by JP – Updated: 05/23/14
“Advanced
Mass Building”
Author: Jeff Anderson
Recommended For:
Intermediate – Advanced
Price: $47
Format: E-Book (Electronic Delivery)
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If you ever feel like going to the gym is analogous to going to war, as in you are in a battle to win the rewards of muscle growth, then this program is for you.
Jeff Anderson has a military analogy for every muscle building tactic he gives you in “Advanced Mass Building”.
The analogies sometimes seem like a stretch but Anderson finds inventive ways to relate them back to his “bodybuilding battle plan”. It’s pretty impressive creativity. Anderson is an entertaining writer and this was an enjoyable read. Still, in the end, the army stories seemed very long and I didn’t really see them presenting value.
At times I wondered if I was reading Anderson’s army memoirs or a muscle building program.
All joking aside, there is a muscle building program here. It’s 4 weeks on and one week off and Anderson provides a 5-day-a-week (recommended) and a 3-day-a-week routine. It starts you out with a very high-volume week and then brings you back to more common volumes in the final three weeks.
As you would expect from an “advanced” program, Advanced Mass Building employs many techniques that are often labeled “advanced” in training circles — supersets, pre-exhaustion training and cheat reps to name a few.
The program seems to be a logical and solid plan-of-attack for the advanced bodybuilder.
There are some good teachings in here. For example, I thought Anderson gave a good lesson on the actual value of a cheat rep. The value isn’t in getting one more rep up but rather in the opportunity to focus on the lowering (eccentric) portion of the lift one more time. In practice, very few “advanced” trainers seem to grasp this concept.
I came away from the ebook wishing I’d gotten more of these lessons and less of the army analogies/stories.
The dieting section of the ebook was disappointing for an “advanced” program. Anderson works from the premise that even advanced bodybuilders screw up dieting. Therefore his goal in the program is to give trainers a simple and easy to follow mass gain diet. It is a pretty basic and simple mass gain diet guidance he provides.
While it likely is true that even those that consider themselves “advanced” mess up basic dieting, I’m not sure I’m looking for a basic dieting lesson when I invest in an advanced program.
Anderson says at the beginning of the nutrition section it should be assumed that if you bought an advanced program you should have “at least a working knowledge of the basics of how to eat to build muscle.” Agreed. So, while it’s fine to do some remedial stuff, why not add to my knowledge? How about some advanced dieting techniques?
I also found it odd that Anderson, someone who is a valued source on supplements, barely touches them in this ebook.
There is a well-reasoned routine here. But past that, I’m not sure I got a lot out of the program in terms of advanced muscle building knowledge. I did, however, up my knowledge base on M-16s and copperhead missiles.
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