Weider Principles Part 1

It amazes me how much knowledge is lost from one generation to another. I work at a gym. I love my job, even though I am one of the oldest employees there. The other day, I asked several of my co-workers who are fitness enthusiast if they ever heard of the Weider Principles, or Joe Weider. I got met with blank stares.

This surprised me because as a young man in the 80’s following bodybuilding it was hard to imagine anyone who hadn’t heard of Joe Weider. Born in the year 1919, Joe would eventually become known as the father of modern bodybuilding.

In 1940, he published his first magazine Your Physique. Later the name would be changed to Muscle Builder and finally to Muscle and Fitness. He also published other magazines such as Men’s Health, Flex and and Shape. Joe Weider also put out a line of fitness equipment and nutritional supplements.

What he is most well known for is he and his brother Ben co-founded the International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB) and Created the Mr. and Ms. Olympia which became the highest bodybuilding competitions in the world. Joe and Ben are also known for bringing Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was still relatively unknown, from Austria to the United States.

Being a former bodybuilder and being around bodybuilders all of the time, Joe had opportunities to talk about training routines of all the great bodybuilders of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

Joe was able to gather all kinds of routines and techniques from the most elite bodybuilders of his day. He eventually wrote these techniques in his book "The Weider System of Bodybuilding”.

In the book he set out some thirty plus principles that he learned from the bodybuilders he knew. The principles can be divided into three categories; principles on how to get the most out of an exercise, principles on how to group your exercises together and principles to help you put an exercise program together.

Some of the principles seem like complete opposite principles. It only shows that there really is an infinite variety that can be used to gain muscle and build your body.

Lets look at the first one set of principles.

How to get the most out of an exercise

1. Continuous Tension Principle

This is a simple technique that you don’t even realize how good it is until you try it yourself.

Normally, when you do a set, for example, for your biceps, you pick up the dumbbell and curl the weight for eight to ten reps. Using continuous tension, try flexing your muscle while lifting the weight. Continuously flex through the whole range of motion, both on the positive (upward motion) and the negative (downward motion of the exercise.

What you will discover is a more intense workout. You will also notice that not only are you working out the bicep when doing curls, but you will also be working out the opposing muscle, the triceps.

One thing to note. You will need to lower the amount of weight you use when doing continuous tension, but you will more than make up for it in the effect of using this principle.

2. Superspeed Principle

Normal weight lifting style when trying to build the body is to move the weight at a steady to slow pace so that the muscle is pumped. Only power lifters and Olympic lifters usually use speed to lift the maximum amount of weight.

Using the superspeed principle will aid in adding strength, when adding strength, you can also add size. For those who are also active in sports such as basketball and soccer, the superspeed principle is also a good way to build strength for their sport.

There are three guidelines to follow when using this principle. First is to never forget to keep proper form. No matter how fast or slow you lift the weight, do not ever swing the weight our cheat on getting the weight to the top position. If you are doing that you are defeating the purpose and not building your body at all.

If you can’t lift the weight without cheating, then lower the weight to a level that you can handle with proper form. Find that sweet spot where the weight isn’t too heavy to keep proper form, but isn’t too light to be affective for your muscles.

The second key to using superspeed is to only use the principle on the upward (positive) portion of the exercise. Lower the weight at normal speed.

Lastly, only use superspeed on some of your sets, not all of the time. Use superspeed when you are fresh, like at the beginning of a workout. This way you can be in control of the weight better.

3. Quality Training Principle

This is a principle that I try to include in my workouts regularly. This is a great principle for those who lead busy lives. The whole idea is quality time versus quantity time.

The tendency one has when lifting weights is to take a long rest period between sets to fully recuperate. With the quality training principle, one tries to lower that time between sets to just 30 seconds to a minute at most. Doing this increases the intensity of your workout. Instead of getting 20 sets done in and hour and a half, you can do 30 sets in an hour or less.

This type of workout will exhaust your muscles more quickly because you are not allowing them to have enough rest. That exhaustion will lead to more growth and size.

Exercising with minimal rest also literally pumps blood into your muscles which helps create muscle growth and recovery on a cellular level. I have noticed my upper arms become visually larger for a short period of time after a workout because of this principle.

Because of this short rest period, you will notice a lowering of strength during the workout. To have maximum strength in a workout takes longer rest periods. The bottom line is if you want size this is the way to go. If you want strength then only use this occasionally.

4. Isolation Principle

The point of the isolation principle is to use specific exercises to isolate specific muscles. Many exercises such as squats or bench presses involves more than one muscle group.

The squat for example draws in your quads, hamstrings, calves and even your glute muscles. An exercise such as a squat is known as a compound movement. When building muscle compound movements are the quickest way for overall muscle growth.

The reason for this is because you are activating multiple muscles at the same time. In a compound exercise you work out your primary muscle, like the chest when you do a bench press, but you also are working out stabilizing muscles such as your shoulders and arms in the process.

Now you might ask why do isolation movements if compound movements are so good for you. Isolation movements are useful when you want to help grow a specific muscle that is lagging behind the others or a muscle you just want to accentuate.

The bicep is a perfect example. Most men that lift want to show off their arms. Doing regular bicep dumbbell curls or barbell curls actually activates your triceps and shoulders as stabilizers with the movement. To isolate the bicep muscle an exercise like a preacher curl takes the stabilizing work of the triceps out of the equation and focuses your entire effort on the biceps.

One of my favorite isolation movements that I do often is I take an e-z curl bar and turn my elbows inward so that I can press them against my body. Doing that enables me to restrict any unwanted movement and focus on the bicep entirely. I have made the most gains on my arms ever since I started doing that.

5. Partial Reps Principle

Most of the time you will hear trainers and bodybuilders talk about using the full range of motion when exercising. What they are teaching is to fully work a muscle one should flex that muscle by moving the weight from a fully stretched muscle to a fully flexed muscle and then back.

Too often you can see novice members at a gym and those who have been there long enough to know better only moving a weight a couple of inches and calling it a repetition. Usually it is because they either don’t know better or they are using way too much weight to do the exercise properly.

There are a few more advanced lifters who are the exception, who know how to get the most out of a partial rep. This is not a normal practice. Instead this is something that should be done only occasionally for the sake of getting a little more out of a workout at the end when the muscle is getting fatigued. The key to a profitable partial rep is to do it while using a controllable weight, doing the partial range in the middle of the movement where the most stress needs to be applied and not moving the range of movement to a place where you can rest. Doing this works the muscle more than usual because it is getting no rest during the set.

6. Iso-tension Principle

Iso-tension is similar to using what is now called isometrics. What you are doing is flexing your muscles while you are holding the weight still at the mid-point of a movement.

Using bicep curls as an example, imagine lifting the dumbbell half way up. At the half way point, there is a lot of stress on the muscle. Now stop the movement and hold the weight there. The stress on the muscle is great and you can make it even greater by then flexing the muscle while holding the weight during this stressed state.

The concept of iso-tension, isometric exercise has been around for a long time. When I was young I use to own what was called a Bullworker. It was two large tubes with a spring inside. On the sides were two cables incased in plastic. You would compress the tubes as far as you could and hold it for several seconds for some exercises or pull on the cables that would compress the tubes for other exercises. It was billed as the perfect isometric machine.

These days, you can do basically the same thing with resistance bands. The best workout with them is when you stretch the band as far as you can during an exercise and hold it at that stretched point. The only key to add is to use continuous tension, flexing your muscles while holding the bands to get that extra little kick out of your workout.

That is it for this installment. There are many more principles to go over. Probably enough for at least two more blogs. Hopefully these principles can be helpful as you try to improve your workouts and get the most out of them.

Have a great and blessed day.