Click Here to Sign Up for Your Free Muscle Building Magazine

Vince Gironda Workout

Vince Gironda Bodybuilder Workout Routine

If you pump iron on a regular basis and you read online about different weight training ideas, then you would no-doubt have heard of the famous and original "Iron Guru" called Vince Gironda. Reading many bodybuilding websites online they always seem to touting Weider as the "trainer of champions", the true trainer of champions was Gironda who without a doubt had the most successful following by most bodybuilding champs.

Vince was the first Iron Guru because he trained his first Mr. Olympia winner by finding Larry Scott when he was a 157lbs weakling and Vince trained him up to the impressive 207lbs Mr. Olympia winner at the first Mr. Olympia competition ever held in 1965. Larry successfully defended his Mr. Olympia title a year later.

Vince trained many successful pro bodybuilders in his long career as a strength coach. The legend called Mohammed Makkawy, was without a doubt the most shredded and the most aesthetic bodybuilder who never actually won the Mr. Olympia title, but he did place second twice ( in 1983 and 1984) but Makkawy won many pro contests.

The list of solid professional bodybuilders that were trained by Vince himself is very impressive and too long to list here. However, it should be said that many of his students went onto win the same title many times. Like Rick Wayne who won the IFBB Mr. Universe title in 1965, 1967, and 1969, Mr. World in 1967 and 1970. Vince was getting results so we are going to very briefly examine why Vince was so successful at training bodybuilders.

Vince tells it like it is, he has never marketed himself and when Arnold first arrived from Austria he obviously went straight to Vince's gym at Venice beach. The story goes that when Arnold took his shirt off to show Vince his muscles Vince said: "Well, you sure look like a fat fuck to me!"

Vince never kissed anyone's arse, but he certainly had some very strange ideas on how to train to build muscle on a sustainable basis. For example, Vince did not believe in regular squats. We simply don't have the space to cover all Vince's "crazy ideas", most of which have since been proven to be highly effective by sports science in the last 10 years.

On the regular squats issue that Vince didn't like, his reasoning was that unless you have a "squat friendly structure" which is a small waist and hips with a longish torso and short legs, regular squats will just develop your glutes and not your legs.

It needs to be explained that sports science has come a long way in the last 50 years. When Vince spoke about increasing the amount of work done in a specific time he called it high intensity. Today sports science calls this a higher density training because you're constantly trying to increase the amount of work done (weights lifted) in a unit of time.

Vince Gironda's top athletes, when they're conditioned correctly will take as little as only 10-15 seconds between each set! Never start with that kind of density training, if your own body has gotten used to 90 seconds or 120 seconds rest between sets, your objective is to gradually decrease those rest intervals, building up your training density, over time.

Vince became famous because of his 10 x 10, 8 x 8, or 6 x 6, training ideas. But he also used 10-8-6-15, and 15 x 4 Methods. 10 sets of 10 reps is NOT Charles Poliquin's German Volume idea, this idea started with strength coach Vince Geronda in the 1950's.

Vince's 8 x 8 System was similar to his 10 x 10 but you're performing 8 sets of 8 reps and not 10 reps, but still using minimal rest. The same with his 6 x 6 System, using minimal resting time, just like his 10-8-6-15 System also insisted on minimal rest between sets.

When doing 10 X 10 the first set = 10 reps using 50% of the weight you'd use when lifting for your set of 6 reps. On your second set of 8 reps Vince says use 75% the weight you'd use to lift 6 reps. Your 4th and final set is for 15 reps where you'll need 35% of the weight you can lift for 6 reps.

In his 15 x 4 System, you will do 15 sets of 4 reps each and you will only do one exercise for each muscle group using minimal rest. It's important to note here that Vince would insist that the same weight should be used when doing all these systems because hypertrophy happens via a cumulative fatigue, not just the load you're lifting for a set. Only when you can complete all the reps do you increase the weight.

Below is an example of how Vince would write out a compound superset for chest using the 8 X 8 system:

Set 1: Bench-press (wide grip) to neck 8 reps, 15-30 seconds rest then chest dips for 8 reps. that's the first set.

Set 2: Chest dips 8 reps, 15-30 seconds rest then bench-press (wide grip) to your neck for 8 reps. That's the second set

Set 3: Bench-press (wide grip) pressing to your neck 8 reps, then chest dips 8 reps

Set 4: Bench-press (wide grip) to neck 8 reps, 15-30 seconds rest chest dips 8 reps

It should be noted that Vince's 8 x 8, 6 x 6, or 15 x 4 routines should only be one exercise for each body-part, so your total will be either 6, 8, or 15 sets for each muscle group. When using the compounding supersets in the example above, you'd still be using the same number of sets 6, 8, or 14 per body-part/muscle group.

You will notice that if you compare his collective total sets when working his 8 X 8 training routine compared to the compounded superset example above you will be doing half the number of total sets you'd be doing if you did straight sets of 8 X 8.

For more information checkout www.WhoWasVinceGironda.com

Click Here to Sign Up for Your Free Muscle Building Magazine