11-23-19 08:14 PM - Post#890713    

Part One

You want to get big? Bigger? Gain weight that’s not centered around your waistline? This is possible; do not doubt that this is possible. In this article, I want to concentrate on what you have to have to be successful.

The ideal thing would be a gym that you can get to three times a week and that you can afford to join and stay a member of. This gym, to be suitable, should have a few features. It should have squat racks. It should have a place to deadlift and do cleans. It should have a decent bench press. It should have bars that are straight, and the sleeves rotate. It should allow chalk. If you have such a place and can afford to, join it.

If you can’t find a place like that, then you have to build your own gym at home. You need a decent bar. If you are young or on a really, really low budget, then I suggest "play it again sports" or a similar place that sells used stuff. Look around. If you can find an old bar that says "York" on the collars that is under $100 and is fairly straight, then buy it. If not, then go for the cheapest bar or bar/plates combo you can buy, with the knowledge that you will need to start saving right away for a decent bar to be bought when you destroy the one you just purchased. It will happen, but don't concern yourself with that right now.

If you can afford it, buy a good, new bar. Look around the Internet and you will see what you need if you have half a brain. Don’t consider buying a new bar unless you can afford one that is over $300.

You also need at least 200 lbs. of plates to start. You can find them cheapest at used sporting goods stores, garage sales, or on Craigslist. I have seen weight plates--and bars also for that matter--practically given away at garage sales many times.

The last things you will need are squat stands and a bench press, or just a bench... in that order. You can get by with a pair of squat stands or a squat rack. A squat rack or stands and a bench are better. A squat rack or pair of stands, and a bench press are best.

Things that are good but not absolutely necessary, are a pair of shoes that have a fairly solid heel of about 3/4 of an inch. You will need to get these eventually if you are serious, but you don’t have to have then to start.

So, now here we are. Do you belong to an appropriate gym? If not, do you have at minimum a decent bar and some weight--better yet, also a pair of squat stands or squat rack? Even better--these things plus a bench or bench press?

This is not a high bar to get over. When I started, I got squat stands by digging post-holes behind the house and putting 4 by 4's in them so I could squat. Figure it out however you want, but if you want to get bigger, figure it out.

We will talk about what to do once you have the necessary set-up in the next article.

Re: Glenn Pendlay - You Wanna Get Bigger - 5 Parts
11-23-19 08:15 PM - Post#890714    

Part Two

In Part One of this series, we concentrated on what tools you should have in order to be successful in getting big / bigger. Here in Part Two, you’ll find out about what you should put into your body to achieve optimal training results.

Eating To Get Big
This article is not for bodybuilders cutting for a contest (although a lot of bodybuilders could benefit from reading it). It’s not really for the average 17-year-old “bro” who is doing bench and curls three times a week at the local Gold’s Gym. This article is for hard training strength athletes, whether they are Olympic lifters, powerlifters, shot putters, or just a guy who wants to gain 30 lbs. of muscle, bench 400 lbs. and is willing to train hard and eat right to get there. This article is not going to be long on science, although I could certainly go that route. It is going to be about what the last 20 years of competing as a strength athlete and coaching strength athletes has taught me about what one has to put into their body in order to train as hard as is necessary to get to the highest level that is possible.

General Guidelines for a Shopping List
- Use olive oil whenever possible when cooking. Drinking it straight when trying to gain weight is good, if it can be tolerated.

- Use Flax seeds. Not flax seed oil. Grind them yourself using a coffee grinder. Sprinkle them into anything that you can. Find a way to get some down the hatch at least every other day. If you eat yogurt, don’t eat yogurt without them.

- Drink milk every day. My palate prefers 2%, but whole milk is also good.

- Eat fish a couple of days a week. Salmon is great. Learn to grill it; it tastes great and is good for you.

- Eggs are good, yolk and all. You should have eggs most days. Most breakfasts should be built around eggs.

- Red meat is your friend. Eat it every day. Do yourself and your pocketbook a favor, and learn to cook brisket. It’s the worst cut of meat at the butcher if not cooked right, the BEST if cooked correctly. It’s also very cheap. If you don’t know how to cook it right, make friends with a Texan and ask him or her. Probably him, cause in Texas it’s the men who do the grilling and smoking and the BBQ.

- Figure out a way to eat vegetables. I don’t care if you don’t like them, do it anyway. There are plenty of very tasty ways to cook and eat veggies--many of them even come from a grill. Again, if you don’t know how to do it, it helps to know a Texan so he can help you with grill technique.

