I told you yesterday that training was more important than diet to build muscle. As I've promised, here's a video of a group of guys who have the WORST diet ever, but who are muscular, big and strong nonetheless.
Here's the video...
Watch this video, then tell me in the blog comment section what you think is the secret to these guys' muscle size and strength. You'll get my answer tomorrow.
Persistence is the key.
Diet isn’t great, technique isn’t great, but they believe in themselves and keep lifting.
This is *awesome* – what an inspiration.
Inspirational. Just glad that’s not where I do my training!
Sheer frequency of training. If they have no weights, they are doing bodyweight.
Of course persistence and other factors play a part but they are the USUAL factors which ppl bring to the table.
So something extra these inmates bring to the table is frequency.
Yes, Persistence is the key.
I have a friend who was skinny as a rake but after 3 years in prison he came out looking like he had been living in a gym (Essentially he had been living in a gym)
He makes many of the gym rats I know look like couch potatoes!
They are inmates, not a whole lot to do in jail. Sleep, eat, watch tv, workout…
They believe not only in themselves, but each other. The team is driving the individual. Twenty hulks screaming at you to lift, you’re gonna give it all. Community. Competition. Dedication.
Retribution…
sheer hard work is what it’s all about!
Persistence, purpose, and consistency. I’ve always believed inmate strength gains are a great argument for those who believe the over-training myths that the supplement companies (magazine publishers) sell.
I saw this on Discovery about a year ago; it’s very inspirational.
I think it’s a combination of a few factors. The first is that there is really nothing else for them to do in prison, so when they do get a chance to lift, they have a laser like focus since that’s all they have to look forward to. The second factor is rest. I’ve seen a lot of documentaries on prison life and the basic theme is that they sit around doing nothing quite a bit. So after a workout your body needs rest to re-build and they get plenty of it. The last factor is regardless of the type of calories they are getting, they are obviously getting enough to gain weight, and their bodies are are using what it needs to adapt. I don’t see any of them competeing in a bodybuilding contest, but they are in pretty darn good shape.
I wonder if they do that 7 days a week? At an hour and a half a day, wow. I guess their secret would be frequency and recovery. The supervisor pretty much said that at the end. ‘They are to tired to go messin around elsewhere’, so, I would imagine they recover quicker. Great video.
I love this video. These guys are so strong. Theirs’ is the look I admire. The look of strength and power. Not the skinny ripped look.
Tenacity.
Eat enough junk food…
Excess calories from eating anything, working out on the basic compound movements, and optimum recovery equals growth. One becomes Massive and strong but not defined due to the quality of calories.
Persistance is the key…Plus these guys motivation level is out the roof!
The persistance and the time to train.
And what really can help is the time to rest so you’re muscles can grow.
They put in the work, and it is paying off. Great story, inspired to push more weight.
I’ve been wondering about this as well. There’s this idea that you can’t build muscle without protein and that if you don’t consume 1g/lb of bodyweight per day your training will be wasted.
That’s never made sense to me because there are many heavily muscled animals that are similar to us such as gorillas that eat little or no protein. It seems plausible that if a human ate a protein free diet of all pasta or rice for instance he wouldn’t lose all muscle, therefore we must be able to regenerate muscle tissue without metabolizing protein.
They are motivated and have excess calories for muscles to heal and build.
Their Competetive training & quality rest
= Good Gains
As someone already mentioned above, their privilege is having all the time in the world and not a lot of options on how to spend it, so it is most likely that they work out a lot, often and regularly, while getting all the sleep they need.
Few things:
- regular exercises,
- a lot of rest,
- enough calories to grow,
- regular meals,
- testosterone filled environment (it helps your body to produce even more testosterone),
You do not need a lot of protein to grow (100g a day max. maybe less), just eat relatively clean, often, enough and you will grow.
i saw the show that the video is from and i was struck by how positive they are to each other. in my view, civilization is a learned skill and it’s one that few people in prison have learned. cesar millan (the dog whisperer), when working with a dog owner who’s having trouble, stresses a three point mantra: “exercise, discipline, affection”, in that order. discipline becomes easier when excess energy as been exhausted. these men obviously train hard and are disciplined. i don’t think their respect and affection for one another would be there without those first two elements.
Heavy Weights.
Consistency
These guys are jacked because they do nothing but eat lots of junk food and sleep 12 hours a night. And apparently they do the big lifts.
Yeah it’s intensity, dedication, persistence, frequency. Those are the qualities, but the reason they have them is because they have made this goal something that is very important to them. A good assumption would be that in prison there’s not a whole lot of other positive things to do, so training becomes a big deal in their lives. Distraction, not giving it your all, skipping workouts, these are the things that cause average people to fail.
For the average person to succeed they need to find a way to make their training and their strength goals important to them, very important. And then all the necessary qualities mentioned will naturally show up. The weak link for most people is not their muscles but their mind, their will. So they stop a lift before their body really fails, they don’t push themselves to their limits, and as a result, their limits never increase.
People lack that intensity, and the reason is in the modern world, the average person just doesn’t care enough. Well if you don’t care, then save your time and don’t train. That’s my perspective. If you wanna do this, then let’s do it for real. Just watch those guys, any of them look like they don’t care? If I had to choose one word as the key, it’s passion.
frequent training rest and recovery,add weight .
Now thats lifting. You wouldn’t find many (if any) commercial gyms where so many lifters in one place would psyche each other up in that way. Certainly not over doing squats. Maybe at some competitive Powerlifting gyms. That is a bunch of strong dudes … who the hell cares if they wouldn’t win bodybuilding competitions …
Sorry to answer your question about what gives them their size and strength. Lots of compound exercises, in particular squats, squats and more squats, lots of downtime and rest and whatever they can eat…
What Alex said. The high calorie meals these guys eat are a big contribution to their size and strength.
Not sure how they get the calories to get that big on a prison meal. You would think what they eat would just get burned off, not leaving any to gain with.
its not much of a surprise to me because i had once joined a very small gym. it wasnt even havin dumbells. just one bench and barbells. but if u came to it u would know that 70percent of the people there had good physiques. not like a bodybuilder but a strong look though i often wonder how this can be possible??????? cant wait for mehdi to comment and disclose the secret
Its all about the intensity of the training, heavy and regular. And the fact they probably do no cardio!
Excellent. I think it’s persistence and dedication. I think they need something to live for, and for most it’s lifting weights.
I like it when they just walked up to the bar and just squat it. No hesitation, no self doubt, just squat it. They are extremely dedicated, focused and loving every single second they have in there gym. I wish these guys worked out in my gym, because they’re so psyched about these lifts, which in return would have psyched me to do even more. Breaking the limits and reaching for personal freedom.
Interesting…….,so then the question is what really makes them that big?
I was hoping to see the deadlifts too!
For an inmate, strength=survival….sometimes this stuff is straigt up Darwinism….the strongest and fittest shall survive…this is what the inmates have been reduced to…
Great video. Can’t wait to see how much they can lift with proper dieting. But determination and dedication is the most important factor of all, whether you’re in jail or out on the streets.
thanks for the post. great video.inspiring