By Chris Lund
Reprinted From BODYBUILDING monthly
I don’t know how to put it but there’s a certain magic involved when you know something is the truth. It’s something that money cannot buy and in bodybuilding it becomes the ultimate gospel.
Many trainees simply do not believe what they read and who can blame them anyway. Granted our sport has made tremendous strides during the past few years. The magazines are better than ever. Full colour quality layouts that make other sports magazines look sick.
In depth training articles covering sets, reps, weight, speed, nutrition, drugs and everything else you can think of are regularly found on the pages of the best magazines such as Flex, Muscle & Fitness and of course our own Bodybuilding Monthly.
“But there must be something else!” Cry the hardcore incredulous muscle heads. “How do you know the articles are straight? How do you know they are the truth?”
The answer of course is YOU DON’T!!!
Unless you encounter the experience yourself you don’t really know whether the articles are merely a figment of the writers imagination or maybe there’s commercialism involved also. Who knows.
When Ellington Darden and I decided to write HIGH INTENSITY BODYBUILDING we wanted the truth to be known about the so called secrets of bodybuilding. One way to do this was to show bodybuilders during their actual training workouts. The intensity of effort was real. Their sweat laden bodies told the truth. Nothing was posed.
In an effort to research the values of high intensity bodybuilding further I called John Cardillo a top Canadian bodybuilding champion who is renowned for his unbelievable high intensive workouts along the lines of Mentzer and Platz.
John was in his heavy mass building cycle in preparation for a forthcoming Mr Canada contest and unbelievable high intensity workouts were the order of the day.
John was six months away from the contest which meant that his fat level content was higher than it would be when he would compete.
I arrived at Johns superb fitness club in St Catharines which is a little town just outside of Niagara Falls Canada. John, who is a devoted advocate of the writings of Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones has his own fitness club fitted out with many different types of Nautilus machines as well as many other machines designed and built by himself.
“Nautilus”, he says “Allows me to apply all those heavy high intensity training methods such as training to failure, forced reps, negatives and rest pause etc. in a safe and efficient manner.” John’s usual training system is one day upper body, next day legs followed by one day rest. Here is how I saw him train his deltoids.
John spent about ten minutes warming up his shoulders with low intensity exercises which were similar to those he would use in his routine. He stressed the importance of a full shoulder warm up because of the joint injury which is quite common in some trainees who continually work with heavy weights.
John worked this exercise like a man possessed! Not since Tom Platz had I seen anybody work on exercise so hard. Each time it appeared that he couldn’t complete another rep John would somehow summon up more strength and endurance and the short Olympic bar would start moving again.
As before John did three sets commencing with his heaviest poundage on the first set, and then reducing the weight slightly on his second and third sets.
By this time his Delts looked pumped and swollen and appeared a dark pinkish colour.
John’s first shoulder exercise was for the frontal deltoids.
John did three sets of forward raises. He did his heaviest set first and worked the exercise until he could barely raise one of the dumbbells from his thigh.
He did approximately 15 reps on this first set and without too much rest did another set of about ten reps with a slight reduction of weight. His delts looked pumped already so he finished a final set of about 8 reps with another slight reduction in weight.
As soon as his breath had returned he went directly into his next Delt exercise.
He finished his routine in Pre Exhaust fashion by coupling these two exercises together.
NAUTILUS LATER RAISES and NAUTILUS SHOULDER PRESS.
John literally tore his shoulders apart with these two and two cycles were carried out.
He managed nine reps on the lateral raise with almost the stack and then screamed for his training partner to help him with three more forced reps. After the forced reps Johns partner then lifted the weight to the top position and then John went into the NEGATIVE phase of the exercise.
John struggled desperately against the downward path of the exercise and the look of extreme torture on his face would have been enough to frighten away even the most ardent trainee.
He did about four negative only reps and then screamed for his partner to hand him the handles of the pressing unit.
Each rep on the pressing part of the exercise was extremely difficult to do and after only five reps John was crying out for forced rep assistance and boy was he in pain!
Four forced reps and four negative reps followed and John almost collapsed into a state of exhaustion trapped inside the machine.
When his breathing had returned to normal John performed a similar pre exhaust set and his shoulder training which had consisted of a mere ten sets was over.
I asked him why he found it necessary to train so intensely.
“Many people ask me this and I’m sure Platz and Mentzer get asked the same question. I don’t train this way because it’s enjoyable. I train this way because it’s productive. High intensity training is the only way to increase muscle size and strength. If you teach yourself that much right from the start then you’re well on your way to building a great body.
When I get older or lose my desire to build large muscle mass maybe I’ll ease off a bit. Who knows? Until that day arrives I’ll keep training the way I do now”.
I asked if he followed any special kind of diet while on such a severe routine.
“No, in fact I eat like a bird and feel stronger and fitter when I’m slightly hungry all the time. I agree with Mentzer when it comes to diet. It’s 60% complex carbs, and 40% protein with virtually no fat at all”.
Did he find it easy to overtrain on such a demanding system?
“Yes you must get to know and understand your own recovery ability, this is most important. I can personally workout two days in a row because I’m not carrying too much body fat and I’ve been training like this for quite some time. Now, if a guy is overweight or not in great shape I would like to see him take a day off after each workout. In other words he can train his upper body one day, rest the next and train his legs the following day and so on and so on”.
As I drove back to Toronto I couldn’t get the thought of Johns amazing training methods out of my mind. Sure, I thought to myself, High Intensity bodybuilding has been around a long time, ah! but how many of us actually have the guts to do it?
John Cardillo does!!!