- Nuts are your friends, and I’m not just talking about your nutty friends. And stop smirking. Cashews, almonds, etc. Places like Costco and Sam’s Club have pretty good deals on big jars of various nuts. Keep a jar around the house and snack on them.

- Eat berries, all varieties of berries. Have some everyday if you can afford it. Besides being tasty, berries of various kinds have anti-inflammatory properties.

- Use ginger when you are cooking. I personally don’t like to cook with it much, so every few days I just take a bite of a raw ginger root. This is not something most people can do, so I urge you to learn some recipes that call for ginger. Ginger fights inflammation.

- Take fish oil supplements. If you want to know how much, Google is your friend, but I personally recommend as much as you can stand or as much as you can afford. Fish oil is a great way to even out your Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio, and is especially important when you are eating a lot of red meat and don’t have the cash to buy the grass-fed kind.

- Get some sun, without sunblock, several times a week. If you can’t, take vitamin D supplements - make sure it’s D3, and take at least 5,000 IU a day. But seriously, just get some sun.

- Vitamin C is cheap and is your friend. But don’t bother taking it if you’re not willing to take 2000 or 3000 mg a day.

- A multivitamin isn’t a bad idea, but it’s not as good an idea as eating a large amount and large variety of vegetables. Doing both is an even better idea.

- A good mineral supplement is probably as or more important than a good vitamin supplement.

That should take care of your shopping list. These are the foods you should be buying when you go to the grocery store. In Part Three, we will look at a sample meal plan.

Re: Glenn Pendlay - You Wanna Get Bigger - 5 Parts
11-23-19 08:16 PM - Post#890715    

Part Three

In Part One of this series, we concentrated on what tools you should have in order to be successful in getting big / bigger. Part Two discussed what you should put into your body to achieve optimal training results. Now, read on to view a sample meal plan that will put you well on your way towards gaining some serious muscle.

Three meals a day is good. This is assuming that you get 2-3 snacks on top of your three meals. You should eat right after each training session. The more variety of food you can eat, the better… and of particular value is a variety of vegetables. Eat veggies of a variety of sizes, shapes, and particularly, COLORS!

And my friends, learn to cook!!! This is a lost art among the youth of today. McDonalds is ok now and then, but not all the time. Places like Chipotle, where you can make a burrito that is both tasty and healthy, are also fine sometimes. But why all the time? It’s expensive and needless. Learn to cook your own damn food! It’s better for you, much cheaper, and, if you spend the time to get halfway decent at it, it can be rewarding and even fun. And for the guys out there, let me just say this, women love a man who can cook. And the girls already know that the fastest way to a man’s heart is NOT straight through his ribcage… it’s through his stomach. Enough said.

If you are going to “cheat,” do it once a week in a big way, rather than every day in a small way.

Here are a few sample meals--use them as guidelines.

Breakfast #1
Take four eggs, about a half-pound of pork sausage, some ham or turkey and some spinach. Cook it all in olive oil, and with two tortillas make two breakfast burritos. A little cheese mixed in doesn’t hurt anything – Pepper Jack is the choice of those who know best. Hot sauce is your friend, and Louisiana hot sauce IS the perfect hot sauce, just like the label says. Peppers and onions can take the place of spinach if you like that sort of thing. Now, get yourself some blueberries, strawberries or whatever berries you like, and put them in a bowl. Eat all of this along with a glass of milk.

Breakfast #2
Cook a small sirloin steak. Other red meat will do, but trust me - sirloin is best for breakfast. Add in some potatoes cooked how you want them (hash browns are good for breakfast). Slices of tomatoes and cucumbers round it out. Other vegetables will do, but cucumbers and tomato slices covered in vinegar and oil go good with steak and potatoes. Coffee goes well with this one - trust me. If this sounds boring, cut the steak into strips, cut the potatoes into little pieces, grill some peppers and put it all in a tortilla. Don’t forget a big glass of milk.

Breakfast #3
Make yourself some French toast--it really isn’t that hard. It isn’t ideal but hell, it tastes good and it’s different. Use berries and whipped cream on it instead of syrup. Sausage goes well with this, as does a big, cold glass of milk. And it won’t kill you to use some syrup. This is America and we are all allowed to use syrup some of the time.

