Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body

by Michael Matthews

Instead, I recommend that we take a page from the famous Bulgarian powerlifters’ books and imitate their counterintuitive type of training for hitting one-rep lifts. They didn’t stomp around like a madman or spend 15 minutes amping themselves up to screaming guitars and vocals. Instead, they just walked up to the bar and hit the lift as calmly and solidly as they could. If they couldn’t get it without overstimulating their nervous systems, they considered it to be too much weight.

One of many terrible pieces of training advice I hear among the “bros” is to train with light weights and high reps when cutting to “bring out the cuts.” This is 100 percent wrong. Focusing exclusively on high-rep training doesn’t help burn more fat than heavier weights. It doesn’t “shred you up,” nor does it make you vascular. Ironically, training heavy is especially important when you’re cutting because the name of the game is muscle preservation, and you need to keep overloading the muscles to accomplish this.

So train hard when you’re cutting and keep trying to go up in strength. Most guys experience an initial drop in strength when they switch from a bulk to a cut, but I’ve always managed to build my strength back up and end more or less where I began with little to no muscle loss (if I do lose any muscle when I cut, I can’t see it in the mirror).

Well, cardio can help your body repair muscle damage more quickly because it increases blood flow to various areas of the body. This type of “active recovery” delivers more “raw materials” to the muscles for use and removes the waste products, which results in an all-around quicker recovery period.21 It’s worth noting, however, that these benefits are primarily seen in the legs because most forms of cardio don’t involve the upper body. If you want to boost whole-body recovery, then you would need to do something that gets your upper body working, like a rowing machine, or using your arms to pump on the elliptical machine.

As discussed earlier in the book, retaining insulin sensitivity is highly beneficial when you’re eating a surplus of calories to build muscle, whereas insulin resistance inhibits muscle growth and promotes fat storage. This is where cardio comes in because it improves insulin sensitivity and does so in a dose-dependent manner (meaning the more you do, the more benefits you get).22 In this way, doing cardio can help your muscles better absorb the nutrients you eat, which can mean more muscle growth and less fat storage over time.

The bottom line is that moderate amounts of cardio most definitely don’t impair muscle growth and may even accelerate it, and cardio confers other health benefits as well. I recommend that you make cardio a regular part of your routine, whether you’re cutting, bulking, or maintaining. The muscle-related benefits of cardio are especially true if the exercise closely imitates the motions used in exercises performed to build muscle, like cycling or rowing.

You do burn both fat and carbohydrates when you exercise, and the proportion varies with the intensity of exercise. A very low-intensity activity like walking taps mainly into fat stores, whereas high-intensity sprints pull much more heavily from carbohydrate stores. At about 60 percent of maximum exertion, your body gets about half of its energy from carbohydrate stores and half from fat stores (which is why many “experts” claim that you should work in the range of 60 to 70 percent of maximum exertion).

The results: after six weeks of training, the subjects doing the intervals had lost significantly more body fat. Yes, four to six 30-second sprints burn more fat than 60 minutes of incline treadmill walking.

Research has shown that the longer your cardio sessions are, the more they impair strength and hypertrophy.30 Thus, keeping your cardio sessions short is important when we’re talking about maximizing your gains in the weight room and preserving your muscle. Only high-intensity interval training allows you to do this and burn enough fat to make it worthwhile.

I like the recumbent bike for my cardio, and here’s how I do it: 1. I start my workout with 2 to 3 minutes of low-intensity warm-up on the lowest resistance. 2. I then bump the resistance up several notches to give me something to pedal against but not so much that my quads get fried in just one bout, and I pedal as fast as possible for 60 seconds. If you’re new to HIIT, you may need to start with 30- to 45-second sprints. 3. I then reduce the resistance to its slowest setting and pedal at a moderate pace for the same amount of time as my high-intensity interval (60 seconds). If you’re new to HIIT, you may need to extend this rest period to 1.5 to 2 times your high-intensity intervals (if you sprint for 30 seconds, you may need 45 to 60 seconds of recovery). 4. I then repeat this cycle of all-out and recovery intervals for 25 to 30 minutes. 5. I finish with a 2- to 3-minute cool-down at a low intensity.

