Neuro Muscular Activation Training Protocol™
The New Breed Of Anabolic Muscle Development
It is well known in the world of training that compound movements are the single best movements you can preform for improving your physique. The squat, deadlift and bench press have long been the exercises of choice for bodybuilders, power-lifters and strongmen alike. These three movements – the big 3 are so effective (particularly the deadlift and squat) due to the utilization of multiple muscles per lift. Whether its a bodybuilder looking to add that extra lb of muscle, or the powerlifter wanting that extra 5lb on his lifting total, inadvertently both use some High NMA exercises. That is exercises that require a high level of neuro muscular activation. Most people may use 3 or 4 as part of a normal workout.
It is our concrete and confirmed belief that the higher the level of neuromuscular activation or stimulation, the greater the opportunity for muscle growth. triggers with your training protocol. This is because high NMA Training™ activates the greatest Type II muscle fibre recruitment and places those fibres under maximal load and time under tension. When you activate those principles, you’re pretty much hitting optimal growth.
Through very specific testing and analysis – we also believe that the greatest stimulation is achieved when the body moves through space with a weight, rather than simply moving the weight away from the body. By moving the body through space with the weight, the body has to incorporate stabiliser muscles as well as an increase in nerve activity in the simulated muscle groups.
Since we, as humans, are designed to move rather than be stationary, in theory there will be a higher adaptability in the set movements and therefore the biggest potential for muscle growth and strength gains.
One thing that must be taken into consideration is the fact that early on into this style of training the majority of learning that occurs will be neurological rather than muscular. At least until the body adapts to the movements. Though we have already learned through further testing and analysis precisely how to accelerate this learning response to exercise which you can read about in the upcoming NMA Protocol™ book.
Over the next few paragraphs I shall outline the very specific exercises used and the workouts themselves. Depending on experience levels, goals, and how well your central nervous system can handle the stress - will effect which version of the program you use. Workouts A and B are both mandatory, however, Workout C is purely for aesthetics only. If the main goal is strength gains or more of a power lifting style then Workout C isn’t mandatory and can be dispensed with so as not to dilute any recovery-ability.
Where possible the highest NMA exercises are used, however, where not possible either 2 relatively high are grouped together, or an exercise that complements the high NMA follows.
The main thing to remember on this program is that LESS IS MORE. DO NOT be adding extra days here and there. Follow it as laid out for 8-12 weeks before 1 week rest (or active recovery).
Everything They Tell You Is B**LSH*T
This is a hard fact, so listen up. I have a number of people to thank for my awakening to this hard and fast FACT of bodybuilding. And we are forever in debt to the innovator of the original thought process behind NMA Training Protocol - Mr Daniel Close from the United Kingdom. Every single professional bodybuilder is blessed by superior genetics and enhanced by a list of pharmaceuticals administered daily longer than your weekly grocery shopping list. Routines prescribing training for hours every single day, sometimes twice a day – are only producing results for these people because of the insane quantity of drugs they are taking. The NMA Protoco™l has been tested on natural athletes over and over again – causing some of the hardest gainers to pack on 28lbs or so in 6 weeks with such a brief, infrequent, but high neuro muscular activation load on their central nervous system. You maybe working out little and less often, but hell, the stress you will be placing on your body when performing NMA correctly will have you growing like you are a genetic freak so long as your nutrition is optimal and you allow yourself the appropriate time to recover. Following an NMA Protocol™ session with seriously insane poundage’s in your high NMA lifts – you will proceed to feel like you’ve been hit by a Juggernaut, or even like you have the start of a mild flu coming on. This is a good sign, it’s a sign you’re pushing your NMA limits.
We know that by taking any professional bodybuilder, removing them from their ridiculous moronic training programs steeped in the science based only in fairy-tale land and those of Chinese whispers and mythological nonsense and prescribing them 12 weeks of NMA Protocol™ they can also gain more muscle on this program than any force feeding cocktail of liver toxic drug abuse. How do we know? Because we tested the crap out of the NMA Protocol™ in the lab with such drug monkeys whom we are well acquainted with from our ties in the industry.