Dinner or Supper #1
Chicken Fajitas. Most grocery stores carry ready-made Fajita mix…cut up chicken, onions and peppers. It takes about five minutes to cook this up with a liberal amount of olive oil in a pan. A pound of this, a couple of tortillas, some hot sauce (Louisiana preferably) and maybe even some cheese, and you have yourself a meal. Some folks use sour cream, avocado, or guacamole. There is nothing wrong with that. Some folks even use lettuce. I can’t stop you from using lettuce in your Fajitas, and it won’t hurt you—it’s not unhealthy in any way--but please don’t. There is just something wrong with lettuce in a Fajita. Save the lettuce for the Tacos and Burritos. If you get bored from this, substitute beef, or maybe even pulled pork for the chicken. And don’t forget to drink a big glass of milk.

Dinner or Supper #2
Salad with chicken or steak is tasty. Get a big bag of baby spinach, an onion, and whatever other tidbits strike your fancy. Peppers are sometimes good. Croutons can be good here also. Chop up the onion and whatever else you want to throw in there. Cook up a good amount of chicken strips or steak cut into thin strips, and make a salad. Use a bunch of olive oil on it as dressing, along with squeezing some lemon juice on it. Just a bit of vinegar along with the lemon juice makes it taste better--trust me. Garlic bread goes good with this too, and don’t forget to drink a big glass of milk.

Dinner or Supper #3
Good old steak, potatoes and vegetables. The tastiest way of preparing this is to get yourself a good Tri-tip, and put it on the grill. If it’s between three and four pounds (which most Tri-tips are), get your grill to about 300 degrees and keep it in for about three hours. That’s the way it comes out best on my grill--it is pink in the center and tender and juicy. Make sure you’re not cooking it over direct heat. Put it on the opposite side of the grill as the burner you have on. You may have to adjust the temperature or time based on the idiosyncrasies of your grill. When the meat is 40 minutes or so from being done, put a pan on the stove with water, set it to boil and put a bunch of potatoes in it. Very simple. Get either another pan or use the grill, and “grill” some zucchini and yellow squash. If it’s in a pan, just fry it up in olive oil. If it’s on the grill, put in on aluminum foil and drip some olive oil on top of every piece. Did I mention that you have to slice it up? Whether a pan or a grill, put some sort of steak seasoning on it. Trust me, this makes it taste very yummy.
Donny Shankle, Jon North, and I had this very supper tonight. Between the three of us we had 7.2 pounds of Tri-tip. We also had strawberries for desert, which I recommend wholeheartedly.

Dinner or Supper #4
Many Hooter’s restaurants have an all-you-can-eat wings deal on Tuesdays. Get the naked wings, and eat a lot. Remember, the more wings you eat, the better a deal it is. Donny Shankle ate 100 wings the last time we took advantage of this deal, and he clean and jerks 464 lbs…draw whatever conclusion you want.

Dinner or Supper #5
Salmon and a salad with asparagus on the side. Any idiot can make a salad, so I won’t bother you with that, other than to ask you to please, please, don’t make some ridiculous concoction in which iceberg lettuce is the only veggie and think that you are making something healthy. The salmon is best made over a plank, cedar, mesquite, etc. that has been soaked in water and placed on the grill. To properly cook asparagus, you need a grill, some aluminum foil, some olive oil and whatever steak seasoning that you prefer. I think you can figure it out from there.

Dinner or Supper #6
Use your imagination. Some fish, red meat, pork, chicken, lamb, goat, whatever. Get some veggies, as wide a variety as you can stand, and maybe something starchy… and you have a meal. What do you like? Experiment. Learn to cook. You’re not really a full-grown man till you can whip out a tasty and healthy meal complete with meat and vegetables on your grill.

Snack #1
Nuts. Eat them, and stop smirking. And don’t ask how many. No sane person counts out 30 almonds. Just grab handfuls and put them in your mouth ‘til you can’t eat anymore. Cashews, almonds, etc.

Snack #2
Fruit. Any of it. It’s tasty and good for you.

Snack #3
Yogurt with ground flax in it. Flax is good for you. Figure out a way to include it in your diet.

So there it is. A guide to eating like a strength athlete who wants to gain muscle.

Re: Glenn Pendlay - You Wanna Get Bigger - 5 Parts
11-23-19 08:17 PM - Post#890716    

Part Four

In Part One of this series, we concentrated on what tools you should have in order to be successful in getting big / bigger. Part Two discussed what you should put into your body to achieve optimal training results. Then in Part Three, we viewed a sample meal plan that will put you well on your way towards gaining some serious muscle. And now, we finally get to the good part--the training!

