Poliquin you rat bastard!
- Category: Journal
- Date: 11.3.10
Charles Poloquin is a horrible, horrible man. He makes me feel pain that I have never felt before. Charles Poloquin is a world renowned strength coach – son of a bitch has coached A LOTof high level athletes. This guy is pretty damn smart. He was born in Ottawa, which because of it’s close proximity to Quebec, he was raised speaking both English and French. This later lead him to begin translating research and findings of French sport performance analysts after he graduted from Exercise Physiology. He found that his own translations were more sound in a sport performance sense than other translated versions (of which where translated by people with no sport or fitness background).
*I may be a little off with the actual facts here, I’m only just starting to look this guy’s stuff up haha, I’m just really excited and felt like sharing. But if any of this sounds interesting, check out his website (www.charlespoliquin.com), he’s great some great books, audio files, and supplements on there.
Anyways, I couldn’t actually retrace how I ended up looking up this guy’s stuff. I remember seeing a link to an article about PAP (post-activation potentiation: basically a way you can train by lifting heavy near 1RM loads prior to doing strength work of around 6 reps, which somehow tricks the body into being able to push heavier amounts than normal for the 6 reps… fucken cool I know) on either 70’s Big or Crossfit Football. While reading through the article it mentioned Charles Poliquin. This sparked my interest because I remembered his name from when I spent a little bit of time learning from Steve at SST back in Hamilton, the base of his coaching info came from his Poliquin certifications/training. So I verved a bit away from PAP for now, I’ll come back to you my dear – I promise, and found my way to Poliquin’s website. I was in need of some supplements anyhow, so decided I’d try out his line, along with a good introductory book. I got Poliquin Principles. So fucken good. His belief is that for maximum muscle hypertrophy and strength, it is not so much about the number of reps, or sets, or the weight lifted. More so, Poliquin talks about time under tension- the actual amount of time the muscle doing the work is being actively contracted (isometrically, concentrically, and ecctentrically). Thus he goes into quite a bit of detail on the manipulation of thie time under tension. One thing – to which I absolutely loath – is his use of tempo.
Tempo being the speed at which the repition is being preformed. Written in a 3:0:1 format, the 3 indicates the eccentric or lowering phase, 0 indicates there is no pause at the top of the contraction when the muscle length is at it`s shortest, and the 1 represents the speed at which you concentrically contract the muscle or lift the weight. And unless you`re as they say, a ratard, you could probably figure out that the numbers were the seconds (counted properly of course) the phase of the lift should last.
Week 1 of his Àdvanced Bodybuilding`Program is done… I can honestly say I hated it. However, I can also honestly say how much I loved it! You can almost feel your muscles get bigger right away, it’s ridiculous. This program is a 4 day split:
- Chest + Shoulders
- Back + Calves
- Thighs + Abs (am workout) – Hamstrings (pm workout)
- Arms
From what I looked at before as a standard, this workout looks just plain weird. It’s got sets of flat dumbbell flys with an insane 10:0:4 for a heavy 4-6 reps (not that fucken heavy with a 10 second eccentric contraction mind you!). It`s got squat sets of 25, stiff leg deadlift sets of 30, and 2 minutes straight of calfraises. Just plain weird. But, the way he explains it jsut makes sense. It`s very much like 2 other radical ideas I`ve read: The Warrior Diet and Eat Your Cholesterol. Both fantastic reads. The warrior diet basically goes against everything we`re told to do with our diets, but how he explains it makes perfect sense. And Eat Your Cholesterol is so pro animal fats, its hilarious, all the so called healthyoils and fats that are man-made are so clearly the root of many of todays health concerns, which again, just makes sense.
Anyways, wow I keep getting off topic. Or kinda on a similar, but still different, topic. Ok. So week 1 is done. Had to shift shit around to make it work, but it worked. I’m currently sitting at about 205 lbs. His program is set up to be used for 3 week intervals. I think I can squeeze out more before I get anywhere near a plateau however. I’m thinking I’ll go with 6 weeks without any changes, and then I’ll start fucking around with shit and see what happens.
He’s also got several programs in this book for specific goals: bigger chest, arms, calves, etc. So I figured, after the 6 weeks are up, and I start to play around with the base of his program, I’ll start using his specialty programs, one at a time, to fix my proportions. It’s kinda fun to put all this shit together, I feel like what I imagine a vintage american muscle car enthusiast might feel like while he’s piecing together an old mustang.
But thats enough for now, I’m sleepy, much past my bedtime.
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