The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [86]
WORKOUT A
Pull-down: 8 reps × 80 lbs → 8 reps × 110 lbs
Machine shoulder press: 8 reps × 30 lbs → 5 reps × 60 lbs
WORKOUT B
Seated dips: 6 reps × 140 lbs → 6 reps × 170 lbs
Seated leg press: 11 reps × 140 lbs → 12 reps × 190 lbs
Occam’s Protocol is enough to stimulate a massive growth response.
Remember our tanning analogy in the beginning of this book? Forget working harder for a minute and realize that biology isn’t about blunt force.
Don’t add a damn thing.
Occam’s Frequency
Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.
—Peter Gibbons, Office Space
The frequency of the A and B Occam workouts is based on a simple premise: you must increase recovery time along with size.
You will exercise less frequently as you increase strength and size, as you can often increase muscle mass well over 100% before reaching a genetic ceiling, but your recovery abilities might only improve 20–30% through enzymatic and immune system upregulation (increased plasma glutamine production, etc.).
Put in simple terms: it takes nongrowing repair systems longer to repair a 20-pound muscle than its 10-pound predecessor. The bigger and stronger you get, the less often you will go to the gym.
Looking at the hypothetical two months below printed from freeprint ablecalendar.net, we see that sessions are not scheduled on set days (e.g., Monday and Friday), but are instead spaced apart by set numbers of rest days, which increase over time.
In 1996, while at the Capital University of Business and Economics in Beijing, I grew to 197 pounds and was easily the strongest I’ve ever been. No supplements whatsoever were used, as none could be found. I hit a whole-food ceiling at 6,000 calories per day, as more made me ill, but I was able to resolve all progress plateaus with additional rest days, eventually ending the bulking cycle after four months at 12 days between identical workouts.
Two sample months
GETTING STARTED
Step 1: Take at least seven days off of all training that causes significant muscular damage. No bodyweight resistance training or weight training allowed.
Step 2: Begin Occam’s Protocol with two days between A and B workouts. After two of both the A and B workouts, increase the rest days between workouts to three days. As soon as you have a workout where more than one exercise has stalled (indicated in our hypothetical calendars with the B*), but not before, increase to four days between workouts.
Continue adding rest as needed to resolve plateaus until you hit your target weight or end your bulking cycle.
Important caveat: this spacing assumes you are consuming enough food to support rapid growth. Of the trainees who fail to gain significant muscular weight (significant = at least 2.5 pounds per week) on Occam’s Protocol, 95%+ of them fail due to insufficient caloric/nutrient intake. The remaining 5% have nutrient absorption issues such as leaky gut syndrome, impaired stomach acid production, excessive fat excretion, insufficient bile, etc., or other conditions requiring medical attention before the protocol can do its job.
I’ve encountered only one such clinical case in the 5% group. He was 124 pounds at 6′1″, and even when he attempted to gain weight by eating bag after bag of doughnuts in 24-hour periods, he could not gain a single pound.
Don’t assume you are in this unlikely minority. The most common problem is insufficient food intake.
That leads us to the real challenge of Occam’s Protocol.
Eating.
Occam’s Feeding
In the 1995 gaining experiment, I set an alarm to wake me four hours into sleep so that I could consume five hard-boiled eggs as an additional meal. It helped, to be sure, but it was also uber-inconvenient. Inconvenient eating schedules, no matter how effective, have a high abandonment rate after initial enthusiasm wanes. I prefer low-friction approaches that are less disruptive, even if