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The Romano Factor

John Romano
John Romano’s name is synonymous with “no bull-crap,” “candid,” and “hardcore.” He’s worked tirelessly to build up an ironclad reputation in the fitness industry through his work as senior editor of Muscular Development magazine and co-founder of Rx Muscle (see also: Heavy Muscle Radio and Muscle Girls Inc.). He’s been consulted as a steroid expert on HBO, ESPN, and ABC’s 20/20, as well as the movie Bigger, Stronger, Faster. Most recently, John worked as director of Internet media at VPX (and host of Shotgun Radio). In his spare time, he is a contributing author for countless blogs, magazines, and articles, including authoring the Muscle Meals cookbook.
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Inspiration Zone - The secret

I love weight training. I love the mental challenge it presents and the intense feeling of how far I can push myself. I love the feeling of ice water flowing through my veins after a drop set to failure. It’s never been about how much weight I could lift—although when I was younger, I moved things I dare not even dream about today. (A jacked dude in his late twenties is about as close a thing to invincible as there is—just ask one). Today, it’s about focus and intensity and moving exactly in the groove of a movement as efficiently and correctly as possible, with no pain anywhere except focused in the muscle. And, it’s about mentally bringing that muscle past fatigue (pain) to true failure—the momentary interruption in the muscle’s ability to contract.

Of the two, training and diet, we all should know that diet is the real secret. If training isn’t precisely fueled, neither will fulfill its destiny and you won’t reap the benefits you seek. If you’re serious about building and maintaining a contest-worthy physique, an impressive collection of Tupperware is in daily use to accommodate a minimum of 42 perfectly portioned meals a week (for yourself).

The better you get at dialing in your nutrition, the more refined your physique will be. It takes a lot of trial and error, but there are a lot of us out there who maintain a decent amount of muscle mass with very low body fat levels and do absolutely no cardio, just by manipulating what goes down the pipe.

The second and almost equally critical requirement you need to grow muscle is the stimulus. I hate to break it to you, but what you’re trying to do—build muscle and burn fat—is completely against Mother Nature. Human beings are designed to hoard fat and shed biologically active tissue (muscle) it doesn’t need. The body does this as a survival mechanism. “Biologically active” means that such tissues expend nutrients. The less biologically active tissue we have, the fewer nutrients are needed, leaving more in storage (fat) in case the food supply dries up.

Building muscle is an adaptive response to an ongoing stress—e.g., moving heavy weights. The body responds to this need over time by painstakingly increasing strength with increased muscle mass. Take the stress away (stop training) and the body immediately dumps all that nutrient-expending tissue it no longer perceives it needs—i.e., you get small and chubby. Just the way Mother Nature intended.

The stimulus must not only be consistent over time, it must also be profound. Now, the two schools of thought in bodybuilding—HIT and HVT—both eventually arrive at the same stimulus response by increasing the workload beyond the body’s capacity to do it. Success in either camp is only achieved by the guys who push beyond their limit; that is, the only way to effect muscle growth is to fail. The body needs a reason to grow muscle.

So, lets take a look at that, because this is where too many of you fail. The only problem is that it’s the wrong kind of failure. If you head into the gym knowing that NASA couldn’t have done a better job at calculating your daily nutrient intake, then you’re good and ready to stimulate the adaptive response that results in more muscle. The only problem is that too many guys just don’t know how.

In either the high volume or high intensity camp, that point at which you can no longer move the weight is more arbitrary than not. I can’t tell you how many guys over the years have told me how hard and intense they train, and then when the time finally comes that we cinch up a weight belt and hit a body part together, I quickly realize they haven’t a clue.

I was training with Mike Mentzer in Gold’s Gym, Venice, one day. I was doing a set of Nautilus pullovers and was hopelessly stuck. Instead of assisting me to finish the rep, Mike calmly told me that I seemed to be out of motivation. “Imagine,” he said, while I grimaced and strained, “that I have a gun to your head and I’m going to blow your brains all over the wall behind you if you don’t crank out three more reps.” Now, I knew Mike wasn’t going to assassinate me right there in the gym, but the way he said it convinced me that I had more in me. It took a sweaty while, but I got myself to grind out three more by believing that my very last thought could end up crimson and dripping down the wall. Sometimes that’s what it takes. The next time you’re training and think you can’t do another rep, I guarantee you, if sufficiently motivated, you’d be able to crank out a few more.

That’s what it takes. That’s the secret. Nothing is going to affect your results more than when your diet and training are perfectly aligned. Nothing. No drug, no supplement, no nothing. If you’re not making gains, something is wrong with either your diet or your training or both. Don’t even think about blaming anything else.

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