Muscle Revolution
An interview with Chad Waterbury
by Chris Shugart


I attended a big weight training symposium in Canada back in 2001. After one of the presentations, I was approached by a big guy who shook my hand and told me how much he'd like to write for Testosterone Nation.

Nothing new there. Every time we attend such events, TC and I are dog-piled by wannabe contributors. This guy was no different, or so I thought. I took his card, told him how to submit an article, and promptly forgot about him.

But just a few days later, the big dude sent TC an article — a simple piece on grip training — and we published it. Now it's five years later, and the big fella, Chad Waterbury, has taken the weight training community by storm. His T-Nation articles (dozens of them by now) and his new book, Muscle Revolution, are just that: revolutionary.

We were finally able to catch Waterbury sitting still for a few minutes and shot him some questions about his unique training methodologies and his new book.


T-Nation: There's a page in your new book that says in big letters "Performance First." Long story short, why performance first?

Chad Waterbury: The short answer is homeostasis. The human body is an organism that constantly seeks to maintain homeostasis. Since the body basically wants to stay the same, you've got to force it to change.

One of the best ways to force the body to change is by forcing it to constantly do more work — increase performance, if you will. And the best ways I've found to instill and monitor better performance techniques are with the progression methods I outline in Muscle Revolution.

I start off the book with that chapter because I feel that the effort to improve one's performance is probably the surest, albeit least understood way to get results. Most people only associate increased performance with lifting ever-heavier loads. While it's certainly true that adding ten pounds to a lift is progress, I feel it's important to outline many other methods that can, and should, be used.

The set progression is one example. If a person does five sets of five repetitions with his bodyweight for one workout, and then does six sets of five repetitions the next workout with his bodyweight, that's real progress. The set progression is an intuitively simple progression method that isn't used nearly enough. You always see coaches telling people to lift a heavier load or do more reps, but rarely do you see a set progression.

I advocate the set progression in many different circumstances because it's one of the least fatiguing methods to increase performance. You're using the same load, the same reps, but you're adding one more set. It's a simple progression that yields big results. I'd like to enter the mathematical universe to establish my point.

T-Nation: Go for it.

Chad Waterbury: Let's say a guy weighs 200 pounds. And let's say he did five sets of five chin-ups with his bodyweight. We can measure the volume of that upper back workout by multiplying the load (his bodyweight) by total reps. In this case, the load is 200 pounds and total reps equal 25. So the training volume is 200 x 25 and that equals 5000 pounds.

Now if he simply adds one more set to his next chin-up workout, it changes his training volume to 200 x 30, and that equals 6000 pounds. Specifically, it augments his training volume by 1000 pounds. That's real progress!

Not only is the set progression an effective and easily measurable progression method, but it's also psychological artifice. When I tell an athlete that his workout is going to consist of the same movements, load, and reps as the last workout, he immediately thinks the workout is going to be a cakewalk.

But the set progression is just one of five progression methods that I outline in the book. I explain how, why, and when all five should be used.

T-Nation: Your book also promises to show lifters where they've been going wrong in the gym. Give us a couple examples of where people wanting to build muscle are messing up in their training?

Chad Waterbury: The first thing people often screw up is what I already mentioned: organized progression. Basically, they don't have an effective, measurable progression plan in place.

You'll get nowhere unless you constantly force your body to do what it isn't used to doing. And you'll never know if you're progressing unless you have an easily measured system to quantify your data.

The second thing people often screw up is their movement selection. If you want to build big, strong triceps, and if you spend your time performing kickbacks instead of dips, your efforts are going to prove futile.

Were every lifter in this country forced to do only compound movements, we'd have a lot more muscle out there. One reason is because compound movements make isolating a body part damn near impossible. The close-grip chin-up is one of the best biceps builders, but it also challenges your forearms and upper back. I'll never understand why a guy wouldn't want to build his forearms and upper back while he's training his biceps.

In addition, people are often surprised by how many additional muscle groups are recruited with free-weight, compound movements like chins. Case in point: a guy came to me for a consultation and a workout. He wanted to improve his upper body size, and he was one of those guys who always wanted to be sore after training. He said he wanted me to make his abs sore, for whatever inane reason. So I decided to humor him. I had him perform eight sets of three rep chin-ups with a heavy dumbbell between his feet.

Not exactly what most trainers would do to instill abdominal soreness, right? The next day he said he never felt such deep soreness in his abs. My point is that compound, free weight movements will always recruit and develop more muscles than single joint isolation movements.

But I don't want to turn this into an all-or-nothing issue. Single joint movements play an integral role in many programs. So in Muscle Revolution I help people understand why certain single joint movements are better than others. And this same information carries over to compound movements, too.

The third thing people screw up is that they don't change their workouts often enough. I understand their dilemma because it's difficult to measure progress if you never repeat the same workout, but static parameters have really been taken too far. Specifically, I don't think people change their rep schemes often enough.

Fast-twitch individuals hate high rep work, and slow-twitch guys hate maximal strength work. But it's important to understand that both camps can benefit from doing the rep schemes that they might have an aversion to.

When I make a fast-twitch guy switch from, say, five reps per set to twelve reps per set, hypertrophy often ensues because he must force his muscles to work longer than they were accustomed to.

And when I make a slow-twitch guy perform maximal strength work, his endurance performance is often enhanced because he can better recruit his motor units, and he usually gains muscle because he's tapped into the high threshold motor units.

There are many more things people often mess up, and I discuss them in my book. But the three aforementioned issues are definitely at the top of the list.

T-Nation: Here's a controversial question for you: Can an experienced lifter really build muscle and lose fat at the same time?

Chad Waterbury: That's an excellent, albeit polarizing question. Many coaches say that you can't build muscle and lose fat at the same time. Their reasoning usually goes something like this: you need a caloric surplus to build muscle but you need a caloric deficit to lose fat, and since you can't have a surplus and a deficit at the same time it's postulated that you can't gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

My position is that the answer probably isn't as elementary as merely looking at it from a surplus verses deficit standpoint. It's likely that other complex processes such as the production of mechano-growth factor (MGF), IGF-1, and insulin fluctuations determine whether a person can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

MGF is derived from IGF-1 and it's expressed in muscles that have been mechanically overloaded: resistance training. Some people might express more MGF than others, and some types of training might produce more MGF than others — we honestly don't know at this point. My postulate, however, is that High Frequency Training (HFT) results in the highest production of MGF. But I don't want to get off on that tangent at this juncture.

From an endocrine standpoint, growth hormone induces both muscle growth and fat loss. So there is a hormone that can do both at the same time. But as many athletes and bodybuilders now know, growth hormone injections rarely end up being worth the effort and expense. So the answer probably isn't as simple as merely focusing on growth hormone.

The answer probably lies in the hormones that are expressed further down the line when skeletal muscles are overloaded — MGF being one that's surfaced over the last few years. There's no doubt that many more will emerge.

Certain real-world observations seem to demonstrate that people can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. When my buddy went to boot camp he was a fat slob. Over the course of basic training, he lost 20 pounds of fat. But what's interesting is that his pectorals, calves, and forearms all grew!

Importantly, this wasn't a smoke-and-mirrors effect such is the case when someone loses fat and his muscles look bigger because he's more ripped. My buddy's muscles were measurably bigger than when he entered boot camp! And this was in the face of losing 20 pounds.