Remember in Part One when I said all you really HAD to have was a bar and some weights--the kind of cheap set-up that you can probably find at Play it Again Sports for $139 or pick up at garage sales or on Craig's List even cheaper? Well, the first program that I am going to give you assumes that this is indeed all you have. If you are in this situation, save your money to buy a pair of squat stands and a bench. Yes, you can get off to a good start without them, but, if you want maximum return on your effort, you will have to have these two pieces of equipment fairly soon.

By necessity, this first program is based off of pulling a bar off the ground and pressing it over your head. This is not a technique article, but if you need to learn how to do a particular exercise, there are plenty of resources on the web that will help you to learn. You will train three days a week on non-consecutive days. Your workouts should take less than an hour.

Your workouts will contain three exercises only, and they are as follows:

Clean and Press
You will power-clean the bar to your shoulders, then do five military presses with it, and this counts as one set. You will start this with an empty bar, and add weight to each set, with the aim being to get to a fairly challenging weight on your 5th set. Your first time might be hard and you might fail on your 3rd or 4th set, or, you might have to do six or seven sets to find a challenging weight. But once you find your starting weight, you should be able to use some simple math to take fairly even jumps from the empty bar on your first set to your top weight on your 5th set from then on.

Clean and Front Squat
You will power-clean a bar to your shoulders, then front squat it three times. Just like with the clean and press, you will start with an empty bar and aim to find a challenging weight on your 5th set, and do so making fairly even jumps. If you fail to do this on your first try, it’s ok. But once you know your starting weight, use your math skills and get to it in five even jumps from then on.

Deadlift
Done identically to the first two exercises, move from an empty bar to a challenging weight for a set of 5 in 5 sets with fairly even jumps.

On each exercise (the first time you do it), find a challenging weight for your top set. Notice that I did NOT say maximum. A challenging weight is one where you KNOW you could do 10 or 20 more pounds, but you still have to put forth some effort to finish the set.

Every subsequent time you do an exercise, you will add 5lbs. for the clean and press or clean and front squat, and 10 lbs. for the deadlift if you completed the required number of reps on your last set from the previous workout. If you did not complete five reps in the last workout, you will keep the weight the same until you do.

The exercises are arranged in the following way:

Monday
Clean and Press
Clean and Front Squat

Wednesday
Clean and Press
Deadlift

Friday
Clean and Press
Clean and Front Squat

This is it; this is all there is to it. Plenty of people have gotten plenty big and strong doing programs similar to this with nothing but a barbell and a place to stand and lift it. But, you should make it your goal to buy, make, steal, or somehow improvise a pair of squat stands and a bench within 2-3 months of starting this program.

Re: Glenn Pendlay - You Wanna Get Bigger - 5 Parts
11-23-19 08:18 PM - Post#890717    

Part Five

In Part One of this series, we concentrated on what tools you should have in order to be successful in getting big / bigger. Part Two discussed what you should put into your body to achieve optimal training results. Part Three viewed a sample meal plan to put you on your way towards gaining some serious muscle. Then in Part Four, we emphasized the training involved to achieve your goals. Here in Part Five, we will explore the 5X5 program.

So now you have a bar, weights, bench, and squat stands. Whether you are just now starting to train, or whether you started with only a bar and weights (via the method I outlined in the last article), it doesn’t matter. Now we are going to move into one of the simplest and most result producing programs a beginner could do--the 5X5 program, beginner version.

When you start the 5X5 method, you ramp your sets. You go from a set of 5 with a light weight as your first warm-up set, take consistent jumps in weight over each of the next 4 sets (doing 5 reps each set), and you end with your heaviest set. So, you are doing 4 submaximal sets of 5, and one maximal set. An example of the weights used in a squat workout would be 95 lbs., 115 lbs., 135 lbs., 155 lbs. and 175 lbs.--all for sets of 5. A good selection of exercises for a beginner would be the following:

Monday
Squat
Bench Press
Row

Wednesday
Squat (or Front Squat)
Military Press (or Push Press)
Power Clean (or Chin-up)

Friday
Squat
Bench Press (or Incline Press or Dips)
Deadlift

Now, some of this is negotiable and some is not. The least negotiable are the squats on Monday and Friday. On Wednesday, you can replace the squats with front squats if you want. You must bench press, but you can replace one of the bench workouts with one of several other exercises if you want. Dips or incline presses are two that are suitable. Military presses can--if you want--be replaced by push presses. You must do the deadlifts on Friday, but you can replace power cleans with chin-ups if you absolutely cannot do a clean. Or, you can ADD chin-ups after power cleans on Wednesday. Some type of rowing should be done on Monday--I prefer barbell rows by a large margin, but I guess T-bar rows could be substituted. Stay away from dumbbell rows or anything that takes away the stress on the posterior chain along with the upper back work.

