ok, but lets say we dont follow it to the extreme, and do not look for 4 inches growth, ill be happy with 2 inches 
what would the key components of the routine be like? i suspect something like one leg at a time, all the way up, all the way down, squeeze at the top? maybe a hold at a top for a no of seconds? since it didnt require gym machines i assume it was something you did every day or even several times a day?
I don't think that is sound reasoning. That if you do something and gain 4 inches then you can do a less extreme version and get 2 inches. It doesn't work that way.
It's meaningless to talk in terms of a workout routine. Sets, reps, intensity variables. various movements.... It was following basic principles that I first learned when I was introduced to Arthur Jones by Hank Grundman (founder of the Iron Man Triathlon) who lived in the condo that I worked as a security guard when I was 18 years old. Hank Grundman opened up the first and only fully stocked commercial Nautilus Training Center. We would have long talks while he relaxed in the Jacuzzi and he offered me a huge discount to train at his gym and gave me a very plain looking paper back red book with a lady wearing a white, modest, full body leotard doing the Nautilus pullover machine saying, "If you read this you will know more about Nautilus equipment and it's training methods than most anybody."
I was mesmerized by that book. It just made so much logical sense. There were a few principles that really stuck out in my mind and really made an impression. This one basic principle stated by Arthur Jones was my guiding principle.
"Below a certain threshold of intensity exercise will do little or nothing by way of increasing muscular size, strength and functional ability."
"A long as you are working within your functional ability, doing things that are already easy, exercise will do little or nothing by way of increasing muscular size, strength and functional ability."
Now were talking late seventies early eighties when it was all about achieving a pump and 60 set squats in the mountains that Arnold claimed in his first autobiography. So this was new stuff. And it made so much logical sense. I mean, if you could do 8 pull ups then as long as you kept doing 8, never trying for 9, 10, or 11 -- how could this possibly stimulate an adaptive response?
So that was the constant challenge. Trying to find ways to challenge the body and stimulate an adaptive response. Your body seems to adapt quite quickly to a new stress so I had to continually figure out ways to subject my calves to a new and unaccustomed stress and that's why I can't just write out a routine.
So my goal was to try and make my calves as sore as possible the next day. If I didn't experience any soreness then I considered the workout wasted effort and a needless drain on my limited recovery ability.
But unlike Basile's DOMS theory I made absolutely sure that I would not touch my calves until it was fully recover. All soreness was gone. It worked out to something like this: I found that it usually took three days for the soreness to disappear. I took that to mean that the muscle damage has been repaired. Then I would wait a couple of more days for the "adaptive response", i.e., muscle growth to occur. So I would generally train my calves every five to six days, sometimes seven or eight if the DOMS was especially severe, but never less than five.
DOMS is an indication of muscle damage. Pain serves a purpose to the human body. It is a signal that damage has occurred and the pain is the body's way of telling you to back off. Give it a rest. It made absolutely no sense at all to continual to train a damaged muscle. It's like to continue sitting out in the sun when you have a sun burn.
Now compare my reasoning to Basile's, if he has even given a coherent reason other than that absurd prehistoric hunter scenario which has already been disproven in the wild using cheetahs as an example. Every time a cheetah fails making a kill, after about the second or third attempt, it grows noticeably weaker and each subsequent failed attempt reduces it's chance of success even more as it's functional ability continues to decline and weaken.
And, of course, unlike Basile, I also did an experiment on myself and was actually successful with before and after pictures as evidence. I also put myself out there on IronAge and accepted any and all challenges to my reasoning gaining the acceptance and understanding. It was well received because logically it made sense and, more importantly, it worked.
As an aside there was zero change in diet and zero change in bodyweight during that muscle gain. But that's only because calves are a small muscle group. I can't imagine anyone could gain any appreciable amount of muscle in the legs and back without an increase in body weight.
So why didn't I try this protocol with other muscle groups? If it worked for calves, the most stubborn of all muscle groups, it should be a shoo in for arms, chest, delts....
That is another very involved long story that I am not up to telling at the moment only to say that it deals with one's mental health, what kind of person you strive to be, your priorities in life and why I believe that anyone who has achieved greatest in anything is by definition not a normal person and that also includes having a screw lost. They are mentally stable. Someone like GSP seems like a normal human being but those close to him will attest that he is a mental. Coleman with his happy go lucky southern charm -- always happy, always living the dream -- had more than a few screws loose considering what he was willing to do to himself. I mean, look at him now. Does he seem all there?
I got so obsessed with my calves that I was going crazy. And I'm not kidding. Others noticed a change in me. That I was described as getting kooky. And it's all because I was always obsessing about my calves.
Calves? A fucking muscle on the back of your shin that most people don't give a shit about. Can you begin to see why that when it was all over that I had some qualms? That a little fucking muscle group and how it looked could so dominate my life. Unless you're a pro bber and your living depends on these things what kind of moron gets so preoccupied with the look of his lower legs.
Resistance training is the best type of activity by far for one to maintain health, looks and quality of life but serious bbing really attracts some strange people and makes them even stranger.