Personally, I wouldn’t do more than 45 to 60 minutes of steady-state cardio in one session, and in terms of weekly frequency, we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Several other studies, such as those conducted by researchers from the Children’s National Medical Center, the Waikato Institute of Technology, and the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, came to the same conclusions: training for both endurance and strength simultaneously impairs your gains on both fronts.32 Training purely for strength or purely for endurance in a workout is far superior. Cardio before weightlifting also saps your energy and makes it much harder to train heavy, which in turn inhibits your muscle growth.

Therefore, I recommend that you separate your weightlifting and cardio sessions by at least a few hours if at all possible. Personally, I lift early in the morning and do my cardio after work, before dinner. If there’s no way that you can split up your cardio and weightlifting, do your weight training first, as cardio first will drain energy that you’ll want for your lifting. While this arrangement isn’t ideal, it’s not a huge problem. You can still do well on the program. If you can, I recommend having a protein shake after your weightlifting and before your cardio as this will help mitigate the muscle breakdown.

HOW OFTEN YOU SHOULD DO CARDIO In terms of frequency, here’s how I do it: • When I’m bulking, I do two 25-minute HIIT sessions per week. • When I’m cutting, I do three to five 25-minute HIIT sessions per week. • When I’m maintaining, I do two to three 25-minute HIIT sessions per week. • I never do more than five cardio...

Between each of its eight-week phases, the Bigger Leaner Stronger program includes a choice between what is known as a deload week and several days, or even an entire week, off the weights.

Training heavy is especially important when you’re cutting because the name of the game is muscle preservation, and you need to keep overloading the muscles to accomplish this.

When I’m bulking, I do two 25-minute HIIT sessions per week. When I’m cutting, I do three to five 25-minute HIIT sessions per week. When I’m maintaining, I do three 25-minute HIIT sessions per week.

These exercises are the squat, deadlift, bench press, and military press, and their timeless power has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt by over a century of bodybuilders, strongmen, and athletes.

I’m going to give you everything you need to perform the exercises properly and safely, but I definitely recommend that you read Starting Strength if you want to dive into the biomechanics of each movement.

In closing, researchers from Duke University concluded that the squat “does not compromise knee stability, and can enhance stability if performed correctly.” 9 Furthermore, any risks of spinal injury can be avoided by simply minimizing the shearing force placed on the spine.

Face the bar so you can walk it out backward. Don’t ever walk the bar out forward, as trying to rerack it by walking backward is dangerous.

Get under the bar and place your heels at about shoulder-width apart, with the toes rotated out by about 20 to 25 degrees (your right foot should be at about 1 o’clock and your left at about 11 o’clock). When you’re ready to unrack the bar, bring your shoulder blades together, tighten your entire upper back, raise your chest up, and straighten your lower back. Put the bar below the bone at the top of your shoulder blades, solidly across your upper back muscles and rear deltoids. Do not put the bar on your neck.

Use a narrow grip because this helps you maintain upper-back tightness. Place your thumbs on top of the bar. Notice how all of the weight is resting on his back, with none on his hands. This is important. The wide grip that many people use slackens the back muscles, which provide crucial suppor...

Many people have the tendency to want to transfer the load to the quads as they descend and accomplish this by sliding the knees too far forward. Well, if your knees push too far past your toes as you descend, they’re put in a compromising position that can lead to all kinds of pains and problems, particularly with the patellar tendon under the kneecap. A good rule of thumb is that the forward motion of the knees should occur in the first third or half of the descent, and they should go no further than just in front of the toes. Once the knees are out of the way and in place, the movement becomes a simple drop of the hips straight down followed by a rise straight up.