How heavy do you start?

Light--with weight that does not require maximal effort. For those new to weight training, you almost can’t start too light. For those who have a training history but are new to this method—do about 15 percent below the maximum that you can do for a set of five. Every time you do an upper body exercise, you add 5 lbs. to the top set and adjust the lighter sets so as to keep the weight jumps as near to even as possible. Add 10 lbs. to the lower body exercises each time you do them.

The first time you fail to get 5 reps on your last set of an exercise, you will decrease the top weight by 10 percent and change the warm-up process. Now the warm-up will look like this—95 lbs. for 5, 115 lbs. for 4, 135 lbs. for 3, 155 lbs. for 2, then 175 lbs. for five. You now repeat the process of upping the weight every workout ‘til you stall again.

On this second stall, you will continue on as long as some progress is being made. For example, if you get 3 reps on your 5th set, go ahead and try it again the next time. If you make 4 reps, then stay with it for another workout. As long as progress is being made, stick with it. When you go three workouts in a row without any progress, reset by 10 percent again.

When you start hitting the third stall on some of your exercises, you need to use a little judgment. If your row is stalled, but your deadlift keeps ticking upwards every week, just stick it out. If your squats and bench are still going up, but the military press is stalled, stick it out. Squats, bench presses and deadlifts are the most important exercises. If two out of the three of these exercises are still going up, stick with it. If two out of the three are stalled, along with several of the other exercises, you’re at the end of the road for this "beginners" version of the 5X5.

Just to give you a rough idea of how long this can take for a person who has no strength training background, does the program correctly and eats enough food to support growth--this simple program can go for as long as six months, put 200 lbs. or more on exercises like the squat and bench press, and add a very noticeable amount of muscle. For a person who fails to do the program correctly or doesn’t eat enough, progress can end much sooner. For anyone who has a training history on a different program, this program will likely not last as long. How long it does last will depend on the quality and the length of their previous training.

When you get to the end of the line on this program, you are ready to step up to an intermediate level of 5X5 programming.

11-24-19 01:24 AM - Post#890726    

BEAUTY!

Life's too short to worry about longevity.

11-24-19 01:47 PM - Post#890736    

Very great, thanks for posting this.

Glenn wrote some great content for OTP, too. Here's a link to his page:

https://www.otpbooks.com/otpbooks-authors/glen n-pendlay/

Glenn Pendlay: Consistency in Olympic Lifting
Glenn Pendlay: Olympic Weightlifting Tips for Beginners
Glenn Pendlay: Programming for Older Lifters
Glenn Pendlay: Olympic Lifts from the Top Down
Glenn Pendlay: Strength Training is a Process, Not an Event
Glenn Pendlay: The Training Log
Glenn Pendlay: The Texas Method
Glenn Pendlay: Olympic Lifting Techniques—Hand Position for the Snatch
Glenn Pendlay: Do You Need to Stomp in Weightlifting?
Glenn Pendlay: Common Weightlifting Mistakes
Glenn Pendlay: Structuring the Training Week

11-24-19 03:16 PM - Post#890739    

Good stuff! He put some funny stuff in there every so often too, which I really like.

Life's too short to worry about longevity.

11-24-19 03:51 PM - Post#890741    

Awesome! Thank you!

Diablo Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth- MT

11-26-19 12:25 AM - Post#890781    

• Laree Said:

Hi Laree,

Any timeline for publication of Glenn's book "American Weightlifting: The Pendlay System" ?

Thanks.

11-26-19 01:27 AM - Post#890783    

Whoa! I hadn't seen his blog before, and it's packed with stuff -

https://glennpendlay.wordpress.com/

Life's too short to worry about longevity.

11-26-19 12:06 PM - Post#890790    

• jp92 Said:

No, not yet. Still some things to iron out, then editing and typesetting. It'll be awhile.

Glenn Pendlay - You Wanna Get Bigger - 5 Parts
11-26-19 04:45 PM - Post#890798    

• Neander Said:

Glenn was an awesomely strong lifter in his own right.

In an old interview (circa 2004 as he was 33 years old at the time) he listed some of his numbers.

The interview - Tea and Crumpets With Glenn Pendlay - was reposted this year on Bodybuilding.com: Link

• Quoting: