I saw Tom Platz at the Olympia in 1980. He was popular there but no where near the top that day...except for his amazing legs. That brought the house down when he posed them. A year later and he was robbed of the Olympia by a sub standard Franco. Who would have thought it was possible? Tom Platz the uncrowned Mr Olympia.
Well, I watched the video and a light went on for me. I once did 10 deep reps in the full squat with 400 pounds. I also did 8 reps with 410 pounds. Squats didn't deliver on making my legs much bigger. Now I can see why they failed me. I was doing them like Tom demonstrated NOT to do them. You know, leaning forward. So my quads never got much mechanical tension and so they never grew no matter how much weight I was using. A good lesson there for all of us.
I learned something new after 56 years of training. I should have had special shoes. Oh, I always put my heels on a low block, perhaps 1 1/2 inches high. Tom stresses how doing squats is the alter for bodybuilders and we should approach them with the right frame of mind. To get into that frame of mind we have to wear the right shoes and wear a loose fitting belt. He even suggested wearing high socks to trick the mind into thinking we are shorter and thus the up and down piston action will deliver if we do everything right. I wasn't training my quads but lower back and other muscles used in a variation of a good morning movement. I highly recommend that others listen closely to what Tom says. He is revealing his secrets and to be honest I had never heard about his secrets and I can see now that he knew a lot about building muscles. It is so easy to dismiss the idea that there are secrets in bodybuilding because after many, many years in the gym we all figure there is hardly anything new to learn.
