was fresh, with full concentration a new focus. With the same foot positioning, head held, chest out, deep breath, he hit the bottom of the squat (which he told me later he called the basement squats because they were very, very deep).
The first 6 repetitions were so smooth that If I hadn’t seen it in person myself, I wouldn’t have believed that he had 500 pounds on his back. His breathing became heavier as he squeezed out a few more reps with his training partners’ help. With their help, he was able to complete a third rep. At this point, the training partners had to help him put the bar back on the racks. After 12 front squats and 9 back squats, Cardillo was done.
He fell to the floor, taking deep breaths as if he was gasping to survive. Next, one of the training partners gave him a 25-pound plate. He held it in his hand and started doing straight-arm pull-overs, lying on his back with his arms straight out and taking the plate backwards. He inhaled deeply so his rib cage expanded as his arms extended back and exhaled as he brought back his arms to the starting position. Cardillo said that he learned early on that these breathing pullovers are key to expanding his rib cage to be able to do better vacuums and better double bicep poses. After completing 25 repetitions, the plate was put over to the side and he just lay there trying to gain back breath.
“With that the workout is over,” declared Cardillo. I could not believe what I had just witnessed.
It was the last week of competition prep for the upcoming Mr. Canada Competition. I had arranged for John Cardillo to come to Toronto for several workout interviews and photographs for Musclemag.
I arranged to meet up with Cardillo at one of his fitness clubs in Brampton called THE GYM, a 40,000 square-foot bodybuilder’s paradise. It was equipped with every top name brand piece of equipment ever made, including dumbbells that went up to 300 pounds!
Cardillo arrived with two behemoths — his training partners, I thought. Not so, though. I was informed that they were his “pushers” for today’s workout. Apparently, they were only there to push Cardillo through each rep/set of the workout so that he trained with maximum intensity, to muscular failure on every set of exercise. They were not there to trade sets with him. I’d heard of two training partners before, but never workout pushers.
Push him, they did! After 10 minutes of stretching his legs and lower back, Cardillo started his leg workout with hamstrings.
The first exercise was the seated leg curl on a Hammer Strength machine. As a warmup, Cardillo did 6 reps with two 45-pound plates, and then had them add another 5 plates to a total of 315 pounds! Cardillo pulled on the machine’s seat belt to tighten it and started the exercise. Each repetition was strict, with him holding the contracted position and slowly performing the negative part of the movement. At the start of each repetition, Cardillo fiercely attacked the exercise to move the monstrous weight. The fifth repetition would not move past the halfway point. One of the training partners helped him squeeze it to the top contracted position. The other pusher then removed one of the 45-pound plates. Cardillo did 3 perfect reps and again failed on the fourth rep, needing assistance to complete it. Once again, one more weight came off, and Cardillo managed 2 reps this time. You could see the enormous effort he put forth. His sweatshirt was already half soaked.
Next, the set changed. One training pusher helped him complete forced positive reps, while both pushers then added resistance with their hands on the negative part of the exercise — screaming at Cardillo to slow down the negative part of the exercise. When he could no longer control the negative movement, the pushers helped Cardillo start the movement in the contracted position and try to hold it there as long as possible, performing static holds. After the second attempt at holding the contracted position failed, the set was over.
This had to be the hardest and most complex set of an exercise that I had ever personally witnessed. Considering the positive, negative and static repetitions, I had never before seen a more intense set of an exercise!
Without a moment’s rest Cardillo jumped on a nautilus prone leg curl, and with the full weight stack, knocked off 7 perfectly controlled repetitions. When he failed on the 8th rep, the pushers screamed at him until he squeezed one more repetition! Next, they helped him complete the lifting part of the exercise and both pushed down on the negative part. Cardillo struggled to fight the lowering of the weight. After the second repetition, they helped him get the roller pads up to the contracted position, but Cardillo had nothing left to do a static hold. The set was over.
Again, without rest and breathing hard, he lay on the pad and got under a 90-degree leg press loaded with eight 45-pound plates on each side for a total of 720 pounds. Cardillo took a deep breath, lowered the weight until his knees touched his arm pits — a depth of movement I had not seen before. Then he pushed it up as if it weighed nothing! He performed this compound movement as If he was totally fresh. With each deep breath, he finished another repetition. At 10 reps, one of the pushers yelled out, “10 more,” which to me seemed impossible, because each rep after the 10th seemed to be a struggle. Then Cardillo stopped, took two breaths, and as if he was just starting the set, a new gear kicked in. He completed 8 more repetitions, deeper and faster than the initial 12. His hamstrings grew larger and rounder with each repetition. His veins popped out, no different from doing bicep curls. Again, this was something I had never seen before.
From the leg press, Cardillo went straight to the Avenger Leg Extension machine loaded with 7 plates (45pounds each) to a total of 315 pounds. He started performing strict leg extensions. He held each repetition at the top contracted position for 3 seconds, then slowly lowered the weight to the starting position. Each rep seemed like an all-out effort. After 4 more excruciating repetitions, the weight was reduced by one 45-pound plate. Cardillo did 3 more reps. Again, the weight was reduced by one 45-pound plate. He did 3 more reps until he could no longer move the roller pad. Then one of the pushers helped him complete a rep and hold it at the top contracted position for a count of 10. This was repeated 3 times until he could no longer hold the weight. In total agony, Cardillo jumped off the machine and looked to the right where the squat rack was. Without a moment’s rest, he confronted the loaded bar and started front squats, and then back squats, as already described in this write up.
After he completed the front and back squats, the workout was over. I had just witnessed 5 excruciating exercises being performed in approximately 20 minutes. All I could think of was that this wasn’t ordinary weight training; this was extraordinary training — something I had heard about before but had never seen for myself.
SUMMARY
To sum up Cardillo’s leg workout, I can only say that it was 20 minutes of the most brutal training I had ever seen. The intensity factor was extraordinary.” Now, I understood how at only 21 years of age, Cardillo had made such incredible improvements by taking Hi-Intensity training to a whole new level! Each repetition was an all-out attack that required absolute focus, concentration and determination. Regardless of hard the last repetitions of a set were, he maintained strict form throughout the movement. He dug deep and completed repetitions that I thought were impossible.
I left the workout thinking, in all the years that I watched the greatest bodybuilders train, had I ever witnessed anyone else do a full leg workout consisting of only 5 sets in 20 minutes? I just shook my head and said to myself, “John Cardillo just did!”