Bodybuilders And What They Can Teach Us

Bodybuilders: Keep the Template, Alter the Protocols

Bodybuilders have a lot to teach strength athletes, powerlifters, Olympic lifters, tactical athletes and serious trainees. Not every bodybuilding method should be copied. Not every bodybuilding claim deserves blind acceptance. But the overarching template—the coordinated use of resistance training, cardio and disciplined nutrition—is one of the most effective physical-transformation systems ever created.

Dorian Yates, shown above at his awesome peak, represented a turning point in modern bodybuilding. His contest condition was famously described in the muscle-magazine world as freakishly low in body fat. Known for his mind-blowing mass, what really separated him from the big men bodybuilders that came before him was his ability to get absolutely shredded. Look how crisp and fat-free his serratus and intercostals appear in this photo, with shredded obliques and a skeletal contest face. I was with him for three hours the morning after he won the 1995 Mr. Olympia. He was doing a post-victory photo shoot with Ralph Dehaan while I interviewed him for Muscle & Fitness.

Back in the 1990s, I worked as the main training article writer for Muscle & Fitness magazine. Dr. Jim Wright brought me onboard after reading my articles in Powerlifting USA and MILO magazine. Jim eventually became science editor at Flex magazine and was one of the smartest men I ever met inside the muscle-magazine world.

The boys at Muscle & Fitness needed a training editor and Jim suggested me. I got the job and generated scores of feature articles during my tenure. My job was to interview the top bodybuilders in the world on how they trained and ate. At the time, the Weider Empire was on top of the world and M&F was the largest-selling fitness magazine in the world.

As a national-level powerlifter and lifelong student of the Iron Game, I was ideally suited to write training articles. I knew training inside and out and when I interviewed bodybuilders, I really interviewed them. I quizzed the hell out of them on how they lifted, what kind of cardio they performed, and how they ate both in-season and out-of-season.

I wanted to know for myself. I wanted to add their knowledge, particularly on diet and cardio, to my own athletic database. With one notable exception, Dorian Yates, the high-level bodybuilders of that era—and previous bodybuilding eras—used a high-volume, moderate-intensity resistance-training approach.

Inside the Muscle & Fitness Era

The topflight pro bodybuilders of the 1990s were spending 15 to 20 hours per week training. Long lifting sessions were coupled with long cardio sessions. To me, the 1990s approach to bodybuilding was a sophisticated extension of the old Arnold-Franco-Robbie-Zane-Sergio volume-training template. Only now, atop 90-minute daily weight-training sessions, the elite bodybuilders added another 45 to 60 minutes a day of cardio.

The inclusion of cardio into the bodybuilder template was resisted tooth-and-nail. Bodybuilders and bodybuilding experts hated cardio and offered up the “irrefutable science” that cardiovascular exercise was detrimental and should be avoided. Cardio tore muscle down! That was all the bodybuilders needed to hear and all they needed to reject cardio.

The missing detail was context. Yes, excessive endurance training combined with inadequate calories can interfere with muscle and strength gain. But that is not the same thing as a well-fed bodybuilder riding a stationary bike for 35 to 45 minutes, then eating or drinking a planned replenishment meal afterward.

What changed the minds of mainstream bodybuilding world vis-à-vis cardio? The cardio deniers started getting beat on a regular and routine basis by bodybuilders who did cardio. Results change minds. Those early cardio users were the pioneers who created the first generation of the modern huge-yet-ripped bodybuilder.

Before cardio became widespread, the ultra-low body-fat look was mostly the exclusive domain of smaller, lighter-boned bodybuilders. With the widespread inclusion of cardio, big men were better able to obtain the kind of conditioning formerly associated with smaller physiques.

The Bodybuilding Triad

With the widespread inclusion of cardio, the modern bodybuilding template was born:

• Resistance training: build or preserve muscle.
• Cardio: improve conditioning, increase energy expenditure and assist fat loss.
• Nutrition: provide the food structure needed to build muscle or reveal it.

This is the bodybuilding triad, the bodybuilding lifestyle.

