The following is an excerpt of an interview I did for The Elite Body, with Vince Delmonte, author of No Nonsense Muscle Building.

Jim:    So going with the hormone thing and not doing steroids, what are the alternatives to that?  What are the natural ways to stimulate those hormones?

Vince:    That’s a great question.  Let’s look at the three things – training, lifestyle and nutrition.  Let’s start off with things people might miss on lifestyle.  The reality is that when training, you’re only in the gym a couple of hours a week.  The majority of the time you’re outside of the gym.  So sleeping eight hours a night is very important.  These are the things that can’t really get dressed up as sexy and they can’t market on the cover of a magazine, “Sleep Eight Hours a Night.”

People underestimate this stuff.  Going to bed earlier I found was one of the big things for me in recovery and being able to train harder the next day.  I would let that kick in.  So I recommend that everybody – I’m just painting a perfect situation.  Whether you can do this or you can’t, that’s up to the person listening to the call to make that commitment and lifestyle change.

If you can get to bed closer to 10:30/11:00 each night, that’s going to help a lot.  They say for every hour of sleep you can get before midnight, it’s almost like the equivalent of two hours sleep.  I tested this out.  I know it’s amazing.  You wake up earlier and you’re able to start your first meal earlier.  You’re able to finish your last meal earlier.  Everything just seems to work a lot better.  Your body is able to start building muscle quicker.

That’s going to produce growth hormone.  That’s one of the hormones that are going to allow you to build muscle.

Also minimizing stress in your life.  Looking at the relationships you’re in; the career you’re in; the social settings you’re in; how late are you staying up – all those little things – the one isolated incident might not make a big difference.  It’s what happens when going to bed at 2:00/3:00 in the morning occurs two or three nights a week over a course of six to nine months.

That’s where the damage is.  So that’s lifestyle.  Alcohol too – that’s another thing.  A lot of people ask me, “Vince, can I drink on the weekends?”  Of course you can drink, but is it going to get you closer to your goal or further from your goal?  It all comes down to how serious you are.

If I’m getting ready for a show, the booze has got to go.  If I’m just wishy washy; I’m happy with how I look and I’m just trying to relieve some stress and that, well then sure.  A drink here and there isn’t going to be a big deal.  So you have to ask yourself how serious you are and then you’ll be able to start answering these questions better for yourself.  That’s lifestyle.

If you want to learn more about Vince’s amazing muscle building program, visit No Nonsense Muscle Building.

Jim: What exactly is going on when we’re building muscle?  When we’re working out, what’s happening physiologically to our bodies to build muscle?

Vince:    Sure.  We’ll let’s tone it down for everyone to understand what’s happening at a basic level.  I like to use this kind of analogy.  First off, you have to give your muscles a reason to grow. What I mean by that, your muscles are probably sleeping right now.  They’re stretched out on a lawn chair having a martini.  They have no interest whatsoever in building muscle because that’s hard work.

They prefer to sleep all day.  Building muscle is what you want to do, so you really need to give them a reason to wake up.  Essentially what you need to do is you have to get them to say, “Holy cow!  What the heck did you just do to me?  I don’t ever want to experience that stress again.  We better build some new muscle.”

When you don’t do that, visualize this scenario.  Your muscles are probably laughing at you and they’re saying, “Man, that’s your attempt at building muscle?  We did this work out a couple of weeks ago.  Actually never mind, we did this work out a couple of months ago as well.  Keep training like this and we’re going to get a great suntan here.”

So you really need to focus on progression and constantly outdoing your previous workouts.  Outperform your previous workouts simply by doing something that your body hasn’t done before.  I’m sure everybody’s heard that.  The whole thing is we’re breaking down muscle tissue and it’s growing back.

It’s more than just the function of breaking down your muscles, because if you’re not giving them enough calories, then they’re not going to have enough support.  It’s like building a house.  It’s like this, and I’ll show you how important nutrition is.  It’s like trying to buy a $50,000 car with only $25,000 in the bank.

So we first need to be in a caloric surplus.  But you probably also know there’s a lot of guys who eat a lot of food and they’re not building muscle.  What’s happening to those guys?  Well, building muscle is also a function of the amount of hormones in your body.  That’s why body builder guys inject steroids, take an extra testosterone, growth hormone – they’re creating the hormonal environment their body needs.

We also need to look at how are we training.  Are we creating the right hormones in our body so that our body can build muscle?  That’s kind of the science.  I just like to keep it revolved around creating the right hormones and getting the right energy surplus.  Those are the two big things.

Jim: Speaking of goals, can you talk a little about performance and outcome goals?
Vince: That’s a great question.  Performance and outcome goals – I guess one’s a good way to set goals and one’s a bad way to set goals.  Outcome goals are something you can’t control.  These are the wrong goals to set.
An outcome goal is saying that I want to – and I’ll clarify all this in a second – an outcome goal is saying I want to lose 100 pounds.  Well, you can’t control if you’re going to lose 100 pounds.   You can control the performance goals that are going to contribute to that outcome goal, but you can’t actually predict the outcome.
It’s kind of like a 100 meter sprinter.  He might want to run . . . an Olympic sprinter might want to run sub 10 seconds, but he can’t control the outcome of running 10 seconds.  What he can control is how hard he pumps his arms; how fast he comes out of the gate; how he accelerates at the 30 meter mark.
What I’m trying to say is that yes, you should have some sort of outcome goal — I want to lose 100 pounds, but that shouldn’t be where it stops.  You should progress your day to day focus to revolve around performance goals, things that you can control. So let’s make this practical.  For somebody who wants to lose some body fat, a good performance goal would be to wake up at 6:00 in the morning instead of 7:00, because waking up an hour earlier is going to allow your metabolism to work an extra hour in the day.  Multiple that by seven days in a week, and that’s 7 hours times 52 weeks — 7 x 50 = 350 extra hours in a year that your metabolism is going to be burning.
Focusing on things that you can control like writing out a grocery list so knowing that you’re going to put enough chicken in your grocery cart.  You’re going to get enough oatmeal.  You’re not going to put this in your grocery cart.  You’re going to make sure you get enough vegetables.  Those are things that you can control.
Writing out your day planner – I’ve got a buddy living at my place right now.  He’s a physician.  He has this insane schedule.  He works one day on; he’s on call one day; he’s off another day.  He’s asked me for all this workout advice.  I’ve been giving him workout advice.  Every time I see him, he looks the same.  I’m like, “What’s the problem here?”  I realize that he doesn’t have a schedule.  He’s focusing on the wrong thing.  I said, “What you need to do is get your planner and I need you to schedule in all the days you’re going to work out for the next month.  Let’s worry about that.”  He’s like, “Oh man, that’s what I need to do. I have to figure out what days I can even work out on.” Who cares about reps and sets until you have a plan and know when you’re going to hit the gym?  Focus on things you can control and then the outcome will take care of itself.

Jim:    That is profound.  That is really great.  I think that’s one of those common mistakes that people make.  They’re so focused on the outcome that they forget to focus on the details of it all.   That is profound knowledge. Another one – and again, these are things in the No Nonsense guide.  It really is no nonsense.  I think that’s the absolutely perfect title because in an industry where there’s a bunch of nonsense – well, the nonsense is that there’s so many different systems and programs and everything else.  I think what Vince has done with his book is really boiled it all down to the absolute core things.

If you’d like to learn more about Vince’s No Nonsense Muscle Building program, click here.

]]> http://theelitebody.com/blog/training-tips/goals-that-lead-to-failure/feed/ 0 http://theelitebody.com/blog/training-tips/replay-interview-with-vince-delmonte/ http://theelitebody.com/blog/training-tips/replay-interview-with-vince-delmonte/#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:01:25 +0000 Jim Katsoulis http://theelitebody.com/blog/?p=8

I just finished interviewing Fitness Model Champion, Vince Delmonte and it was awesome. Vince is a fantastic model of motivation. He shares some distinctions about how to set goals that are profound. It was also fascinating to hear his technique for creating  unstoppable commitment to his stated goal. You can listen to a replay of the interview here for the next 24 hours.

PS: If you haven’t signed up for the free Elite Body series yet, click here