Principles of Growth
How to put the Weider System to work in your training
by Frederick C. Hatfield, PhD, MSS

The Weider Principles featured each month in Muscle & Fitness give you specifics to improve your training, but you may wonder how they fit into the big training picture, and how you can apply them most effectively to reach your goals. The Weider System, containing all the Weider Principles, is the big picture, and possibly an intimidating one with so much information and advice. Here we break down the principles into three areas that are key to your bodybuilding progress:

Principles to help you plan your training cycle. Principles to help you arrange your exercises in each workout. Principles to help you perform each exercise.

Of course, Joe Weider doesn't claim credit for inventing all these principles himself. Many are time-tested maxims vital to training that Joe observed, then recognized they should be named, recorded and organized. Thus the Weider System of training principles, evolving for nearly 50 years, has grown to incorporate other great training ideas. The 'system' itself is a guide to aid you in developing your own personal training methods based on your own unique recuperative ability, experience, goals, strengths, weaknesses and - well - 'guts' to go the distance. The system can help you develop your instinct as to how to train; at that point, the Weider Principles can help you further refine your physique.

Of the Weider Principles developed by Joe personally, one in particular had a major impact on the world of bodybuilding: the concept of splitting your workouts to train specific bodyparts. The split system, double-split system and triple-split system, as they became known, are Joe's major contribution to bodybuilding science.

The Weider Principles are categorized and discussed below. One principle, Instinctive Training, appears in all three categories. Folks, it's simple: Use your own training experience and knowledge of how your body responds to exercise stress when planning and carrying out a training program. This must take place on a cycle-to-cycle, day-to-day and quite literally a minute-to-minute basis. Here are my views on how you can put the Weider Principles to work for you.

As Joe Tells It
"I was a weightlifter at first," says Joe Weider, recalling his days as a youth in Montreal. "I just wanted to lift heavy weights. When war broke out, there was no more weightlifting in Canada. All the guys left. Since I couldn't compete anymore, I turned to bodybuilding. I started Your Physique magazine in 1940, and had a section on weightlifting in the muscle mag until Bob Hoffman (the power broker in the weight world in those days) began to attack bodybuilders. From there I went ahead and developed bodybuilding shows. My brother and I started the IFBB.

"In the '40s, nobody followed any bodybuilding routine because there really wasn't any. We were all weightlifters and trained basically for technique. Around that time, Charlie Smith did a lot of writing, and I remember discussing with him: How can I build overall power if all I ever do are three lifts? I figured that by incorporating some powerlifting movements into my routine, I could lift more weights. So we did boxes, we did partial cleans, we did all kinds of movements to build power. It was a natural progression. When boxes didn't work any more, I had to find a different tactic that worked. We all did.

"A lot of guys I spoke with from other countries were going through the same thought processes back then. Who got what idea first? I frankly don't know. I can tell you that I never claimed the basic science behind each of the Weider Principles is mine. It isn't that I was suddenly struck with divine revelation in the evolution going on in lifting. But I did have an open mind, and I had a magazine to write these new bodybuilding training ideas in."

Weider Principles To Help You Plan Your Training Cycle
  1. Cycle Training Principle - Break your training year into cycles for strength, mass or contest preparation, helping you to avoid injury and keep your body responsive to adaptation.
  2. Split System Training Principle - Break your workout week into upper- vs. lower-body training, which results in more intense training sessions.
  3. Double- or Triple-Split Training Principle - Break your workout into 2-3 shorter, more intense training sessions per day, resulting in greater intensity developed in each.
  4. Muscle Confusion Training Principle - Muscles accommodate to a specific type of stress ('habituate' or 'plateau') when you continually apply the same stress to your muscles over time. You must constantly vary exercises, sets, reps and weight to avoid accommodation.
  5. Progressive Overload Training Principle - The basis of increasing any parameter of fitness is to make your muscles work harder than they're accustomed to.
  6. Holistic Training Principle - Different cellular organelles respond differently to different forms of stress, so using a variety of rep/set schemes, intensity and frequency will maximize muscle mass.
  7. Eclectic Training Principle - Combine mass, strength or isolation-refinement training techniques into your program often, as your instincts dictate, to help you achieve greater progress.
  8. Instinctive Training Principle - Experiment and pay attention to results so you can develop an instinctive ability to construct diets, routines, cycles, intensity levels, reps and sets that work best for you.
Weider Principles To Help You Arrange Your Workout
  1. Set System Training Principle - Performing one set per bodypart was the old way; the Set System calls for multiple sets of each exercise to apply maximum adaptive stress and produce muscle growth.
  2. Superset Training Principle - Alternate opposing muscle-group exercises with little rest between sets.
  3. Compound Sets Training Principle - Alternate two exercises for the same bodypart with little rest between sets.
  4. Tri-Sets Training Principle - Do three consecutive exercises for one muscle group with little rest between sets.
  5. Giant Sets Training Principle - Do 4-6 consecutive exercises for one muscle group with little rest between sets.
  6. Staggered Sets Training Principle - Train smaller, slow-developing bodyparts like the forearms, abdominals and calves in between sets for, say, chest or legs.
  7. Rest-Pause Training Principle - With 85%-90% of your one-rep max, do 2-3 reps and put the weight down. Then do 2-3 more, rest, 2-3 more and rest for a total of 3-4 sets of rest-pauses. The short rest-pause allows enough time for ATP to be resynthesized and permits additional reps with the heavy weight.
  8. Muscle Priority Training Principle - Work your weaker bodyparts first in any given workout; alternatively, work the larger (as opposed to smaller) muscle groups first, while you're fresh and your energy level is still high.
  9. Pre-Exhaustion Training Principle - Do an isolation, single-joint movement before you do a multijoint exercise to prefatigue the muscle group. For example, do dumbbell flyes before the bench press.
  10. Pyramiding Training Principle - Begin a bodypart workout with higher reps/low weight and gradually add weight (and reduce the number of reps), ending with a weight you can do for 5-8 reps.
  11. Descending Sets Training Principle - After you reach muscular failure, immediately lighten the weight and continue until a second point of failure is reached. (Also called stripping.)
  12. Instinctive Training Principle - Experiment and pay attention to results so you can develop an instinctive ability to construct diets, routines, cycles, intensity levels, reps and sets that work best for you.
Weider Principles To Help You Perform Each Exercise
  1. Isolation Training Principle - All muscles act as stabilizer, synergist, antagonist or protagonist. By making any given muscle the prime mover in any given exercise, you 'isolate' it as much as possible, and therefore the stress applied to it.
  2. Quality Training Principle - Gradually reduce the rest between sets while still maintaining or increasing the number of reps performed.
  3. Cheating Training Principle - Use momentum with a slight swing to move the weight past the sticking point at the end of a set to add further muscular stress.
  4. Continuous Tension Training Principle - Maintain slow, continuous tension on muscles to maximize red-fiber involvement.
  5. Forced Reps Training Principle - Have a partner assist you with reps at the end of a set so you can train past muscular failure.
  6. Flushing Training Principle - Do 3-4 exercises for a bodypart to force maximum blood into the tissue before moving to another bodypart.
  7. Burns Training Principle - Do short, 2-3-inch rapid movements at the end of a set.
  8. Partial Reps Training Principle - Do partial-range movements with varying weight through targeted sections of the range of motion to derive maximum overload stress for that bodypart. This lets you put more stress on areas that usually don't get stressed enough because of leverage advantages in the full range of motion. This also includes working a muscle over a very short range of motion after you reach muscle failure when doing full-range reps.
  9. Reverse-Gravity Training Principle - 'Negatives,' or eccentric training, make it possible to get more muscle cells to respond because you can lower about 30%-40% more weight than you can successfully lift concentrically.
  10. Peak-Contraction Training Principle - Hold the weight at maximum contraction for a few seconds at the completion of a movement.
  11. Speed Training Principle - Compensatory acceleration of movements stimulates fast-twitch fibers.
  12. Iso-Tension Training Principle - This is great practice for posing. Tense each muscle maximally for 6-10 seconds. Do up to a total of 30-45 flexes in a variety of posing positions.
  13. Instinctive Training Principle - Experiment and pay attention to results so you can develop an instinctive ability to construct diets, routines, cycles, intensity levels, reps and sets that work best for you.

Fred Hatfield, PhD, is co-founder and president of the International Sports Sciences Association, an organization specializing in certifying personal fitness trainers worldwide (call 800-892-ISSA for information).

In addition to being a former national and world champion powerlifter, he is a former editor of MUSCLE & FITNESS and has written several hundred articles and more than 60 books on training and nutrition.
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