(question in subject field)
I don’t think people do. I love his workouts, although he is said to be quite a prick in person (seminars), and I think he ripped off Ian King since he became known first. But that said, I don’t think people hate him. His work has gone downhill lately though, IMHO.
All I have to say is over training. His workouts are great with the help of androgens.
He’s over-rated. There’s many guys like him out there. He’s good, but not great.
i dont think poliquin ripped off anybody. he always gave credit for everything he used. every article he wrote he talked about how he got this idea from this guy or that guy.
I don’t hate him. Even though he wasn’t the first to come up with the ideas behind the 6x2-4 thing (it’s a Doug Hepburn idea) & wave loading (Angel Spassov brought that to north america from Bulgaria), etc he was the one who introduced me to them, through Tmag & MM2k. When I got my copy of the Poliquin Principles, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t much new stuff, but it’s still good because all those articles are lumped together. It does soound like he’s a bit of a jerk in person, though, going by the way he left Tmag (it’s in an Atomic Dog column).
nate can you remember which atomic dog colum?..coz I dont remember it…thx
I don’t think TC was talking about Poliquin in that article.
I’ve never met Coach Poliquin so I can’t make a judgement about him as a person, but as a strength coach I think he’s awesome. I’ve used programs from Ian King to Charles Frances and many in between. Those were all great, but by far the best I’ve used is CP routines. However I’ve changed them from once every five days to once every seven days.
I thought it was the Atomic Dog for #123, but I just read it again & he said the guy was a total unknown before he joined tmag, so oI don;t think it was Poliquin. oops
I found it. issue 115#
I remember I first discoverd Charles from MM2k, he was the most technical trainer I knew and I enjoyed reading his Q&A sessions. I bought his principals book and utilized the information from it to gain some more muscle mass and knowledge. Not sure about his personality cause I never met him. I was just wondering why I see so many people ripping him.
thanks for the info
Bernie
The guy that TC was talking about is Nelson Montana.
As for Poliquin, I think people were ripping him because he brought a lot of “new” techniques/exercises that people hadn’t heard about yet. I remember when he first started talking about using a swiss ball several years ago. Someone wrote Mike Mentzer about it in MM’s column and they were both talking about how ridiculous it was and that CP obviously didn’t know what he was doing…
I’ve never met CP personally, but from what I’ve heard from others that have met him is that he is a jerk.
I’m answering some of the other points brought up - I have no idea whether or why people feel one way or the other about Poliquin and have no opinion myself, not having met him and not having happened to have read his books or many articles.
There are some fundamental problems with being
a training guru-for-bucks, that I don’t know how someone can escape from and still make good money.
First problem is, what people really need and would benefit from is, Here’s the information you need, train according to these ideas and methods, I’ve explained it to you, go forth and prosper!
Well, how are you going to get your $300 per hour in the future if you do that? You’d be financially screwed if you actually got people self-sufficient.
So instead it becomes, Here’s a good routine custom designed just for you (the bill is in the mail) but it’s good for only X weeks, then we need to figure out another one for you, no,
you won’t be able to do it yourself, no, it hasn’t already been determined that after routine A, routine B will be effective. I’ll just have to send you another whopping bill a few weeks from now for your next plan!
Fact is though that one CAN design training cycles that repeat with time, that are designed to work with each other so the person training does not need to come back for new routines.
AND this works much better.
Oh, except for one thing. You want the client paying big bucks to make stunning gains or at least think he is. Now, the reality is you can’t gain 5% per week, week in, week out… that would add up to something monstrous very fast.
But you can TRICK the client into thinking he is, by always switching up exercises! With an unfamiliar exercise, call it exercise A, the first few times sure you can outperform the previous workout by 5% or better each time
over 3 weeks let’s say.
Now we’ll move you to exercise B and voila,
you improve 5% each week, again for say 3 weeks. Now of course we’ve gotta move you to exercises C, D, E, and F. 18 weeks of training.
Wow, 5% per week gains for 18 weeks straight!
Gotta be stunningly strong now, right?
Nope, go back to Exercise A and I absolutely guarantee you that your strength increase will be far, far less than the apparent increase you thought you were getting.
Fact is, if you’re an advanced trainer, say an experienced competitive powerlifter, if you add
10% strength over the ENTIRE YEAR you’ve had a good year. But are you going to pay $300 per hour for those kinds of incremental slow results? Nope.
So you see the motivations for some shenanigans and so forth.
I don’t know about the rest of his programs but his “One Day Arm Cure” sure didn’t do a thing for me.
Bill Roberts I would like to know then what do you reccommend I agree with your logic but what strategy in terms of coaches we should listen to should someone follow. I personally read Kings OR Poliquins principles and then use my own brain to suit them to me is this the right approach?
Thanks
I’ve met Charles (at a seminar of his) and he isn’t a jerk at all. In fact, he is a really funny guy and he has no allegiance to anything except that which works.
He is EXTREMELY forthcoming that he uses other people’s stuff but his spin is great. I put almost 20 lbs on after one of his seminars - using a lot of his ideas.
He’s definitely worth checking out since he isn’t afraid to recommend high volume routines like it seems every other “guru” is.
I’d say, combine ideas that make sense to you and which have worked for you, and make them into a system where they dovetail into each other and you can repeat them. In other words, a periodization scheme that works in ideas from these coaches that you’ve found valuable,
and in a manner where the different routines don’t “step on” each other, and preferably logically lead into each other.
Most likely
this would be a scheme that begins with lighter
weight training and ends with heavier weight
training after however many weeks, but it’s possible that different body parts might be in different phases at different times.
That might have sounded confusing. Here’s what
I mean. Let’s say your bench (for the classic
cliched example exercise) has a 1RM of 300 lb.
Now, it might be that if you had to pick one
“most effective” percentage of 1RM to train at, that might be 80%. But training at 80%, 240 lb, week in week out is not the way to go.
Your cycle might start at 60%, 180 lb. Besides “just regular” training that can be done with this weight, there’s GVT and there’s also training Louie-Simmons-style with explosive sets of 2 reps for 12 sets, or 3 reps for 8 sets.
Weights could go up some percentage each week.
You might choose to have some weeks where gains were not really expected anyhow be dieting weeks, but weeks where stimulating gains was really hoped for would be higher in protein and calories. Etc. The cycle might end
as high as 90% 1RM, then be repeated, but next time a little heavier.
Just picked up a copy of “Ironman”, with Mentzer’s last interview (Kiana Tom’s on the cover). They played word-association, and C.P.'s name was brought up. I believe the response was something like “kook”, because of C.P.'s use of the Swiss balls. Just FYI…