Legendary Bodybuilder Frank Zane Reveals How He Achieved Physical Perfection

i call it the curse of potential there are people in bodybuilding world who have never made it to the top because everything comes too easy for them now things never came that easy for me i had to work real hard welcome to this week's escape your limits podcast in today's episode we reconnect with mr frank zane one of the most admired and influential bodybuilders of all time his previous episodes have received some of our highest downloads to date that generated hundreds of comments wanting to know more about how frank zane built his perfectly balanced physique in the episode we discussed his training diet nutrition supplementation and recovery plans that he used to be arnold schwarzenegger and win the mr olympia three times we also talk about what it takes to maintain a physique like frank's well into your 70s so if you're aspiring to achieve your physical potential then check out this week's episode with the bodybuilding legend mr frank zane [Music] so frank thank you very much for inviting me back i think it's the third time i've been up here so um and you're still looking as young as ever well thank you i tried to try to stay that way and we we um we had the the previous interviews with were very successful and we kind of talked about mindset and your journey but a lot of the comments that we got was was about the the working out and how you trained and how you ate and and so i thought this time it would be it would be great to do that because you have some fantastic books that you've written which go into a lot of detail so um so yeah i wanted to i wanted to talk about that but the first thing i probably wanted to start um you know getting your views because um i guess you're being a master almost i suppose you know sculpting bodies and including your own but what what has been over your career what would you say is or how would you define like a perfect physique um you know what what what's in your mind what would be the perfect physique and um how would you describe that i would say the perfect physique is one that has really great proportions where everything matches no one thing stands out it all blends together and you have it's everything is very well defined you know a lot of definition uh and you don't see too much of that i mean like take the best one best example i i know of that is steve reeves from early on he was my idol in bodybuilding because he had everything developed and everything fit perfectly and then another idle mind was larry scott he was sort of different he had incredible deltoids in arms which sort of stood out from everything else i always thought that the ideal physique would be larry scott's delts and arms on steve reeves not that reeves didn't have good development there but his blend was really the best i i've ever seen right right and and when you've i suppose seeing how things and trends and fashion have changed through the years i know you know one of the things that people even now seem to like is what they call you know the the frank zane physique uh and that seems to have been fairly timeless even with the bodybuilding you know kind of going into the i suppose dorian yates and and that type of area where size was always important but it seems as though the you know the your physique has been fairly timeless you know what what do you think that that is is that down to kind of i suppose you know looking at sculptures and arts through the years you know you've sort of modeled yourself on that or i always thought about it as what is possible for me based on my frame and what i really have going for me and looking at my frame i have narrow hips and relatively wide shoulders and so i wanted to maximize that i might might call it a weak point although not really it from the side i'm not real thick you know i don't have a barrel chest and so what i did is i played up the way i looked from the front straight on in the back straight on and as far as areas go for my thighs were always very muscular i worked a lot the hamstrings developed a lot and calves developed developed quite a bit i built my calves up quite a bit and great abdominals i did a lot of ab work i worked up to a thousand reps a day and my abs got real real deep very deep and then my back i did a lot of back work to bring out a lot of definition in the back that's what i focused on and then i took a lot of photos and i looked at the photos and looked at what wasn't progressing and what was and wanted to get the perfect picture so by the time the competitions came around i knew exactly what i looked like and i realized that nobody else was really doing that nobody knew what they looked like on stage but i did because i'd seen many images of it so that was always my focus do you think that's something that you know because i guess some people you know not everybody's got your genetics and mine and everybody else's do you think that's really what it's about when you're you know to have something that you can feel good about yourself is is to say well look you know what is what have i been given and how do i make the most out of what god or whoever's given to me well yeah you know i i call it the curse of potential there are people in bodybuilding world who have never made it to the top because everything comes too easy for them now things never came that easy for me i had to work real hard and so i was dedicated and i managed to get it all done but i think that if things come too easy you tend to you know relax a bit too much and not really take care of what needs to be done so then an awareness of what's going on of what you look like and that was with photographs i really think that's the most important part of bodybuilding is to be photographed on a regular basis especially that time before competition the three months before to see how you're defining yourself how it's all coming in and then i have records going way back over the years of my body how it changed over the years and you know i i looked different every year you know some years i was bigger some you know you know more defined and so i think probably my best year was last year i won the olympia was 79 and a really great combination of size and proportion and definition now the years after that i actually competed three years after that i think in 1980 i had an accent i really couldn't peak although i was very muscular and i didn't compete at 81 but in 82 i was i wanted to be bigger so i wanted to compete at 200 pounds it was a mistake because i was a little bit too bulky i noticed that the center part of my body was a little bit too thick for the rest of it and then in 83 i went the opposite direction i was about 15 pounds lighter and i was very muscular a little bit too light plus i had shoulder injury and i retired after that because i was concerned that if i keep doing this i'm just going to get so injured i won't be able to do anything because i already had shoulder injury after that i had shoulder surgery so that was my career at age 41. from 1960 to 19 to 23 years competing i figured that's enough and with with um i suppose when people now think about training like whatever age and you know we had quite a few comments about people asking about even where to start and i suppose how do you get that balance between i suppose if you are out of shape and and you're um i suppose you know yeah if you're out of shape how do you um kind of balance you know making the most out of your body but without getting over obsessed about the fact that you don't look like