Mike Francois
1995 Arnold Classic Winner
Toughest Workout :
World Gym; Worthington, Ohio; 1991
A lot of my early workouts were pretty insane, but one particular workout stands out. My trainer at that time was a national level competitor named Greg Greenzalis, and I was one of his first clients, which made me sort of is guinea pig. He was a good trainer – don’t get me wrong – but he always felt like he had to push people to the brink of failure.
In some ways, I looked forward to it; in other ways, I dreaded it, because I knew I was going to throw up, or at least come close, every time. Especially with legs which we were scheduled to train that day at 3:30 pm. When I arrived , Greg told me what he had in store : a giant set compromising of Front squats, leg press, Hack squats, leg extensions and sissy squats. He wanted me to do 20-50 of the first, followed immediately by 20-50 of the second, and so on until I completed one continuous set.
HE would let me rest for a minute or two – what a guy – then we would start the whole insane thing over again.
We never deviated from the poundage’s we used for the first giant set. For front squats it was 315. The leg press was 10 plates on each side, or about 900 pounds. Hack squats was 225. For leg extension Greg just stuck the pin at the bottom of the stack. I did sissy squats holding a 25 pound plate against my chest.
As the workout unfolded, my legs got warm, then pumped, then wobbly, like jelly. IN the middle of my third set in hack squats, I couldn’t feel them at all. I was ready to throw in the towel, and I looked up at Greg and asked, “cant we do 12 reps instead of 20?” “sure you can do that or you can just go home.” He said. That sums up his attitude.
Then your testosterone kicks in and you just go, go, go. Greg was the first person who had given me any real guidance in bodybuilding, so I looked up to him.(I still do). I didn’t want to fail.
Near the end of the fourth giant set, everything I was hearing and seeing started to blur together. IN retrospect, I think I was on the verge of loosing consciousness. No matter how sick I felt, though, I knew I had to keep going, to keep blasting through it. If I’d stopped to rest, the nausea would’ve set in. If I kept pushing though, I wouldn’t throw up until after id finished.
After I completed five of these 100 rep plus giant sets, I was just crawling on the ground. What was Greg trying to accomplish by putting me through this? It’s simple: he was trying to kill me. Actually, it ends up pushing you to a new level. That’s the thing – I made tremendous gains training with him. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was taking me where you have to go to become a champion.