We often kick back in the office reading popular muscle publications laughing at the ridiculous pseudo science training routines – because we’ve had the pleasure to meet most of the writers and editors over the years. We’ve seen this in actual real life on an airplane trip from Europe back to the USA. We won’t name any names to save any public embarrassment. Sharing the plane with a (this being at the time) top elite competitive bodybuilder, and an editor for one of the largest muscle publications in prints (the editor being at best 140lbs and never trained a day in his life). Both were drinking Coke’s and eating a family sized bag of potato chips and quite literally laughing and joking about what complete trash they were having to throw together for yet another article about how this ‘pro’ trained. Truth was, he’d been training for maybe three days that week, and focused more heavily on his nutrition and drug administration than any training routine whilst in Europe whilst with us. His training was pathetic and half arsed, possibly due to the lethargy and blood pressure from his overload of pharmaceuticals. The point we’re making here is that those using anabolic steroids and more, as well as the popular publicized training programs, are at best just humorous, and at worst drastically affecting your progress in a negative manner.
So get your head in gear for scientific training, because when you get down and dirty with NMA Protocol™ in our book – the science and data is all there to digest and make your eye’s bleed if you want. Or if you’re like most people and want the dummy’s guide and a shortcut to the basics – get applying the below principles and make them work for your dramatic muscle and strength gains immediately.
It’s All Or Nothing Folks!
You’ve probably seen this type of image before. What is it? It’s clearly the intersection of a human muscle, clearly displaying the muscle attached to bone, and all of the many muscle fibres contained in bundles and surrounded by sheaths. We won’t cover all the complex science here, we shall leave that for the book. What we will point out, as clearly pointed out in every single study on human muscle tissue – your muscle fibres contract using the all or nothing principle. What does this mean? Simply that when you are lifting any resistance, your body will recruit a specific number of muscle fibres to complete the task. The number of fibres recruited will depend upon the load (or weight) in order to complete the task at hand – lifting. Those recruited fibres contract MAXIMALLY – ie, they contract completely 100%. Muscle fibres cannot contract partially, or just a little bit. They contract entirely – and this is known as the all or nothing principle – either they contract or they don’t contract – simple. When you lift a sub maximal weight, your body simply recruits less fibres. And this is very important to note. So get this into your head – no one is going to build no big ass muscle tissue lifting some piss ass weights for lots of reps from tons of different angles!
It is a scientifically verified physiological fact that muscle size and strength are directly related.
Clearly, increasing the volume of muscular contractile elements is the key to increasing muscle size and strength. Since the type II fibers contain the most actin/myosin filaments, and generate the highest tensions, they have the greatest potential for strengthening/growth. The prerequisite, of course, is that you have to lift weights heavy enough to recruit the type II fibers – and for them to twitch fast enough to develop significant tension. You also have to subject them to that tension long enough for significant damage to occur to the muscle fibers.
So what we did with NMA Protocol Training is to devise a program that incorporated how the human physiology worked mechanically optimally for recruiting and stressing the Type II Muscle Fibres to their maximum safe limits to instil dramatic, unnatural strength and functional muscle growth. By creating a measurable, progressive training system that generated the highest tensions, with maximal loads under the optimal time under tension. This was proven to develop the maximum, fastest gains we have ever witnessed in both natural and drug assisted bodybuilders.
Everyday Is Liver Day
Whenever the muscle cell wall (also called the Sarcolemma) is damaged through heavy training tension, or deep stretching , a cocktail of growth factors are released. There are a number of different growth factors, though a number are most significant when it comes to muscle growth. These being IGF-1 (Insulin Like Growth Factor 1), FGF (Fibroblast Growth Factor) and TGF-Beta (Transforming Growth Factor Beta Superfamily). When the Sarcolemma is damaged through intense tension and time under contractile tension – be it through heavy loads, or stretching – or both, especially when moving heavy loads through space, the membrane become permeable and these growth factors are leaked into the surrounding area. These growth factors then allow the satellite cells to proliferate, differentiate and mediate. It is following this process that the satellite cells fuse with the muscle cells, donating their nuclei and allow the process of ‘growth’ to then take place.
