Lou Ferrigno
Lou started out as a very skinny 6’5″ kid from New York. He began working out as a way to overcome a disability that he suffered as a toddler when he lost his hearing due to an ear infection.
He basically stormed onto the bodybuilding scene as a 21-year-old prodigy, winning several Mr America and Mr Universe contests, then battling Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Mr Olympia in 1974 and 1975. He never beat Arnold.
Lou played a big part in the film Pumping Iron, which pitted him against Schwarzenegger in the 1975 Mr O. While a lot of the movie was theatrics, the documentary did bring the sport of bodybuilding into the limelight and gave it some much-needed exposure to the general public.
Ferrigno then went on to become the Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby.
Lou has also been in quite a few movies, including Hercules and Sinbad, as well as playing a role in The King of Queens, playing himself.
He also made one appearance in The World’s Strongest Man contest. He participated with fellow bodybuilder Franco Columbu and they both showed that bodybuilders weren’t just about showy muscles; they were indeed very strong.
Lou, of course, has his own web site and does a strong mail order business. He’s also written several books, including my personal favorite, The Incredible Lou Ferrigno.
Meal Planning
Meal Planning for Building Muscle or Losing Body Fat
Here’s a reply to an often-asked question:
I’m a big fan of baselining anything and everything. After all, how can you judge progress if you don’t know where you started? In that light then, I’d suggest you record what you eat over a 7 day period. I won’t tell you to go so far as to weigh and measure everything, but certainly make an attempt at being fairly accurate. The reason I use 7 days and not just one is because people’s weight and calorie intake naturally vary day-by-day.
The idea in this 7-day period is to maintain your weight so that we can know your “maintenance caloric intake.” If you gain or lose a pound, don’t worry much, but if your weight changes by 3 pounds or more, then we’ll have to start over.
It’s easiest to eat pre-packaged foods during this time period because those food sources already have the calories, protein, carbs, and fat grams already determined for you. There’s a great book called Nutrition Almanac that has all sorts of data about thousands of different food sources. Check out your local bookstore or Amazon.
Keeping a log is fairly simple. I suggest Excel or some other garden-variety spreadsheet; however, writing it down on paper works, too.
The things I would track are portion size, calories, protein, carbs, and fat. At the very least, get the cals. Create a spreadsheet or a piece of paper with calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat, and portion size as columns, the things you eat per meal as rows.
Log everything each day. At the end of the day, add it all up. At the end of the week, take the average of each day. If you maintained a steady weight, you now know your maintenance caloric intake.
As for your wife and your different objectives, I’d take a roughly similar approach. To change your weight (in gaining weight you want to increase mass while maintaining or losing fat, ideally; in losing weight, you want to drop fat while maintaining or adding muscle), vary your daily maintenance caloric intake by an average of 500 calories.
For example, if your maintenance caloric intake is 2500, and you’re goal is to gain muscle, then up your caloric intake to 3000 on average.
Here’s the twist: Over the course of a 7 day span, your caloric intake ought to be 3000. BUT, vary this amount. Your caloric intake might look like this:
| Calories | |
| Monday | 3050 |
| Tuesday | 3350 |
| Wednesday | 2800 |
| Thursday | 2500 |
| Friday | 3250 |
| Saturday | 3050 |
| Sunday | 3000 |
| AVERAGE | 3000 |
Every fourth day, go back to “normal.” The body is terribly resistant to change and if you just up your calories from 2500 to 3000, you probably won’t gain an ounce! So, don’t let it adapt by changing your levels every day.
Now, this isn’t as hard as it sounds. Because I assume you eat different things every day, you’ll never eat exactly the same amount of calories each day.
How do you add calories? There are a few ways:
- Increase portion sizes slightly
- Add a meal or snack
- Add a protein or weight gain drink pre- and post- workout
How do you drop calories?
- Mainly, decrease your portion size
- Cut out fatty food
- Eliminate juice and bread and “add-ons” like butter, dressing, and condiments
Your caloric intake for losing weight looks similar to gaining weight, only back off the calories by an average of 500 per day, but remember to vary that number so that it is an average.
Building muscle and/or cutting fat is mostly a math problem. You either need to create a caloric surplus (gain muscle) or deficit (lose fat).
Exercise plays a vitally important role here, too. If you want some help there, let me know. The short story is that your training can be mostly the same, whether you’re attempting to build muscle or lose fat.
Remember intervals, circuit training, and high intensity. Long aerobic sessions are out (think jogging for miles on end).
If you want some really good meal plans that address specific body composition needs, let me know via the Contact Form. Be extremely specific about your objectives.
Jay Cutler
Jay Cutler is a 4-time Mr. Olympia winner. He’s broad, tan, and ripped to shreds.
I ran across him once at the Arnold Sports Expo quite a few years ago. He’d already won the Mr. O a couple times by then.
He’s not tall, but DAYUM he’s wide.
The man has some broad shoulders. And he’s freaking huge!
Larry Scott
The winner of the first two Mr. Olympia’s (1965 & 1966), Larry Scott is best known for those arms! He probably has the best bicep structure ever.
Unfortunately, he’s also known for wide hips and narrow shoulders. I’m not so sure I agree with Mr. Gironda about this, but that’s the story.
He also starred in movies, including Muscle Beach Party featuring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.
The partnership of Larry and Vince was quite innovative. Together, they “invented” at least two exercises named after Larry:
- The Scott Curl, performed on a “preacher” bench, to which they both attributed his famously long-bellied biceps.
- The Scott Press, a dumbbell exercise where you started in the finished position of a curl, and press upwards as you rotate your hands from supination to pronation. This exercise really hits the front and side deltoid a lot harder than a standard dumbbell press.
Homemade Supplement Secrets Review
This is my second review of a Jeff Anderson product, and just like the last product I reviewed, Optimum Anabolics, Homemade Supplement Secrets is an overwhelming hit!
This book is chock-full of nutritional information. Jeff dispels a lot of myths about nutrition and supplementation and he really takes the supplement industry to task for the deceptive practices that some of the players engage in. Jeff also lays it all out in terms of ingredients in popular supplements in several categories (like “Mass Gainers,” “Fat Burners,” and “Hormone Boosters,” just to name a few) and tells you the exact quantities of each beneficial ingredient to put in your own, homemade recipes.
You will learn a lot from this book. There’s a lot of science here, but it’s all put out in layman’s terms that anybody can understand and comprehend. Better yet, everything you learn will be actionable! In no time flat, you’ll be making your own supplements at a fraction of the cost in the store, and you may even be making a more effective concoction (Jeff tells you which ingredients aren’t necessary in the popular formulations).
Want Faster Results?
Look, I know how hard it is to build muscle. Trust me when I tell you it took me 20+ years to figure it out. But once I did--BAM!--muscle appeared almost overnight. Give me your email address and I'll send you the keys.