Okay, Here It Is.

[Nelson Montana]

Just got off the phone with Mr. America 1967 Don Howrth.

Lots of interesting stuff but I'll just touch upon a couple of things for now.

First off, (and you're not going to like this) he spoke about drug dosages.

Read it and weep.

On Drugs:

Don used 10 mgs of D-bol for 4 weeks prior to the America. Prior to that he was totally natural. Considerng how honest he was about several topics I believe this to be true. It wasn't until the middle 70's when things got crazy.

On Training:

40 sets per body part 6 days a week. Yep. FOR-TY! ( When I asked about cardio, he laughed). He admits this was overtraining but the belief was, those who have the genetics could tolerate it and those who didn't -- well, it didn't matter anyway.

On Diet For Growth:

He followed Rheo Blairs plan. Two dozen eggs a day! Plus a gallon of milk and 2 pounds of beef. THAT was the real secret to how those guys got so big and muscular. Today you have guys taking a gram a week and eating 2000 calories and they don't grow so they up their dosage. He admitted he put on some fat, but as he said; "You can't get bigger without getting a little fat." He didn't look too fat in any picture I've ever seen of him.


On Diet For Cutting:

NO CHANGE. The only difference is, he'd keep rest between sets to less than 30 seconds and train twice a day, 7 days a week.

And his total income from competing and working for Joe Weider: $0.00
He did it because he loved it.

There you have it. That's a real bodybuilder.

 

[maxmurph]

wow.....the drug use, or lack there of is almost hard to believe.

Although Lee Priests claims his drug use is(was) very minimal, i suppose that it could very well be true for the geneticaly gifted.

40 sets per bp 6 days a week and i would be in ICU eating from an IV....lol

good stuff..

god bless
Max

 

[jackt]

40 SETS! damn did he have a bed in the gym to? i never heard of genetically tolerating that much training.

 

[hunter21]

thats crazy shit, but i dont know about all that, id say most of it is true, not to disrespect but ive heard of BB's exagerating alot about there gear and training, even still today..not to say he didnt do that but, just 10mg of dbol, and for only 4 weeks. ive seen good genetics and dedicated ppl before but....hmmmm, i dont know about that...but thats just my 2 cents.

 

[Rocket Man]

Damn no bitchin about 5 sets!!!!

 

[ROAD DOG]

Bottom line is GENETICS,either you have it,or you don't!Sad but true.

 

[hmlacrosse]

great post nelson, very informative, we should have a Bodybuilding History Forum

 

[JohnnyB]

Damn no bitchin about 5 sets!!!!

LOL isn't that the truth

JohnnyB

 

[JohnnyB]

40 SETS! damn did he have a bed in the gym to? i never heard of genetically tolerating that much training.

Read Arnolds encyclopedia of BB they did some crazy w/o

JohnnyB

 

[HGH Man]

40 sets a work out ? It's no wonder I grow at a snails pace. I do cardio once in a while to get my blood moving but I don't like it. In fact I hate it. Depends mostly on who's in front of me, doing cardio. Nice chick with a shaply bottom,I'm good for as long as she's on.I train myself to get back everything that I had before my stroke and I'm almost there. People at my gym wonder about me cause I do 1 excerise and go right to another with or with-out rest. Good article Nelson,people body building should be glad to have a person like you.

 

[TxLonghorn]

So basically he was using Fonz's 10mg AM dbol bridge?

 

[hmlacrosse]

johnnie thanks for that link, there is some great stuff in there

i also loved Flex Ability by Flex Wheeler, great book. wish i could meet the guy

 

[ssmla123]

Quick question about the forty sets...Was that 40 to failure, forty to a set number etc? Kinda wondering if it was high tempo like a gymnastics workout or more like bb's today lift.

 

[meowcat]

genes are the bottomline.i can't wait for the day they make a drug that alters our DNA.

 

[Gtrack]

I can't find a reason why this should surprise anyone.

