Brooks D. Kubik - Dinosaur Training Secrets Volume 1: Exercises, Workouts and Training Programs

Brooks D. Kubik

2015

Hail to the Dinosaurs!

In the early 1990s I began writing for Stuart McRoberts Hardgainer magazine. In 1996, I published Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength and Development. Since then, Ive written and published more than 20 books and courses and written thousands of blog posts and articles on strength training, muscle building, weightlifting and Iron Game history, famous strongmen and how they trained, diet, nutrition, and the all-important mental aspects of strength training. Ive edited and published close to 100 issues of The Dinosaur Files newsletter, which is now available in a journal-sized quarterly format, and Ive put together over a dozen strength training DVDs. Ive done close to 100 podcast interviews, delivered audio seminars, presented live seminars, and answered thousands of training questions from readers around the word. By conservative estimate, Ive written well over one million words about strength training, muscle building and physical culture.

Ive done thisand I continue to do itbecause Ive made it my lifes work to promote sane, sensible, result producing and effective strength training and muscle buildingand to teach and preserve the very best traditions of old-school physical culture. My goal is to teach as many people as possible about the kind of training that really worksthe kind of training that builds real-world strength, muscle and power, promotes life-long good health and develops the mind and the heart of a true champion.

This book is the first in a series of books that will collect, collate and update all of the information in my other books, courses and articles. Were going to begin with a very important topic: the most effective exercises, and how to put them together into workouts and training programs that will build strength, muscle and power as rapidly and efficiently as possible. There is a wealth of valuable information in this book, and if you read, study and apply what you find within its pages, I have no doubt that you will enjoy great gains and rapid progress. I also believe that although your training will require plenty of hard work, youll find your workouts to be fun and enjoyable. Human beings thrive when they meet and overcome challenges, and that makes old-school strength training an enormously rewarding activity for all of us.

The material in this book will give you plenty of ideas for hard, heavy, challenging and demanding workoutsworkouts that will help you build plenty of strength, muscle and power. For more great training ideas, and more Dinosaur Training workouts, visit my website at www.brookskubik.com, and check out my other books, courses and DVDs, as well as the quarterly Dinosaur Files strength training journal. And be sure to sign up for my daily email tips, and to read the Dinosaur Training Blog and the articles page at my website. We have a tremendous amount of valuable information for you, covering all aspects of real world, common sense strength training and muscle building, physical culture, and diet and nutritionand we add to and update it regularly. Well also be making more material available in e-book format, so if thats your preferred way of purchasing and reading training material, be on the lookout for new e-books from Dinosaur Headquarters.

But right now, youre holding some strong medicine in your hands. And Im betting that youre itching to get started with it and that youre ready for some hard workouts and some big gains in strength, muscle and power.

If thats the caseand Im sure it isthen turn the page and get started now!

As always, thanks for reading and have a great day. If you train today, make it a good one!

Yours in strength,

Brooks Kubik

P.S. Train hard and make this your best year ever for strength and health. Please keep me posted on your training and progress!

Heres a very simple pierce of advice that will save you many hours of wasted training time and help you build more strength, muscle and power than you ever imagined: devote all or substantially all of your training time to the very best and most effective exercises. The best and most effective exercises are the basic, compound exercises such as squats, presses, bench presses, deadlifts, etc. There are no secret exercises, so dont waste time looking for them. Stick to the basics.

In contrast to basic, compound exercises, we have what are called isolation exercises. These are exercises that target a single muscle group. They are usually performed with light dumbbells, or with cables or exercise machines. Examples include lateral raises, front raises, bent-over lateral raises, leg extensions, leg curls, hack machine squats, sissy squats, flies, cable cross-overs, the pec dec, concentration curls, triceps kickbacks, triceps extensions, and one-arm triceps extensions. Trainees typically perform these exercises with relatively light weights, using high reps and many sets, and training for a pump or a burn. Of course, the sad reality is that most trainees spend almost all of their training time on isolation exercises, and some gyms even prohibit their members from performing some of the most important and most effective compound movements, such as squats, deadlifts, military presses and push presses. No wonder so many modern trainees have little to show for their long hours of training!

The basic, compound exercises are best because they allow you to work several muscle groups at the same time, and thus, to work up to substantial amounts of weight in your different exercises. Training on the basic compound exercises builds strength, power, and athleticism. It also thickens your tendons, ligaments and bones - as well as your muscle fibers. Over time, hard work on the basic, compound exercises leads to enormous increases in strength and muscle mass. Isolation exercises dont have this effect, because you use much lighter weights in isolation movements.

The basic exercises also have two other very important bonuses. First, they affect your internal organs, digestion, metabolism and your bodys ability to digest and utilize the food you eat. This promotes good health, helps burn unwanted body-fat, makes it easier for your body to recover from your training sessions, and leads to steady gains in muscle mass.

Hard work on basic, compound exercises has an anabolic effect on the body. It activates your internal growth mechanisms. Training hard on exercises such as squats, deadlifts and presses will cause your body to produce more testosterone, the male hormone that builds strength and muscle. By stimulating your bodys production of testosterone you trigger rapid gains in strength and muscle mass - and you do so by using your bodys internal chemistry rather than relying on potentially harmful drugs or supplements. (Iron Game authors have written about this process since at least the 1920s, but most modern trainees are entirely ignorant of it.) As a result of this anabolic effect, training on the basic, compound movements builds strength and muscle throughout the entire body. This is why, for example, a trainees upper body increases in size and strength from a squat or deadlift specialization program.

The basic exercises have another important benefit. They allow you to have a complete, head-to-toe workout in a short period of time, while using only a small handful of exercises. As Ill detail throughout this book, you can get a terrific, result-producing program by training just two or three days a week for as little as 45 minutes to an hour in each workout. But you can only do this if you focus on the best and most effective exercises. And lets face it - at a certain time in your life, it may seem fun to train all day or to train for half the day and lie on the beach the rest of the day (which is the fantasy world promoted by the muscle media for the past 50 or 60 years) - but the vast majority of us work for a living, go to school (or do both), and have family responsibilities on top of everything else, so we have strictly limited training time and we need to make the most of it.