BODY TRANSFORMATION: CALISTHENICS

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Body transformation without barbells …

David Bolton Q & A: Building Muscle with

Stupidly Light Weights
Posted on August 21, 2012

David Bolton’s new book The Lost Secrets to a Great Body is the ultimate guide to building
muscle using what he calls “stupidly light weights.” By light, he’s talking five-pound dumbbells!

I know, it sounds absurd. I thought that, too. But when I looked into the method, I realised that
this is a training system with real merit. You can find links to my supporting evidence at the
end of this article.

I am delighted to present part one of a three-part Q & A with David Bolton.

His book is available for instant download on Amazon — just CLICK HERE. Even better, there
is a generous preview available for reading on the Amazon site, too.

Q & A WITH DAVID BOLTON: PART ONE

Please tell readers a bit more about your training system.

The system in my book is a simple routine of muscle development exercises that use rhythmic
self-generated tension/ relaxation. Small dumbbells are used along with leverage and
manipulation of body/limb angle to facilitate greater tension in the movements and to help the
trainee consciously recruit more muscle fibres as they perform their contractions.

There are also several simple bodyweight exercises included that utilise the same principle —
self generated maximal or “complete” contractions using all or part of the weight of the trainee
to focus the contractions in exactly the same way as the small dumbbells are used in the other
exercises.

This method of exercising was ubiquitous at one time (end of the 19th and early decades of
20th Century) and was first brought to the attention of the public by Eugen Sandow. Other
Physical culturists followed his lead with very similar courses based on exactly the same
principles but even though everyone seems to refer to them as “Sandow’s exercises” they were
actually taught to him (and to Lionel Strongfort, Bobby Pandour and many others) by Professor
Louis Attila. The routine in my book is exactly the one Attila taught, supplemented by several
variations on some of the movements that were included in the courses of Strongfort, Sandow
and Al Treloar.

All I have done is to make the principles involved in performing the routine as originally
intended clear, and then included very exacting instructions in how to perform each exercise in
contemporary terms. In the source material this is either missing altogether or obscured by
impenetrable vernacular and odd terms from the late 19th century.

Had you ever done any resistance training beforehand?

I had mostly done body-weight exercises before — press ups, sit-ups etc (between ages 20 –
thirty something) — while involved in martial arts but I had expressly avoided heavy weights.
Like many people as a teenager I had a set of vinyl weights and one of those spring powerbar
thingies but I never really trained consistently with them or achieved any notable results.

What sort of shape were you in before starting the training?

During my twenties and thirties, as stated above, I was training martial arts, and although I was
training for fitness and function and not aesthetics, I was fairly happy with my physique — I’d
say I looked trim and “in shape” although nobody ever referred to me as muscular.

Prior to experimenting with this system though I had wrecked my right elbow quite seriously
(partial dislocation/ hyperextension with damage to the tendons) and couldn’t supinate my wrist
to hold anything heavier than an empty dinner plate for a considerable time. Because of this I
couldn’t do any resistance training at all for at least 18 months and felt very unhappy with my
physique as a result. I felt my arms and shoulders in particular looked a bit puny.

Do you think such training can help build strength?

This is a complex question which I go into in much more depth in the book but very basically,
modern thinking on strength training and muscle building would tend to say that such training
— if it were to “work” at all — would only produce showy, pumped-up fluid-filled (predominantly
sarcoplasmic) muscle growth, and therefore no increase in strength whatsoever.

Sarcoplasmic growth brings no appreciable increase in contractile capacity to a muscle, yet this
method is expressly about consciously and systematically increasing the contractile capacity of
each muscle, and the development it brings is very different from purely sarcoplasmic
hypertrophy. The muscles you build feel extremely hard and dense when flexed. It’s my belief
that the development that comes from this kind of training involves a significant amount of
myofibrillar growth and therefore an increase in potential strength output for each muscle. (As
mentioned in the book, this assertion is supported to some extent by the Mcmasters university
study and now by the more recent and complete follow-up study)

Does this mean that you can do this sort of training, and suddenly find yourself able to deadlift
600lbs or bent press 200? No, absolutely not. If you were to take up deadlifting though I believe
it would help in that you would have a greater conscious control of your musculature. [Editorial
note: Pavel seems to agree with this conclusion, too. See Beyond Bodybuilding.]

Any strength feat is partly a matter of organising your body correctly — having the appropriate
chain of muscles fire at the right time and in the correct sequence and with the required
intensity. This type of training fine tunes this neurological component of strength.

Also as Chad Waterbury wrote in an article on T-nation in 2007: “[T]he key to getting stronger,
bigger, faster, or any combination of the three depends on your understanding of how to recruit
more motor units. In fact, if I had to sum up the intent and purpose of any effective size and
strength training plan in one sentence, it would read like this: Recruit as many motor units as
possible with each muscle contraction.”

It is for this reason that Louis Attila in training strongmen for the stage and in his commercial
studio trained all his pupils first and foremost with this light dumbbell protocol.

Do you know of any other people using this system exclusively? What are their results
like?

I currently have several people training in the system exclusively with a view to producing
before and after photos for a future edition of the book. Early results are good — there is a
period at the very start of training though were you have to “get the hang” of inducing the right
feeling in the muscles. This will take longer for some than others and it’s when you have as
Sandow put it ” thoroughly gained a correct way of working” that the results really start to
manifest. That said everyone so far is surprised by how quickly they can see a difference.

Is it better to fatigue the muscles using the fewest reps possible, or could this lead to
over tensing?

This is a good question and raises an important point. Over tensing is actually a potential
problem and one you want to avoid. You don’t want to go all out at first to get a complete
contraction by going too slowly, trembling with effort, popping veins and straining on each rep.
Rather it’s a case of performing each movement smoothly with as complete a peak contraction
as you can manage each time without messing up the proper cadence.
The number of reps is unimportant really — the rep ranges in the book are only there to guide
you and give you an idea of the sort of duration of each exercise that should give the correct
level of muscle fatigue. It’s much better to just perform each exercise as perfectly as possible at
the right rhythm and cadence and carry on until you hit fatigue/ache. Don’t try to force it. As you
get better you will find yourself able to recruit more muscle fibres, and get a better contraction
each time so perversely there is a period early on when you are able to hit failure earlier and
earlier with the same weight.

Do you still use the system? If so, are you continuing to progress?

Yes I use it everyday and it’s the only direct physical conditioning I do.

The question about continuing progress is an interesting one. From a modern bodybuilding
perspective it seems like a reasonable aim to constantly keep progressing — and if you’re no
longer growing you must be doing something wrong, right? And likewise if your aim is to get as
strong as humanly possible you would also want to keep constantly developing towards that
goal, and any plateau’s or sticking points would be viewed negatively.

But what if your stated aim is to develop your physique so you have a nicely balanced
musculature that looks good, is healthy and strong, and approximates “classic” proportions? If
you achieve those aims in several months, then keep doing the routine exactly as is, and
maintain those results with very little effort — is that a failure to progress or unqualified success
continued indefinitely?

I don’t seem to be getting bigger constantly (and I don’t want to) but it’s easier and easier for
me to perform the routine and induce the correct feeling in my muscles and I feel that my
muscle control is continually improving as well, which will occasionally lead to a break through
and the ability to perform one of the movements better or more effectively. So I’m progressing
in that sense but as I say in the book, I’m perfectly happy with the results and with just training
to maintain them.

As Attila put it: “Once the muscles are built up to their ideal state…the muscular standard can
be easily maintained with ten minutes morning and evening with the light dumbbells.”

How do measure progress with this system?

Again this particular use of the concept of “progress” is the same as in the previous question —
and the question seems perfectly reasonable and self evidently necessary from a
contemporary training perspective.

I suspect though, if you asked Professor Attila this he would look at you a bit funny. From his
perspective of quickly building up the muscles to their ideal state and then maintaining them
with little effort, it’s a bit like asking, “If I’m swimming across a lake how do I measure my
progress?” He would probably say, “Well…with every stroke the opposite shore will get a bit
closer and when you bump into it your done…”

I get where it’s coming from though — you’re very politely asking “how do I know I’m not
pumping away at some useless antiquated system, totally wasting my time, only to turn round
in six months and see no real results?”
Well, because if you do it right it works really well and quite quickly, and you can both see real
results in the mirror and measure them with a tape if you want, and your body feels increasingly
responsive as your ability to control your muscles improves. The results are really quite
concrete and undeniable — a couple of quotes from people on a forum who have been using
the routine (rumsoakedfist Martial arts forum):

I’ve been doing it for about 10 days …& think I have got the gist of it. I feel strong & think I am
definitely going to stick with it. The mrs is digging the guns too

I got (am getting) a better feel for the muscles targeted in each exercise now i have been doing
it a while, yesterday my deltoids just gave up! I have definitely noticed a change across my
shoulder girdle and also finding it is helping a few nagging injuries that normally hurt if I
train daily.

If you feel the need to be able to objectively quantify any strength gains you could periodically
test yourself in an exercise or set of exercises — e.g., pullups, clean and press etc… If you
already practice a sport or martial art or something, you could monitor improvements in
performance/ effectiveness but for me the results were visibly and proprioceptively apparent
and that was enough.

What do you say to the people who dismiss these methods as an early 19th century
con?

I say it’s perfectly understandable that you think that — particularly as this is intimated or stated
directly in various places on the Internet by people who are merely posting their assumptions
as fact without really doing any research to speak of (as you will have noticed this is not exactly
an isolated occurrence on the Internet).

Even if you haven’t read this before and you’re an intelligent informed person with a passing
knowledge of modern sports science, if someone tells you that a group of old-time strongmen
at the turn of the last century made a packet by selling muscle-building courses that advocated
training daily with 2-5lb dumbbells — such courses being adorned with pictures of their
massively muscled selves — you would probably think the same thing all on your own.

If you never actually read and attempt to understand these old courses, and just assume that
they advocated training with these tiny dumbbells as we would today with heavy ones, the idea
that it was some sort of con is the only one that makes sense.

The fact is though ordinary resistance training isn’t what was being advocated, and nobody at
the time cast aspersions on the actual methods — there were millions of satisfied customers
the world over who submitted impressive results photos to the various authors; the method was
taken up by the British army with some fanfare, and the method remained popular for decades.

If it really was a con and didn’t work the men responsible could not play the long game with it
— three months after their course came out when absolutely nobody had any results and
everyone wanted their money back, they would have been ruined.

Instead, Sandow became world famous and his books and courses were best sellers for years,
with many other Physical culturists jumping on the bandwagon to sell courses of their own.
Professor Attila operated a very successful studio in New York which taught these methods to
the great and the good — including world famous athletes such as Jim Corbett. He wouldn’t
have done much business if his key training protocol didn’t work — in fact the reason he did
such good business was because it did and it worked spectacularly well.

Also it doesn’t help that Sandow, Strongfort Staff Sgt Moss, and Attila where all music hall
strongmen. This was show-business after all and a branch of it in which ostentatiously lifting a
weight labeled 75lb that really only weighed 35lb was common practice, as was breaking pre-
weakened chains and challenging people to repeat a feat of strength that had a secret knack to
it that only you were familiar with. Add to that lots of dubious stories about Sandow’s personal
life and business practices and it’s easy to get that impression — and forget that Al Treloar who
was an enthusiastic proponent of this method was a respected trainer and director of the Los
Angeles Athletic club for 42 years!

For part two of the Q&A CLICK HERE

You can see my evidence in support of these methods by CLICKING HERE. Just follow the
links.

David’s book is available on Amazon by CLICKING HERE.

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8 THOUGHTS ON “DAVID BOLTON Q & A: BUILDING MUSCLE WITH STUPIDLY LIGHT WEIGHTS”

t01880
on August 21, 2012 at 10:44 am said:

Great interview.

Shenandoah
 on August 21, 2012 at 6:56 pm said:

Very interesting! David Bolton really sounds like someonewho knows from whence he
speaks. I’ve started doing this type of training one day a week, in the midst of my
regular routine.

lionquest1
on August 23, 2012 at 9:28 am said:

Good interview. Once upon a time these exercises were very popular. Truth be known,
dumbbell exercises have been around since at least the time of the ancient Greeks.
They used light weights, aprox. 5 pounds, called halteres. Even Ben Franklin wrote his
son to describe the dumbbell exercises he was doing.

I think David Bolton hit it on the head when he said that the
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body that we have now.

Will you get the look that heavy lifting and auxillary bodybuilding exercises will give
you? NO. Few people have the natural recovery ability to get that look, even with heavy
lifting, especially without bodybuilding drugs to enhance recovery.

However, anyone can develop a lean, muscular physique within their genetic type by
using Bolton’s method of bodybuilding. All it takes is focus and concentration.

calisthenicsworks
on August 23, 2012 at 10:03 am said:

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head when you say that most people won’t get
the big bodybuilding look no matter what they do. I truly believe that these sort
of exercises are the one of the best ways for people to get into great shape.
They also leave you fresh, and able to pursue other activities, too.

I really think iron-game historians have tried to bury these methods.

Tank
on September 4, 2012 at 2:28 am said:

For what its worth, I used to work w/this smooth ol’ guy. He was 62 when
we last worked together (I changed jobs, btw). He was 200-205 lbs, 5’8
tall, and built like a hockey puck. What you’ve detailed here describes
his exact training method. He sort of stumbled upon it himself. He
 worked out consistently, never using more than 20-25 lb dumbbells. He
was healthy, refused to retire. I personally saw him perform perfect chin-
ups while hanging from thick overhead pipes, and I saw him beat
younger, bigger guys in arm wrestling. Seriously, he’d never heard of
Sandow, but this is how he got it done.

calisthenicsworks
on September 4, 2012 at 4:03 pm said:

Thanks Tank — very interesting. By coincidence, I recently found out

that the original Sandow course actually permitted dumbbells of up to 20
pounds each for the light dumbbell work.

Pingback: David Bolton Q&A Part 2: Building Muscle Using Sandow’s Light-Dumbbell
System | BODY TRANSFORMATION: CALISTHENICS WORK!

Pingback: David Bolton Q & A, Part Three: Building Muscle using Sandow’s Light-
Dumbbell Techniques | BODY TRANSFORMATION: CALISTHENICS WORK!

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