I recommend that you practice this movement with no bar to get a feel for it. If you want to score bonus points, put yourself on camera so you can ensure that what you think you’re doing is actually what you’re doing.

Once you’ve reached the bottom of the squat, you drive your butt straight up—not forward—and raise your shoulders at the same pace. To do this, you must maintain a back angle that keeps the weight over the middle of your foot. If your hips rise faster than your shoulders, you’ll start tipping forward, which puts heavy strain on the neck and back. Don’t think about anything but driving your hips straight up while keeping your chest up and maintaining the proper spine angle, and you’ll ascend correctly.

Squatting too rapidly increases the shearing and compressive forces placed on your knees.12 Make sure your descent is controlled—don’t simply drop your hips as quickly as you can.

Don’t point your feet straight forward, as this can increase stress on the knees. As the stance widens, the body naturally wants the feet to be parallel with the thighs. By twisting them in and squatting, you force an unnatural torque on the knees that can lead to bowing them in as you ascend, which increases the risk of injury.

Believe it or not, the wrong shoes can make squatting significantly harder. Bad shoes are those with a soft or unstable sole or raised heel, as this promotes instability during the lift, and those with too high of a heel, which shifts your body weight and thus your knees too far forward as you descend and ascend.

Don’t use a “thumbless” or “suicide” grip (as its aptly called), which has your thumbs next to your index fingers as opposed to wrapped around the bar. While people give various reasons for liking the thumbless grip, its disadvantage is obvious: when you’re going heavy, it’s surprisingly easy for the barbell to slip out of your hands and crash down on your chest, or worse, your neck (just Google “thumbless grip bench press accident” if you don’t believe me!). Put the bar in the palm of your hand, not in your fingers, because this leads to wrist pains.

Grip the bar hard. Try to crush it like spaghetti, as this will give you a little boost in strength.

Create a stable lower body base by placing your feet directly beneath your knees, which should be angled outward, tightening yo...

Research has shown that keeping your arms at about a 45-degree angle relative to your torso and using a medium grip are the best ways to protect your shoulders while performing the bench press.16 However, 45 degrees on the nose isn’t necessarily right for everyone—you’ll want to find the position between 30 and 60 degrees that is most comfortable for you.

The proper bench press movement is a controlled lowering of the bar all the way down to the bottom of your chest (over your nipples), followed by an explosive drive upward. The bar should move in a straight line up and down, not toward your face or belly button.

There’s a never-ending debate over whether you should bring the bar to your chest. Many fitness “experts” claim that you should lower the weight no further than the point where your upper arms are parallel to the floor, as going any deeper places too much stress on the shoulders. This is nonsense.

Don’t watch the bar as it moves, as this will likely cause you to vary its angles of descent and ascent. Instead, pick a spot on the ceiling to look at during the exercise and see the bar going down and up in relation to it. The goal is to bring it up to the same spot for each rep.

Use your legs to drive against the floor. This transfers force up through the hips and back, which helps maintain proper form and can increase the pushing force you can generate.

Keep your butt on the bench at all times. If your butt is lifting, the weight is probably too heavy. The three points of contact that you should always maintain are the upper back (stays down on the bench), the butt (ditto), and the feet (stay planted on the floor).

When doing a close-grip bench press, your grip should be slightly narrower than shoulder-width and no closer.

The rest of the setup and movement are the same as the regular bench press: the shoulder blades are “screwed” into the bench, there’s a slight arch in the lower back, the feet are flat on the floor, and the bar moves straight down, touches the bottom of your chest, and moves straight up.

If your shoulders or wrists feel uncomfortable at the bottom of the lift, simply widen your grip by about the width of a finger and try again.

Drive your body upward and slightly back as quickly as you can by pushing through your heels. Keep your elbows locked in place and your lower back slightly arched (no rounding!).

If you start it with bent elbows, you’ll end up putting unnecessary strain on your biceps. Keep your elbows straight for the entire lift.

