3 Reasons You Can't Train Like a Juicer

Plus How Natural Bodybuilders Should Train

by Christian Thibaudeau | 10/27/16

Tags: 
 Cortisol Control
 Pharma
 Bodybuilding

You've Been Fooled by Drugged Lifters

If you're a drug-free lifter, it's highly likely that you've been duped by lifters
who use drugs. They didn't do it intentionally, but you've suffered nonetheless.

Here's what they did: They made you, the natural lifter, assume that drugs
simply enhanced the response to training. You figured that there wasn't any
reason you couldn't train like the drug user. The only thing that would be
different was the magnitude of the results.
Not only was that assumption wrong, but that reasoning messed you up in a
number of ways. Make no mistake about it, natural lifters shouldn't train the
same way as enhanced lifters. Here's why.

1 – Juicers Convinced You to Use Too Much Volume

We know that building muscle is all about protein synthesis. The higher the
rate of protein synthesis and the longer the rate of protein synthesis, the more
muscle is produced.

Performance-enhancing drug users have an enhanced level of protein

synthesis 24/7 because that's one of the main effects of steroids (the effect of
growth hormone on protein synthesis is debatable).

Even if PED users didn't trigger a higher level of protein synthesis through
training, it doesn't matter, they'll still progress. A natural lifter's normal state is
homeostasis: protein synthesis and protein breakdown are pretty much equal.
He needs to stimulate protein synthesis (through mTor activation, mostly) with
the workout itself.

In other words, the natural guy is dependent on the training session to

stimulate protein synthesis. That's not true of the enhanced lifter. That doesn't
mean that the training session isn't important for the drug user, it just means
that his workout is pretty much bulletproof.

Even if the PED user breaks down a lot of tissue using too much volume, or
even if he doesn't do enough to maximize protein synthesis, he'll be fine.
Protein synthesis and growth will still occur. Not so for the drug-free lifter. He
needs "Goldilocks" training: Not too little volume, not too much volume, but
just the right amount of volume. Otherwise, he doesn't grow, and he could
even lose muscle.
2 – Juicers Turned You Into a Cortisol Waste Dump

Cortisol is devastating for natural lifters. First, it opposes protein synthesis by

increasing protein breakdown, but it also has an impact on the expression of
the myostatin gene, which limits the amount of muscle you can carry.

Cortisol can also inhibit mTor activation via an increase in AMPK. mTor is
basically a muscle-building switch, so if you inhibit mTor you stop muscle
growth. This means that cortisol not only increases protein breakdown
(muscle loss), it can actually decrease or even stop protein synthesis.

The role of cortisol during training is to mobilize energy stores to give your
body fuel for muscle action. The more fuel you need during your training, the
more cortisol you will produce.

It's easy to understand that the more training volume you do, the more fuel
you'll need to mobilize, and thus the more cortisol you'll release. That's why
excessive volume is the number one problem for natural bodybuilders. Doing
too much high volume in a workout can actually stop a natural guy's gains.

A steroid user, however, is somewhat protected against the negative impact of

cortisol. Since the anabolic drugs greatly increase protein synthesis around
the clock, he will more than counterbalance the increase in cortisol, within
reason.

Steroids and cortisol also share the same intracellular second messenger, so
the more anabolic hormones you have in your body, the harder it is for the
cortisol to interfere with muscle growth. Again, what's called for is a volume
sweet-spot where cortisol release is limited.

3 – Juicers Made You Think You Can Grow From High-Rep Sets
Enhanced lifters can gain a lot of muscle from doing plenty of work with lighter
reps – things like high-rep work, drop sets, etc. That's because they don't
need to trigger protein synthesis with the workout itself.

Doing very high rep-work will drive more blood into the muscles, and if that
blood is loaded with amino acids, they're then supplying their muscles (that
already have an enhanced level of protein synthesis) with the nutrients
needed to take advantage of their high rate of protein synthesis.

As such, steroid users don't need fairly heavy work as much as natural lifters
do. In fact, since many steroids tend to make the muscles proportionally
stronger than the tendons themselves, focusing too much on heavy lifting
might lead to devastating injuries.

I'm not saying that light pump training doesn't work for natural lifters.
Hypertrophy can be stimulated with light weights if you go to failure. The
problem is what happens in the body when very high reps are combined with
light weights. Sure, you'll eventually get maximum muscle-fiber recruitment as
you build fatigue during the set, however, if it takes you 15 or 20 reps to "get
there" instead of 6 to 8, then you're spending twice as much glycogen to
achieve the same effect.

Remember, the more energy (glycogen) you need to mobilize, the more
cortisol release you'll get! That's why super-high rep work is not ideal for
natural lifters, especially if you do a lot of sets.
 How Natural Lifters Should Train
1. The volume per workout should be limited. Excessive exercise variation
is the enemy of muscle growth. Look at all the top natural lifters. They stick to
a small number of exercises. They'll use some variation from time to time, but
for the most part they stick to the same exercises.
2. Push/pull routines are often optimal for the natural bodybuilder. They
allow for the most recovery between training sessions.
3. Generally speaking, most sets should be in the neighborhood of 8 to 10
reps, with higher-rep sets reserved for warm-up or preparation sets. However,
if a natural guy is going to do lighter pump work, he should make sure to
consume a carb/protein blend pre-workout and during the workout.
(Plazma™ is the top choice here.) This makes glucose readily available for
fuel so he won't need to mobilize as much stored glycogen and he won't
release excess cortisol.
4. Since a natural lifter needs to rely on the actual workout to trigger
protein synthesis, and considering that protein synthesis remains elevated for
24-36 hours in a muscle after it's trained, a natty needs to train each muscle
more often. Otherwise protein synthesis in a muscle won't be elevated long
enough over the course of a week to get maximum growth. Once is not
enough. For the most part, working a body part twice every 8-day period is
optimal.