The classical bodybuilder approach to resistance training is distinctly different from the resistance training used by an athlete seeking to increase pure strength and power. The bodybuilder’s goal is maximum muscle size, shape, balance and visual impact. Freed from having to improve a squat, bench press, clean or deadlift total, bodybuilders can “pump” a muscle over and over using a variety of exercises.

To increase a targeted muscle’s size, bodybuilders repeatedly engorge the muscle with blood, inflating and purposefully overinflating. The immediate goal is the pump. The long-term goal is hypertrophy.

For a broader introduction to the sport itself, see IRON COMPANY’s guide to what bodybuilding is and how it differs from other strength disciplines.

Cardio Was the Missing Piece

Cardio was the missing piece to the bodybuilding puzzle. Bodybuilders became fitter and leaner because of aerobics. Ironically, it was discovered that many bodybuilders grew larger muscles because of constant cardio. Fit bodybuilders were able to train harder, longer, more often and recover quicker.

Cardio builds and strengthens the heart and lungs while improving circulatory function. Cardio can help raise energy expenditure and support a fat-loss phase when coordinated with diet. The human machinery functions best when fit, strong and fed appropriately.

Current evidence suggests that concurrent aerobic and resistance training can coexist, but programming matters. Excessive endurance volume, poor exercise order, inadequate recovery and under-fueling can interfere with strength or hypertrophy adaptations in some settings. Sensible cardio performed by a well-fed resistance-trained athlete is a different animal from an underfed endurance specialist logging huge mileage.

Fasted cardio deserves similar precision. Fasted aerobic exercise may increase fat oxidation during the session, but that does not automatically mean superior long-term body-fat loss. The old-school practical value of fasted cardio is adherence: get up, walk, ride, or move before the day gets away from you. The fat-loss result still depends on the full weekly plan.

Bodybuilding Resistance Training: The Pump Versus the Payload

The bodybuilder weight-training strategy often reduces training poundage. This one act enables longer sessions filled with more pumping sets, higher reps, more exercises, a quicker pace, shortened rest periods and non-lockout techniques that promote bigger pumps.

Here is Frank Zane’s classical old-school high-volume chest routine, performed three times a week:

Zane weight trained twice a day, six days a week. His weekly set totals were enormous. Depending on how the sessions were counted, the old-school bodybuilders could rack up hundreds of sets per week.

That kind of work capacity is not normal. It is not beginner training. It is not something a normal lifter should copy because it looks heroic on paper.

The pump-based approach has real value. It teaches muscle feel. It builds local muscular endurance. It develops the ability to direct tension into a target muscle. It creates tremendous volume. It also takes time, recovery, food and tolerance for monotony.

For a deeper dive into the pump itself, read Marty Gallagher’s bodybuilding pump training article.

The Dorian Yates Counterargument

Then along came Dorian Yates doing approximately 70 sets a week, not 700.

As I pointed out in articles in Muscle & Fitness, Yates got really big because he figured out a way to get really strong. He trained like a powerlifter: a powerlifter that added forced reps to finish a top set. Like a lifter, Yates trained each muscle once a week.

He used bar-bending poundage and his strategy was to work up to one all-out top set. He would ride the poundage to positive failure before having Leroy, his fearsome training partner, step in and administer one or two expertly applied forced reps. Then onto the next exercise. One all-out top set and done.

Using this “less is better if less is heavier” strategy, Yates built mind-blowing size. Even if muscle-building results were equal between Dorian’s low-volume high-intensity approach and the classical Arnold-Zane high-volume moderate-intensity approach, Occam’s razor would nudge me toward the 70-set-a-week school, not the 700-set-a-week school.

Volume training—pump, pump, pump—is akin to flogging a muscle to death. The Yates approach recognized that getting stronger, way stronger, could make muscles bigger, way bigger. In a bit of an oversimplification, a man with a 400-pound bench press usually has a hell-of-a-lot more pec, delt and triceps development than a man with a 200-pound bench press.

While Frank Zane was performing huge volumes of chest work weekly, Yates would warm up with a few sets before incline pressing massive poundage for a small number of brutally hard reps plus a forced rep or two. Then he moved on: a couple sets of flyes, a couple sets of pec deck, and chest training was done for the week.