Try to crush the bar with your grip. If your knuckles aren’t white, you’re not squeezing hard enough.

A common mistake guys make is starting the ascension slowly, which makes it much easier to get stuck. Explode the bar up from the floor as fast as you can by applying as much force through your heels as possible.

When you begin the movement, you unlock your knees just enough to put some tension on the quads, and your back should be slightly arched. Start the bar down the thigh in a straight line by pushing the hips back, and your torso should lean forward to keep your shoulders directly over the bar. The bar passes over your knees and travels down the shins, and you go as low as you can without breaking the extension of your back. Because of the increasing angle of the torso, you probably won’t be able to go much further than a few inches past your knees, and that’s okay. In fact, if the weight is touching the floor, you’re doing it wrong (you’re bending your knees).

Another common exercise I’ve left off the list is any type of decline press. This wasn’t a mistake. The reason I’m shunning this popular exercise is that decline pressing is simply less effective than incline and flat pressing for training the pecs. Due to its reduced range of motion, it causes less stimulation of both the pectoralis major and clavicular pectoralis.24 A common argument for doing decline presses is to work the lowest portion of the pectoralis major, but dips are a far superior exercise for accomplishing this while also training more muscles overall and building upper body balance and coordination.

Do 2 calf workouts per week with at least one day in between each. • Do 6 sets per workout. • For the first set, point your toes forward. For the second, point them slightly out (about 20 degrees). For the third set, point them slightly inward. Repeat for the next 3 sets. • Use a 2-1-2 rep tempo: 2 seconds to full contraction, a slight pause while contracted, and 2 seconds to release. • Once you hit the top of your rep range with a given weight, add 10 pounds.

I’ve found that abs seem to respond best to a combination of weighted and unweighted work. Here’s how I like to do it: • Do a set of a weighted exercise like the cable crunch, captain’s chair leg raise, or hanging leg raise for 10 to 12 reps (you can add weight to the latter two by snatching a dumbbell in between your feet). • Go directly into 1 set of an unweighted exercise, to failure. • Go directly into 1 set of an unweighted exercise, to failure. • Rest 2 to 3 minutes. For example: • Do a set of cable crunches in the 10- to 12-rep range. • Go directly into 1 set of captain’s chair leg raises, to failure. • Go directly into 1 set of air bicycles, to failure. • Rest 2 to 3 minutes. Do 3 of these circuits two or three times per week, and your abs and obliques will develop.

If you’re going to train five days per week, use the following training template: Day 1: Chest and Abs Day 2: Back and Calves Day 3: Shoulders and Abs Day 4: Legs Day 5: Upper Body and Abs Your “Upper Body” day consists of 3 sets for the chest performed in the 8- to 10-rep range with 1 to 2 minutes of rest in between each set followed by arms training (biceps and triceps) in the 4- to 6-rep range. In terms of the amount of weight to use for your 8- to 10-rep sets, it should be about 10% less than your heavy, 4- to 6-rep weight (about 75% of your 1RM). And the goal is to progress here like everywhere—once you hit ten reps, add weight. In terms of your choice of exercises for this additional chest training, I recommend that you stick to incline pressing and dips. For example, here’s a 5-day week on the program (and remember that “working sets” are your heavy, 4- to 6-rep sets and “optional” sets are for when you feel like you have a bit more juice left but aren’t mandatory): DAY 1 CHEST & ABS Incline Barbell Bench Press – Warm-up sets and then 3 working sets Incline Dumbbell Bench Press – 3 working sets Flat Barbell Bench Press – 3 working sets Face Pull – 3 working sets of 8 to 10 reps per set with 1 to 2 minutes of rest in between these lighter sets 3 ab circuits The face pull isn’t an exercise you see many people doing but it’s one of my favorites for strengthening the rotator cuff muscles, which are heavily involved in pressing DAY 2 BACK & CALVES Barbell Deadlift – Warm...