The growth process is initiated and instigated by factors that promote growth (protein synthesis) – namely testosterone, growth hormone (GH), IGF-1 and certain Prostaglandins. It is known that protein synthesis occurs because messenger RNA (mRNA) is released from the nucleus to the ribosomes. And it is the mRNA that is released only upon response to specific high levels of tension, and/or damage to the myofibrillar damage induced by a lack of sufficient cycling of actin-myosin cross bridges during intense muscle contraction. It is the mRNA that carries the instructional code delivered to the Ribosomes to activate protein synthesis and thus begin the process of constructing contractile (actin-myosin) from the amino acids within the blood stream.
After NMA Training Protocol your muscle fibres are much more receptive to Growth Hormone, Testosterone and IGF-1. Training high Neuro Muscular Activation exercises has witnessed a massive abundant release of increased levels of free testosterone, growth hormone, PGF2-alpha and autocrine IGF-1. Are you getting the picture on how training is purely the activation switch to stimulate the actual endocrine response that initiates and causes the process of hypertrophy. And this explains quite clearly why any bodybuilder who is routinely injecting themselves with a cocktail of anabolic drugs such as the big 3 (insulin, growth hormone and testosterone) are bypassing the training stimulation needed to create this anabolic cascade, and simply going to be building muscle tissue regardless of training protocol!
Now when you’re training as intense as you are with something like NMA Protocol, you have to remember that the systemic stress upon your entire central nervous system is dramatic. Your body is naturally releasing huge quantities of testosterone, growth hormone, IGF1 and prostaglandins. Although not liver toxic like many oral anabolic steroids, the point is, it is your liver that is being put under daily stress to process all of the required nutrients to support your massive muscle gains. You will be ravenously hungry when training correctly. Your body will have a greater demand for specific fats to build hormones, as well as BCAA’s and amino acids than ever before. The overall demands on your CNS and supporting systems is grotesque, and the key focus is on progression of load. So listen. Don’t be a smart ass. You will be training brief and infrequent. If you increase the schedule, the protocol will put a level of demand on your physiology that cannot be maintained and you will produce negative results. We know, we’ve tested the variables over and over again.
So – What’s Your Poundage Per Minute?
You’re going to be thinking outside the box when it comes to NMA Training Protocol™. Why? Because the system is new and is a very detailed scientific training protocol. It is also dispensing with the typical mass publicized crap you are unfortunately bombarded with every single day by unscrupulous supplement companies that own muscle magazines, whose only intention it is to sell you more of their sports supplements that simply do nothing, and are based on science that is completely fictitious. Here’s where you leave the land of fairytale and result-less workouts and enter a world of massive size and strength gains like you have never experienced before. Welcome to your poundage per minute.
Whilst developing the NMA Protoco™l, what we wanted to construct was a methodology that was progressive and hit the key measurable growth factors. That was maximal load, under effective time under tension and that was of course progressive to develop consistent gains. We did that by measuring a new variable that holds more meaning than just sets and reps alone. It is the poundage per minute variable per exercise and workout. It is critical you record your poundage per minute variable in order to ensure that you are fully resting and recovering between training sessions, and specifically how you can continue to increase the load and thus the stimulation for muscle growth each and every single workout. This is the key to continuing that muscle growth signal on each and every occasion in the gym, something which most people only trigger occasionally with their workouts, and at best inconsistently.
To measure your poundage per minute you need a stop watch, and preferably a training partner who will be timing your lifts. For each set you will record your poundage (the load) and the time it takes you to complete the repetitions to total momentary muscle failure (the point where to continue with more reps you would be required to break strict form and cheat). Rep cadence should be pretty standard with an accelerated lifting portion (concentric), followed by a moments tension, and then a slower eccentric lowering portion of the lift. So for example, you are performing 3 sets of squats with 400lbs.
Set 1 – 400lbs x 10 reps over 60 seconds. This is 400 x 10 divided by 1.0 minute = 4000lbs per minute.
Set 2 – 400lbs x 8 reps over 52 seconds. This is 400 x 8 x 0.86 minute = 2752lbs per minute.
Set 3 – 400lbs x 8 reps over 49 seconds. This is 400 x 8 x 0.81 minute = 2592lbs per minute.
Total Poundage Per Minute on the Squat calculated at average 3114lbs per minute on this workout.
Your goal of course on the following NMA Session is to increase your average poundage per minute on the squat. The way you would do this is to increase the weight (the load), without decreasing the time under tension. Or increase the time under tension with more reps with the same weight. Or of course a combination of all factors. So long as your poundage per minute is increasing on every exercise you will be stimulating muscle growth on a dramatic scale.
Exercises where you can lift the highest loads such as deadlifts and squats will produce the highest poundage per minute averages, and it is these loads that have been shown time and time again to stimulate the greatest type II muscle fibre recruitment and stimulation of natural anabolic hormones such as testosterone, growth hormone and insulin like growth factor.
We also recommend, that you cease to think in terms of ‘arms day‘ and ‘leg day‘ and the such. Everyday is simply LIVER DAY – and your over whelming goals should be on each and every NMA workout to produce the greatest level of both neuro muscular activation, and thus endocrine response to training. To do this, you can also measure the overall average poundage per minute variable of an entire workout. With this figure you can ensure that your entire systemic NMA workout is progressively bringing home a greater growth factor with each and every training session.
Get Your Glut-4 Flow On
Let’s take a look at a loophole in the human physiology that we encountered, which allows all of our athletes to remain extremely lean all year round, even when gaining multiple pounds of bodyweight every week. We like to think of this portion of NMA Protocol as a little bit of physiological wizardry. Your new found friend is Glucose Transporter Type 4. GLUT-4 is a messenger hormone (are you starting to see and understand the real game here is all about hormone manipulation and control) – which is stimulated by both exercise and insulin through cross over pathways to open the flood gates at the surface of the muscle cell to allow more nutrients (glucose/amino acids etc) into the muscle cell. The key, or trick, is to beat food induced insulin release from the pancrease, and use exercise to stimulate GLUT-4 transporter, over riding the insulin storing nutrients in the fat cells, and opening those flood gates to skeletal muscle tissue.
How do we tap into the overwhelmingly juicy goodness that is Glucose Transporter Type 4 through exercise, beating insulin storage hormone to the fat cells? Well, interestingly it may seem a little bizarre though has been shown to work a treat. Many recent studies have shown that 280 seconds of maximal muscle contraction is what is required to release an anabolic cascade, including, and most importantly an immediate response of GLUT-4, allowing you to pre emptively circumvent insulin release from digestion, and syphon those fantastic muscle building nutrients right where you want them – into your muscle cells.
Exercise actually improves insulin sensitivity, especially within 1 hour after cessation of exercise, and even upto 1 – 2 days following exercise. GLUT-4 is a little more responsive and immediate. You specifically need around 280 seconds of maximal intense contraction of muscle tissue prior to, and following every single meal. The easiest way to achieve this, we have discovered from research and testing, is 90 – 120 seconds of air squats, tricep wall presses, chest pulls with a resistance band. With these three exercises pre and post eating your focus should be on maximum contraction of your muscles, rather than anything else. So you’re aiming to squeeze on every single contraction like there’s no tomorrow, keep the movements going, no pausing or resting, or lockouts. That’s the key to GLUT-4 release, in the contraction of the tissues.
Using this technique every single day, at each meal, will ensure your muscles are actually flexing, releasing toxins and breaking down any stiffness and waste products from your heavy lifting, and none of it will interfere with your recovery in anyway. In fact it will accelerate your recovery with the stimulation of GLUT-4 transporting more glucose and proteins to the muscle cells right where those nutrients need to be fore maximum repair and growth.
EXERCISE LIST & DESCRIPTIONS
During the NMA program you will be utilising the following moves only.. (where injuries don’t allow or equipment unavailable some exercises can be changed. i.e. squats for hack squats)
THE N.M.A. PROTOCOL™ LIST
Weighted Press ups
Incline Dumbbell Press
Dumbbell Fly
Deadlift
Barbell Rows
Wide Grip Pull ups
Clean & Jerk
Squats
Leg Extensions
Walking Lunges
Barbell Curls
Concentration Curls
Tricep Push down
Skull Crushers
Lateral Raises
Dumbbell Shoulder Press
Upright Rows
Forearm Curls
Dumbbell Shrugs
Calf Raises
THE WORKOUTS
WORKOUT A (mandatory workout)
|
EXERCISE |
SETS |
|
*Leg Stretches |
3 |
|
**Rotary Cuff Warm ups |
1 |
|
Weighted Press Ups |
3 |
|
***Dumbbell Fly |
3 |
|
Clean & Jerk |
2 |
|
Barbell Rows |
3 |
|
Squats |
3 |
|
Walking Lunges |
2 |
WORKOUT B (mandatory workout)
|
EXERCISE |
SETS |
|
*Leg Stretches |
3 |
|
**Rotary Cuff Warm ups |
1 |
|
Incline Dumbbell Press |
3 |
|
Deadlift |
3 |
|
Wide Grip Pull ups |
3 |
|
****Leg Extensions |
3 |
|
Step Ups |
2 |
WORKOUT C (optional workout)
|
EXERCISE |
SETS |
|
Barbell Curl S/S Tricep Push down |
3 |
|
Concentration Curl S/S Skull Crushers |
3 |
|
Lateral Raises |
3 |
|
Dumbbell Shoulder Press S/S Upright Rows |
3 |
|
Forearm Curls S/S Reverse Forearm Curls |
3 |
|
Dumbbell Shrugs |
3 |
|
Calf Raises S/S Reverse Calf Raises |
3 |
WORKOUT NOTES
* Helps to warm up and stretch the core/leg muscles activating muscle fibres for heavy lifting
** As recommended by Dorian Yates (6X Mr Olympia) to protect the tendons which are
very susceptible to injury.
*** Although flys are relatively low NMA wise they help to fry what’s left of the stabilisers after the Press ups
CASE STUDIES
Phil (United Kingdom), aged 31 and lifting with weights consistently since he was 17 years old. So Phil was no stranger to heavy lifting, movements, or terminology. He was also a natural athlete, and in recent years both strength and bodyweight had remained static. Frustrated with his training, he knew he was continuing training purely to retain his current size, as any lay off would see his bodyweight and muscle density drop. The following statistics were taken from the training log on the forum Phil was recording his data on and can be verified by week on week, session by session breakdown. We watched Phil growing like he was taking some hardcore anabolics, which he was not. Purely following scientific NMA Training Protocol™ and GH Diet V3.0™ to the very letter. Phil diligently recorded his poundage per minute factor on every exercise and workout, and the key was to progressively increase his poundage per minute. Which progress he did. Phil’s poundage per minute shot up leaps and bounds on each and every single workout.
What is very interesting to note is that over these 12 weeks Phil reduced his body fat level from 12% to 8% – so that’s 4% bodyfat down whilst gaining 18lbs of lean muscle tissue. Bear in mind Phil hadn’t gained a pound in years…(we measured in kilograms here in Switzerland Europe)
WEIGHTED PRESS UPS – up 50kg (approx 112lbs)
DUMBBELL PRESS – up 30kg (approx 67.5lbs)
DUMBBELL FLYS – up 15kg (approx 33.7lbs)
BARBELL ROWS – up 10kg (approx 22.5lbs)
DEADLIFT – up 30kg (approx 67.5lbs)
SQUATS – up 40kg (approx 90lbs)
CLEAN & JERK – up 20kg (approx 45lbs)
SHOULDER PRESS – up 20kg (approx 45lbs)
Phil continues to make phenomenal strength and bodyweight gains following the 12 week trial where we measured his progress. His bodyweight is currently 28lbs up on his previous sticking point, and his bodyfat now down to 6.5%.