For the full Marty Gallagher treatment of Dorian’s power-bodybuilding legacy, read Dorian Yates – Forged Passion.

Nutrition: The Bodybuilder’s Real Discipline

Bodybuilding is fundamentally about nutrition. Disciplined, planned, sustained nutrition is coordinated with intense, consistent, hardcore exercise to create a muscled-up, fat-free physique. The triad—lifting, cardio and nutrition—is skillfully juggled to coax progress and transform the physique.

Nutrition: the bodybuilder often establishes a multiple-meal eating schedule. Mini-meals break the day’s calorie allotment into smaller amounts. Rather than eat 3,000 calories in three square meals, the bodybuilder might eat six 500-calorie meals. The value is practical: planned meals, planned protein, planned portions and fewer accidental food disasters.

Multiple meals are not magic. They do not suspend energy balance. Their value is discipline, appetite management, protein distribution and adherence.

Cleaning up the food selections is the first order of business. Anyone unwilling to clean up the diet has little chance of bodybuilding success. The world is littered with muscled-up, strong, fit, fat athletes. High-quality eating combined with intense, consistent exercise is the eternal bodybuilding prescription for leanness.

Cardio: cardio is coordinated with diet to whittle off body fat. Through the skilled use of timed exercise and strict eating, the body is maneuvered into a situation where stored body fat can be mobilized and oxidized over time. The circulatory system needs stressing and strengthening as surely as the external muscles.

Resistance training: classical bodybuilding stresses the pump, the purposeful engorgement of a muscle with blood. Moderate poundage enables the bodybuilder to plow through several exercises per muscle group, hitting multiple muscle groups in each training session. At the other extreme, bodybuilding minimalists like Dorian Yates grow powerlifter strong and grow powerlifter large.

Regardless of which generalized direction is selected—the volume-and-pump approach or the train-like-a-lifter approach—application, tenacity and intensity are the keys to sparking hypertrophy and building muscle.

What Strength Athletes Should Borrow

The bodybuilder triad—the balanced combination of resistance training, aerobic exercise and highly disciplined nutrition—is a magnificent template. It covers strength, leanness, function and physical presentation.

However, we reserve the right to switch out the protocols used by bodybuilders within the three legs.

We have our own weight-training protocols, our own cardio protocols and our own nutritional protocols. While we salute the genius of the generalized bodybuilding template, we reserve the right to insert our own modes, methods and procedures.

Do not throw the baby out with the bath water. Keep the triad. Switch out some of the component parts.

Equipment Notes for Applying the Bodybuilding Template

Bodybuilding methods can be applied in a commercial gym, garage gym, school weight room, tactical training room or home gym. The tools do not need to be exotic. The basics remain the basics: barbells, dumbbells, weight plates, collars, benches, racks and a training surface that can handle repeated use.

Serious lifters building a bodybuilding-and-strength hybrid setup can start with dependable Olympic weightlifting bars, accurately selected weight plates, and secure barbell collars. A bar such as the CAP Barbell Rebel Olympic Power Bar belongs in the conversation when the goal includes heavy barbell work.

When plates are being changed often during bodybuilding-style sessions, practical collars such as SnapClips barbell collars can help keep plate changes efficient. A dedicated training space also benefits from durable rubber gym flooring rolls that protect the floor and support repeated training traffic.

The equipment does not create the physique. The lifter does. The equipment merely gives the lifter an honest place to apply the triad.

Safety Note for Bodybuilding-Style Training and Dieting

High-volume bodybuilding, forced reps, fasted cardio, contest-style dieting, very low body-fat targets and extreme training schedules are not appropriate for every trainee. Beginners, older lifters, injured athletes and anyone with medical, nutrition or eating-disorder concerns should scale training and diet to their current capacity and seek qualified guidance when needed.

Do not chase sub-5% body fat as a health goal. Do not copy a professional bodybuilder’s volume, drugs, diet, dehydration practices or contest-prep methods. Train hard, eat intelligently, recover deeply and remember that the bodybuilding triad is a template—not a suicide pact.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.