you know someone like yourself how do you how do you sort of keep that healthy balance well you have to develop patients and have a plan have a goal maybe a six-month goal i always like to divide it like that so maybe peaking in the autumn maybe october so october september august were my all-out months of training really hard to have everything sharply defined but before that that's april may and june what may june july something like around those months i was working on building up strength and size and so i needed six months to really bring it around and then taking photos and seeing how i looked in the photos and getting feedback from that i think the most important thing is awareness and i don't think enough people pay attention to that too busy looking in the mirror you know you got to get photos to see what you really look like and i don't think many people know what they really look like so i was fortunate to have some good photographers artie zeller and weda photographer years ago got some great photos of me and then my wife after that really good photographer took most of the photos of me that i use now what would you say as a if you're starting or if you want to i suppose get yourself and your body to a certain stage what what is some of the things you've learned regarding mindset you know how do you get your mind in the right position to start that journey to get the body and physique that you want set a goal that's attainable and then have a schedule on when you want to reach it i always kept a notebook and i would have the weeks laid out you know up to three months or even more and i'd write my workouts in my notebook then i just kept track you know take photos see where i was at and see what i still had to do and it's a lot it's all trial and error really you know you don't know when you start what's going to happen and so you find out you know what the photos with the critique from experts your peers and uh you know you build build on that it's gradual process and how did you when you were when you were competing um how you what did you do mentally before you went in was it was did you have any sort of rituals before going into the gym and um and when you was actually working out that that sort of helped you prepare for what you was about to do and get get the most out of those sessions i'll give you an example from my favorite year in the best shape i think i was in for competition was 1979. i really i just i do really do very well by myself i'm like a loner when it comes to this and really a lot of other things too i think i can do it by myself and so i had a house in palm springs which i had a lot of this equipment in it and i spent the last month over their training and the day was all about training and getting sun and then running at night and the whole time i didn't do anything else but do that and during the whole time i said a mantra which lifted me up and i realized that when i wasn't saying that my mind would drift toward what if so and so does this or looks like that and i realized that that wasn't all important what was really important is what i was doing and so i would say my mantra to keep my focus internal on myself and it worked and i ended up saying it my goal was to say it a million times a year and i did those years i competed a million times a year it's like 3 000 times a day but you know i wasn't doing anything else i mean i had it set up so i could just do that um you think that kind of helps because when you i suppose when you are trying to train and if you're looking to lose a lot of weight as an example i suppose it it can be easy to feel that you're not really progressing and and um i suppose sometimes you can look in the mirror and it's like isn't where you want to to get or isn't where you want to be yet so doing those mantras do you think that sort of helps um you sort of deal with the time it takes to get you to where you are sure help me face myself right but you know i think you have to be realistic about this and you have to see what you look like in photos and feedback from others and then pace yourself according to that you know you can have a lot of illusions about what you look like and it can be way off i've seen that people get on stage they've been may have been in great shape the year before and they come back a year later and they've gained some weight and they look worse because they're smoother you know i can name examples but i don't want to incriminate anybody but you really have to be in touch with that and like i say the best way is to photograph reviewing that right so i wanted to start with with diet then so imagine that you're i guess um you know sort of starting from scratch and and i suppose using some of their um you know using some of the uh programs when you are you know competing yourself what what would you say is some of the fundamentals in terms of your diet um i'm not talking about right up to the competition but um you know just more of like off season what what were some of the essentials that you did whether it's foods that you ate and um yeah to sort of you know keep you in in shape all year round uh one of the most important things i learned is not to get fat in the off season like in you know december you know don't don't get into eating junk food and a lot a lot of things that aren't going to help you physically so those months like december january february i would specialize on weak points and not get out of shape you know still stay in shape but i mainly focus on areas i needed to improve and then when i got closer to when i wanted to go into all-out training i would you know still be doing that but basically training more overall and practicing posing and taking more photos and getting the whole package together you know i think that i learned that don't get out of shape in the off season if you do if you do get out of shape you can lose a lot of time getting back there so stay where you're at and for me i learned not to bulk up don't do that you know it just meant getting fatter than having to lose that that's just time lost i try to stay lean in the off season right and what was your you know in terms of protein carbs fats would whether did you have a certain amount of protein and high low carbs what would that look like i would restrict carbohydrates as i got closer to competition typically i would get a little bit more than one gram of protein per pound of body weight so let's say i was training at 200 pounds of body weight i would get maybe 240 grams of protein a day spread throughout the day you know uh fish poultry uh i did eat a lot of red meat in those days you know red meat that didn't have a lot of fat attached to it um carbohydrates i usually kept my carb intake about half of my protein intake or less so if let's say i was eating 240 grams of protein a day i was getting under 100 grams of carbs a day just enough to get a pump i could tell if i wasn't getting enough carbs because i wouldn't get a good pump and so i tried to get more more of that earlier in the day mainly from vegetables and some fruits i wouldn't drink fruit juice and i wouldn't eat you know fast foods and fats i really never went on a real low fat diet i still used a cheese but i wasn't heavily into fats and so my calories i'd say probably under 2 000 a day and that worked for me and what what when you had carbs what were the carbs that you used to have from fruits and vegetables maybe grapefruit apples any kind of fruit really but not overdoing it maybe one piece of fruit a day maybe two at the most but mostly vegetables fresh vegetables like salad occasionally i'd have a baked potato or yam and i just kept it down i didn't let my carbohydrate intake exceed my protein intake ever and then the fat intake was usually about 60 50 60 grams of fat a day most of it coming from from the protein right and what with with the the sort of timings then what did when what what did the typical day look like you know breakfast how many times did you eat and when did you sort of start and stop eating i eat probably four to six times a day there are some extreme times like in 1976 i was eating seven meals a day and each meal was basically a combination of protein and carbohydrates a little bit of fat so that i can ingest a lot of capsules mainly amino acids in free form and i got incredible that year i mean i really got defined it was incredible the way i looked out here why did you have so many free so many more frequent meals in that that year well to get all the capsules down right okay maybe seven feedings actually i got up and this is i don't recommend this for anybody but i was very much an experimenter in those days i would probably ingest 80 to 100 capsules each time i ate each time and so i would get close to six to eight six to seven hundred capsules a day but it worked if you i figured if i could find a way to get this down without what's the worst that could happen well you can get bloated you can get diarrhea you can get nauseous so avoid that during such way the food acts as a matrix you can't just take a lot of capsules or pills that looks up your stomach you have to buffer it with food that acts as a matrix to hold the capsules together and you know especially in 1976 i did that i got in great shape that year but i did i did it ever since i still do it but nowhere near the extreme i did then um so when was your when was your first meal then when you were you know what what what how soon did you eat from when you woke up right away right i usually have maybe three softball eggs and a piece of whole grain toast and about a fourth of an avocado and some grated cheese and then for lunch i would have maybe a fish salad and then for dinner i might have i would have red meat with a vegetable or salad and then before i went to bed i would have usually a piece of fruit maybe grapefruit with amino acids and i took the i took the amino acids throughout the day that really helped because there you're getting the effects of having protein that's been digested without any calories think about that you know and so i took more took more and more that doesn't sound like a lot of food to be honest it's probably not according to what some people are doing these days but i wasn't that big you know the most i weighed in the off-season was maybe 198 pounds and so i kept the feeding small i wanted to keep my waist small and i did a lot of abdominal work too i never did a lot of aerobics although i did do some at certain times especially like the program that worked the best for me was in 79 when i was in palm springs i would go to the track i was go track and run six laps at night and my legs got really good from doing that so i found out if i took my time and did everything in pace i could avoid extremes if you have to go to extremes right before you show you're going to lose something you can't count on that you can you can do it but you're always going to lose something so when you when you went kind of like came to pre you know like the month before competition then did you have to change your food and and that too much or was that you know was was it not a lot i tried to do it gradually i just cut down on my carbs right and fats keep the protein up and one thing too is i i stopped drinking milk or doing using milk products the last month because you know milk has female hormones and i always certain bodybuilders i knew they were always sort of smooth but they looked impressive i called them milk fed champions and i realized that that wouldn't work for me because they were smooth they weren't defined they weren't as defined as i would like to be right so i realized that that might be okay like using a milk egg protein might be good was good i did it right up until the last month and then i just went to taking more amino acids right so what about the what about supplements you talk about amino acids what what what type of amino acids did you have and was there anything else that you used to take alongside those yeah i would take amino acids at the time i was using real blair products and since then i went to another brand because he's not around anymore they were good i use montife products now they're in los angeles and they have 16 amino acids in them and uh sometimes i'll take extra arginine and extra glutamine but usually not sometimes extra tryptophan but usually not at night i take maybe 10 mm milligrams of melatonin just to to well initiate sleep i have no problem falling asleep but i sort of get into sleep and have some nice dreams with that and then i take b complex uh multiple formula i take uh megazone which is a protein digestant i digest protein fat and carbohydrates i take two every time i eat i take oils i used to take lecithin i don't anymore but i take germ oil concentrate and you know if i were going to train for something to get in peak condition i would take more of everything right i would but now i don't i mainly take a bunch of stuff in the morning with breakfast and that's it i might take something later in the afternoon when i eat but not much right so when he was in that shape like olympia side was there any other sort of like extent like extra like hormones or anything like that that you that you you use to get into that condition i never relied on any of that stuff i wanted to get that effect from supplements and you know when you take high doses of supplements vitamins minerals enzymes amino acids you do get a drug-like effect right but it's not just it's not as radical you know plus there are none of the side effects like one of the side effects of using anabolic steroids is your temperament changes you know your personality changes people start hating you and avoiding you because you're like a bull out of a cage so i didn't want any of that thank you for supporting the escape the limits podcast if you're thinking about creating a unique and engaging fitness space to take your fitness to the next level then we have you covered escape fitness design and manufactures some of the most innovative attractive and durable functional training and freeway equipment used by many of the best trainers and fitness brands across the globe as a valued listener we are offering you a 10 discount off many of the products on our website you can check out the full range by going to escapefitness.com and use the code dumbbell that's escapefitness.com using the code dumbbell that's it for me please enjoy the rest of this interview what about as you get older like i know there's i know it's quite popular now certainly around here like their testosterone replacement so replacing what you've lost as you've got older what do you what do you think about that i did it for a while but i haven't done it in a long time because you know one of the things about testosterone is cancer feeds on testosterone right you know if you have a tendency men have a tendency to get prostate cancers to get older and so you don't want to encourage that so i don't take any of that stuff no hormones so in your book which um which you've just updated uh you you talk about sleep and dreams and it's it's one of the things i've we've had a few guests on that have talked about sleep and um the importance of it um i know you is something you reference so when you were at your peak training what were some of your sleep habits how long did you sleep um you know when you used to go to bed wake up and were there any again sort of like sleep rituals that kind of helped you you know recover and be able to kind of continue with those training sessions well when i was in competition and training i would sleep i guess an average of about seven and a half hours a night now being lighter and not interested in that or doing that anymore i usually go to bed it's about 11 30 and i get up about 4 30. i get about five or six hours straight through sleep and i fall asleep i have a what i call mind muscle machine it's basically a battery powered unit with the glass sunglasses with the green lights on the inside that flash at a certain certain pulse and i use a program that starts fast and goes slower and i fall asleep with that every night do you wake up [Music] not before four hours five hours honey's getting one of those machines well they're all over i recommend you try it what's the name of the place uh mindplace.com tell them i say here right and they have a unit called the uh casino nice unit i mean there were more of them around years ago but sort of gone by the wayside but the casinos nice unit and so all that what is that doing just like flashing lights to relax you or something like that i have a pair of goggles that are basically uh they diffuse the light so it's not right in your eyes and the lights flash at different frequencies you know fast frequencies make you more alert but slower frequencies make you drowsy so ideally for falling asleep you want one that starts faster and ramps down to a slower frequency and as far as the sound goes you know the best sound is ocean waves and we have those going on in our bedroom all the time at night all the time i don't have to use headphones or anything the ocean waves are crashing you know and then i have my dog next to me he's snoring and it's like his bulldogs he's like so it's all natural and what's what's the thing about dreams because you you talk about that and i know you you even sort of use that or you have used that or had some interesting stories about how dreams have kind of shaped some of the things that have happened in your life what's what's the why are those sort of important to you i really don't bother with them too much i just let them occur naturally and i do have dreams and basically a dream is a picture of a feeling and so uh i i do pay some attention to them and basically it's what's on my mind i tend to dream about you know i get messages from them too you know and years ago i paid a lot more attention to dreams i had dreams about what was going to happen it seemed like i dreamed dreamed two weeks beyond where i was that's you know and really what it is it's just basically we we have patterns in our life recurring patterns that comes out in the dream and so it's nothing new or magical it's just that you see what you've been doing over and over and over again you may not realize it but that's what's going on so a dream can maybe help you get to know yourself better what's on your mind how you're spending your time if you're doing something wrong or something that's not leading you to the place where you want to be you might have a more violent dream or maybe a nightmarish type dream i don't really have any of those because i'm life's pretty much on an even keel all the time and i just try to be calm as possible all the time my idea is to be tranquil all the time not to get worked up and what about meditation is that something that you did when you were competing and still do now yeah right i still do it and i do mantra meditation i see my mantra and i have two that i use and i use bees like these small ones it's you know just whenever i have some spare time i'm just sitting even if i'm watching television i might be doing this seeing my manta internally and i say it because you know it crowds out negative thinking that's what it does you know you're saying mantra you're not going to be thinking about anything negative and so that's how i use it i still do it so before you went on the the when you were doing the when you're in the olympia were you were you going on the stage you know were you meditating then and were you sort of calm you know or did you were you you do you have nerves and thinking about stuff what was that like i was saying my mantra 1976 when i started that and i just said a lot you know whenever i thought about it i would say it and i would say use the beats to keep saying it that's the thing about using the beads is it reminds me to keep saying it because if you just didn't if you didn't use them you would drift off you know you can't stay people have a hard time everybody has a hard time staying focused and so these help you stay focused and then after that i just did it more and more and more and then it became part of my you know my everyday experience and when i'm walking i'm saying the mantra it's perfect each step you say is syllable you know we were talking about arnold off camera was it so that backstage when you were competing and when you beat him was there mental intimidation that like he seemed as though he could be quite an intimidating character but was was there sort of like psychological games that he was playing with people and that you had to deal with at that time not really because i knew what was going on i remember 1980 olympia we're in australia and arnold had a dressing room and he invited me to go into his dream come in he says you want to share my dressing room with me i said no i know you're going to try and psych me outside i'll pass and so tom platts became his co-star for that but you know i mean i only competed against him in the 80s really that that show before that he was sort of like the person i would go to to ask him what he thought i looked like and so would always go and other people did too and he would tell everybody the same thing i've learned he said he'd say after he saw you'd say he make all kind of comments about little things then he says you know if i had your body i would win that's all we had to hear but i realized at the time that he said that to everybody but he wasn't lying he proved in 1980 you know so he could win with a number of different bodies because of his attitude and his connections and the way he played it in his aura you know he was clearly then very mentally strong as well then yeah he was he was very very focused right is that something that you have sort of constantly developed yourself i know you talk about it and you reference it in a book but is that sort of developing that mental strength is that something it's there it's there over the years arnold is good up to ten up to up to ten what does that mean ten reps right you know zen meditation basically it's breath counting up to ten then you start over so he's sort of like that he's good up to 10. whereas i'm you know i'm good up to 10 but beyond that too and so uh i think the main thing is to develop a sense of tranquility so that things don't upset you you realize that it's not not important the most important thing is your state of mind and your being you know one of the things i do is i visualize a golden seed right here and i focus on that i can feel it glowing a lot of times especially walking i do that so did a lot of little tricks it's difficult like we were just chatting about this but it's um you know i think people know that consciously but it it isn't easy particularly it's easy when things are going well to have that mindset but it's you know suddenly when you get punched on the nose metaphorically speaking it that's when it's quite difficult to snap yourself and and get into that what have you and i know you've been through a lot of ups and downs in your life what what what do you do when it's you know how where do you go to when you do have those sort of punches on the nose that's when i say the mantra more imagination i want to focus more on that and realize that that's not important really the overall scheme of things of you know who you really are you know i think we're i think we're divine beings but we don't realize it was so caught up in the mundane world of everyday life she realized that that you're special that you're you're divine and and dwell on that you know whatever helps you get there is great like mantras help you get there visualizing helps you get there closing your mind closing your eyes and picture here in your mind's eye what it is you want in your life what you want to be perfect who you want to be who you really are you know don't be around people who bring you down or talk who are negative don't go into that don't let them think that you're not you know as high as you actually are so right company is you know right thought right speech right behavior right company that's important so don't hang around with people who don't help you grow and so i don't i don't i mean i i have people that come here for programs and work out you know friendships with them sometimes longer than some longer than others and of course with my wife she's a pretty elevated being in the way she is and we've been married now was it 40. i'm trying to think when we first come here i was 60 67 we got married that's before 54 years we've been married 54 years what's the secret patience uh understanding realizing where the person has come what's where where you know putting yourself in another in another shoes i wrote a poem like that it's like it goes uh christ or buddha what's it to you it's the message not the medium don't let it fool you i learned that all the great teachings lead to the same end be nice practice empathy and kindness there's nothing to lose putting yourself in another shoes and i try to live by that try to think where the what's what's it like for the other person where are they coming from why are they like they are why are they being like that now you know it's not like i have to assert authority over everybody i try to be like i want to see what they have to say what they have to offer i want to be transparent more or less than anything yeah it's a great way to sometimes it can be difficult when you're not in agreement with someone to share that but it's that's the challenge you know that's why we're here i guess we have you know we want to get better at that i think that when you perfect everything you you your time is up here you know there's another place you go that's a good point yeah so hopefully there's a long way there's a lot of things need fixing still sure so let just change gears slightly then i want to talk about training i know that's something that you're still is a big big passion we've been walking around your gym here which is a uh an awesome home gym i don't think many people have got anything like this um what if you're you know again when you were in i guess prime condition but more offseason what would what was uh you know what was a typical all-body workout look like you know what what were some of the key things you used to do or you know what what what was um if there was a traditional workout what would that what would that be like for frank well there are two forms that i've used one was the two-way split routine which for me was upper body one day and legs the next that's pretty much what i do now sometimes a full body workout when i have a lot of machines so i just do two sets on everything but for most of my training when i was training seriously i followed the three-way split and that was usually doing pulling muscles on the first day that's back biceps and forearms they all work together the second day was legs thighs and calves and i worked abs every day and that gave my upper body a rest and the third day was chest shoulders and triceps and then the fourth day was rest three days on one day off and i followed that a lot and that really gave me the results i wanted i tried training five six days a week like the only method i just got over trained doing that and so when i i fell into this pattern three on one off and it worked really well and if i ever wanted to reach peak condition absolutely i would do that again for now i just you know train maybe twice maybe three times a week and i do either a full body routine or split routine i don't do a lot you know i i stay light i walk a lot that's the main thing is i walk a good mile and a half two miles every day we have this lake we go to beautiful early in the morning take our dog it's eight tenths of a mile all around it's really nice it's very uplifting so how long in terms of the duration of the sessions in how long when you know when you're in your peak condition how long was a typical workout i'd say an hour to an hour and 15 minutes you know i wouldn't i wouldn't if i was training heavier it would take a little longer might take an hour and a half but i generally wasn't you know i do three sets of everything working up on every set maybe uh 12 10 8 reps increasing the weight on every set by a little bit getting a pump that's was my main thing getting a pump of the muscle and working that was always my goal if you're not getting a pump it's not working you got to get blood into the area so would ever give me a pump that's what i would do right and what what about rest were you sort of long periods and and sort of you know going heavy or fairly sure if i was going heavier i'd rest longer but it was never more than if i would set a timer to to ding every two minutes that was the the least i would rest the longest i would rest or might be three minutes if i was going real heavy but i generally didn't have to and so basically i called it cultivating the breathless state because i'm breathing slightly harder than i normally would in a workout my pulse was elevated maybe 100 110 and with the um with this sort of intensity then when you you said you trained to a pump were you so you know you'd obviously been very good at building muscle what what was the sort of the secret to doing that because you weren't a you want a super heavy training person would you so how are you getting that that you know those muscle gains from from that sort of medium type of weight range over time they came you know if i kept training like that i would make progress i mean i would the muscle would be more developed it'd be more defined it would stand out more if i was really going all out for growing i would you know do lower reps with heavier weight rest longer and my training was sort of paced like that i'd say during those late spring months i was training more with heavier weights with longer rest periods and then the late summer early autumn i'd be training quite quite faster with less rest between sets you know the thing i always did was stretch between sets you know i don't think many people do that why how and why did you do that then well because you know it sort of extends your set when you're doing a set you're focused on contracting the muscle but when you're stretching you're stretching the muscle so it sort of gives it a completion and it keeps blood in the muscle too which is the main thing right you know you get a great pump stretching good so if you were doing something like chest you would you would do your you'd do your set and then what you you do doorway stretch okay by getting a doorway and just hit it right here and just lean out and then feel right here i have a place to do that's perfectly called the pillars of hercules these two pillars that hold up our patio i go out it's perfect place for doing that stretch and i have different stretches for different body parts about 10 of them i use and what sort of reps would you what did you find work best for you usually eight to twelve right in that area and i you know i didn't do any kind of force reps usually i sometimes would do a drop set where i'd go to a lighter weight but only when i was getting to the point where i needed to do that like the last few months last few weeks before competition when i had to peak i would really go beyond what i normally would do and and you you you uh talk in your book about the negatives and that's something like when i used to i did my competitions many years ago i i used to i got really great results from there and i i find it it's i found it difficult to do on my own but i always used to um probably didn't used to have to use quite as much weight but you know it worked quite well for me what what um did was that part of your routine or you only did that i always did slower negatives than positives right you know but the thing is i wanted to keep the set rhythmic the reps rhythmic like two metronome but let's say i'm doing bench press would be like this because you're 40 stronger on the negative so if you want to tax your muscles more fully do a slower negative make it harder make lighter weights feel heavier that was my motto so you don't have to really go heavy you have to make it feel heavy and i know a lot a lot sort of after your time that you know a lot of it was about you know going super heavy um but you know you're you're probably well you you have a slightly different approach don't you and i guess also going heavy creates a lot of injuries yeah your possibility of injury increases dramatically when you're going real heavy like that and you know it's bad news getting an injury because you know what you do you're sort of stuck with it it tends to recur if you're not not careful the injury defines your upper limit in weights that you can use you generally won't ever be able to go past that so why why even find that out i mean i found it out because you don't know any better at first you know you just do it do it everybody else is doing what somebody tells you because you don't know any better but you know if you don't learn you're in bad you're gonna be in bad shape and you won't last and the thing about it is the longevity of your career how long are you gonna keep doing this well my answer is as long as possible i want to keep training i'm more interested in longevity than heavy weights heavy weights not important at all anymore but making lighter weights feel heavier in strict form is important getting a pump is important i think that what's important is getting blood to the muscles and developing your circulatory system that's what's important you know once you lose your circulation you're dead you're done for done for you got to get that that blood in there so what's what's this one-sided workout that you talk about what what what what's the benefit of doing that i think it's a great idea but i've never done it right so theoretical is i think that if you just trained one side of your body in a workout with one dumbbell or one one pulley and then maybe train the other side later in the day or the next day just think about it if you're doing a curl how much blood can you get into your biceps doing it you know half of it goes here half it goes here but when you're doing one at a time it all goes there it makes sense to do that so you know isolateral workout or one-sided workout boy you're up on all the stuff i've written right i think that's a great idea you know but if you have the time to do it nobody has the time to do that i mean if i was younger and had nothing else to do i was at one time but i didn't know about that i would try it or if i'm going to the gym twice a day wish i was at that time i'll make work my left side in one time the other time do you know if there's any research about that at all no i don't think so someone should do it yeah i guess it makes sense i suppose if you write if you're training in the morning and afternoon you could just do i don't know how you'd feel sort of like at the end of the workout you'd you know kind of be all pumped up on one side so what's wrong with that take sports all sports are one-sided like i shoot archer i've shot a lot of archery it's all one-sided you don't switch arms i mean i do do something i did sometimes i used to shoot right-handed until the shoulders started giving out and you're doing this and now i shoot left-handed you know it's possible they say oh you're right out of your left eye i don't think so you know i can see out of both eyes i'm using sight what difference does it make and you're you are a bit of an equipment specialist there's a real you've got a museum in here of things that it's all stuff i like very i don't know how many years old this naught of this piece is but what's what's some of your sort of favorite types of equipment and some of the things that you've you've developed yourself well you know i used to go to trade shows a lot when i was with the uh as a consultant for advanced freeway systems in the 1990s went to a lot of trade shows and i have some of their equipment that leg presses theirs and i really like it because it's it's comfortable and uh you know you can change the effect by putting your feet in different positions on the platform it doesn't injure you and so it's instead of squatting anymore heavy i do the leg blaster sometimes for squatting because i can i sleep better i do more leg presses and then leg extension leg curl i have too nice that the nautilus leg extension is really good i've had that unit for a long time maybe 40 years i'd have that the leg curl is made for me and it's all my equipment you really feel it in the area and so all these pieces i i've personally selected after trying them out and using them this one i'm sitting on is a curling machine it's a great seat too and actually i sit down and i can massage my rear deltoids though and what about the bat you you you've got bands hooked up to a lot of these weight stacks how how long have you been doing that and why why do you like kind of ever since i learned about it probably about five or six years now uh maybe longer makes sense because you know gravity uh is how we get our effects from weight training by and large almost all of it comes from that but you're missing out on a point because gravity has a there's a point where it lets off where there's no resistance you know and that you don't want to the point is don't relax between reps you know when you're doing wraps you want the tension to build but when you put a rubber cape around your weight stack doing pull downs you pull it down you're getting retention from the weight it's pretty constant but as you pull it down more you're getting more tension from the cable and then as you let it back so you're basically building tension and it's all the concept of time under tension the more you can do that the better development you're gonna get and you could save a lot of time in your training too because everything you do will you feel everything you do so i make it a point to hook up with rubber cable to anything i can mainly wait stacks it works the best with that but you could like you could hook them up for curls or anything but you know i don't get into it that much but i can see on my leg press over there have a rubber cable that stretch around if i don't put that on there i know so when i push it all the way out there's no resistance but with the cable and i push it out there's a lot of resistance from the cable take advantage of that i think also for your joints i've i went to a gym a few months ago and they had a an old hack squat and i always always used to get me on my knees when i got to the bottom but there was a band on it and it kind of just it took out some of that sort of um uncomfortable yeah as well which is nice about bands um whereas the weights are very sort of harsh at certain parts of the movement i think the best training is with bands and with weights gravity from the weights the elastic tension you know from the bands yeah so what about training what about sort of i i call them sort of boomers or you know a little bit older people 40s 50s what what are some of the you've you've been through this and you're you know still training up to this day but what are what are some of the sort of um i guess differences as you get a bit older in terms of staying in shape you know still wanting to look good on the beach and in your shorts and things like that what what would you do differently from when you were probably younger well i would do whatever i could for my age was basically uh you know don't get hurt don't get injured don't do stupid stuff don't see how much weight you can lift over you know it's things like that grow up use common sense work for getting a pump you know rubber cables and weights and don't go real heavy make your goal getting your pump all the time that's really probably the best shortcut advice i can give you is do you always get a pump on everything you do whatever it takes to get a pump like let's say you're doing calf raises instead of going real heavy what you should do is when you rise up pause for about a second and hold it hold the contraction longer and try to get even a burning scene and that's the thing certain body parts take more more work you have to like for cast if you can't want your calves reading to respond you should work on getting the onset of a burn on every set now you can't just do that flat out because your cast will start to cramp like sleeping in a bed and stretch out and cramp so you got to do it gradually but really your calves can respond pretty well if you if you ease yourself into that and it's not necessary on all the muscles like your bigger muscle groups you don't have to do that so much but if you do you work into that you get even better results and did did you change in terms of recovery like the frequency you know in your say let's say late 40s 50s would were you changing the amount like the duration and the frequency of those workouts well the duration was always about the same you know my two-way split each workout would the upper body workouts like the chest shoulder tricep back bicep form workouts they're about the same length the legs are shorter because it's only two body parts but uh they didn't change much uh i'd say probably now i'm not that concerned about about how much i train i stay light and lean i'm not interested in growing i'm interested in staying the same really i want to stay the same i don't want to make progress i want to stay the same just stop that what's wrong with that if i could look like this at 90 wouldn't that be great stay the same so that's my goal is to stay the same now i couldn't say that ten years ago it was make gains make gains grow yeah so when did that when what what what age was that sort of turning point from right i want to be a little bit better each year to i'm good if i still look like this every year about a month ago i realized it and you're 79 in a few months is that right a couple weeks a couple of weeks right okay stay the same no aches and pains and i feel real good right now i have no aches and pains my shoulder which has been hurting every now and then it's feeling pretty good right now so you know have nothing hurt be able to do just about anything i want to do and that is you know i we go for a walk it's about a mile and a half a little longer every morning with our dog keep doing that uh and train a couple times a week with weights yeah eat sensibly you know i have the same breakfast every breakfast is the same what's that still eating your eggs are you three eggs softboiled eggs a piece of whole grain toast and about an eighth of an avocado and some grated cheese that's it i drink one cup of coffee in the morning when i get up lunch uh i'm not a formal lunch person but basically i might have anything that fills me up like i might even have like a a bowl of soup like a good soup that has good ingredients i might have that i might have a salad with fish i might have a can of salmon with mayonnaise and then dinner is almost it's fish a lot a lot of salmon or chicken i might have turkey occasionally i don't have much red meat anymore not that i would like to have more why get stronger right we just like we got out of the habit of doing that it's mostly fish we eat a lot of fish now right and i don't i like i love wine but i don't drink probably would if i had some and what about pre-work did did you ever used to take any pre-workouts to kind of help you enhance that pump or anything or if or if you didn't what what were what did you take before you worked out never really got into that i just wanted to get a pump when i worked out so i would a lot of times let a protein drink about hour and a half before my workout but as far as stimulants now i mean i i tried that stuff there's some pretty good pretty the best one i ever used i think i still have some but i don't use it it's called sligolin saligalene and what it does it's um it's actually beneficial as far as opening up your brain but i don't need it i mean i'm not going pushing myself to levels beyond what i normally can do why bother i think you know i think it's all subtracted off the end you keep pushing yourself going to failure guess what you're going to fail sooner than you'd like to in your life i think that's psychologically bad look at the mentors go to failure yeah they made it to 50 and then they can't then they they checked out they failed i think you know you don't want to do that what's wrong with feeling good about everything get a good workout feel good from it you know don't hurt don't train so hard that you hurt you know so that's what i'm after you know so i've got a couple of final questions that were put on the previous videos that um i thought we'd ask just before we finished um just to address some of the things that i think people are interested in knowing or getting clarification on um just before that um just just tell us a little bit about your one of your new books and where people can find those uh for anyone who wants to sort of you know get a program and and learn how to get in the frank get frank zane body well i got them right here my textbook my reference book is the zane bodybuilding manual everything i know is in this book it's 436 pages of everything i mean everything there's mental stuff in here too psychological stuff and routines all kinds of stuff diet nutrition meals and it's sort of chronological micro it's like autobiographical too as i go through it went to various