Triangle Method of Peak Athletic Performance

The Edge: Ben and Joe's Weider's Ultimate Guide to Strength, Speed, and Stamina
by Ben Weider, Joe Weider, Daniel Gastelu

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The Pursuit of Personal Excellence

The Weider Triangle Method allows you to be your personal best and achieve your goals. This success model applies to attaining athletic performance and personal fitness goals, and it can be applied to other areas of your life.

First, by following the Triangle approach, you will quickly develop a healthy and functional body. You will also see improvements in your mental fitness, and you will develop good habits, which include planning and scheduling to integrate your fitness goals into your life. In time you will begin to realize that being positive and believing in yourself will help you stick to your plan and accomplish your goals.

Second, you must then start to identify bad habits, the ones that detract from attaining your goals. This could include bad eating habits, poor time management, substance abuse, or lack of motivation.

Third, work on your skill and technique. Become a master of them. Strive for perfection.

Fourth, always think positive thoughts. Focus on your daily and long-term goals every day. Create daily mantras to repeat every morning and in the evening, to keep your mind focused on what matters most to you and free from extraneous thoughts.

The Weider Triangle Method of Peak Athletic Performance

The Triangle

The Weider Triangle Method combines three crucial components: strength from weight training and bodybuilding; energy from sports nutrition; and technique from skill training and practice. These components are integrated to produce reliable improvements in athletic performance and personal fitness. No one component can work without the other two. Without technique, there is no skillful movement. Without strength, there is no effective body movement. And without sports nutrition there is no growth, energy, or recovery. By integrating the three components of the Weider Triangle Method, we have a system that is proven to succeed.

The Triangle is unique in tailoring weight training and nutrition needs to your chosen sport. Specificity is important. For example, we know from viewing sophisticated video and computer skill analysis techniques developed over the past twenty years that even one finger out of place can impede performance. This knowledge is important for your goals, too. The Triangle shows that precision leads to optimum fitness.

1. Strength

In sports, strength makes a critical difference between two athletes of equal skill. Once trainers concentrated on the specific muscles used in a given sport, but now we know that it is the strength of the whole body that counts. Functional power comes only from a complete program of weight training and physical conditioning. During the past several decades, more and more people have turned to bodybuilding and weight training to improve their body build and strength. We have continued to review the latest advances in this form of training for your utilization and to benefit your athletic and personal fitness objectives. This includes the newly developed Variable Weight-Training approach, which breaks the barrier of the antiquated one-size-fits-all weightlifting approaches you may have already tried, with limited success.

In recent decades, there have been significant advances in exercise science, especially in the area of using weight training to improve athletic performance and personal fitness. Not long ago coaches and trainers thought weight training for the whole body produced "muscle-bound" athletes with big, slow muscles. But correct muscle building techniques do just the opposite, and instead will result in building faster, more flexible athletes. Muscle building not only improves athletic performance, but also extends an athlete's career and contributes to general health and longevity. These athletic muscle-building techniques have been modified to also meet the needs of fitness enthusiasts-people looking to reshape their bodies for personal fitness and improved appearance.

By using the Variable Weight-Training approach you can target the exercise frequency, intensity, and duration to best meet your specific goals. For years, we have researched the science of weight training-which exercises, frequency, sets, and reps work best to build the massive physiques of bodybuilders, powerlifters, and other strength athletes? These variables can be manipulated to create a continuum of muscle and strength development results. For example, it is well established that lifting heavy weights for a low number of repetitions stimulates muscle growth and strength. But now we know that exercising with lighter weights for higher repetitions also stimulates muscle growth and strength, particularly muscle strength-stamina-strength that can be sustained for long periods of time rather than quick bursts only. This new approach increases the benefits that weight training has to offer, and allows you to fine-tune your training that much more. The science behind this phenomenon is described in chapter 3. The Variable Weight-Training approach is the new frontier of muscle development, strength, and bodybuilding.

Copyright © January 2002, Avery Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc., used by permission.

About the Author

Ben Weider is the cofounders of Weider Nutrition International, Weider Publications, Inc., and the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB). Weider publications include Muscle & Fitness, Muscle & Fitness Hers, Men's Fitness, Flex, Shape, and Natural Health. Ben Weider lives in Montreal.

Joe Weider is the cofounders of Weider Nutrition International, Weider Publications, Inc., and the International Federation of Bodybuilders. He lives in Woodland Hills, California.

Daniel Gastelu is the author of Avery's Sports Nutrition Almanac and Dynamic Nutrition for Maximum Performance. He lives in Sparta, New Jersey.