When we left off, the entire lifting world had discounted the effects of isometrics because some of the York lifters were taking a whopping fifteen milligrams of dianabol a day, which to the puritans of the world is tantamount to raping a dead goat in their grandma’s lap at Christmas dinner. The busybodies of the industry shunned the shit out of the cowpoke wildman Dr. John Ziegler, whose experiments were open, honest, and without any sort of malicious intent (he was attempting to put them on a level playing field with the government-sponsored and supplemented Soviet lifters), so we essentially lost 50 years of gainz due to the interference of people who likely don’t lift in the first place.
The shit Ziegler used on the the York lifters was a potent combination of electro-mechanical stimulation, hypnosis, ultra-positive thinking, super-low-dosed b-bol, and isometrics. Using these methods, guys like 21 year old bodybuilder/weightlifter Bill March and 34-year-old inventor, chemist, and weightlifter, Louis Rieke. Within six months, both men had put over a hundred pounds on their three-lift competition total, moved up in weightclasses, and stunned their competition, and within a few years they were treated as “drug cheats” for violating rules that hadn’t even been as yet conceived banning completely legal performance enhancing drugs.
To give you a bit of perspective, that’d be like modern USA Weightlifting completely discounting five years of lifters’ feats because they drank too many Bangs in a day… which I guess is how Oly lifters like shit, since they ban and shun basically everything and everyone. Their idiocy shouldn’t be our fucking problem, however, so we can blast past the minute consumption of an entirely legal substance off the table for discussion so we can uncover the “lost secrets of isometrics” I’m sure someone has made an exceptionally shitty free ebook about at some point. Regardless of your opinion on drugs, “cheating” and all that nonsense, one notion of which you ought to disabuse yourself is the idea that steroids don’t work in the absence of steroids, because science has since proven that isometrics work irrespective of one’s hormone levels.
Furthermore, Lou Riecke was noted by several sources to have become a massive fan of hypnosis, which he credited with much of his success on the platform. He brought that mentality to the Steelers when he coached there, and it was so successful that the Steelers still use hypnosis on their athletes fifty years later. You might have still been laboring under the misapprehension that 15 milligrams of dianabol a day can turn a seasoned lifter from a reasonably good middleweight to a world record-holding 198 pounding in a few moths, but the mere fact that the Steelers continue to have success using the basics of Riecke’s methodology should put that nonsense to rest. Unless, of course, you’d like to take it up with the self-proclaimed “toughest man on Earf” James Harrison, who would happily tear you limb from limb with his bare hands as part of his retirement conditioning program as you deliver your insipid dissertation on the magic of dbol.
Though I will admit that hypnosis sounds like a waste of time only applicable to the soft-headed, it so happens that science kicked open the door to the mind like an oily 80’s action star and blasted every doubt in the room. Plenty of studies exist to support the idea that hypnotic induction could help all of us in the gym, a 2018 study showed that some goofy fuck with a Coexist-stickered Prius and a metronome was able to turn experienced lifters’ one rep max into their max triple in a single session. As a general rule, I have better things to say about cancer than most head shrinkers, but in the area of physical strength, paying a soft-spoken mentally ill person (why else would they become a psychologist) to be your friend is apparently not the sad commentary on one’s life is usually seems to be.
So with a base of an immediate and serious increase in their one-rep max, Ziegler added fifteen milligrams of dianabol a day and some intense, brief isometric training. There wasn’t much in the way of real science on isometrics at the time, but the 1960’s were a hotbed of isometric experimentation anyway. The powerhouse football programs at the University of Alabama, Florida State, and LSU were crushing their competition like they were Madden eSports competitors who for whatever reason decided to suit up for real, and they all credited isometric strength training for their success, as did FSU’s track team, who took second in the NCAA the same year their football team went 10-0 with nine shutouts. And their pedigree was fucking insane- Victor Hugo included a bit in Les Mis about how
“Certain convicts who were forever dreaming of escape ended by making a veritable science out of force and skill combined. It is the science of muscles. An entire system of statics is daily practiced by prisoners.”
Though the science then couldn’t confirm Ziegler’s results, modern science certainly can.
- As Bill March and others constantly maintained, it is possible to train more frequently with abbreviated isometric strength training methods, which translates to faster gains in isometric strength. That might mean nothing to you, because no one competes in isometric strength tests, but a recent study showed that recreationally trained athletes had a very strong correlation between their isometric strength and both their one rep max on the squat and their vertical leap (McGuigan). Thus, short duration isometric lower-body workouts could be the literal difference between being utter shit and having a respectable squat.
- Research on the elderly showed that simply including a flexing protocol along the lines of Bernarr MacFadden’s Dynamic Tension system (the one Charles Atlas stole) or Maxalding increased leg strength about 10% and muscle cross section almost 2% (Welsh).
- another study that used twins showed that using isometric strength training on leg extensions on a single leg not only increased the strength in the trained leg by 20% over twelve weeks, but it increased the strength in the non-trained leg by 11% (reminding us all to train the fuck out of the other limb if one is too injured to train it). Their ability to hold a static load increased by 60% over their starting weight. Ultimately, the study concluded that “isometric strength training as used in the present study can cause increased recruitment of the available motor unit pool, improved efficiency at submaximal loads, and surprisingly also enhancement of the oxidative metabolism in the muscle” (Komi).
There are plenty of studies demonstrating the unerring excellence of isometrics on Pubmed, yet we all ignore the shit like it is that weird-assed, toe walking metalhead kid in high school who grew up to be a Viking re-enacting, endlessly kilt-wearing amateur blacksmith. If that’s too specific to people like myself, you can go with “ignore them like most people ignore sensible, well-educated people offering a cogent and research-heavy response to an asinine political claim on social media.” However you want to paint the analogy, the point remains the same:
We all need to start incorporating more isometrics into our training.
In the event you need more convincing, feel free to examine the methods of two contemporaries on the US Olympic weightlifting team, both of whom were stronger than most of the powerlifters of the time without even training those three lifts, yet they looked like bodybuilders.
Bill March
One of the most impressive lifters in the York stable from a progress and physique standpoint was Bill March, a Pennsylvania lifter who surged onto the Olympic weightlifting scene as a newly minted, hyper-muscular 198 pounder after struggling as a 181 pound lifter. Though he had begun his training with the 6×6 system that was popular at the time, March was tapped by Ziegler to be one of his guinea pigs, and March began making the drive from Pennsylvania to Maryland (it was about three hours each way) a couple of times a week to get hypnosis, e-stim, dianabol, and isometric training under Ziegler’s watchful eye. Due to March’s exhaustion on this schedule, Ziegler eventually arranged to have March shuttled back and forth by one of his assistants, and March made some of the most insane progress a human being has ever seen inside a gym.
What resulted was seriously impressive- once he bumped up to middle-heavyweight (198lbs/90kg), he took 3rd in the 1962 World Championships; 1st in the 1963 Pan American Games and set a world record in the press; and he was a five-time US National Champion at 198 from 1961-65.
Bill March Vital Statistics
Height: 5’7″ (or 5’8″, depending on the source)
Weight: 200lbs
- Neck: 17″
- Arms: 17.75″
- Forearm: 15.75″
- Chest:46″
- Waist: 33″
- Thigh: 29″
- Calf: 17.5″
Olympic Press: 375lbs (gym); 353lbs (official)
Snatch: 320lbs (gym); 315lbs (official)
Clean and Jerk: 418lbs (gym); 405lbs (official)
Deadlift: 575lbs (Larry Pacifico dominated the world with a 620 deadlift in the 1969 nationals)
Quarter Squat: 1425lbs
Rock-Bottom Anderson Squat: 430lbs
World Records Held: Olympic Press, 353lbs
Bodybuilding Titles Held: Mr. Pennsylvania, Mr. Middle Atlantic, Mr. Eastern States, Mr. North America, Mr. Pan American, and FIHC Mr. Universe.
Though he lived in York, Bill March never considered training in Hoffman’s gym any more than Kim Kardashian would consider reading a book. Instead, he got sweaty with eventual Mr. America Vern Weaver in the back room of a florist, where Weaver and some other guys had set up some weights. Weaver put Bob Hoffman onto March, as March had made rapid progress as a recent high school graduate and thought Hoffman might want a good-looking, muscular dude for use in Olympic weightlifting demonstrations. Hoffman liked both guys, so he invited them and their third lifting partner (Dick Smith, who trained the hyper-muscular press beast and Baddest Motherfucker Phil Grippaldi to Olympic greatness years later) to his bleeding-edge Olympic weightlifting gym, which consisted of one staircase rack, two platforms, and a single flat bench. That was apparently light years ahead of whatever conditions in which the three had been training, and the three rapidly became fixtures in the gym, and they competitive weightlifting and bodybuilding communities.
Initially, March, Weaver, and Smitty all trained together, lifting for a couple of hours a day. A schism in their training methods occurred when March decided to abandon bodybuilding and focus entirely on weightlifting, while Weaver went the other way and focused entirely on bodybuilding. Weaver never experimented with Ziegler’s methods alongsideMarch, though he relied very heavily on the power rack for his training and was able to squat 585 for reps with a stop on the pins at the bottom. Interestingly, Weaver’s training abbreviated alongside March’s, and he would spend exactly an hour beating the shit out of the weights like he was Chris Brown and the plates all read “Rihanna” rather than “York.” March’s abbreviated even more than that, cutting his total gym time down to a little less than a half hour, with an additional “meet” day on Saturday.
March claimed that this system would work equally well in both Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting, but March was really the last of the line of old-school brute strength dickheads who dominated the lifting scene since the Germans forced the Brits and French to continually add rules that turned strength events into ones better suited to skinny-fat people fueled by unspeakably bad cuisine. Frankly, March would have made a far better powerlifter than he would have an Olympic weightlifter, but he happened to be born in a decade in which powerlifting barely existed and people still actually cared one whit about weightlifting- obviously, it was a weird era.
“If you train and follow this routine as it is told and do not over-train by trying to do more sets and reps than advised, you will be amazed at your rapid progress in size as well as in power. As you know any muscle you work on in isometric training is broken down into three basic parts: low, middle and high. This also holds true of any push or pulling movement. *Editor’s note: Bill refers to the three positions of each exercise – the start, the mid-way point and the finish.
Taking the Press, for example, the “low” is starting from the shoulders to six inches above the shoulders; the “middle” from eye-level to a few inches above the head; and “high” is from six inches below finish to finish. In lifting, pushing or pulling, there are what is called “hard” or “sticking points”. These are your weakest points in the pull or push you may be doing. Doesn’t it seem logical that they are the points you should work? *Editor’s note: Taking the Press again as an example, if a lifter finds the most difficult phase of the lift between eye-level and a few inches above his forehead, he should work on the “middle” part of his press. In this routine you will handle weights you never dreamed of handling. Your workouts will be four days a week of about 20 minutes a workout” (March).
On March’s program, he trained Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, then had a meet day on Saturday (though in the event a lifter finds this to be too taxing, March recommended that occur every two weeks). He believed that the meet days should be the easy days, though- the poundages should be 100-300 pounds lighter than what the lifter will handle in training. Training is broken down into “low” and “high” days rather than individual lifts, because training the same lift from a low pin and a high pin was simply too taxing for him, which means it would likely be too taxing for any of us.
Monday and Wednesday
Deadlift– “This I do from Hole No 5 (see photo). I DO NOT USE ANY ARMS TO PULL IN THIS POSITION but rather use them as cables attached to the bar, pushing with my legs until the weight comes off the pins at least two inches. I let go of the bar and repeat the movement. On the third rep, when the weight gets two inches off the pins, I HOLD THAT SPOT FOR 12 SECONDS, then put the bar down and move on to the next position” (March).
Low Pull– “Using Hole No. 10 (see photo) I pull the bar as high as possible so as to get some bend in the elbows. I pull up twice and on the third hold it for 12 seconds with the elbows bent as much as possible” (March).
Low Squat– “Using Hole No. 16 (see photo) I push the weight off the pins as high as possible twice then, on the third, hold it up there for 12 seconds. I use a weight that I CANNOT COME THE WHOLE WAY UP WITH” (March).
Low Press– “Using Hole No. 16, I push as high as I can twice and hold it on the third for 12 seconds TRYING TO PRESS THE WEIGHT HIGHER ALL THE TIME” (March).
Tuesday and Thursday
Deadlift– the same as on Monday and Wednesday as this exercise is to be done on all four days.
High Pull– “I use Hole No. 14. Here I use the Snatch grip pulling as high as possible and holding the third rep for 12 seconds” (March).
Middle Press– “I use Hole No. 32. From here I press the weight to arms’ length for three reps, holding the third for 12 seconds. Top Press – From Hole No. 37 I push the weight up three times holding it on the third for 12 seconds” (March).
Quarter Squat– “From Hole No. 24 I push the weight off the pins and straighten my legs. On the third rep I bring the weight down to within one or two inches of the pins and hold it WITH KNEES UNMOVING for 12 seconds. I use the same poundage for one week then increase it 10 or 20 pounds the next. In this I am using more and more each week. This builds a good mental attitude as well as overwhelming power. If you are wondering about hitting a limit poundage with this routine – don’t. I do not believe there is one! Each time I have taken a layoff from power rack training (about every two months) I always surpass my previous high poundage in each position” (March).
And that’s fucking it- no arms, no calves, no forearm, no neck- just a handful of exercises barely done were March’s recipe for success, and he stated more than once that overtraining hurt his success far more than any other factor (like bad luck, as Murphy’s Law jumped and buttfucked March every time the man attempted to step on a platform. Instead of hitting the gym longer, March preferred to play basketball and did long and broad jumps on a nearly daily basis. Should that surprise you, consider the fact that Phil Heath was a collegiate standout in basketball, and Hafthor played semi-pro basketball for years- apparently, all that jumping pays off on the platform.
Though this isn’t exactly a BME (March isn’t a terrifically interesting person), some discussion of his diet is in order, since the man managed to move up a weightclass and put a hundred pounds on his total in six months, then an additional 200 pounds over the next two years. As fifteen milligrams of dianabol only take a person so far, diet likely played a role. By all accounts, Bill March was one of the biggest eaters in the lifting scene in the 1960’s, eclipsed only by 6’9″ 290lb professional football player and wrestler Ernie Ladd, and his prodigious appetite must’ve paid fucking dividends in the gym.
As he trained in Hoffman’s gym, it’s a certainty Hoffman was having March chug gallons of milk mixed with his noxious, unpalatable soy-and-sugar-laden protein powder. In addition to that, March claimed his diet consisted of a shitload of “meats, salads, milk, whole wheat bread, vegetables, and plenty of fruit. I eat quite a bit of dry fruit. I also take-with meals- Vitamin B and C and Energol (Hoffman’s wheat germ oil). I am a strong believer in Vitamin C” (Terpak). He’d apparently eat “greasy hoagies” between sets when he used multiple sets, and the late Ken Leistner once saw him “drink 3-4 quarts of milk prior to a workout (he was loading protein powder into cans during this one hour period. I guess the ‘hard work’ made him thirsty), and then down a quart of orange juice, a quart of milk and a quart of Pepsi during a moderately hard workout” (Leistner).
March would end up cutting about 15 pounds in 36 hours to make weight, which killed half of his attempts because he’d be cramping so badly he couldn’t lift a fucking paperweight. He’d chug a full case of Pepsi and eat a ton of food after bombing out and would be hovering around the 220 mark the day after the meet. Say what you will about that sort of a cut for a three hour weigh in, but the man managed to set a serious world record with that method, and looked so good when competing that he managed to win the FICU Mr. Universe the day after the Pan Am Games with no dieting, no prep, and no arm or calf training whatsoever.
“After all, you can’t argue with success.”
– Bill March
I’ll be fucked if I know what’s coming up next, because I lost interest in this topic about 3000 words ago and still have another entry coming in this series, in addition to a new So and So Go So Fucking Jacked, more Fustigation Fury shit, and half a dozen other articles that are 3/4 written but still require a shitload of work and editing. On top of that, I’ve taken a side job so that I can one day actually own a car, so writing and researching 8-10 hours a day isn’t going to be possible for awhile (you’d be shocked to find out how much research actually goes into this shit). In any event, something new will be dropping on the Patreon side tomorrow, and I’ll have something rad ready for next week.
Love the site? Wanna show a little love? Mash that Patreon button and throw me some cash to help out with research costs and to help support the only motherfucker keeping the strength sports underground alive – you’ll get access to articles that won’t be available on the free side, plus insights on my current training and diet, interviews with people like Eddie Hall and Randy Couture, and a bunch of other shit.
<center><a href="https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=24374767" data-patreon-widget-type="become-patron-button">Become a Patron!</a><script async="" src="https://c6.patreon.com/becomePatronButton.bundle.js"></script></center>Sources:
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Awesome article. I’ve been meaning to add Isometrics to my training since reading these last two articles. How would you go about doing something like what March did without a rack though? I’ve only got a squat stand. I do alot of lockouts for pressing but I’d like to add in iso work too. Especially for my pulling. Any thoughts?
Thanks man! Glad you enjoyed it- it was a bitch and a half to research and synthesize.
Yeah- one easy thing to do is on your last rep of each set or of your last set, lower the barbell to the 3/4 point and hold it there until you can’t. You can do that on any squatting movement and then dump it, as well as bench and overhead press. Alternatively, you could do shit like leg extension holds while balancing a barbell on your feet/ankles, which is what the Cubans have been doing forever, and you could do static holds at various points within a leg curl as well (or a bicep curl or overhead extension). Your options are basically limitless- don’t get hung up on the rack.
Ok. Thanks jamie. I’ll definitely try those out. Between those and the lockout work it should be plenty of options.
Ziegler added fifteen milligrams of dianabol a day…you think people tell the truth about this?
Beyond a certain noob phase, nobody believes anything about sport, PED use etc.
In a way this confirms Mr Lewis’ perspective. Nobody can do it for you, nobody can tell you how to do it, nobody can give you the answers, you just have to jump in and work it out for yourself. If you decide to juice, its your call.
Ziegler had no reason to lie- the nonsense about steroids being cheating is a modern fabrication created by the non-competitive capitalists. But yeah- the choice is between expanding your potential and realizing it or arbitrarily refusing to use nootropics and steroids in some vain hope you’ve got the moral high ground.
You mentioned in the last isometric article that tedious long holds should be less than five minutes. Is that something from a study or just a consensus you heard?
15 milligrams…It took me about 1 minute to find this…”Ziegler gave Dianabol to the entire U.S. Olympic weightlifting team in Rome in 1960, but they still lost to the Soviets. He gave up experimentation with athletes when he learned that some who had taken 20 times the recommended dose of Dianabol had developed a liver condition. He was quoted in Science in 1972 saying “I lost interest in fooling with IQ’s of that caliber. Now it’s about as widespread among these idiots as marijuana.” In later years Ziegler regretted introducing AAS to athletes. He recollected “but I wish to God now I’d never done it. I’d like to go back and take that whole chapter out of my life.”
“Ziegler suffered from heart disease, which he partially ascribed to his experimentation with steroids, and he died from heart failure in 1983.”