stages of my life and basically that's the textbook and this is the workbook 91 day wonder body it's three months 91 days of what to do every day the workout's right there you can write it in your book write it right down and it goes through 18 different routines and here's my dvd which i made in when i was 60 this is like 18 years ago in this gym in this gym and so these two will take you through it then if you want to go beyond this book here we go there get finished it takes the three-way split the one i like the best the three days on one day off pulling muscles legs pushing muscles for three months it'll take you to take you to completion and all the workouts are right there in the book just write in your totals your sets your reps and everything so i wanted to come out with with the stuff that people could use and follow and have a complete guide you know no matter where they're at and all the things that are related to that that help there's something there i just passed i want to show it to you there's a mind muscle machine right here the one that i use the casino okay for your sleep yeah this is like you know i call it high-tech meditation it's basically a stimulus generator you know meditation basically you follow a stimulus one could be saying a mantra with the beads another one could be counting your breath like in zen meditation breath counting those are the stimulus your mind wanders away from that you bring it back you train your attention that way and this is this is automatically done as a stimulus flashing lights pulsating sounds that's another way to do it is it better it's different right so where can you get those of you um and i'll we'll stick all these in the emails and show notes and that kind of thing but where my website frank zane.com they're all on there and uh you know they're really all you need to know i mean it's all that i know at least i mean it came out there's some things you might want to experiment with but really this book is full of ideas as far as routines and mindset and everything else yeah some great stuff in your books of uh in preparation i was reading them and uh yeah it's a lot more than just uh workouts definitely definitely recommend checking those out so a few questions then that we've been asked so um what are you one of the one one of the sort of uh one of the first ones is why atp not creatine well atp is what creatine becomes so why not go to this right directly to the end effect and it's a lot easier than having to swallow that powder and you know it's called the krebs energy cycle where your body converts carbohydrate into energy creatine is one of those stops on the on the krebs energy cycle it's like the third stop and atp is the final stop why not just go to the final stop i take about four creatine or atp every day usually in the morning how did you come up with your first workout routine well that's going way back i guess reading them in the magazines and trying them you know muscle muscle muscle builder power i remembered strength and health and muscular development i just stepped in there and i saw the routines and i tried them out who was your sort of who were the people that inspired you in that day in that time well i grew up in pennsylvania and you know weightlifting was very popular there would be weightlifting contests you know those days was press snatch clean and jerk all day long then after that they'd have the bodybuilding shows right and my very first contest was mr pennsylvania i was 18 and i finished last because i didn't get points for athletic ability i probably would have been right in the middle if i did my next contest was uh teenage mr america i was 18. and i was backstage pumping up and bob hoffman was watching me you know bob hoffman is the father of american weightlifting the guy behind york barbell okay you see that was very big in pennsylvania aau it was all that and hoffman was watching me and he came over to me and he said young man if i had a physique like yours i'd walk around my shirt off all the time i said whoa hoffman tell me that that's all i needed here you know it was off i was off to the races after that nothing could stop me and then of course i got away from the aunt ifbb and joe wieder and joe never really encouraged me he'd always say oh frank you're going to get bigger right why don't you take some dynamite that's okay joe i'll pass but uh you know joe sort of provided the means and the magazine and i wrote articles for him and uh those are the good old days i remember you know he's been passed away now for about five six seven eight years with great times when he was around arnold myself colombo dave draper i guess he probably he's he put i suppose a spotlight yeah yeah he was personality behind it all right now there's nobody nobody so how does your how does the way you train today compared to how you used to train you're more sophisticated i have a lot of toys here you have something for everything when in those days there wasn't much you could do you know if you had a lat machine you're lucky if your leg extension like come on that's all you needed flat machine leg extension lateral barbell dumbbells you could do it all right and now we have that plus other stuff makes it easier there's still some of the basics i i know yeah you could do everything with dumbbells and barbells pretty much you know and you could go quite far with that but it just makes it more fun to have more toys to play with than more things at your disposal for isolation for example that's really the key to bodybuilding is learning to isolate areas when you have certain machines you'd be able to do that yeah it's kind of gone full circle i remember the bodybuilding gym i went to back in the 80s mid 80s it was just bars and dumbbells and barbells and some cables and that was it yeah and you know the bodies have evolved too because the equipment has evolved yeah i guess yeah you know you have more more intricate development more little areas that are developed now that you never used to see too much yeah and it was it was naughted us like people who make this stuff were probably they were they were the first ones were they to sort of really focus on they're important in in that the evolution of equipment is knowledge you know and uh cybex also very important hoist in san diego important they have equipment basically that you let's say you're sitting you're doing a dip it lifts you up lifts your body up when you're doing it and so uh you know the better the equipment the better the bodies i would love to get some of that newer hoist equipment but this stuff i have is perfectly good and i don't want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on it but it's very nice thank you for sharing this and uh i look forward to coming and interviewing you on your 89th birthday and seeing how your workouts change then 79 or 89 10 years from now well i'm not going to do anything but i'll watch you do it i'll give you feedback fantastic hey i hope you enjoyed this podcast if you did then please go over to itunes and subscribe to the escape your limits podcast leave a review leave a comment it really would help us a lot to continue to keep these going you

Channel: Escape Fitness

Views: 2,261,242

Keywords: escape fitness, workout, training, mindset, escape your limits, Frank Zane, Mr. Olympia, bodybuilding, MatthewJanuszek, Fitness, Muscle, matthew januszek, escape your limits podcast, bodybuilder, mr. olympia, mr olympia

Id: yZthBN25ebA

Length: 67min 34sec (4054 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021