How John Cardillo Trained To Win The Eastern America Classic (Iron Man Magazine)

By Lennard Thompson
Article featured in Iron Man Magazine

In superb condition John Cardillo, of Niagara Falls Canada, overwhelmed a strong field of contestants to win the USBE Open Eastern America Classic. Much had been written in the local newspapers on the competition and especially of Cardillo competing. The residents of Berwick, Pennsylvania and Tony DeFrancisco, the promoter, anticipated a great competition and got one indeed.

From the first round of relaxed judging it was apparent that Cardillo was the man to beat. Greg Golden of Pairmont, West Virginia, with a superbly thick upper body was the only contestant who came close to matching Cardillo’s huge size. Golden, at 5’8″ weighed 205 while Cardillo, at 5’10, weighed 228. Third place went to an ageless champion, Claude Rigon of Surf City, New Jersey who had just won the Mr America Competition

After the competition I had a chance to talk to John Cardillo. I found John to be a very interesting person. At the age of 23 this young man has accomplished a great deal in life. He has been in the gym business for 5 years and at the time I met him he was in the process of opening his fifth gym. John operates one gym himself while the others are run by qualified managers. Although he says he enjoys business a great deal, nothing compares to the enjoyment he gets from bodybuilding.

In preparation for this contest John told me that he has been dieting for 7 months and expected to stay on his diet for at least 3 more months. When he started the diet he weighed 218 pounds with his bodyfat measuring 12 percent. By intensifying his workouts and monitoring his caloric intake, John gained muscle while losing bodyfat. John’s diet consisted of 2500 calories daily. His protein intake is very low compared with most bodybuilders we read about. John only eats 50 to 70 grams of protein a day while consuming at least 400 grams of carbohydrates. He believes that most bodybuilders eat far too much protein in the belief that it will build more muscle. He went on to say that carbohydrates are of greater importance in order for him to train as intense as possible to stimulate growth. Since switching to this diet John has gained 30 pounds of muscle. (That’s 15 pounds a year)

John’s training philosophy is also unlike most bodybuilders. He totally believes in high intensity, short duration workouts. He seldom ever performs more than 2 sets of any particular exercise and never does more than 4 to 6 sets per bodypart. Every set of each exercise is performed until complete muscular failure is reached.

As John described his training to me, his facial expressions grew more in-tense, I could almost envision him going through a torturous workout. Не explained that in order for him to make constant gains he must continually increase his intensity by employing forced reps, negative reps, static reps or pre-exhaustion. He is able to tolerate so much pain that at times a particular muscle he is working will actually turn blue from the great amount of blood being gorged in it.

Another interesting thing about John is that he has been using the same routine for the past 2 years. He only varies the order of the exercises and at times the repetition scheme. He has made subperb progress with this routine and possibly you also could.

John’s training routine is as follows: