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LEGAL DISCLAIMER
The information presented in this work is by no way intended as medical advice or as a substitute for medical counselling. The information should be used in conjunction with the guidance and care of your physician. Consult your physician before beginning this program as you would with any exercise and nutrition program. If you choose not to obtain the consent of your physician and/or work with your physician throughout the duration of your time using the recommendations in the program, you are agreeing to accept full responsibility for your actions. By continuing with the program, you recognize that, despite all precautions on the part of Ben Pakulski Athletics, LLC, there are risks of injury or illness which can occur because of your use of the aforementioned information and you expressly assume such risks and waive, relinquish and release any claim which you may have against Ben Pakulski Athletics, LLC, or its affiliates as a result of any future physical injury or illness incurred in connection with, or as a result of, the use or misuse of the program.
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WARNING:
I believe this is the hardest and most effective muscle program in the world. This is NOT for you IF youre a tire kicker, lazy ass, or looking for a quick fix. Are you going to stick your head in the sand? Are you going to go into denial? Pretend you didnt invest in this? Pretend you are already where you want to be? For your sake, I hope not and, because youre here right now, I know youre not that kind of person. If you put every ounce of your being into the next 40 days, I promise youll get the most incredible physique of your life. But you have to be ready to trust the science, trust the program, and trust yourself.
The content (not to mention the length) of this system was created to scare off the weak and cowardly, the do-nothings, and the bitter know-it-alls. If youre reading this right now, it tells me that you arent someone who is going to sit on your hands and do nothing. So, Im going to make a blatant proposal: IF you follow this program, I think it will change your life, and I KNOW it will change your physique! And it will answer a common question: No! It is NOT impossible to gain muscle AND lose body fat at the same time. In fact, I suggest that you should expect it! This program is designed to get you the MOST growth in the shortest amount of time. This does not mean that you should continue on it forever (more on this below).
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It is too intense and many variables need to be manipulated. It is definitely beneficial to train with different rep ranges during certain times. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY! This program will eliminate all of the confusion and doubt in your mind. It will teach you to think like, and train like, a pro athlete. Every time you step in the gym, you will have a plan -- a plan that you can confidently believe will build muscle. The key to this program is sticking to the 40-day rotation. Every day has a reason behind it. You MUST learn to perform exercises properly before you can advance to the intermediate and advanced programs, so be honest with yourself. Another question I deal with frequently and know many guys are afraid to ask me, and which Im more than comfortable sharing my thoughts on, is this purple elephant in the room:
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BEN, ARENT YOU A PRO BOdYBUILdER WhO TAKES STEROIdS? IM dRUG-FREE SO WhY ShOULd I LISTEN TO YOU?
Fair question. For the record: I believe EVERYONE SHOULD BE TREATED LIKE A DRUG- FREE ATHLETE. No matter what youre taking, youd BETTER make sure your body is working optimally on the INSIDE if you want your training MAXIMIZED on the outside. You can take as many extra-curricular supplements as you want, but if your body isnt treated as a whole organism, maximizing recovery, controlling inflammation, and balancing hormones, its going to BREAK DOWN very, very quickly. Your gains will be limited and very short-term. There are TONS of juice monkeys in every gym taking stuff and NOT growing. They have the eat more protein, lift more weight approach. Sorry folks, the days of the dumb meathead are LONG GONE, along with parachute pants and bandanas. Ninety percent of my clients are 100% drug-free so I know my methods are equally effective for drug-free or drug-assisted individuals. I approach ANY athlete by looking at the body as a whole. If there is ONE ingredient missing from the pie, you wont be responding in the best way possible. What someone chooses to do above and beyond PERFECT training concepts and optimal nutrition is their own choice. Anabolic assistance or not, why wouldnt
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anyone want to minimize their time in the gym and maximize results? Sounds like pretty simple meathead math to me.
I GREW UP TRAINING NATURAL ANd EATING CLEAN. ThERE WAS NO CUTTING CORNERS FOR ME. MY MEdIOCRE GENETICS WOULd NEVER ALLOW IT!
In fact, I have always preferred working with drug-free trainees because its more of a challenge and requires a more thoughtful & intelligent approach. We must carefully analyze every aspect if we want them to beat their non-drug-free counterparts! They often tend to be much more receptive to an intelligent whole body approach. Drugs or no-drugs, professional bodybuilders are just like you. We obviously have different caloric requirements, and different training load, but at the end of the day, were all trying to get 100% out of our bodies. We push our limits, minimize injuries, recover as fast as possible, and then do it all over again! The smarter bodybuilders, like myself, focus on how to optimize recovery: short term and long term. This is the limiting factor to muscle growth! The faster you can recover, the more time you spend being anabolic (growing). Improve your capacity to recover faster, and you can train again sooner to stimulate more new growth. Everything Ill share in MI40!
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MY PERSONAL MOTTO hAS ALWAYS BEEN: ThE MORE YOU KNOW, ThE MORE YOU GROW!
So, why in the world did I create MI40?
I decided to create the MI40 Program to fill a tremendous need that I see each and every day in the gym, at the beach, even on stage at fitness and bodybuilding events. People just dont know how to train. This is evident by the bad posture, poor flexibility, and poor develop-ment we see in gyms all over the world!
Looking around each day, anyone with a trained eye can see that you can break it all down to about 3 or 4 common mistakes that everyone makes. 1) Poor range of motion. 2) No tension the muscle they think theyre working isnt engaged AT ALL. 3) Inability to give the muscle enough stimulus to grow (overload). 4) Its obvious that people have no idea how to eat. The crazy thing is that its EASY to fix them! After many years of exposure to this sport, it is now even easy to pick out the exercises that people are doing improperly without ever seeing them in the gym. Simply looking at someones structure, posture, range of motion, even how they walk, will tell me a lot of information about what is going on in their body and how they likely perform exercises, and move. This lack of exercise knowledge seems to stem from a blind leading the blind
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mentality. People tend to look at those with the best or biggest physiques, and try to emulate them. Or, they learn from the newest fad on TV or the Internet. Well, that could be a great place to start if you were sure that the person you are learning from has any clue what they are doing. Often, these people with the best physiques are just blessed genetically or simply work harder or are very meticulous with their nutrition. Or, perhaps it is just a well-positioned marketing program. All factors that YOU, an outsider, cannot see. This, then, is where the premise of MI40 began.
Most people see an overly-muscled IFBB Pro bodybuilder and assume two things -genetics and performance-enhancing drugs. Well, the truth of the matter is that, yes, I do build muscle better than 90% of the people in the world; however, I do NOT build muscle at anywhere near the rate at which my direct competition builds muscle. To get myself to be one of the top 6 bodybuilders in the world, I need to perfect every single aspect of training, recovery, and nutrition. My quest is never ending, and I feel I learn something new everyday. Every single time I step in the gym, my focus is not only on building muscle and having great workouts, but also on how to improve each and every exercise so that I am able to get the most out of each muscle fiber on every rep. This has taken a lot of studying of physics-angles and forces; anatomy and biomechanics. Hours and hours of reading textbooks and researching the most brilliant people in the world (and often seeking them out to train with them or learn from them directly). All of the cumulative information gathered over the last 13 years has led me here, to MI40, and passing all of this information on to you.
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system. Brain says contract; nervous system sends a signal; muscles move. The strength of contraction is dependent on the tension perceived in the muscle. The more tension, the more muscle fibers that are told to contract. Eventually those muscles fatigue, but the nervous system is still getting a signal to contract those muscles hard. At some point, the nervous system can no longer recruit any more muscle fibers to contract and the muscle stops working. Every time this happens, the body is asked to adapt, thereby forming new neurological pathways to the muscle and, therefore, a greater percentage of muscles can fire at once. 3) Optimizing range of motion Every muscle has a specific range of motion that it moves through. To fully exploit muscle growth, it is absolutely essential to know what this range is, and how the muscle is intended to move. Be sure to watch the online videos and review the Exercise Execution document to learn what full range of motion is for each respective exercise. 4) Increasing muscular torque Muscle communicates in terms of tension. Torque is the force directed through a muscle that results in greater tension in the muscle: more tension, more growth!
People have heard this so why dont they do it? Maybe because people dont want to start with light weights, or put in the time to learn, or maybe they just want fast results now. How does this apply to you? Well, the goal of MI40 is to teach you how to create the MAXIMUM amount of tension in your muscles. Weights are irrelevant. If we can increase tension and torque in the working muscle without increasing the actual weight, we grow equally as well and minimize chance of injury from uncontrolled heavy weight and improper movements.
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For example, you cant train chest the day after you train triceps. Every body part is trained twice in a week, every 3 weeks. How do I know I am creating the maximum amount of tension? INTENTIONS! If you are applying Intentions whenever possible, the amount of tension you are applying is completely under your control. When using Intentions, the amount of force you apply (either in or out), is inversely proportional to the weight used. The lighter the weight, the harder you can/should push. The heavier the weight, the less you will be able to use Intentions. Always do your best to use intention on the negative portion of ALL reps. Your body is stronger eccentrically and therefore you can apply additional force without having to worry about not completing the rep. PLEASE, ALWAYS USE A COMPETENT SPOTTER!!! Watch the online videos to learn how to execute each exercise properly and re-read the Exercise Execution Guide multiple times over. Youll always pick up something new. Dont be lazy or assume you know how to train.
When someone starts using Intentions, is it very normal for the weight to drop significantly? This is okay. You are still creating as much, if not more, tension inside your muscles. Once you feel the increased tension on the muscle, and can maintain this through the ENTIRE range of motion, slowly start increasing the weight back to where you were prior to using Intentions. You should be back to using your previous weight by the end of your first run through the MI40 programonly now, doing it with INTENTION! If you have a hard time learning to feel the exercises with Intention, RE-WATCH the training videos. There are many helpful little tricks and hints in there to help you along.
0 second pause at the bottom 1 second to press the weight 0 second pause at the top A 4-0-1-0 tempo on a lat pulldown (pulling exercise) would look like this: 4 seconds to extend to the top 0 second pause at the bottom 1 second to pull the weight to chest 0 second pause at the top The 4 seconds is ALWAYS on the Eccentric portion of the rep or Negative.
Try doing a set with 4-second Concentric reps its EXTREMELY difficult and you will get tired quickly, whereas your muscles could continue to work on the eccentric portion even after your concentric strength is gone.
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The point here is to train the muscles again before they have a chance to recover completely. You may see many people taking longer between sets. The point of this would be to allow the nervous system, which takes more time, to recover. This would be advantageous in strength training. It is not as effective for muscle-building.
Something clicked in my brain! Time under MAXIMAL TENSION! This had to be better than just Time under Tension!! And so, my GROWTH BABY was born! If I could use the maximum amount of weight I could handle for strict form, for the greatest amount of time possible, growth was inevitable! The only catch? ITS HARD!!! NOS is something that I have been using religiously ever since perfecting its components. I use it to get ready for my contests and in my off-season. Straight sets are now a thing of the past.
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researched and proven to stimulate this precise training environment inside the muscle! No other training protocol comes close to stimulating this amount of muscle growth. Testosterone has been shown to increase in response to any intense exercise, in both men and women. Its levels peak after 20 minutes and begin to fall around the 30-40 minute mark. The goal of any workout plan should be to stimulate this natural release of testosterone, and get out of the gym before it plummets! GH is released in response to exercise and the presence of lactic acid in the blood. Lactic acid is released during anaerobic exercise for the first 2 minutes of activity. GH levels will actually continue to be stable for a long time during training. IGF-1 -- Insulin-like growth factor is only released during exercise when muscles are pushed to their limit. This is the true muscle- building hormone. This is what makes NOS so effective. Taking muscles to their brink causes maximal growth via IGF-1. Here is another example of what a NOS set might look like Incline Dumbbell Press: Complete the first 3 sets to failure with 8 repetitions at a tempo of 4-0-1-0. 4 seconds to lower 0 second pause at the bottom 1 second to press the weight 0 second pause at the top That equals 5 sets per rep -- 8 reps per set equals 40 seconds per set!
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Lets assume for this example that you were able to use 100 lbs for the first 2 sets, and 90 for the 3rd set. For the 4th and final set, the NOS set: Using 90 lbs again, the set will look identical to the last one, except that once you have completed the 8th repetition, you will drop the weight by approx 20% (in this case, that is 18 lbs, so we will drop 90, 70, 50, 30) and continue with perfect form, and the same 4-0-1-0 tempo until you cannot complete another rep (ideally 4-5 repetitions with each weight). **It is extremely important to note that there must not be longer than 10 seconds between decreasing weight increments -- any longer will negate the NOS process. **
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The give it all youve got set! Approach each set and each rep with: FOCUS, INTENSITY, PERSISTENCE, TENACITY! GROW!
MI40 is so effective because it considers the critical variables to create the ideal weight training program. The first and foremost is execution and form. Sure, you can grow muscle from lifting weights improperly, but you can also build muscle by lifting sacks of potatoes all day long.
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If youre someone who is seeking the information necessary to build a better physique (which, if youre reading this, then you certainly are!), you DONT WANT TO WASTE YOUR TIME!! MI40 is a TOOL to teach you proper technique to build balanced, symmetrical muscle in the shortest amount of time possible! Plus, MI40 will help to balance your body! Say goodbye to certain muscles being stronger, unbalanced, weaker, and unpleasing to the eye. When you do things properly, things will start to balance out! The body wants all the muscles to be proportionate so that the entire body can work as a whole unit. Start doing things properly NOW. Perfect range, maximal tension! Your body will thank you.
HOW IS MI40 DIFFERENT ThAN EvERY OThER MUSCLE-BUILdING & WEIGhT-GAIN PROGRAM OUT ThERE?
How is MI40 Different Than Every Other Muscle-Building & Weight-Gain Program Out There? MI40 is NOT a weight GAIN Program! It is a PROPER TRAINING and OPTIMAL MUSCLE-BUILDING program! Muscle growth and muscle gain will inevitably come as your body does things properly, as well as overloading your muscles with NOS! This program is extremely different because this is not the Im jacked, do what I do? routine. This program is based on proven scientific principles, and has been
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tested by average people and pro athletes alike. Everyone grows! That is, everyone and anyone who wants to maximize time in the gym and minimize the amount of time it takes to build an ideal physique. Every variable for growth has been carefully considered and addressed to ensure optimal GROWTH!
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training methods of every one I saw -- not assuming they were wrong, just wondering why they chose to do it the way they did. My desire to learn led me to seek out the most brilliant people I could find. They are the people that can answer all the questions, fill in all the gaps, and not only know WHAT IS BEST, but also WHY it is best! Anyone who knows me, or has trained with me knows that I am constantly looking for ways to make things better. After years of carefully studying muscle function and biomechanics, things have finally become clear. This being said, I dont claim to be a master of every muscle in the body -- we have over 600 of them. I only claim to have mastered the muscles necessary for appearance and building a badass physique! I have been building my body for over 13 years now. The last 5 years have been the most influential for me. Throughout this time, I have had many mentors, role models, training partners, and even trainers. All of whom have, in some way, shaped who I am today. My passion for perfecting training has led me to travel literally all over the world to find the best coaches and trainers from whom to learn. One day, it all just clicked for me! It all became so simple. I could break down the most important principles Ive learned over the last 13 years into 3 simple things: 1) RANGE OF MOTION 2) TIME UNDER TENSION 3) MUSCULAR OVERLOAD These are the principles on which MI40 is based.
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If I could learn to eliminate extraneous and useless movement (cheating!), learn to initiate with the working muscle (engage the proper muscle group for each specific exercise -- in my opinion, THE most important thing you are going to learn!), while applying these 3 principles.the potential for growth would be ENDLESS! Better yet, it would be ALL IN MY CONTROL! Whatever body type youre told you have, this training will work for you. Its ALL IN YOUR CONTROL. Focus on making every day your absolute best and youll arrive at your ultimate body. Yours for health, fitness and passion, Benjamin Pakulski
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