Thread: Pete Sisco - Train Smart

I'm sorry for bumping this, but I am very curious, as I know Pete Sisco has had many publications, and this one is supposedly extremely good, I mean, there has even been a Gym Equipment company founded on the basis of the program, they developed special equipment to suit it....so I'll just wait and see

I know of it, but never read it.

does anyone know a good book on how to keep good form on excersises?

Neo

The Book is certainly different, here are some extracts, I just don't 'get some of the ideas'

'So how do you measure the “intensity” of “high intensity training”? That’s
easy. It’s already been done by people a lot smarter than I. People like
Isaac Newton and James Watt (who coined the term, ’horsepower’).
As far as your body is concerned, the intensity of any workout is defined
by the amount of weight it has to lift and the amount of time it has to
lift it. Lifting 100 pounds in 20 seconds has “x” amount of intensity.
Lifting 100 pounds in only 10 seconds has “2x” intensity, since you have
to do the same work in half the time.
This is very helpful!
Suddenly, if you bench pressed 200 pounds for 10 reps on Monday,
then bench pressed the same 200 pounds for the same 10 reps on
Thursday ... you might have made progress! Why? Because if it took you
90 seconds on Monday and only 75 seconds on Thursday it means the
intensity went up! More intensity ... more muscle growth stimulation!
How did this fact get missed during 100 years of bodybuilding???
This kind of intensity measurement is called “horsepower” or “watts”
outside of the gym. And we could use those same units in the gym. But
to do that we also need to measure the distance the weight travels each
rep. Here is where a couple of issues come up.
First, it’s a pain in the ass to have to measure all those distances. And
do you know what? They never really change from workout to workout.
The distance you move the bar during a bench press is determined by
the length of your arms. Assuming you’re older than 17 or so, that distance
is not going to change. So the distance number factors out of all
your comparisons anyway.
Second ... and this is a little weird ... in the realm of muscle physiology,
the distance doesn’t have much importance. Here’s why it’s weird. In
physics, moving a 100-pound weight 12 inches is the same amount of
work as moving a 200-pound weight 6 inches. Both of the above examples
are also equal to moving a 400-pound weight 3 inches. Fine. But
have you ever tried it? Most of you reading this can probably throw
around 100 pounds easily. Can you even get 400 pounds off the pins?
How about moving 800 pounds 1.5 inches? I doubt it.'


'Why is this the case? I honestly don’t know. But I don’t need to know the
“why” ... and neither do you. (I’m sure there is a biochemist somewhere
who can provide a rigorous answer involving nerve discharges, rates of
cellular activity and many metabolic factors ... but I just know it’s true in all
cases I’ve tested.) By the way, science doesn’t yet know “why” a headache
hurts. But it does hurt. That’s a fact. And lifting 400 pounds any distance
is a hell of a lot more demanding than lifting 100 pounds through a full
range of motion. Don’t take my word for it. Try it!
Anyway ... we left distance out of the measurement because it wouldn’t
change from workout to workout and because (even in 1992) we suspected
it didn’t matter as much as everyone thought it did. (A few years
later we proved it ... big time!)
So if we did a bench press of 200 pounds for 10 reps in one minute,
I’d enter the data into my laptop then add up the “work” thusly: 200 lbs
x 10 reps = 2,000 lbs. Since it took one minute, we bench pressed
2,000 lbs per minute. I decided to call that number a “Power Factor”
because it wasn’t a proper unit of horsepower or watts. Hey!!! ... suddenly
we were measuring intensity! All we had to do now was
make sure it was high enough to stimulate muscle growth and that it
progressed from workout to workout.
The “Discovery” Of Partials
So we started working out - in an entirely conventional way - except
we measured the intensity of every workout with a Power Factor calculation
so that the next workout would always have a bit more intensity
(after all ... we were supposed to be getting bigger, stronger muscles
from every workout ... something few other people seemed to
realize or to shoot for.) And we progressed nicely for a few weeks.
Then we hit a plateau.
That plateau hung on for quite a while. Then John came up with the idea
of trying a routine based on using strong range partials.'
We kept doing all the same exercises, except we did each one using only
our strongest quarter of range. So rather than move the bar, say, 24 inches,
we would move it only the last six inches of our reach. The first thing
that happened was our Power Factor numbers took an enormous jump.
But that is to be expected (and doesn’t mean much) because we were
adding weight and reducing distance but the Power Factor number did
not reflect distance - only the weight. The second thing that happened
was truly amazing.
Our strength skyrocketed!

anyone got some comments on those extracts ? TO BE HONEST...I really don't know what is Different etc...as I havn't read too many books, but just from what I noticed from peoples general routines..his appear very different in the book.