People used to work in the farm or in factories for 10+ hours a day with hardly any food during the day.Ask your gradfathers how life used to be back then and you'll see how 40 sets per bodypart seems quite natural to do.

These first generation bodybuilders started to find out what good nutrition was about and knew that all that milk+eggs+meat supported their efforts quite well and let me tell you his daily food intake would be enough to feed 4 families for a couple of days anywhere in the world these days.

Perhaps most of you don't know what hard work is really like regardless of drug dosages.Perhaps you should attend an Olympic weightlifting or wrestling camp for a couple of months where they lift and train all day.

Bulgarian weightlifters (being notorious about their drug use) lift 40 tons a day all year long (40.000 kilos as in weightXrepsXsets...10sets of 2 reps in squat with 250kg=5000kilos) with no more than 50 mg of dianabol or stromba per day at the peak of their cycles.And no whey protein and such but mostly protein from high fat foods.

It's more than obvious that cardio would be useless because on top of all this training these people of yesterday would also work manually .

Hard work has no substitutes.

 

[Mudge]

He followed Rheo Blairs plan. Two dozen eggs a day! Plus a gallon of milk and 2 pounds of beef.

I've gone way past that for beef, but the milk and eggs would have me shooting hershey juice. I have gone up to 66 egg whites a day, but that started to heavily disagree with me after about a week.

 

[house1]

great stuff -- shows you how lazy and dependent on the drugs to do the job has taken over these days

 

[TxLonghorn]

great stuff -- shows you how lazy and dependent on the drugs to do the job has taken over these days

Maybe some, but like is pointed out, those guys were right around 200lbs, vs. 300lbs+ with the monsters today.

 

[EZstreet]

I can't find a reason why this should surprise anyone.

People used to work in the farm or in factories for 10+ hours a day with hardly any food during the day.Ask your gradfathers how life used to be back then and you'll see how 40 sets per bodypart seems quite natural to do.

These first generation bodybuilders started to find out what good nutrition was about and knew that all that milk+eggs+meat supported their efforts quite well and let me tell you his daily food intake would be enough to feed 4 families for a couple of days anywhere in the world these days.

Perhaps most of you don't know what hard work is really like regardless of drug dosages.Perhaps you should attend an Olympic weightlifting or wrestling camp for a couple of months where they lift and train all day.

Bulgarian weightlifters (being notorious about their drug use) lift 40 tons a day all year long (40.000 kilos as in weightXrepsXsets...10sets of 2 reps in squat with 250kg=5000kilos) with no more than 50 mg of dianabol or stromba per day at the peak of their cycles.And no whey protein and such but mostly protein from high fat foods.

It's more than obvious that cardio would be useless because on top of all this training these people of yesterday would also work manually .

Hard work has no substitutes.

Shit I don't have to envision it. This was the first 2 and a half decades of my life.
I remember working on a loading dock at 17 y/o fucking12 hours a day
and everybody on the dock was beefed up. The oldsters on the dock looked like bb's. I I busted my ass on everything and anything that was hard manual labor. Is wasn't like I had any choice. Even if I could I couldn't let myself put on a fucking paper hat and work for penuts at teh clown palace flipping burgers. When I was in my mid 20's after a long, ass busting day I would hit the gym EOD.
At 28 I was stonger than I had ever been in my life with no juice,
Even with juice I cannot do many of the strength movements that i was able too.

Walked ten miles in the snow to school every day too/ j/k that's an old timer favorite. I only had to walk 5.

 

[Nelson Montana]

Maybe some, but like is pointed out, those guys were right around 200lbs, vs. 300lbs+ with the monsters today.

True, guys are getting much bigger due to bigger dosages. The problem is, that leads guys to think that the answer to more size is more gear. So they wind up using dosages of todays pros to go from 180 to 190.

I say, look as good as Howorth or Draper or Reeves and THEN up the dosages if you want to get bigger. Won't happen. Why? For exactly the reasons GTrack mentioned. Too many of todays bodybuilders are spoiled and lazy. In other words, they're not really bodybuilders.